New director for NeIC
Tomasz Malkiewicz has been appointed Interim Director of NeIC for the year 2025.
The decision was made by NeIC’s Strategic Committee, which is a steering body replacing the NeIC Board from 1 January 2025. The committee consists of representatives from the six national e-infrastructure provider organisations: Sigma2, DeiC, RHnet, NAISS, CSC, and ETAIS.
– I’m honored and humbled to accept the role of interim director of NeIC. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Gudmund Høst, who has built the NeIC organisation from scratch since 2012 and truly leaves big shoes to fill, Malkiewicz says.
Malkiewicz has worked with NeIC as executive manager and been a part of the executive team since January 2017. Throughout the years, he has acted as project owner for several projects, Puhuri, CodeRefinery and NordIQuEst being the most recent ones. He has been responsible for the Beneficial Collaborations part of NeIC strategy and worked diligently to further deploy and benefit from the Practical Project Steering (PPS) framework used in every NeIC project. In addition, Malkiewicz has improved NeIC’s project lifecycle model and introduced the framework for realising and managing project benefits at NeIC, extending connections with project managers as well as value production beyond the end date of a project.
Malkiewicz holds a PhD in nuclear physics from University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He is employed at CSC - IT Center for Science in Finland. Before joining CSC, he had worked as a CNRS postdoctoral researcher at the LPSC Grenoble, France.
Goodbye, Gudmund!
Gudmund Høst has been the director of NeIC since 2012 and played a major role in founding NeIC. In 2025, he will take on new responsibilities at NordForsk.
– Participating in the development of Nordic collaboration in digital infrastructure for research has been the most fascinating, challenging, and rewarding period of my career, Høst says.
– As the director of NeIC since 2012, I had the privilege of witnessing the collaboration flourish, growing to include over 60 partner institutions and more than 30 cross-border activities, engaging over 300 infrastructure experts. I am especially proud of Estonia joining the collaboration on equal footing in 2020. Today, the collaboration has expanded beyond the boundaries of official Nordic cooperation, transitioning away from NordForsk. The increasing demands for resources from a broad range of sectors present exciting opportunities for new collaboration mechanisms. Notably, four out of six partners in the new LUMI AI Factory are Nordic-Estonian. The provision of this resource, which will include extensive quantum capabilities, is just one of the potential game changers for Nordic infrastructure cooperation. I wish NeIC a bright and prosperous future and am confident that its leadership is in excellent hands. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have been part of this journey and I will always cherish the experiences and relationships I’ve built during my time with NeIC.
Host organisation changes
The change in leadership is not the only change NeIC undergoes in the turn of 2024 and 2025. The hosting organisation, which has since 2012 been NordForsk, is from 1 January onwards CSC. NordForsk will continue to administrate the three currently running projects - CodeRefinery3, NordIQuEst, and Puhuri2 – until their completion, while the projects starting in 2025 will be administered by CSC.
– Undergoing changes such as discontinuation of funding from NordForsk and change of hosting organisation are major challenges for NeIC, but they can also lead to new opportunities, both Nordic and European. Shaping and implementing a new strategy for NeIC for 2025-2030 will be my first task and am looking forward to working with the board and the management team on it. At the same time, we will keep on doing what NeIC does best - running meaningful and innovative development projects, fostering innovation, and strengthening the legacy and core values of NeIC, Malkiewicz says.