FULL AGENDA
VAST Forward 2026 Complete Agenda
Explore the full program of keynotes, breakout sessions, hands-on labs, and networking opportunities designed to advance your expertise in AI, data architecture, and enterprise IT.
42 sessions
Evening Events
Welcome Reception
Evening Events
Winter Wonderland Dinner Reception
Keynote
Main Stage — Wednesday Morning Program
Renen Hallak
VAST Data
Tim Urban
Jeff Denworth
VAST Data
Certification Bootcamp
Admin Certification Refresh Bootcamp & Training
Phillip Wagstrom
VAST Data
Hands on Lab
Advanced VAST System Monitoring
Josh Wentzell
VAST Data
Hands on Lab
Big Data Processing with Data Engine Pipelines
Christian Neundorf
VAST Data
Andrius Markvaldas
VAST Data
Hands on Lab
Building AI Pipelines with Data Engine
Matt Rogers
VAST Data
Breakout Session
Building Data Pipelines with VAST DataEngine
Simon Golan
VAST Data
Sagi Grimberg
VAST Data
Breakout Session
Building Internet-Scale Data Lakes In-House
Guy Lawless
CrowdStrike
Jair Bobys
VAST Data
Breakout Session
Database and Storage for Demanding 24/7 Environments
Kevin Weiler
Aquatic
Bert Corderman
The Trade Desk
Bryan Whitmore
VAST Data
Breakout Session
The Efficiency Imperative: Turning Scarcity into Competitive Advantage
Erik Wolf
VAST Data
Phil Manez
VAST Data
Breakout Session
Breaking the GPU Memory Wall
Anat Heilper
VAST Data
Vikram Sharma Mailthody
NVIDIA
Breakout Session
From 24 ⧸ 7 Storage Operations to AI Operating Systems at Scale
Eric Bermender
Pixar
Andy Pernsteiner
VAST Data
Breakout Session
High-Performance Analytics with VAST DataBase
Fouad Teban
VAST Data
Breakout Session
Parallel File Systems for Extreme Computing Demands
Lucas Wojcik
Jump Trading
James McCarrick
VAST Data
Breakout Session
VAST + NVIDIA Arm the Enterprise with Agentic AI
Adel El Hallak
NVIDIA
Sagi Grimberg
VAST Data
Hands on Lab
Advanced VAST System Monitoring
Josh Wentzell
VAST Data
Breakout Session
Architecting a Secure Unified AI Data Platform
Daniel McGinniss
Cisco
John Mao
VAST Data
Jacob Liberman
NVIDIA
Breakout Session
Beyond Storage: The Data Foundation for Agentic AI
Christian Hudon
ServiceNow
Ofir Zan
VAST Data
Hands on Lab
Big Data Processing with Data Engine Pipelines
Christian Neundorf
VAST Data
Andrius Markvaldas
VAST Data
Hands on Lab
Migrate from Anywhere using SyncEngine
Blake Golliher
VAST Data
Breakout Session
Retrieval Augmented AI for Financial Asset Servicing
Fouad Teban
VAST Data
Ahmed Kissay
CACEIS
Breakout Session
Scale and Performance with VAST DataStore
Scott Howard
VAST Data
Breakout Session
Secure Global Data Computing for Government AI
Robert Linger
Leidos
Josh Salmanson
Leidos
Jeremiah Hinrichs
VAST Data
Breakout Session
AI Infrastructure for Healthcare and Life Sciences
James Forrester
University of Rochester
Julie Myers
University of Rochester Medical Center
Betsy Hillery
Purdue-Lilly Research Alliance Center (LPRC)
+ 1 more speakers
Breakout Session
AI Transforming Media Production Workflows
Derek Kennedy
The National Hockey League
Matt Rogers
VAST Data
Breakout Session
Hybrid Cloud Architecture with DataSpace
Eiki Hrafnsson
VAST Data
Breakout Session
Integrating VAST into Cloud Service Architectures
Danny Lee
Coupang
Ryan Price
Adobe
Scott Howard
VAST Data
Evening Events
Closing Reception: Party at the Peak
Keynote
Main Stage — Thursday Morning Program
Chen Goldberg
CoreWeave
Andy Pernsteiner
VAST Data
Shachar Fienblit
VAST Data
+ 3 more speakers
Breakout Session
Best Practices for High-Performance IO from App to VAST
Alon Horev
VAST Data
Sven Breuner
VAST Data
Hands on Lab
Building AI Pipelines with Data Engine
Matt Rogers
VAST Data
Breakout Session
Deploying VAST AI OS Across Cloud Platforms
Jonsi Stefansson
VAST Data
Eiki Hrafnsson
VAST Data
Breakout Session
Exascale HPC and AI
Nic Lewis
TACC
Kyle Lamb
VAST Data
Hands on Lab
Migrate from Anywhere using SyncEngine
Blake Golliher
VAST Data
Breakout Session
Navigating the 2026 SSD "Dry Year"
Scott Shadley
Solidigm
Glenn Lockwood
VAST Data
Certification Exam
VAST Admin Certification Exam (VCP-AD1)
Hands on Lab
VAST SDK Hands-On Workshop
J Powell
VAST Data
Breakout Session
Building A Suite of Cloud Data Services for AI Training and Inference
Jason Vallery
VAST Data
Breakout Session
Forecasting the Future: How NOAA Is Evolving from Traditional HPC to AI-Enabled Science
Alan Powers
GDIT
Shawn Needham
GDIT
Ben Lee
Supermicro
+ 1 more speakers
Breakout Session
From HPC to AI Factory at Leading Research Institutions
Sam Liston
University of Utah
Daniele Cesarini
Cineca
Glenn Lockwood
VAST Data
Breakout Session
Scaling the Modern Data Platform with VAST S3
Alon Horev
VAST Data
Scott Howard
VAST Data
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