Bhaskar Agarwal, Ph.D. · Bologna, Italy

AI & HPC Lead

Data science · Scientific computing · Technical product leadership

I work where science, high-performance computing, AI and product meet. I prototype fast, measure honestly, explain clearly to the people who decide, and scale what works with a team.

Bhaskar Agarwal

Born in India, I left for a master's in the UK and a Ph.D. in Germany. Research took me to more than 10 countries. Along the way I moved from simulating black holes to running AI on supercomputers, then to building products. Italy is home now: Bologna, two rescue dogs (Poldo and Ninja), bouldering and cooking.

  1. IndiaB.Sc. Physics
  2. UKM.Sc. Astronomy, Sussex
  3. GermanyPh.D., LMU & Max Planck
  4. USAPostdoc, Yale
  5. GermanyPostdoc, Heidelberg
  6. ItalyCINECA, GLS, home

The intersection

Where my work sits

Click a field to see the skills behind it.

Science HPC AI Product me

Selected results

How I lead

01

Prototype fast

  • A working version before the debate hardens
  • Built the GLS planner alone, from data to app, into production
02

Measure honestly

  • Agree the KPI first
  • Test where it can fail: held-out cities, leave-one-month-out
  • A 0.75 bar before swapping models
03

Explain clearly

  • “Communicate like a billboard, not a thesis.”
  • Master's teaching, Bologna Business School
  • 20+ international talks, Towards Data Science articles
04

Scale with a team

  • Solo prototype → team of 6 across 7 countries
  • Now leading an R&D group of data scientists and engineers

Teaching, at every level

  1. Master'sBologna Business SchoolData science, master's programme
  2. Bachelor'sFergusson College, PuneClassical mechanics; astronomy & astrophysics
  3. High schoolEnglish International School of PadovaIB Mathematics
  4. ProfessionalCINECAML and distributed computing for HPC users

Also volunteer science talks at schools in India and the US, and the "AI with HPC" tutorial series on Towards Data Science.

Papers and writing since astronomy

Peer-reviewed

Articles

01 · AI

AI systems, built and measured

  • Technical leadership
  • OmegaLambdaTec
  • Independent research
  • Pydantic schemas for every LLM output
  • 19–56% fewer service points (held-out cities)
  • 3 memory tiers for agentic reasoning
  • ~24% of articles filtered before any LLM call
Early-stage venturesTechnical advisor, CTPO and co-founder roles

Agentic news-intelligence engine LLM · Pydantic · event memory

A system that watches trusted financial news sources and tracks stories instead of individual articles. It decides whether each new article continues an existing event or starts a new one, and it's designed to alert only when an event materially changes, not on every headline.

  1. Ingest5 sources, every 30 min
  2. Prefilterrules, no LLM: drops noise cheaply
  3. ExtractLLM → Pydantic-validated JSON: entities, event types, triggers, figures
  4. Gatekeep reporting, drop opinion and recaps
  5. Event memoryattach or create · 48 h window · score ≥ 0.65
  6. Reason & alertagent over working, episodic and reference memory · in progress
  • ~24%of articles dropped before any LLM call
  • 0.75agreement bar a local model must meet to replace the API model
  • 0.53–0.69what DeBERTa, BART and Qwen reached, so the API model stayed

Built as a tick-driven loop (Python, SQLite locally) with replay for testing, designed to move to AWS (ECS Fargate, RDS, pgvector).

Independent researchOpen-data methods, built spec-first

Coverage-bounded H3 maps for service planning independent research · open data

Service planning needs to know, for every place, whether people need urban, suburban or rural service. Fine hexagons get that right but produce thousands of zones per city. I developed a rule that coarsens an H3 grid only where coarsening loses (almost) no one. The result is a much smaller map that still serves nearly everyone at their level of need.

H3 cell sizes: res 8 ≈ 0.74 km² · res 7 ≈ 5.2 km² · res 6 ≈ 36 km²

Service points to reach 99.9% of people (fewer is better)

Milan2,2533,092
Madrid1,9844,480
Paris4,8335,978
Held-out cities; Paris shown for its base scenario.my rulegradual rasterization (published method)
  • 6European cities
  • 19–56%fewer points at 99.9%, held-out cities
  • 4open datasets: HRSL 30 m, GHS-SMOD, OSM, Eurostat

Methods were fixed before testing on Milan, Madrid and Paris. At 80–90% coverage the results are mixed: another method is sometimes cheaper. Built spec-first: tests for every requirement, data provenance hashes, and a browser engine parity-tested against the Python code.

02 · HPC

AI workloads on Italy's supercomputers

  • CINECA HPC
  • Horizon 2020 European projects
  • 6 TB processed: 5 days → 4 h
  • 8 V100s across 2 nodes with Horovod
  • 3 GPU systems: V100, A100, DGX

At CINECA I advised research and industry teams: scoping AI and data problems, porting and optimising their workloads for NVIDIA GPUs, and training users.

CINECAData Scientist & HPC Specialist · Italy's national supercomputing centre

What I did

    Case study: day-ahead hail prediction EU H2020 CYBELE

    1. Input6 TB of downscaled weather simulations: ~50k GRIB files, 68k grid points × 1,000+ features, 5 years
    2. Parallel I/Omultiprocessing + PyArrow, converted to Parquet on one Marconi100 node
    3. Traininggradient-boosted ensemble (XGBoost, LightGBM, AdaBoost), scheduled with SLURM
    4. DeliveryDocker container for the project demonstrator
    preprocessing
    5 days
    4 hours

    The ML problem

    • ~100recorded hail events in 5 years: extreme imbalance
    • 1,000 → 150variables, picked with meteorologists (convective physics)
    • 3-modelensemble: XGBoost, LightGBM, AdaBoost
    • min / strain in minutes, predict in seconds

    Hail is recorded at a single point, so I spread labels over space and time to get enough positives, and tuned for the convective months (May, June, September). Deep learning gave no gain over boosted trees, and choosing the right KPI with the stakeholders mattered most.

    Validation: leave one month out, then a true hold-out

    train + dev · Jan 2015 – Apr 2018 test · May 2018 – Dec 2019 each convective month held out in turn retrained monthly output: daily hail-probability map for Valencian orchards

    Multi-GPU debugging with RAPIDS and Dask NVIDIA DGX A100

    With colleagues, I traced a bug in a Dask-based all-reduce that made jobs fail when scaling from one GPU to several on an NVIDIA DGX. Fixing it made multi-GPU data processing reliable again.

    • RAPIDS cuDF
    • RAPIDS cuML
    • Dask
    • 8 × A100 per system

    PCA shortcut for virtual drug screening EuroHPC LIGATE · informal contribution

    LIGATE is a EuroHPC drug-discovery project, with CINECA in the consortium, that screens very large libraries of molecules by docking them against protein targets. As a side contribution I showed that dimensionality reduction (PCA) recovers the same subset of candidate molecules that the established linear docking-score equation selects. That makes it a different, faster route to the same shortlist. Individual files ran from tens of gigabytes to terabytes, far too large for memory, so I read them from disk in parallel and benchmarked the approach across systems, including a DGX.

    1. Docking datatens of GB to TB per file, on disk
    2. Parallel readspandas + Linux tooling, chunked and out-of-core
    3. PCAreduce the descriptors, rank the candidates
    4. Same shortlistmatches the linear scoring equation's candidates
    5. Benchmarksacross systems, including DGX

    Finding magnetic reconnection in NASA MMS data EU H2020 AIDA

    Magnetic reconnection, where field lines in Earth's magnetosphere snap and reconnect, is rare and hard to spot in spacecraft data. I trained models on plasma simulations, where reconnection is labelled, and tested them on real data from NASA's four-spacecraft Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission. To make that transfer possible, I put both data sets on a common footing: resampled to the same resolution (0.05 di) and each trajectory standardised against itself.

    1. Train: simulations~80 trajectories, labelled reconnection time steps
    2. Features6 plasma variables (B, E, V, J, N, energy dissipation) + 5–10-step history → 30–60 features
    3. ModelXGBoost against logistic regression, decision trees and random forests; 0.5% class imbalance
    4. Test: MMS~250 spacecraft trajectories, labelled only "contains reconnection" or not

    KPI I defined: flagged share must be higher in reconnection trajectories

    config A
    83% vs 53%
    config B
    63% vs 29%
    config C
    61% vs 30%
    reconnection trajectoriesnon-reconnectionShare of time steps flagged as reconnection, on real MMS data. Results depended on feature and window choices.

    Federated statistics for COVID-19 cohorts EU H2020 ORCHESTRA

    ORCHESTRA analysed SARS-CoV-2 patient cohorts across Europe, where GDPR often prevents records from leaving a country. I co-developed the federated infrastructure and built a small statistical package for federated analysis. It computes each analysis locally at every national hub and combines only the aggregates centrally, so individual records never move.

    hub Astats hub Bstats hub Cstats central nodecombines aggregates aggregates only
    records stay in each country; only statistics travel
    • 26partners
    • 15countries
    • 0patient records moved between hubs
    • 2024Digital Health paper

    Teaching and reviewing Bologna Business School · CINECA · Fortissimo Plus

    I taught the Master's in Data Science course at Bologna Business School and ran training on ML and distributed computing for HPC users. In 2024–25 I evaluated European HPC/AI innovation proposals for Fortissimo Plus.

    "AI with HPC" series, Towards Data Science, 2022: 1. Parallel data processing · 2. Multi-GPU training with Horovod

    03 · Product

    I own products end to end

    • GLS · parcel logistics
    • ScenZero · co-founder
    • OmegaLambdaTec · R&D group lead
    • −20% operating cost, 7 countries
    • 7 products owned or led
    • 6 people led, after building it solo
    • 1 company co-founded
    Products I've owned or led
    ProductDomainMy roleStageOutcome
    Network plannerGLSParcel logisticsBuilt it solo, then product owner and lead of 6production−20% cost, 7 countries
    Demand forecastingGLSParcel logisticsTechnical leadproduction<5% MAPE, €0.5–1M/yr
    ScenZeroco-foundedDecarbonisation, SMEsCo-founder & CTPOlive demoOne model, assembled per client
    LocationAIOmegaLambdaTecGeomarketingMethod design, agentic simulation leadfunded R&DBavarian-funded, with WIGeoGIS
    GrydNovaOmegaLambdaTecElectricity gridsArchitecture, roadmap, validationin marketUsed by German grid operators
    SimLuminaOmegaLambdaTecEngineering simulationArchitecture, roadmapR&DAgentic simulation workflows
    TerrAIOmegaLambdaTecEarth observationArchitecture, roadmapR&DSatellite data to decisions
    GLSSenior Data Scientist & Technical Lead · parcel logistics

    Out-of-home network strategy, city by city strategic network planning

    Where should a parcel carrier put its pick-up shops and lockers in each city, and how many does it really need? I built the answer from zero, on my own: the data pipelines, the demand model, the optimiser that sets each city's network against coverage targets, and the planning app on top. Once it was in production, scaling it across Europe needed a team. I then led six people to deploy it in seven countries.

    • product owner
    • architect
    • lead developer
    • team lead
    1. Demandpopulation, socio-economic and map data per city
    2. Targetscoverage goals set by area type
    3. Candidatesevery feasible shop and locker site
    4. Optimisefewest points that meet the targets, at lowest cost
    5. Delivercity plan in a planning app and API for operations
    • −20%network operating cost
    • €1–5Msaved per year, per country
    • 6people led for the roll-out
    • 7countries in production

    Stack: Python, H3, OpenStreetMap and socio-economic data, mathematical optimisation, a Dash planning app and an Azure Functions API.

    Demand forecasting and EU AI Hubs forecasting · EU AI Hubs

    Forecasting models in production, with the pipeline re-engineered so a computation that took months now runs in minutes. That turned forecasting from a one-off study into something planners can re-run. As technical lead for GLS's EU AI Hubs, I defined best practices and prototyped solutions for adoption at country level.

    runtime
    months
    minutes
    • <5%MAPE
    • €0.5–1Mvalue per year
    • EU AI Hubstechnical lead, best practices
    ScenZeroCo-founder & CTPO · decarbonisation planning

    One model, many clients system dynamics · DAG architecture

    ScenZero lets manufacturing SMEs plan decarbonisation as a dynamic system instead of a static spreadsheet. As co-founder and CTPO, I owned product and technology.

    • The model: system dynamics. Stocks (emissions, installed capacity, capital) change through flows (investment, abatement, energy use). Feedback loops and delays mean a measure's effect on cost and profit plays out over years.
    • The key decision: one mother simulation instead of a bespoke model per client. A DAG reads each client's profile, resolves which components and dependencies apply, and deploys only that simulation.
    • Why it matters: without it, every client needs its own model. That is a consulting job, not a product.
    • Hands-on: I turned the Vensim model into a Python/JavaScript simulation engine and built the app.
    Decarbonisation measures Emissions Carbon & energy cost Profit − + − + R reinvestment loop
    one feedback loop, simplified · polarity of each link shown
    mother simulation emissions energy production finance climate risk circularity DAG resolverclient profile→ components deployed per client client A client B
    one model, assembled per client by a DAG · modules illustrative
    • Co-founderCTPO: product + technology
    • 1 modelmother simulation, assembled per client by a DAG
    • 4app modules: business case, inaction, roadmap, explorer

    scenzero.com → · live demo →

    OmegaLambdaTecGroup Lead & Senior Data Scientist · R&D

    Running an R&D product group team · direction · partners

    I lead a team of data scientists and software engineers across four products (see the table above). My job is to turn research into something a partner can use and pay for.

    • Direction: set research directions and decide which prototypes become products
    • Architecture: define the system and its validation criteria before the build
    • Partners: roadmaps agreed with external partners, such as WIGeoGIS for LocationAI
    • Hands-on: I still design algorithms, for example LocationAI's adaptive H3 grid and its agentic footfall simulation

    LocationAI press release (German) → · grydnova.com →

    GrydNova: planning local grids for the energy transition electricity grids · in market

    Rooftop solar, EV charging and heat pumps are putting pressure on low- and medium-voltage grids. GrydNova helps German grid operators decide where and when to reinforce. I provide the product and technical leadership: architecture, roadmap and validation criteria.

    1. DataGIS and operational grid data
    2. Digital twinmodel of the low- and medium-voltage network
    3. Load flowwhere lines and transformers hit their limits
    4. Scenariosgrowth of PV, e-mobility and heat pumps
    5. Plangrid expansion plan for regulatory reporting

    Used by grid operators including

    • Stuttgart Netze
    • Netze BW
    • Schleswig-Holstein Netze
    • Netzgesellschaft Düsseldorf
    • Netzgesellschaft Niederrhein

    grydnova.com →

    IP knowledge graph co-developed · live

    A live knowledge graph of OmegaLambdaTec's intellectual property, generated directly from its code repositories.

    • Traceable: every method links to the code, commits and assets behind it
    • Connected: edges show how methods depend on and evolve from each other
    • Scored: each method is rated by maturity (foundational, specialised, established) and by reuse across products and industries
    or open ip.omegalambdatec.ai →

    Physics methods for industrial optimisation energy optimisation

    1. From astrophysicsadaptive time-stepping: small steps only where the physics demands it
    2. To industryenergy-management optimisation solvers
    3. Resultup to 100–1000× faster convergence, reused across projects

    Earlier at OmegaLambdaTec: a linear-programming energy-management system built from first principles with a German university, and a day-ahead gas-price forecast that placed on the podium in the Ruhr Challenge 2018.

    “Communicate like a billboard, not a thesis.”

    From my two-part series on moving from data scientist to product owner: 5 lessons from becoming a tech lead · 5 lessons from managing a cross-functional team

    04 · Astrophysics

    How the first supermassive black holes formed

    • Ph.D. · LMU & Max Planck
    • Postdoc · MPE
    • Postdoc · Yale
    • Postdoc · Heidelberg
    • 20+ peer-reviewed papers
    • 1,500+ citations · h-index 16
    • 20+ conference talks
    LMU · Max Planck · Yale · HeidelbergPh.D. and postdoctoral research

    Billion-solar-mass black holes existed less than a billion years after the Big Bang, which is too early to have grown from dead stars. I modelled a faster route, direct collapse, and described the overmassive black-hole galaxy phase that follows. JWST and Chandra found a candidate in 2023, and the discovery papers cite my work.

    10⁹ M☉ black holes, <1 Gyr after the Big Bang too massive to have grown from a ~100 M☉ stellar remnant dark-matter halo, 10⁷–10⁸ M☉ pristine gas metal-free gas cools only to ~10⁴ K without H₂ star-forming neighbour Lyman-Werner photons H₂ H₂ radiation destroys H₂, so the gas can't cool and fragment into stars the cloud collapses into a single 10⁴–10⁶ M☉ black-hole seed merger Overmassive Black-hole Galaxy black hole as massive as the galaxy's stars, or more predicted 2013 · candidate observed 2023: UHZ1, z ≈ 10.1 (Chandra + JWST)

    The problem: the largest early black holes are too massive, too early, to have grown from ordinary stellar remnants.

    Selected papers

    All papers on NASA ADS →

    Cited and covered

    Tools

    HPC & GPU
    SLURM, Horovod, RAPIDS (cuDF, cuML), Dask, NVIDIA NGC, Docker, parallel I/O, PyArrow/Parquet
    ML
    PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face, LoRA/PEFT, scikit-learn, XGBoost, forecasting, anomaly detection
    GenAI
    RAG, LangChain/LangGraph, Qdrant, pgvector, Neo4j, tool calling, Pydantic
    Geo & optimisation
    H3, GeoPandas, OpenStreetMap, linear/integer programming, numerical simulation

    For the full history, download the CV. To get in touch, message me on LinkedIn.