Plenaries

Plenay 1: BepiColombo Mission to Mercury

Santa Martinez Sanmartin

BepiColombo Mission Manager

Santa is responsible for coordinating mission operations and assisting all teams involved in achieving the mission's scientific objectives.

Stephen Taylor

Technical Authority, Solar Generators

Stephen Taylor is the leader of the Working Group into the BepiColombo solar array anomaly.

ESA’s BepiColombo mission is set to become the most complex mission ever to orbit Mercury, developed in collaboration with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

Its goal is to answer some of the planet’s most intriguing mysteries, including: ‘Why is there ice in the permanently shadowed craters of one of the hottest planets in the Solar System?’ ‘Why does Mercury possess a magnetic field?’ and ‘what are the strange “hollows” found across its surface?’

On 26 April 2024, just as the spacecraft was preparing for its next manoeuvre, the solar arrays on the Mercury Transfer Module unexpectedly failed to provide sufficient electrical power to the thrusters. This marked the beginning of a two-year effort to understand the root cause of the problem and develop a way to continue the journey to Mercury, despite the gradual decline in available solar power.

Now, after an eight-year journey through the Solar System since its launch in 2018, BepiColombo is approaching the start of its scientific mission at Mercury.

In this talk, we will explore the mission’s scientific objectives, the upcoming challenges of the Mercury arrival phase, and share details about the investigation into the solar array anomaly, revealing how the team ensured that the mission remained on track to unlock the secrets of the Solar System's innermost planet.

PLEnary 2: Two worlds, one Mission

Enrico Gualtieri

Technical Director Power Unit

Scuderia Ferrari HP

What can a Formula 1 car have in common with a spacecraft? More than you might imagine.

In this keynote, Enrico Gualtieri, Head of Power Unit at Scuderia Ferrari HP, reveals the surprising parallels between Formula 1 and space exploration. From advanced power systems, simulation and telemetry to mission planning, operations, reliability and high-pressure decision making, both industries rely on the same foundations: engineering excellence, teamwork and relentless pursuit of performance.

Using a Formula 1 race weekend as the framework for a space mission, the talk takes the audience from design and preparation to execution, debriefing and continuous improvement. Along the way, it highlights how people, technology and culture come together to succeed when failure is not an option.

A compelling story of innovation, electrification and human ambition, this session demonstrates that Formula 1 and space are not two separate worlds, but two expressions of the same mission: pushing beyond today's limits to create tomorrow's possibilities.

Enrico Gualtieri was born on 21 February 1975 in Modena.

He graduated in 2000 from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. He came to Ferrari to work on his thesis and after graduation, he was taken on as a simulation specialist with the Scuderia.

In 2003, he became an Engine Fluid Dynamic Simulation Specialist, gradually being given more responsibility in the Fluid Dynamics and Engine Combustion Department, working first on research and then design as from 2008.

In 2010, he was appointed Head of Engine Reliability, which meant he fulfilled this role with the arrival of the first hybrid era power units for Formula 1, in 2014. From July 2014, he headed up the Engine Design and Development area, a role he fulfilled until 2017 when he became Head of PU Project Management. In 2019, he was appointed head of the Power Unit Area and in 2023, was made Technical Director Power Unit.

Enrico loves football and, in his youth, he was a good player at amateur level. He is an ardent supporter of his hometown team, Modena. In his free time, Enrico likes to spend time with his family and friends going for long walks in the mountains, especially in wintertime.

Plenary 3: ESA's l4 mission to enceladus: from first concepts to the search for life beyond earth

Martin Haag

Lead for the L4 science mission

At Earth, the spacecraft requires tens of kilowatts to power solar electric propulsion. At Saturn, nearly ten times farther from the Sun, it must survive and conduct world-class science with only a few hundred watts available. This talk describes how ESA's proposed L4 mission to Enceladus is driving new developments in solar arrays, batteries, thermal control, and energy-efficient mission design, all in support of one of the most compelling goals in space exploration: the search for life beyond Earth.

Dr. Martin Haag works in the Solar System Missions Section of ESA's Science Future Missions Department, where he is involved in the assessment and development of future Solar System exploration missions. He currently leads ESA studies for the Large-class (L4) mission to Enceladus, investigating the habitability of ocean worlds and the search for life beyond Earth.

Plenary 4: challenges and opportunities in power delivery for nvidia gpus

Miguel Rodriguez

Principal Engineer

This talk explores the key challenges and opportunities in powering Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs), which are widely deployed in data centers for AI training and inference workloads.

The first part covers the architecture of GPU power delivery systems from the utility grid down to the chip, highlighting fundamental problems that arise at every level. A central focus is how the interplay between GPU architecture and AI algorithms tends to produce large voltage transients, and the difficulty of delivering thousands of amperes at sub-1V voltages to state-of-the-art chips.

The second part discusses approaches to addressing these challenges — including strategies for designing power supplies that meet these demanding requirements, techniques to reduce or mitigate noise, and promising medium- and long-term solutions.

Miguel Rodriguez received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Oviedo in 2006 and 2011, respectively. In 2011, he joined the CoPEC (Colorado Power Electronics Center) at the University of Colorado Boulder as a postdoctoral researcher, where he spent two years working with Professor Dragan Maksimovic on digitally controlled intelligent power supplies, converters for radio frequency amplifiers and radar, gallium nitride devices, and other projects.

In 2013, he joined AMD (Advanced Micro Devices), where he focused on systems to improve energy efficiency — including digital linear regulators and adaptive clock generators — across process nodes ranging from 14nm to 5nm. These systems were successfully brought to market at high volume in AMD laptops, GPUs, and servers.

In 2021, he joined Nvidia, where he was named Principal Engineer in 2023 and has held the position of Senior Manager of Hardware Engineering since 2025. He leads a team of more than 20 engineers working on power delivery solutions for Nvidia's GPUs and CPUs, with a focus on integrated linear and switched regulators, and noise modeling and simulation.

Miguel has published more than 30 papers in international journals and conferences, and holds more than 10 U.S. patents.