Empowering New Zealand researchers to accelerate digital discovery in Open Science

Scientific discovery increasingly depends on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and High-Performance Computing (HPC) to address complex, data-intensive challenges. This paper examines how researchers leverage scalable cloud-based HPC and AI capabilities to advance Open Science, demonstrating transformative applications in analyzing genetic datasets for health, bioinformatics, and personalized medicine tailored to New Zealand's population, as well as enhanced climate modeling for environmental management and national adaptation strategies.ABOUT THE AUTHORSDr Carina Kemp is the Global Lead for Academic Research at AWS. Carina is passionate about enabling researchers to leverage the power of the cloud to accelerate their research. Previously Dr Kemp was the Director of eResearch at AARNet where she led Research Cloud Services enabling researchers with tools and advice for all their data and digital infrastructure needs. Dr Kemp joined AARNet from Geoscience Australia, where she provided scientific and digital leadership as the CIO. At GA, Dr Kemp also led the development of virtual laboratories and high-performance computing to enable geophysical applications for pre-competitive dataset delivery. In her career, Dr Kemp has always strived to enable research and innovation working for higher ed, industry, government and NGOS. Her interests include open data, data science, machine learning, high-performance computing, communication of science, improving collaboration across science and information technology disciplines, and encouraging leadership and women in science.James Hills is a Senior HPC Specialist at Amazon Web Services, Brisbane, Australia. He has over 20 years of high-performance computing experience, with expertise spanning cloud-based HPC, artificial intelligence, and machine learning solutions, helping research institutions and enterprises leverage scalable computational infrastructure to accelerate scientific discovery and innovation. Prior to joining AWS, James held technical leadership positions with HPE and SGI, providing him with unique insights into the evolution of HPC from on-premises systems to modern cloud-native approaches. Beyond his technical work, James has a strong commitment to culturally informed technology applications. He spent five years in a part-time capacity as Project Manager for an Indigenous Virtual Heritage project, requiring collaboration across social sciences and technical domains while maintaining close liaison with Indigenous knowledge holders to ensure cultural protocols and values were respected throughout the technology development process.Maryclaire Abowd is a Technical Business Development Manager at Amazon Web Services, Washington DC, USA. She is based in Washington, DC, and works with education and research customers as a global business development manager at AWS. Maryclaire has over twelve years of experience working in the IT and services industry supporting government and education customers around the world. Maryclaire is a graduate of Boston College and the London School of Economics. -----For more information about the eResearch NZ / eRangahau Aotearoa conference, visit: https://eresearchnz.co.nz/