CloudCIX Data Centre | Cork, Ireland | Tuesday, 27 January 2026
AI FORWARD > Supercomputing the Future took place at CloudCIX in Cork, bringing together industry, academia, infrastructure specialists and public sector representatives for a rare open day inside a live, operational data centre.
The event marked the official launch of the Boole Supercomputer, Ireland’s first liquid-cooled NVIDIA B200 platform, and explored how next-generation AI infrastructure is being deployed in practice, from data sovereignty and performance to sustainability and real-world use cases.
Across panel discussions, technical sessions and guided tours, speakers and attendees shared practical experience, openly discussed infrastructure choices, and challenged assumptions around how and where AI workloads should run. A strong theme throughout the day was the importance of responsible, transparent AI adoption, supported by secure, local and sovereign infrastructure.
One of the highlights for many attendees was the opportunity to see the Boole Supercomputer up close during guided data centre tours, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the scale and complexity of modern AI infrastructure.
Hosted at CloudCIX in Cork, home to the newly upgraded Boole Supercomputer, this edition of the AI FORWARD series shines a spotlight on how supercomputing is reshaping the future and expanding what’s possible with AI.
The Boole Supercomputer is the first liquid-cooled, supercomputer-class NVIDIA B200 system in Ireland and one of the first deployed in Europe, purpose-built to demonstrate what next-generation AI infrastructure can unlock.
Next-Gen AI Showcase
AI Technology Ecosystem
AI Quick-Start to Scaling Supports
Registration 9:30 – 10:00
Organisations choose where to host their data based on security, regulation, geopolitical risk, performance, sustainability and long-term control – not just cost or convenience.
This panel will examine the role of sovereign AI infrastructure in supporting businesses and academia and which factors will enable Ireland to compete for world-class AI projects, including fast delivery of advanced computing and connectivity, reliable energy availability, and the development of a strong ecosystem of suppliers and skilled specialists.
Let’s challenge the idea that signing up with a large cloud provider is the natural starting point for AI projects. In reality, there’s no single “right” place for AI to live – every option has its own strengths depending on scale, cost, performance, and how sensitive the data is. This panel will explore the full range of choices, from in-house setups and colocation to cloud, GPU-on-demand, edge, and hybrid models, and how organisations can avoid falling into hyperscaler lock-in.
We’ll highlight the role of independent providers like CloudCIX, who offer flexible, local, and sustainable ways to build and grow AI projects without giving up control.
Using real-world examples, like bioinformatics with lessons applicable to many other data-intensive computing workloads – this panel explores how performance, data locality, long-term storage or compliance shape infrastructure decisions, and why many organisations are choosing sovereign cloud and colocation over default hyperscale platforms – with lessons that apply to other highly data-intensive workloads.
This panel looks at the practical supports that help organisations move from early AI ideas to real-world impact – from R&D incentives and innovation grants to collaboration between universities, SMEs, and start-ups.
Our speakers will explore how research can be translated into early products, how shared expertise and infrastructure can accelerate progress, and what the growing ecosystem offers to help teams scale quickly and responsibly.
Supercomputing the Future: CloudCIX Boole Supercomputer Tour
Be one of the first people to see Ireland’s first liquid-cooled NVIDIA B200 supercomputer and discover where next-generation AI actually lives.
This guided tour takes you behind the scenes at CloudCIX to explore advanced cooling systems, high-density compute infrastructure, and the technology powering some of Ireland’s most ambitious research and innovation projects.
An unmissable chance to experience the future of compute up close.
See the systems, tools, and solutions in action, meet the teams behind them, and get inspired by what’s already possible.
Plenty to explore, plenty to learn – you are in for a treat!
Support Organisations
A quick invite to the AIFI Quest Hackathon, where participants build bilingual (Irish and English) AI tools to tackle real-world public services challenges and explore what’s possible with accessible, community-driven AI.
Top experts will dive into what it really takes to run modern, high-density AI and HPC systems, from the rise of liquid cooling to the operational realities inside a working data centre. We’ll explore the challenges and opportunities of liquid cooling (is it worth the hassle?) and hear first-hand insights from the CloudCIX team on deploying it in practice. Expect a grounded, experience-led discussion on power, cooling, space, planning, and the unexpected lessons that come with hosting next-generation compute.
An opportunity to revisit key points from earlier panels and address questions submitted throughout the day. Our speakers will take a deeper look at topics that sparked interest, clarify outstanding queries, and explore any emerging themes raised by the audience.
“Bioinformatics by Numbers: file sizes, RAM, and costs” is a hardware-centric workshop that demystifies bioinformatics by reducing it to what infrastructure teams care about most: memory, storage, runtime, and cost. Rather than focusing on biology, the session walks through concrete, production-grade analysis pipelines and examines what actually happens at the compute layer.
Starting with a direct comparison of nf-core amplicon sequencing on a virtual machine versus an HPC environment, the workshop then moves through increasingly demanding workloads, including CUT&RUN (HPC-only by design), bulk RNA-seq, and large-scale cancer analysis using Sarek. Each example highlights why certain workloads scale poorly on general-purpose VMs, when shared or dedicated HPC resources become unavoidable, and how poor infrastructure choices translate directly into wasted time and money.
Managing Director at CloudCIX
CEO at AlloComp
Niall Smith is a technology leader with a passion for artificial intelligence and a proven track record in developing optimised and more sustainable AI infrastructure. His experience spans designing scalable, efficient systems that power advanced AI applications, driving innovation and operational excellence. Known for his hands-on approach and strategic vision, Niall consistently delivers robust solutions that meet the evolving needs of modern businesses.
EMEA Enterprise AI Business Development · at Dell Technologies
Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) and a Director of the MSc in Computing Science programme at the School of Computer Science and Information Technology, University College Cork
Harry is affiliated with the Insight Research Ireland Centre for Data Analytics and the Research Ireland Centre for Research Training in Artificial Intelligence (CRT-AI). Dr Nguyen has been working on large-scale research projects to develop reliable artificial intelligence for sustainable development goals. His work in knowledgeable machine intelligence, robust decision optimisation and mobile interactive systems have been published in many conferences and journals, including AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), AI Open, ACM Multimedia (ACMMM), and Health and Quality of Life Outcomes. He has been chairing many AI/ML competitions and events, such as reliable intelligence on social media, AI for COVID-19 detection and MLOps challenges. Dr Nguyen is also a Director of Tech Industry Alliance, connecting Tech, Business, and Innovation with over 200 organisational members in Ireland.
Strategic Partnerships Manager at BnM
David is BnM’s Strategic Partnerships & Business Development Manager, leading the commercial strategy and delivery of the company’s multi-GW Energy Park portfolio. He has nearly 15 years’ experience across the energy, utilities and manufacturing sectors, having previously served as VP of Strategy at CRH plc and held senior roles with Grant Thornton.
David is a Chartered Member of Engineers Ireland and formerly chaired its Energy, Environment and Climate Action Division.
He holds an MBA from UCD and a BEng from the UCG.
CSO at AlloComp
Experienced marketing professional and co-founder of an innovative tech startup, dedicated to revolutionising AI infrastructure by optimising cost, energy, and water usage, while enhancing sustainability of AI applications. Drawing on a diverse background in telecommunications, engineering, and a variety of start-ups and impact-driven organisations, I specialise in unpacking technical complexity into clear, efficient strategies that deliver real, measurable results.
Holding a Master's degree in Business Management and Marketing, I thrive in challenging environments and am always keen to capitalise on opportunities to create lasting, positive change.
Experienced marketing professional and co-founder of an innovative tech startup dedicated to revolutionising AI infrastructure. In my role, I focus on optimising cost, energy, and water usage to deliver sustainable, high-performance AI applications. Passionate about sustainable technology, I am committed to building resilient, eco-friendly solutions for the data centres of tomorrow.
Chief Technical Officer (CTO) at NS90
Declan Barry is CTO of NS90, a Cork-based software company operating in the betting and trading sector. With over 20 years’ experience in the IT industry, Declan has worked across software development, architecture and technical leadership roles, including building and supporting financial trading platforms.
At NS90, he is responsible for technical strategy and platform direction, and is involved in operational decision-making, budgeting, and balancing commercial and regulatory constraints with long-term technical roadmaps. He brings a practical, delivery-focused approach to designing and deploying systems in a cost-effective, scalable and resilient manner.
Head of ESG & Sustainability at Masterlink
Managing Director at BH Associates Ltd
With more than three decades of experience specializing in transport, warehouse, and logistics solutions, Mike is a SaaS solutions expert who has been active in the industry since 1992. He delivers practical, forward-looking insights on digital transformation and modern supply chain technology, helping organisations optimise operations, improve visibility, and scale with confidence.
Edward O’Connor is CTO of Continent 8 Technologies, a global hosting and services company focused on regulated industries such as iGaming, sports betting and financial sectors. With over 20 years’ experience, Edward has worked in the telecommunications and data centre industries across operations, architecture and technical leadership roles.
At Continent 8, he is responsible for technical strategy and growth of the cloud platform. Edward’s role involves operational delivery, supporting, key partnerships, commercial growth and alignment of regulatory requirements with technical roadmaps.
Dr. Stephen Stockdale is founder and CEO of BioFigR.
BioFigR is a contract bioinformatics and scientific data-visualisation service helping researchers, labs, and biotech companies turn complex sequencing data into clear, reproducible insight. The name BioFigR reflects the company’s focus on bioinformatics, publication-quality figures, and statistically robust analysis in R. Founded in 2024 by Dr Stephen Stockdale, BioFigR specialises in Linux-based workflows across genomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics, and metagenomics. Operating as a founder-led CRO and Bioinformatics-as-a-Service provider, BioFigR fills the gap between raw data generation and interpretation without the overhead of in-house platforms or teams.
His work focuses on distributed sensing, real-time data analytics, and Edge–Fog–Cloud architectures that enable autonomous and semi-autonomous machine operations in safety-critical environments such as ports and quarries. These systems are designed to generate high-value operational data at the edge while supporting federated learning and interoperability aligned with European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) principles.
Dr. Neff is Head of Delegation for Ireland under NSAI to ISO and CEN in Intelligent Transport Systems, Internet of Media Things, and Acoustics, contributing to international standards for trusted, interoperable industrial data and machine perception systems.
Business Development Manager at R+D Tax Solutions
EDIH Programme Manager at CeADAR
Barry O’Sullivan is Head of IT Operations at University College Cork and has over 20 years of experience working in higher education.
Before joining UCC in 2002 Barry worked in a number of technical roles in PwC, Motorola, and Avery Dennison.
In his role as Head of IT Operations, Barry is responsible for leading a team that manages the critical infrastructure of the university including networks, datacentres (including Azure/AWS), identity, and security.
Business Development Leader at PEAK AIO
Stephen Zhao is the Thermal Management Director for Europe in Castrol where he leads the development of the data centre cooling business for the region. He has many years of experience in the energy industry with expertise in solutions for the Data Centre industry. His work with Castrol covers the deployment of various liquid cooling solutions for AI and HPC Clusters with a wide range of customers from Hyperscale, Global Telecom, and Start-Up segments.
Regional Director Ireland & CEE at Legrand Data Center Solutions
With over 20 years of experience in the data centre industry, David is a passionate and driven leader who delivers innovative, integrated solutions for complex and demanding projects. He has a strong technical background in electrical engineering, power quality, fire, security, and BMS systems, supported by a postgraduate degree in business administration and management. As Regional Director for Ireland and Central and Eastern Europe at Legrand Data Centre Solutions, David is responsible for developing and executing the go to market strategy across this dynamic and fast growing region.
Previously, as Senior Data Centre Solutions Consultant at Honeywell, David worked closely with engineering teams and design consultants to develop customised, end to end solutions for fire, security, cyber security, and BMS for the data centre industry. He managed the tendering process with main contractors and M and E contractors, supporting deal closure and ensuring high levels of customer satisfaction. Leveraging his expertise in technical sales, IT solutions, and strategic account management, he consistently created value for both clients and the organisation. He also held the role of Sales Manager for Data Centres at E and I Engineering, where he supported the expansion of market share and the delivery of high quality electrical switchgear and power distribution solutions.
Our event was designed for organisations and teams working with demanding AI workloads or exploring high-density compute.
It is particularly relevant for:
The NVIDIA B200 represents a major leap in AI performance, efficiency and capability – and deploying it is far from straightforward. Its power density, cooling requirements and infrastructure demands mean only a small number of sites in Europe have deployed it.
CloudCIX’s Boole Supercomputer is one of the first places in Europe to run a liquid-cooled, supercomputer-class B200 system, making this deployment a significant milestone for Ireland’s AI ecosystem.
To help you understand what makes the B200 so transformative, and why liquid cooling is becoming essential, you can explore AlloComp’s deep-dive guides.
These resources explain the performance jump, the engineering challenges and the infrastructure innovations that make the Boole Supercomputer possible – and why this event is a rare chance to see next-generation AI hardware in action.
CloudCIX is a leading Irish cloud-infrastructure provider, based in Cork, that delivers flexible, open-source, multi-region and multi-tenant cloud platforms – both public and private.
Their platform enables organisations to build scalable compute, storage and networking environments – supporting Linux and Windows, virtual machines, containers, GPU and HPC workloads including demanding AI and research use cases.
When you run workloads on CloudCIX, you benefit from enterprise-grade performance and flexibility without being locked into proprietary or hyperscaler systems: data stays private, compliance and sovereignty are preserved, and infrastructure remains fully under your control.
For this event, CloudCIX hosts the Boole Supercomputer – a state-of-the-art, liquid-cooled, supercomputer-class AI infrastructure – underlining their commitment to high-performance, sovereign, and sustainable computing for Ireland and beyond.
As the appetite for AI grows, reliance on energy-intensive GPU servers amplifies environmental challenges. We build AI infrastructure differently – championing more sustainable technologies like in-house AI, liquid cooling, and heat reuse. Our vendor-agnostic partner ecosystem spans cloud services, computing hardware, optimisation, AI development platforms, training and more – simplifying deployments and empowering confident adoption of emerging technologies.
Driven by a vision to establish a competence centre for sustainable computing, AlloComp leads innovation and collaboration for a future where AI and sustainability go hand in hand.
CSC Solution Architect, Enterprise Edge / Manufacturing
Laura Hanlon is a Solution Architect within Dell's Customer Solution Centers based in Limerick, Ireland. In her capacity, Laura collaborates with customers and partners to design, architect, and validate solutions tailored to meet their business objectives. Her focus is on edge-to-enterprise for smart manufacturing, helping customers improve efficiency and increase productivity within their operations.
Tim Crowe, Co-Founder and CEO of WrxFlo, is an engineer by profession with over 20 years of experience in global supply chain management. Before founding WrxFlo, Tim held leadership roles at Dell Technologies, where he designed, built, and managed manufacturing operations worldwide. Over the last decade, he expanded his expertise into software development, data architecture, and IT to drive digitalisation transformation in supply chains.
Mavarick is a climate technology company that delivers AI-driven solutions to help organizations decarbonize their supply chains. Mavarick AI partners with enterprises and OEMs to accelerate sustainability initiatives.
Before joining Mavarick, Muiríosa worked in the food and beverage industry, gaining firsthand experience with how different markets address value chain emissions, resource efficiency, and sustainable operations.
At Mavarick, Muiríosa supports teams in adopting a data driven approach to reducing value chain emissions through the use of data and AI.
Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Center
Global Sales and Marketing Director at EkkoSense
Mathew brings deep data centre software and infrastructure expertise to his role having spent over 20 years working for APC and then Schneider Electric. He previously headed up the sales operation for Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure offering, focused on helping organisations to reduce the energy their data centres consume through digital transformation. He joined data centre performance optimisation specialist EkkoSense AI in 2022, and is focused on helping data centre operations teams to prioritise sustainable action through the application of an entirely new generation of machine learning and AI-enabled software solutions.
OT Infrastructure Lead at Pfizer Grange Castle Automation
David is an experienced automation leader with over 14 years of industry experience at Pfizer and previously Hewlett Packard. Currently, David holds two pivotal roles within Pfizer. As the Site OT Infrastructure Lead at Grange Castle, one of Pfizer's flagship sites, David oversees the operational technology infrastructure, ensuring seamless and efficient operations. In addition, David serves as the Global Lead for Manufacturing Networks Cybersecurity, where he spearheads initiatives to protect and secure Pfizer's manufacturing networks on a global scale. David is also a contributor to Pfizer’s AI community of practice.
CSC Global Lead AI Strategy
Dr. Cathal Wilson
Co-Founder & COO Nexalus
In addition to being a Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Nexalus, Cathal is an Adjunct Professor of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering in Trinity College, a manufacturing engineer and holds a Ph.D. focused on Performance Management and Wealth Generation in SMEs.
He grew up in his family’s design and manufacturing company, where he acted as Commercial and R&D Director. Cathal attained extensive national and European research funding and developed a commercial R&D service for the scientific application of Electromagnetic Radiation (IR -Infrared Radiant Energy) through which the company won more business.
Cathal is an advocate of leveraging third level research and technology developments as a method for business development and growth and was co-lead of a project that won an Industry/University Collaboration KTI award. He was an acting founding Director of I2E2 and ICMR, which led to the establishment of Irish Manufacturing Research (IMR). He is co-author of four recent patents in the area of thermal science. Cathal is an ISO Lead Auditor, reviewer/R&D auditor for Horizon 2020 projects, Smart Manufacturing and the Irish Revenue Service.
See how AI, IoT, and automation come together in this smart brewing demo—powered by a private 5G network. From real-time monitoring to automated quality control, OpenBrew shows what’s possible when edge computing meets industrial intelligence.
Play a quick game of tic-tac-toe with a collaborative robot and experience how Cobots and humans can work side by side—seamlessly and safely. This fun, hands-on demo highlights how AI-driven Cobots are being integrated into real production workflows to boost productivity and engagement.
Discover how AI and computer vision are transforming workplace safety with real-time ergonomic risk assessments. VelocityEHS shows how motion capture and predictive analytics can identify strain risks, improve workstation design, and reduce injuries -before they happen.
Explore Nexalus’ high-performance, liquid-cooled edge unit -designed to last even in harsh environments and built with sustainability in mind. This compact, pole-mounted system runs silently, resists dust and corrosion, and delivers powerful compute at the edge with up to 25% lower power consumption. Ideal for Telco, remote AI deployments, and demanding outdoor applications.
See how Durata’s modular data centre solutions bring scalable, secure, and energy-efficient infrastructure wherever it’s needed. These pre-engineered units offer rapid deployment, flexible sizing, and high-performance capacity for AI workloads – ideal for edge, industrial, or constrained environments.
Watch computer vision in action as this compact demo walks you through step-by-step part assembly using edge AI.
From real-time part recognition to guided instructions, it’s a powerful glimpse into how AI can simplify complex manual tasks in manufacturing.
Experience immersion cooling up close with a fully functional Xbox submerged in fluid to demonstrate the power of this technology and showing how immersion cooling can work from fun to full-stack infrastructure.
