Prof. Dr. Julian Kunkel is a Professor of High-Performance Computing (HPC) at the University of Göttingen and serves as Deputy Head of High-Performance Computing at the Göttingen Supercomputing Center (GWDG). He is a leading expert in HPC storage systems, performance analysis, and the software engineering of scientific applications. Prof. Kunkel's academic journey began with a deep interest in high-performance computing storage, which he developed during his studies in computer science in 2003. Prior to his current position, he held postdoctoral research roles at the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ), where he worked closely with the Scientific Computing group at the University of Hamburg. He also served as a lecturer at the University of Reading. At the University of Göttingen, Prof. Kunkel manages several research projects focused on advancing HPC technologies. His primary research goals include developing efficient and performance-portable I/O systems, optimizing data reduction techniques, and improving the management and performance analysis of parallel applications and cluster systems. He also leads the german AI service center "KISSKI" (AI service center for critical infrastructures), providing basic AI services to over 500 german institutions and over 1 Mio users as well as providing AI resources to startups, SMEs and the public sector. Prof. Kunkel is a founding member of the IO500 benchmarking effort, the Virtual Institute for I/O (VI4IO), and the HPC Certification Forum.