Ayesha Afzal
Ayesha Afzal
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin, PhD Student
Erlangen National High Performance Computing Center (NHR@FAU)
Research Division
Short Bio
Ayesha Afzal is a researcher at the Erlangen National High Performance Computing Center (NHR@FAU) in Germany. She holds a master’s degree in computational engineering from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan. Her PhD research lies at the crossroads of analytic performance models, performance tools, and parallel simulation frameworks, with a focus on first-principles performance modeling of distributed-memory parallel programs in HPC. She also conducts research in multi-core and parallel architectures, parallel computing and algorithms, parallel programming models, and domain-specific languages. She is actively involved in HPC initiatives such as KONWHIR with the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) on performance optimization, and NHR’s EEC project on enhancing energy efficiency and managing operational costs across NHR centers.
Ayesha contributes to the HPC community through various leadership roles. At the IEEE Computer Society, she serves as vice chair of both the Germany Section Chapter and Region 8 Area 2. She is the founder of the NHR Women in HPC chapter, organizes workshops such as EESP at ISC, PERMAVOST at ACM HPDC, and EE HPC SOP at SCA/HPCAsia, and regularly contributes to scientific community events as a chair, vice chair, program committee member, journal reviewer, panelist, and speaker. She has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications, and her work has earned several honors, including the ISC PhD Forum Award (1st place, 2021), IEEE TPDS Best Paper Runner-up Award (2023), SC PMBS Best Short Paper Award (2023), SC Best Research Poster Finalist (2024), and ISC Best Research Poster Award (1st place, 2025). She was named to the Top 100 Future Leaders Role Model List (2022–2025), supported by Yahoo Finance and YouTube, and won WeAreTheCity’s Global Award for Achievement (2023).
- 2025: First Place, Best Research Poster Award (€500) — ISC High Performance, sponsored by Springer
- 2025: Named in Heroes Top 100 Future Leaders Role Model List — Supported by YouTube
- 2024: 2023 Best Paper Runner-Up Award — IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems Journal
- 2024: Best Research Poster Finalist — Supercomputing Conference
- 2024: Named in Heroes Top 100 Future Leaders Role Model List — Supported by YouTube
- 2023: Best Short Paper Award — Supercomputing PMBS Workshop
- 2023: Global Award for Achievement — WeAreTheCity Rising Star Awards
- 2023: Named in Heroes Top 100 Future Leaders Role Model List — Supported by YouTube
- 2022: Data Scientist Award Finalist — Diversity in Tech Awards, sponsored by AWS
- 2022: Travel Grant Recipient ($600) — ACM SIGHPC
- 2022: Named in Empower Top 100 Future Leaders Role Models List — Supported by Yahoo Finance
- 2021: First Place, PhD Forum Award (€600) — ISC High Performance, sponsored by Springer
- 2021: Innovation Alliance 4.0 Sponsorship (supported recruitment of female student assistance) — University of Erlangen-Nuremberg Germany
- 2021: Data Scientist Award Finalist — Diversity in Tech Awards, sponsored by AWS
- 2021: Young Female STEM Pioneer Award Finalist — Diversity in Tech Awards, sponsored by AWS
- 2018: HiPEAC Paper Award — HiPEAC Network, Steering Committee
- 2014: Second Place, Fastest Scientific Computing Performance Challenge — University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
- 2008: First Place, Intermediate Pre-Engineering — Queen Mary College Lahore, Pakistan
- Founder and Lead – NHR Women in HPC (WHPC) Chapter (May 2024 – Present)
- Vice Chair – IEEE Computer Society Germany Section Chapter C016 (May 2024 – Present)
- Vice Chair – IEEE Computer Society Region 8 Area 2 (Jan 2025 – Present)
- Lead – IEEEXtreme Region 8 Germany Section (Apr 2024 – Apr 2025)
- Posters Chair – Supercomputing Conference 2026
- WHPC Posters Chair – ISC High Performance 2026
- Co-Chair – SCA/HPCAsia EE HPC SOP Workshop 2026
- General Chair – ISC High Performance EESP Workshop 2025
- General Chair – ACM HPDC PERMAVOST Workshop 2025
- WHPC Program Chair – International European Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing Euro-Par 2025
- WHPC Posters Chair – ISC High Performance 2025
- Publicity Co-Chair – International Conference on Parallel Processing ICPP 2025
- Posters Vice Chair – Supercomputing Conference 2024
- Research Posters Vice Chair – Supercomputing Conference 2024
- Doctoral Showcase Vice Chair – Supercomputing Conference 2024
- ACM Student Research Competition Vice Chair – Supercomputing Conference 2024
- Art of HPC Vice Chair – Supercomputing Conference 2024
- Co-Chair – ACM HPDC PERMAVOST Workshop 2024
- WHPC Posters Co-Chair – ISC High Performance 2024
- Publicity Chair – International Conference on Parallel Processing ICPP 2024
- Co-Chair – ACM HPDC PERMAVOST Workshop 2023
- Mentoring Co-Chair – Supercomputing WHPC Workshop 2023
- 2025: Vanguards of HPC‑AI: Erlangen HPC Center’s Ayesha Afzal and the Acceleration of Science, spotlighting current and future HPC-AI leaders
- 2025: ISC 40th Anniversary: Connecting the Dots with Ayesha Afzal, emphasizing the interplay of technology, personal journeys, and evolving scientific identities
- 2025: Supercomputing Conference: Women Igniting Innovation in HPC with Ayesha Afzal, celebrating contributions to HPC
- 2023: Like Minded Females (LMF) Network Mentoring Program: Ayesha Afzal — Profiles in Spotlight Series, inspiring women to pursue STEM and mentor future scientists
- 2022: ACM SIGCSE Computing Crossroads: The Electrical Engineer Shifting to Computer Science, promoting multidimensional career paths
- 2022: Quartl Magazine #102: KONWIHR Erlangen: Getting to the bottom of modelling large-scale parallel applications, featuring ISC’21 First Place PhD Forum research
- 2021: Bavarian Ministry of Science and Art Research in Bavaria: The Researcher Mom, highlighting work-life balance
- 2018: Developer Blog by Codeplay: Solving Maxwell’s Equations on Unstructured Meshes with SYCL and ComputeCpp, presenting research innovations
- Oct 2023 – Present: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
- Oct 2023 – Present: IEEE Computer Society (IEEE CS)
- Oct 2023 – Present: IEEE Women in Engineering (IEEE-WIE)
- Jul 2022 – Present: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
- Jul 2022 – Present: ACM’s Women in Computing (ACM-W)
- Nov 2021 – Present: Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA)
- Aug 2019 – Present: Women in High Performance Computing (WHPC)
2025
- Bachelor Thesis – Markus Manfred Li: Energy Consumption of Modern CPUs and GPUs: A Study with Production Applications (ongoing)
- Bachelor Thesis – Onur Karaca: Implementation and Benchmarking of MPI Collectives in a Parallel Simulator Framework
- Master Thesis – Jean-Yves Verhaeghe: Exploring Advanced Visualization of MPI-Parallel Programs
- Master Thesis – Krishna Sai Lakshmi Gayatri Manda: Performance Analysis of Desynchronization Effects in a Parallel Optical Flow Solver
2024
- Master Thesis – Aditya Ujeniya: Extending a Simulation Framework for Performance Assessment of Parallel Applications
2021
- Bachelor Thesis – Sebastian Bönning: Integration of Chip-Level Performance Models into a Parallel Simulation Framework
2019
- Master Thesis – Hassan Asghar: Development of a Benchmark Suite for Investigating MPI Communication Behavior
- Energy Modeling and Simulation of Parallel Applications on Clusters
2026
- , , :
Analytic Roofline Modeling and Energy Analysis of LULESH Proxy Application on Multi-Core Clusters
(2026)
DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2412.08792 - , , :
Exploring metrics for analyzing dynamic behavior in MPI programs via a coupled-oscillator model
(2026)
DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2506.02792
2023
- , , , :
Making applications faster by asynchronous execution: Slowing down processes or relaxing MPI collectives
In: Future Generation Computer Systems-The International Journal of Grid Computing Theory Methods and Applications (2023)
ISSN: 0167-739X
DOI: 10.1016/j.future.2023.06.017 - , , :
Physical Oscillator Model for Supercomputing
14th IEEE/ACM Workshop on Performance Modeling, Benchmarking and Simulation of High Performance Computer Systems (PMBS23) (Denver, CO, USA, 2023-11-12 - 2023-11-17)
In: 14th IEEE/ACM Workshop on Performance Modeling, Benchmarking and Simulation of High Performance Computer Systems (PMBS23) 2023
DOI: 10.1145/3624062.3625535 - , , :
SPEChpc 2021 Benchmarks on Ice Lake and Sapphire Rapids Infiniband Clusters: A Performance and Energy Case Study
14th IEEE/ACM Workshop on Performance Modeling, Benchmarking and Simulation of High Performance Computer Systems (PMBS23) (Denver, CO, USA, 2023-11-12 - 2023-11-17)
In: 14th IEEE/ACM Workshop on Performance Modeling, Benchmarking and Simulation of High Performance Computer Systems (PMBS23) 2023
DOI: 10.1145/3624062.3624197 - , , , :
Exploring Techniques for the Analysis of Spontaneous Asynchronicity in MPI-Parallel Applications
14th International Conference on Parallel Processing and Applied Mathematics, PPAM 2022 (Gdansk, Poland, 2022-09-11 - 2023-06-14)
In: Wyrzykowski, R., Dongarra, J., Deelman, E., Karczewski, K. (ed.): Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2023
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-30442-2_12 - , , , , :
PERMAVOST ‘23 Chairs’ Welcome Message
3rd Workshop on Performance Engineering, Modelling, Analysis, and Visualization Strategy, PERMAVOST 2023 (Orlando, FL, USA, 2023-06-20)
In: PERMAVOST 2023 - Proceedings of the 2023 on Performance Engineering, Modelling, Analysis, and Visualization Strategy 2023
DOI: 10.1145/3588993
URL: https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/3588993
2022
- , , :
Addressing White-box Modeling and Simulation Challenges in Parallel Computing
ACM SIGSIM-PADS '22 (GA, Atlanta, USA, 2022-06-08 - 2022-06-10)
In: SIGSIM-PADS '22: SIGSIM Conference on Principles of Advanced Discrete Simulation 2022
DOI: 10.1145/3518997.3534986 - , , :
Analytic performance model for parallel overlapping memory-bound kernels
In: Concurrency and Computation-Practice & Experience (2022)
ISSN: 1532-0626
DOI: 10.1002/cpe.6816
URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cpe.6816 - , , :
The Role of Idle Waves, Desynchronization, and Bottleneck Evasion in the Performance of Parallel Programs
In: IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (2022), p. 1-16
ISSN: 1045-9219
DOI: 10.1109/TPDS.2022.3221085
2021
- , , :
Analytic Modeling of Idle Waves in Parallel Programs: Communication, Cluster Topology, and Noise Impact
36th International Conference on High Performance Computing, ISC High Performance 2021 (Virtual, Online, 2021-06-24 - 2021-07-02)
In: Bradford L. Chamberlain, Bradford L. Chamberlain, Ana-Lucia Varbanescu, Hatem Ltaief, Piotr Luszczek (ed.): Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) 2021
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-78713-4_19
2020
- , , :
Desynchronization and Wave Pattern Formation in MPI-Parallel and Hybrid Memory-Bound Programs
35th International Conference on High Performance Computing, ISC High Performance 2020 (Frankfurt, 2020-06-22 - 2020-06-25)
In: Ponnuswamy Sadayappan, Bradford L. Chamberlain, Guido Juckeland, Hatem Ltaief (ed.): Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) 2020
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-50743-5_20
2019
- , , :
Propagation and Decay of Injected One-Off Delays on Clusters: A Case Study
2019 IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing, CLUSTER 2019 (Albuquerque, NM, 2019-09-23 - 2019-09-26)
In: Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing, ICCC 2019
DOI: 10.1109/CLUSTER.2019.8890995 - , , , , :
ClusterCockpit-A web application for job-specific performance monitoring
2019 IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing, CLUSTER 2019 (Albuquerque, NM, 2019-09-23 - 2019-09-26)
In: Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing, ICCC 2019
DOI: 10.1109/CLUSTER.2019.8891017
2018
- , , , , , , :
Solving Maxwell's Equations with Modern C++ and SYCL: A Case Study
The 29th Annual IEEE International Conference on Application-specific Systems, Architectures and Processors (ASAP) (Politecnico di Milano, Milan, 2018-07-10 - 2018-07-12)
In: Proceedings of the 29th Annual IEEE International Conference on Application-specific Systems, Architectures and Processors (ASAP) 2018
DOI: 10.1109/ASAP.2018.8445127
URL: https://www12.cs.fau.de/downloads/schmittch/publications/ASAGTFH18asap.pdf - , , , , , , , , :
OpenCL-based FPGA Design to Accelerate the Nodal Discontinuous Galerkin Method for Unstructured Meshes
The 26th IEEE International Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCM) (Boulder, CO, USA, 2018-04-29 - 2018-05-01)
In: Proceedings of the 26th IEEE International Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCM) 2018
DOI: 10.1109/FCCM.2018.00037
2025
- Afzal A., Hager G., Wellein G.:
DisCostiC: Digital Twin Performance Simulations Unlocking Hardware-Software Interplay
(Best Research Poster Award – 1st Place)
ISC High Performance 2025
(Hamburg, Germany, 2025-06-10/2025-06-13)
Download: Poster, Poster PDF, Extended abstract - Yean V., Afzal A., Hager G.:
ParaViz3D: MPI trace visualization with 3D video
The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis, SC24
(St. Louis, USA, 2025-11-21/2025-11-16)
2024
- Afzal A., Hager G., Wellein G.:
DisCostiC: Simulating MPI Applications Without Executing Code
(Best Poster Award Candidate and Finalist)
The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis, SC24
(Atlanta, GA, USA, 2024-11-17/2024-11-22)
Download: Poster PDF
2023
- Afzal A., Hager G., Wellein G.:
Making Applications Run Faster by Slowing Down Processes?
ISC High Performance 2023
(Hamburg, Germany, 2023-05-21/2023-05-25)
Download: Poster PDF
2022
- Afzal A., Hager G., Wellein G.:
DisCostiC: A DSL-based Parallel Simulation Framework using First-Principles Analytic Performance Models
The Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing Conference (PASC22)
(Basel, Switzerland, 2022-06-27/2022-06-29)
Download: Abstract and video talk; Poster PDF - Afzal A., Hager G., Wellein G.:
White-box Modelling of Parallel Computing Dynamics
The 5th International Conference on High Performance Computing in Asia-Pacific Region (HPC Asia 2022)
(Virtual, Online, 2022-01-12/2022-01-14)
Download: Extended abstract; Poster PDF
2021
- Afzal A., Hager G., Wellein G.:
Physical Oscillator Model for Parallel Distributed Computing
ISC High Performance 2021
(Virtual, Online, 2021-06-24/2021-07-02)
Download: Abstract; Poster PDF; Slides; Video talk - Afzal A., Hager G., Wellein G.:
Noise-driven Cluster-level Performance Modelling and Engineering
(First Place in the ISC PhD Forum Award 2021)
ISC High Performance 2021
(Virtual, Online, 2021-06-24/2021-07-02)
Download: Abstract; Poster PDF; Slides; Video talk
2019
- Afzal A., Hager G., Wellein G.:
Delay Flow Mechanisms On Clusters
EuroMPI ’19 Proceedings of the 26th European MPI Users’ Group Meeting
(Zurich, Switzerland, 2019-09-10/2019-09-13)
Download: Extended abstract; Poster PDF