Thank You!

Students@SC would like to take a moment to thank the generous donors who helped provide funding for the SC22 Student Program. A huge thanks to Jack Dongarra, this year’s ACM A.M. Turing Award winner, who donated his speaking honorarium in support of Students@SC. We are also grateful to Cornelis Networks, IEEE, BP, Chevron, Meta, Oracle Cloud, and Microsoft Azure for their generous support.

Platinum

Jack Dongarra at SC22 with students.

Gold

Bronze

In-Kind

Georgia Tech showing off their HPL run.

In its second year, IndySCC is an event sharing the goals of the SCC but with an emphasis on education and inclusion, intended for less-experienced teams. The teams compete remotely, using hardware secured by the committee. The teams interface with the hardware using the Chameleon Cloud platform. For this year’s competition, we used over 300 nodes of a retired cluster at Purdue University.

Ten teams competed in this year’s competition from all over the world. The competition began in August with four educational modules where the teams learned the platform and the three applications. Each module included a webinar, homework, and a chance for Q&A.

From October 20–30, the teams took on the Hero HPL Challenge where they had 24 hours to build out a cluster of up to 300 nodes and produce the best possible HPL scores. To conclude, from Nov 4–6, the teams competed in a 49-hour (thanks, Daylight Saving Time) competition similar to the SCC. The teams competed to complete tasks from 3 applications as quickly and as accurately as possible – the teams were also interviewed by the app judges to judge their knowledge of the applications.

Universitas Indonesia working in the dark thanks to a blown fuse!

Team Revontuli, CSC, Finland having a pizza party!

Congratulations to the winners, and to all the teams for a successful competition! 

Best Poster

Clemson University 

Hero HPL Challenge

Winner: CSC, Finland (144 TF on 250 nodes)
2nd Place: SUSTech (109 TF)
3rd Place ShanghaiTech (102 TF)

Overall

Winner: ShanghaiTech
2nd Place: SUSTech
3rd Place: CSC, Finland

It’s always exciting to be the one sharing good news. It is my pleasure to announce a generous donation made by longtime SC advocate Jack Dongarra, this year’s ACM A.M. Turing Award winner. SC22 previously announced that Dr. Dongarra has chosen SC22 as the forum where he will deliver his Turing Lecture. In addition, Dr. Dongarra has donated his entire SC22 speaker’s honorarium to the Students@SC program. This generous donation will be used to support the travel costs for the SC22 Lead Student Volunteers (LSVs).

Fostering Leadership

LSVs are previous student volunteers who are selected to help plan the current conference and serve as managers for the army of student volunteers who help staff the conference. They work directly with the planning committee as junior committee members gaining exposure and experience as an SC committee member. This opportunity allows students to foster professional relationships by working alongside the committee members. Additionally, it provides a fantastic pathway for students who are interested in becoming full committee members once they finish their studies, or who just want to learn how to organize events to become leaders in the research community.

Valuable Experiences

The conference planning committee, which is comprised of more than 700 volunteers, relies on LSVs and student volunteers for the additional help needed to ensure a successful conference. Student volunteers perform a wide range of tasks for the SC Conference, such as working the information booth and staffing conference activities. Student volunteers work 15–20 hours during the conference, allowing plenty of time to engage in important educational and career-advancing activities such as tutorials, technical talks, panels, poster sessions, and workshops, as well as explore the Exhibit Hall.

Everyone in the Students@SC22 program is grateful for Dr. Dongarra’s gracious gift. Thank you, Dr. Dongarra!

While pursuing her master’s degree in computational science, Verónica Melesse Vergara attended her first SC conference – SC10 in New Orleans – as a student volunteer. And that experience completely changed her career trajectory.

“It opened my eyes to the wide range of career possibilities in high performance computing,” says Verónica, who today is the System Acceptance & User Environment Group Leader at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). “The relationships I formed at SC10 have been invaluable, and the collaborations I established as a result have helped me grow as an HPC professional.”

“The relationships I formed at SC10 have been invaluable, and the collaborations I established as a result have helped me grow as an HPC professional.” — Verónica Melesse Vergara

Anthony Cabrera, a PhD student, discovered the SC conference through Twitter contacts. Anthony applied and was accepted to be a student volunteer at SC17 in Denver.

“My experience as an SC student volunteer was truly a game changer for me,” explains Anthony, a research scientist in the Architectures and Performance Group at ORNL. “All of my career opportunities have been through my involvement with SC.”

Verónica and Anthony are not alone. They are among countless HPC professionals who, as undergraduate or graduate students, have kickstarted their careers by participating in Students@SC.

“All of my career opportunities have been through my involvement with SC.” — Anthony Cabrera

Dozens of students will have an equally robust opportunity to learn, serve and network at this year’s event in Dallas. Three primary areas where students can benefit:

• Serving as a Lead Student Volunteer, which is limited to those who have previously served as SC student volunteers;
• Serving as a Student Volunteer, assisting in conference operations while also attending/participating in the Technical Program;
• Participating in the Student Cluster Competition, which involves teams of undergraduate students from around the world who put their skills to the test building, operating and tuning powerful cluster computers.

This is a program I’m passionate about, because I know Students@SC is important for finding and developing the next generation in HPC. The student program produces great future HPC leaders.

Besides volunteering and the Student Cluster Competition, students attending SC22 will also be able to attend a job fair, participate in a variety of mentoring programs, and become immersed in HPC through student-specific technical programs aimed at advancing the skills required to thrive in an HPC career.

But perhaps the greatest benefit is for students to take advantage of the ability to meet and interact with some of the world’s leading HPC proponents.

“The networking opportunities are unparalleled,” says Sally Ellingson, who works in computational biology and high performance computing as Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Kentucky and Markey Cancer Center. Like Verónica, she first participated in SC as a student volunteer at SC10. “I fell in love with the community at SC and knew immediately that I would be back.”

Learn more about the Students@SC program, including how to apply for selection as a student volunteer, cluster competition details, and many other valuable opportunities for students.

Students@SC