Maria Girone is Head of CERN openlab and Principal Applied Scientist at CERN’s IT department. She has been at the forefront of scientific computing for over two decades, driving how advanced computing enables the groundbreaking research carried out at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

At CERN, Maria has led efforts to integrate High-Performance Computing (HPC), cloud, AI, and new data technologies into the workflows of one of the world’s most data-intensive scientific experiments. She played a central role in the development and operation of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG). WLCG is the largest distributed computing infrastructure ever built for science, connecting hundreds of data centers worldwide to process petabytes of data from particle collisions.

As former Chief Technology Officer of CERN openlab (2016–2023) and now its Head, Maria has defined international R&D strategies and built strong collaborations with industry and academia to push the boundaries of computing architectures. Her work not only supports the current experiments but also prepares for the High-Luminosity LHC, which will demand unprecedented computing capacity.

A strong advocate for diversity in STEM, Maria also co-founded IDEAS4HPC, the Swiss chapter of Women in HPC.