2026 Lunch and Learn – Austin, Texas

Cristina Beldica

Sr Director, HPC and AI Software Engineering

Intel

Cristina Beldica leads an organization responsible for delivering products that enable increased performance on Intel architectures for HPC and AI applications, such as Math Kernel Library (oneMKL), Intel Integrated Performance Primitives (IPP), Intel Cryptography Primitives Library), Intel® Query Processing Library (Intel® QPL). In addition, her team delivers Threading Building Blocks (TBB), Data Parallel C++ Library (oneDPL) and OpenMP runtime, Unified Runtimes and Unified Memory Framework. Her team also includes the Numerics team providing optimized mathematical, statistical, data fitting, and emulation libraries, basic floating-point and numerical algorithms, and floating-point validations tools. Her team is involved in several Intel Federal initiatives, most notably the Aurora supercomputer at the Argonne National Lab which is the first exascale system built with Intel CPUs and GPUs. Prior to joining the DC Software and Tools team, Cristina also led the Intel communications libraries: Intel Message Passing Interface (Intel MPI), oneCCL, a collective library aimed at AI applications, the new Intel SHMEM library and the Open Fabrics Interface (OFI/libfabric).

Cristina has over 30 years of experience in software development and high performance computing. Prior to joining Intel in 2015, she was Associate Director at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. She was co-Principal Investigator and Executive Director for both the acquisition and operational phases for Blue Waters, a $500+ million project funded by the National Science Foundation, University of Illinois and the State of Illinois. At the time, Blue Waters was the largest supercomputer housed by an academic institution in the world.

Cristina holds a M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Politehnica University, Romania, a Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics from University of Illinois at Chicago and an MBA from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is based in Austin, TX.

Lisa Dulchinos

Chief Financial Officer

Ayar Labs

Lisa Dulchinos is the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at Ayar Labs, a company developing advanced optical interconnect technology. With over 25 years of experience leading finance teams in global high-tech organizations, she has a strong track record of driving scale, managing capital, and executing successful corporate acquisitions and sales.

At Ayar Labs, Lisa has guided the company through its transition from the conceptual phase to commercialization. During her tenure, the team grew from 20 to nearly 200 employees, including the establishment of international entities in Taiwan and India. She built the company’s finance and accounting infrastructure, recruited the key finance leadership team, and led multiple funding rounds from Series B through Series E. In total, she has raised nearly $1B in capital, helping drive a multi-billion dollar valuation increase for the company. To ensure Ayar Labs is IPO-ready, she has focused on implementing a strong controls environment, ensuring robust and scalable ERP systems, and curating a cap table backed by institutional investors capable of supporting the company through a public offering.

Before joining Ayar Labs, Lisa spent six years as CFO at Penguin Computing, where she led the company through its successful sale to Smart Global Holdings. Previously, she was CFO for five years at Adept Technology, a publicly traded robotics company. At Adept, she managed investor and analyst relations, led three strategic acquisitions that culminated in the company’s sale to Omron, and prepared the S-1 filing and roadshow for a secondary public offering.

Lisa began her career in public accounting as a Senior Auditor at Ernst & Young. She holds an MBA from St. Mary’s College, a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and holds a CPA (inactive).

Susan Graham

Director and Distinguished Engineer Technology Enablement & Analytics – Solution Engineering

Arm

Susan Graham stands out as a dynamic innovator, deeply committed to advancing process efficiency and fostering product innovation within Arm’s Solutions Engineering group. They operate at the nexus of Physical IP development, Design/Technology Co-optimization (DTCO), and strategic organizational planning, consistently evaluating emerging process technologies and forecasting their impact on Arm’s competitive PPA for future products. Based in Austin, Texas, Susan is instrumental in propelling Arm’s compute solutions forward by harmonizing technology, talent, and execution to deliver high-performance, power-efficient designs in an era marked by escalating system complexity. 

With over three decades of experience in the semiconductor industry, Susan possesses an exceptional breadth of expertise spanning the entire silicon lifecycle. Their background encompasses everything from manufacturing and quality engineering to circuit design, physical implementation, and system-level architecture. Throughout their career, Susan has held significant leadership roles at both Arm and Intel, making substantial contributions to CPU, memory, and interconnect technologies across various process nodes—from early planar approaches to the latest FinFET and Nanosheet generations. This comprehensive experience empowers Susan to steer pivotal technical decisions and anticipate downstream effects across design, validation, and production. 

A true champion of people, Susan is dedicated to nurturing talent and building high-performing teams. They founded Black@Arm, Arm’s inaugural Employee Resource Group, and are widely regarded as an advocate for inclusive leadership, recognizing it as a key driver of innovation in the shifting landscape of the post-Moore’s Law era. Known for their energetic and approachable demeanor, Susan is an exceptional technical extrovert who eagerly shares their insights and experiences to inspire others. 

Pratima Rao

Materials Engineering Director

Lam Research

Pratima Rao (she/her/hers) is the Materials Engineering Director of the Materials Science & Technology Group and Additive Manufacturing Program at Lam Research. At Lam, Pratima engages with cross-functional teams to develop solutions to materials science, engineering, and technology challenges enabling cutting edge wafer fabrication equipment development designed to achieve breakthroughs at the atomic scale for next-generation semiconductor chip technology. She is also the Advanced Chamber Materials Innovation Design Engineering Authority for the Deposition Product Group organizing annual symposia to highlight key break-throughs in the development of novel materials, surface treatments, and coatings achieved by her organization and through collaborations with research institutions and university collaborations. She serves on numerous Lam-wide task forces to enable materials technology roadmap development and ESG initiatives. 

Pratima previously held positions at Corning Inc, Xerox, and Microsoft and is certified with Design for Lean Six Sigma and DMAIC Green Belts. She is co-inventor on twelve patents and is co-author on five peer-reviewed papers and ten conference proceedings. Her speaking engagements have included research conferences and numerous talks describing her work in the field of materials science and engineering and in particular, working as a female in technology. 

Pratima has a Ph.D. and M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering with a minor in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where she was recipient of the National Science Foundation Fellowship, the Rensselaer Fellowship, and the American Association of University of Women Fellowship. She received her B.S. in Materials Engineering and a minor in Economics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where she graduated summa cum laude. Pratima is a member of Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Xi, and Alpha Sigma Mu honor societies. Pratima is a proud graduate of Emma Willard School, the first women’s higher education institution in the United States. 

Pratima is a life member of the Society of Women Engineers for which she has held several leadership positions and was a Prism Award recipient. She is also a member of the American Association of University Women and the American Chemical Society as well as sits on the SEMI SCIS Advisory Council. At Lam, she serves as Global Co-Chair for the Lam-wide Global Women’s ERG and is a member of the PRIDE employee resource group. Pratima is an Executive Board member for Saturday Academy, a non-profit organization which provides STEAM education to children in the greater Portland area. 

Pratima has an eighteen-year-old son and a fifteen-year-old daughter. She is married to her partner, Bob Hepburn who also has a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering. Her fun interests include cheering at her kids’ sports events, enjoying wine-tasting with friends, trail hiking, and becoming more skillful with Indian food cooking. 

Lisa Ryan

Partner

Fragomen

With nearly three decades of immigration law experience and a current leader of Fragomen’s West Coast global operations, Lisa understands the importance of asking her clients a seemingly simple question that is too often overlooked or forgotten: “What support do you need?” She provides thoughtful, strategic counsel to clients by understanding the bigger picture: their broader business objectives. Lisa manages worldwide immigration and mobility programs for a wide array of clients,ranging from companies in the beginning stages of development to some of the world’s largest multinational corporations. This includes helping companies centralize their worldwide programs, allowing them to be more strategic, cost-effective, compliant and competitive, as well as understanding the immigration nuances of new markets so they can get their talent where they need it, when they need it there—all while providing a positive employee experience and achieving business goals. Founding and serving as Chair of the firm’s Semiconductor Industry Group, she represents corporate clients in areas including semiconductors, manufacturing, automotive, commercial aviation, oil and gas, information technology and telecommunications, gaming, financial services, insurance/reinsurance, human resources and management consulting, accounting, marketing/advertising, beverages and pharmaceuticals. 

Lisa’s deep experience in the mobility arena allows her to develop programs for clients that not only work for their businesses, but also for the individuals affected. Knowing that the pressure employees face is higher than ever due to geopolitical events, economic conditions and natural disasters, she successfully helps companies create policies and programs that are effective on a day-to-day basis as well as in crisis situations, while ensuring their employees to feel supported throughout. Her clients appreciate her unwavering dedication to and personal involvement in their issues, always having a pulse on their businesses and serving as a strategic leader to guide them through complex challenges. 

Lisa is an active member of the American Bar Association’s International Law Section, where she previously served as Section Chair and currently serves on the Section’s Council. She also holds the role of President on the Board of Directors for the Humane Society of Sonoma County.