Author

Dr. Elisabeth Ortega is a Theoretical Chemist converted to an HPC specialist. Since she was a child, she has been an enthusiast of science and technology, and it motivated her to get a first degree in chemistry and a second one in computer science, followed by a master's degree and a Ph.D. in theoretical and computational chemistry. She tasted the HPC world, being the only system administrator of the chemistry department for one year, just to pay the bills when her doctorate scholarship ended, but she realized that the academy life was not for her, and moved to the industry right after presenting her dissertation. She spent seven years designing and developing software for pharmaceutical companies, teaching her customers to use the solutions provided to them, and traveling as a salesperson, but when the lockdown affected her daily tasks, spending a few months working at home, she decided to change her career and restart her experience in the HPC with a position in customer support and as a technician for European projects. A few months later, she was promoted to create her own department and to start the “quantum journey” of the company, being focused on innovative solutions to improve user accessibility to HPC and in the optimization of computational resources. Today, she is the R&D&I manager and one of the decision-makers of an HPC services and consulting company. Her career was combined with her participation in local community events, participating actively in PyLadies BCN community more than 10 years ago until today (+100 members), being part of the coordination team of “Hablemos Python” discord channel (close to 9000 members) and co-creator of the WHPC local chapter.