Speaker
Description
Deepa Shinde, Senior Director of Research & Innovation at Microsoft EMEA, explores how the convergence of high‑performance computing, artificial intelligence, and emerging quantum techniques is redefining the pace, scale, and nature of scientific discovery. The keynote sets out a new operating model for research - AI‑native rather than marginally assisted, platform‑based rather than tool‑centric, federated rather than centralised, and governed by design rather than retrofitted control - arguing that sustained impact now depends on shared platforms that connect data, models, compute, and collaboration, with AI treated as a scientific instrument alongside supercomputers and laboratories. In the spirit of TNC26’s Digital Sisu theme, the talk combines this systems perspective with concrete research exemplars, including AI‑assisted materials discovery, foundation models for weather and climate forecasting, and hybrid AI–HPC–quantum workflows that open up problem classes beyond classical computation alone. It concludes by addressing why trust, reproducibility, provenance, and governance are not constraints but prerequisites for responsible acceleration, and how collaboration across universities, national research and education networks, organisations such as GÉANT, and industry partners enables research to move further, faster, and with greater credibility - positioning Microsoft as a long‑term partner within a broader public research ecosystem.
