CIONET Award for digital leadership in the public sector awarded to BSC Operations Director

19 June 2018

Sergi Girona says that this award recognizes the effort and the teamwork to launch MareNostrum 4 in record time.

Sergi Girona has received the award that acknowledges him as the best 2018 CIO in the public sector by Ángel Ruiz, Country Manager of Lenovo Data Center Group for Spain and Portugal. During his speech, he has expressed his gratitude for this award, which he has got “thanks to the effort of all the BSC team, without which it would be impossible for me to carry out a successful job. It is also the result of the trust placed by our Trustees (Spanish government, Generalitat of Catalonia and Universitat Politècnica of Catalonia) in supercomputing as a tool for the progress of our country and their support as regards the future of BSC during all these years”. The award ceremony has taken place during a gala in the Rafael del Pino Auditory, in Madrid.

The BSC Operations department Director has been recognised for the digital achievements reached last year. The jury, made up of known professionals and experts of the IT area, has taken into account two major milestones to grant this award: on the one hand, the MareNostrum 4 supercomputer, which was installed in record time (two months). On the other hand, its power consumption has not undergone a proportional growth to its power; that is, MareNostrum 4 is four times more powerful than its predecessor, but its power consumption has only increased a 30%.

The jury of the CIONET Leadership Awards has taken into consideration the future prospect that the supercomputing project offers. The technical complexity of the project, the time of its execution and the capacities offered to the scientific world make this initiative worthy of this recognition.

The main objective of the Digital Leadership Awards is to grant visibility to major achievements regarding digital transformation which are being developed by the ICT community of different companies and institutions of our country. These awards are aimed at recognising the strategic importance of this task, being a unique opportunity to share knowledge and experience, which may well be used as mutual learning of this new digital era.