Maria GIRONE

NGT Deputy Coordinator

Maria Girone serves as Deputy Coordinator of the Next Generation Triggers (NGT) project, bringing to the initiative more than two decades of experience in scientific computing for high-energy physics.

She is the Head of CERN openlab and a Principal Applied Scientist in CERN’s IT Department. Holding a PhD in particle physics, Maria has worked in scientific computing since 2002 and is widely recognised for driving the adoption of High-Performance Computing (HPC) within the high-energy physics community. Her work bridges emerging technologies, HPC and AI with the operational needs of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments.

Maria has played a central role in the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG), where she founded and led the operations coordination team responsible for core services and the commissioning of new tools. From 2014 to 2015, she served as Software and Computing Coordinator for the CMS experiment, overseeing computing operations across approximately seventy centres worldwide. Earlier in her career, she was a Marie Curie fellow and research associate at Imperial College London, contributing to hardware development and data analysis for the LHCb and ALEPH experiments.

From 2016 to early 2023, Maria was CTO of CERN openlab, where she defined R&D strategies in computing architectures, HPC, and artificial intelligence, while strengthening collaborations with industry, the European Commission, and the LHC experiments.

A strong advocate for inclusivity in science and technology, she co-founded the IDEAS4HPC Association (Swiss Chapter of Women in HPC) and regularly contributes to initiatives promoting diversity in STEM. In 2022, she received the “Brutium” Gold Medal for her contributions to science.