Opening Session

This opening session launches ISC High Performance 2026 in Hamburg under the theme of connecting the dots, with program chair Rosa M. Badia of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center welcoming a record registration of around 3,500 attendees and 200 exhibitors. Badia frames the connections at three levels, technological, human, and community, and situates the program at a moment when HPC has reached exascale, AI dominates applications and shapes system design, quantum computing is advancing toward integration with HPC, and energy efficiency has become critical for sustainability. She previews the keynotes: Martin Schulz on transitions in HPC, Amanda Randles on HPC for vascular digital twins, and Jack Dongarra's closing keynote on HPC in transition. The session tours the week's formats, including fishbowl panels with rotating chairs, 31 Birds-of-a-Feather sessions, guided walking tours of the exhibition on sustainability, machine learning stacks, and data infrastructure, and a new community stage in the exhibition area for interest-group sessions, plus a newly formed Next Generation Committee of young talent shaping future sessions and the student cluster competition. Badia announces the week's awards: the Jack Dongarra Early Career Award to Devesh Tiwari, the Hans Meuer Award for best paper, and the first Best Student Research Paper Award to Niklas Barr, with a poster award to follow. She closes by urging attendees to engage actively, meet new people, use the conference app for networking, and turn the event's technological discussions into lasting collaborations.