Meet the Minds Shaping the Future of AI-Powered Simulation
We are excited to invite CEOs, CTOs, heads of development and simulation experts from the Upper Austrian Industry to our upcoming event "AI-Powered Simulation - Unlocking New Potential in Efficiency and Innovation", taking place on May 27th, 2025 at 3 PM at WKOÖ, Hessenplatz 3, 4020 Linz.
Join us for a deep dive into the future of AI-driven simulation technologies. Connect with a dynamic community of innovators, researchers and industry professionals. Explore the latest advancements and gain valuable insights into how AI is transforming simulation across disciplines.
From thought-provoking keynotes to hands-on discussions with local and international experts, this event is your gateway to collaboration, discovery and operational impact.
Keynotes
Johannes Brandstetter is the Co-founder and Chief Scientist of Emmi AI - pushing towards the data-driven revolution in science/engineering. Additionally, he is leading the group “AI for data-driven simulations” at the Institute for Machine Learning at the Johannes Kepler University (JKU) Linz, Austria. He has obtained his PhD after working several years at the CMS experiment at CERN. There he learned from brilliant minds from all around the world, and got the chance to co-author seminal papers in the realm of Higgs boson physics. During the time at CERN he was part of the CMS Collaboration at CERN and won the Breakthrough Price in Fundamental Physics in 2025. In 2018, after completing his PhD, his career trajectory shifted towards machine learning, and he joined the research group of Mr LSTM Sepp Hochreiter in Linz. In 2021, he was part of the Amsterdam Machine Learning Lab lead by Max Welling, and subsequently joined Microsoft Research in 2022 for 2 years. During this period, he pivoted towards large-scale PDEs, including weather and climate modeling, which culminated in Aurora.
Thomas Lichtenegger completed his PhD in Theoretical Physics at the Johannes Kepler University (JKU) Linz, Austria, followed by a postdoctoral stay at the State University of New York at Buffalo, United States, on the topic of quantum liquids such as superfluid helium at absolute zero. Since 2014, he has been working on the multiscale problem of complex multiphase and multiphysics flows as a Senior Scientist at the Department of Particulate Flow Modelling at JKU, where he earned his Habilitation (venia docendi) in 2021. He leads the team for particle-based simulations with a focus on data-driven methods and enjoys supervising PhD students in this area. During his PhD studies, he learned the importance of first identifying the relevant physics of a problem, then modeling it rigorously, and finally solving it numerically in an efficient fashion. This principle also guides his current research activities, where he integrates physics-based models with data-driven approximations. Compared to classical simulation methods, this kind of approach enables calculations that are several orders of magnitude faster so that real-time simulations of complex flows are within reach. Together with the team of Emmi AI, he is working on deep learning surrogates for digital process twins.
Cristian Bodnar is the Co-founder of Silurian.AI and the lead co-author of the Aurora weather foundation model. As a former Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research in the AI4Science team he was working at intersection of deep learning and partial differential equations (PDEs). On the ML side, his research spans a range of topics such as geometric & topological deep learning, graph neural networks and neural differential equations. Previously, he finished his PhD at the University of Cambridge, supervised by Prof Pietro Liò and supported by a Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship (2021). He has also spent significant time in industry as a research intern at Microsoft Research (2022), Twitter Cortex (2021), Google Brain (2020), and as an AI Resident at Google X (2019). In 2019, he graduated with distinction the MPhil in Advanced Computer Science at Cambridge with a Best MPhil Student Award.
Wolfgang Freiseisen comes from the field of computer mathematics and has been working for more than 30 years on the modeling and digitalization of industrial and logistical challenges. His areas of focus range from mathematical optimization and simulation to heuristics, data analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI). He was a student of Prof. Bruno Buchberger and is a graduate of the RISC (Research Institute for Symbolic Computation). Since 2001, he has been the sole Managing Director of RISC Software GmbH, one of the leading non-university research institutions, owned by Johannes Kepler University (JKU) Linz, Austria and the Province of Upper Austria. The company focuses on R&D in the fields of medical informatics, industrial software systems, logistics informatics, and data analytics.
He is currently coordinating the development of an AI strategy for the Province of Upper Austria. The topic of artificial intelligence is viewed holistically as a key future area, taking into account both data perspectives and model-based approaches.
Michael Giretzlehner leads the Medical Informatics Research Department at RISC Software GmbH in Hagenberg, Austria. He specializes in applying AI to healthcare, coordinating projects like AIMS (AI-based early warning systems for patient safety) and MEDUSA (advanced neurosurgical training simulators). His research includes machine learning applications in medical imaging, such as brain tumor segmentation using diffusion models. With a strong background in medical informatics, Dr. Giretzlehner drives innovation at the intersection of healthcare and technology, focusing on improving patient outcomes through intelligent software solutions.
Agenda
2:30 Check-In
3:00 Welcome
3:15 Keynotes
4:30 Panel Talk
5:00 Roundtables
6:00 Networking
Click here to secure your spot now!
We are happy to welcome up to three participants per company. Please note that the event will be held in English.
Limited Free Parking is available at the Parkgarage Hessenplatz BOE Parking Linz or at the Hotel Inn Parkgarage.
If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact us at +43 590909-4220 or via email at kitransfer@wkooe.at.