The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking becomes autonomous

Two years after its establishment, the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) is now running under its own steam. As of today, the EuroHPC JU is solely responsible for its operations and has the capacity to implement its own budget, under the direction of Mr. Anders Dam Jensen, its new Executive Director.

As the Executive Director of the EuroHPC JU, Mr. Jensen is the legal representative of the Joint Undertaking and the chief executive responsible for its day-to-day management in accordance with the decisions of the Governing Board.

Anders Dam Jensen has a lifelong interest in supercomputers, dating from his time in university where he earned a Master of Science in Engineering degree (specialising in electronics and computer science) and an MBA from the Technical University of Denmark. He started his professional career with 10 years of engineering work developing computing hardware and software for embedded systems, before successfully shifting into senior management positions in the ICT sector. As an IT Director, Mr. Jensen built up a very successful IT service provider for the airline industry.  In 2011, Mr. Jensen joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) as Director for Information and Communication Technology Management. This position helped him to become well versed in the areas of human resources, finance, budgeting, procurement, and recruitment in a public sector context, while developing experience as regards international organisations. Thanks to his strong technical background, his excellent knowledge of the industry and his management career, Anders Dam Jensen brings to the JU a vast set of assets that will help the EuroHPC initiative to flourish.

Mr. Jensen stated:

“I am thrilled to join the EuroHPC initiative in this promising start-up phase! Thanks to the pooling of resources of the EU, 32 participating countries and private partners, we have the means to provide a link between research, innovation and infrastructure’s procurement to strengthen our HPC supply chain and lead the way in European supercomputing. The EuroHPC JU is now autonomous but we will continue our close cooperation with the European Commission. As President Ursula von der Leyen emphasised in her State of the Union Address of last week: HPC is key to strengthen Europe’s digital sovereignty. “

Since its creation, the EuroHPC JU was operating under the supervision of the Directorate‑General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology of the European Commission (DG CNECT). Following the JU’s autonomy, the European Commission remains member of the EuroHPC Governing Board (50% of all votes) but ceases to be involved in the JU’s daily business operations.

Background

The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking is located in Luxembourg and was established in 2018 by the Council Regulation (EU) 2018/1488  to enable the EU to become a world leader in supercomputing.

The mission of the EuroHPC JU is to develop, deploy, extend and maintain an integrated world-class supercomputing and data infrastructure in the EU and to develop and support a highly competitive and innovative HPC ecosystem.

The EuroHPC JU aims at equipping the EU in 2021 with an infrastructure of petascale and precursor to exascale supercomputers, and developing the necessary technologies, applications and skills for reaching full exascale capabilities around 2022 / 2023.