Zaphiris Christidis is a Senior Certified IT Architect in STG Systems Software Group. He has been in IBM since 1987. Before joining STG in 2009, Zaphiris was a Research Staff Member at the TJ Watson Research Lab, in the Deep Computing and Parallel Systems departments. In 2002 Zaphiris joined STG in the Greater China Group as an International assignee, working on High Performance Computing and Environmental Applications. Zaphiris has expertise in designing weather system solutions, benchmarking and Weather code optimization on system P and X products. Zaphiris has a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics from the University of Ioannina, Greece, an MS in Climatology from the City College of New York, and a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences and Engineering from the University of Michigan.