During the SC22 Awards Ceremony, held on Thursday, November 17, 2021 in Dallas, the SC Awards and selected ACM and IEEE awards were presented. Congratulations to all of this year’s awardees!

Watch the Awards Ceremony on YouTube

SC22 Awards Ceremony

Society Awards

ACM/IEEE-CS Ken Kennedy Award

Ian Foster, University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory

ACM/IEEE-CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship

Read about the awardees on the ACM website

Marcin Copik, ETH Zürich 

Masado Alexander Ishii, University of Utah 

Shelby Lockhart, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (Honorable Mention)

IEEE-CS Sidney Fernbach Memorial Award

Torsten Hoefler, ETH Zürich

IEEE-CS Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award

Satoshi Matsuoka, Riken Center for Computational Science (R-CCS)

ACM Gordon Bell Prize

Pushing the Frontier in the Design of Laser-Based Electron Accelerators with Groundbreaking Mesh-Refined Particle-In-Cell Simulations on Exascale-Class Supercomputers

Luca Fedeli, France Boillod-Cerneaux, Thomas Clark, Neil Zaїm, and Henri Vincenti, (CEA); Axel Huebl, Kevin Gott, Remi Lehe, Andrew Myers, Weiqun Zhang, and Jean-Luc Vay, (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory); Conrad Hillairet, (Arm); Stephan Jaure, (ATOS); Adrien Leblanc, (Laboratoire d’Optique Appliquée, ENSTA Paris); Christelle Piechurski, (GENCI); Mitsuhisa Sato, (RIKEN)

ACM Gordon Bell Special Prize for High Performance Computing-Based COVID-19 Research

GenSLMs: Genome-Scale Language Models Reveal SARS-CoV-2 Evolutionary Dynamics

Maxim Zvyagin, Alexander Brace, Kyle Hippe, Yuntian Deng, Bin Zhang, Cindy Orozco Bohorquez, Austin Clyde, Bharat Kale, Danilo Perez-Rivera, Heng Ma, Carla M. Mann, Michael Irvin, J. Gregory Pauloski, Logan Ward, Valerie Hayot, Murali Emani, Sam Foreman, Zhen Xie, Diangen Lin, Maulik Shukla, Weili Nie, Josh Romero, Christian Dallago, Arash Vahdat, Chaowei Xiao, Thomas Gibbs, Ian Foster, James J. Davis, Michael E. Papka, Thomas Brettin, Rick Stevens, Anima Anandkumar, Venkatram Vishwanath, Arvind Ramanathan (University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory, NVIDIA, Cerebras Systems, Northern Illinois University, Arizona State University)

ACM Student Research Competition (Graduate)

First Place

Software Resource Disaggregation for HPC with Serverless Computing

Marcin Copik, ETH Zürich

Second Place

Compressing Quantum Circuit Simulation Tensor Data

Milan Shah, North Carolina State UniversityArgonne National Laboratory (ANL)

Third Place

Analysis of Validating and Verifying OpenACC Compilers 3.0 and Above

Aaron M. Jarmusch, University of Delaware

ACM Student Research Competition (Undergraduate)

First Place

Statistical Prediction of Lossy Compression Ratios for 3D Scientific Data

David Krasowska, Clemson University

Second Place

Predicting Scientific Data Popularity Using dCache Logs

Julian Bellavita, University of California, Berkeley

Third Place

Analysis of Validating and Verifying OpenACC Compilers 3.0 and Above

Aaron M. Jarmusch, University of Delaware; Aaron Liu, University of Delaware

ACM SIGHPC Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award

Enabling High-Performance Large-Scale Irregular Computations

Dr. Maciej Besta, ETH Zürich

ACM SIGHPC Fellowships in Computational & Data Science

Read about the awardees on the SIGHPC website

Tassallah Abdullahi (PhD, NLP/Information Retrieval), Brown University

Jennifer Briggs (PhD, Bioengineering and Biomedical Informatics), University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus

Navona Calarco (PhD, Medical Biophysics), University of Toronto

Leslie Cook (Master’s, Computer Science), Midwestern State University

Draga Doncila Pop (PhD, IT), Monash University

Alexis Garretson (PhD, Genetics), Tufts University

Tobias Holden (PhD, Health & Biomedical Informatics), Northwestern University

Hellina Nigatu (PhD, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences), University of California, Berkeley

Sonal Sannigrahi (Master’s, Computational Linguistics), Saarland University

Ana Veroneze Solórzano (PhD, Computer Engineering), Northeastern University

Nicole Tomassi (PhD, Computational Neuroscience), Boston University

ACM SIGHPC Emerging Woman Leader in Technical Computing Award (2021)

Didem Unat, Koç University

ACM SIGHPC Certificate of Appreciation

Presented to the authors of the SC21 paper selected for the SC22 Student Cluster Competition Reproducibility Challenge

Productivity, Portability, Performance: Data-Centric Python

Alexandros Nikolaos Ziogas, Timo Schneider, Tal Ben-Nun, Alexandru Calotoiu, Tiziano De Matteis, Johannes de Fine Licht, Luca Lavarini, Torsten Hoefler (ETH Zürich)

ACM SIGHPC Educational Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computational Science Education

Bob Panoff, Shodor

IEEE-CS TCHPC Award for Excellence for Early Career Researchers in High Performance Computing

Read about the awardees on the TCHPC website

Yue Cheng, University of Virginia

Hang Liu, Stevens Institute of Technology

Elliott Slaughter, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

SC Awards

Test of Time Award

A Power-Aware Run-Time System for High-Performance Computing (Published at SC05)

Chung-hsing Hsu, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL); Wuchun Feng, Virginia Tech

Best Paper

ProbGraph: High-Performance and High-Accuracy Graph Mining with Probabilistic Set Representations

Maciej Besta, ETH Zürich; Cesare Miglioli, University of Geneva, Switzerland; Paolo Sylos Labini, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy; Jakub Tětek, University of Copenhagen; Patrick Iff, ETH Zürich; Raghavendra Kanakagiri, University of Illinois; Saleh Ashkboos, ETH Zürich; Kacper Janda, AGH University of Science and Technology, Krakow, Poland; Michal Podstawski, Warsaw University of Technology; Grzegorz Kwasniewski, ETH Zürich; Niels Gleinig, ETH Zürich; Flavio Vella, University of Trento, Italy; Onur Mutlu, ETH Zürich; Torsten Hoefler, ETH Zürich

Best Reproducibility Advancement

HammingMesh: A Network Topology for Large-Scale Deep Learning

Torsten Hoefler, ETH Zürich, Microsoft Corporation; Tommaso Bonato, ETH Zürich; Daniele De Sensi, ETH Zürich; Salvatore Di Girolamo, ETH Zürich; Shigang Li, ETH Zürich; Marco Heddes, Microsoft Corporation; Jon Belk, Microsoft Corporation; Deepak Goel, Microsoft Corporation; Miguel Castro, Microsoft Corporation; Steve Scott, Microsoft Corporation

Best Research Poster

Toward Scalable Voxelization of Meshes with High Growth Rate

Markéta Hrabánková, Ondřej Meca, Tomáš Brzobohatý, Lubomír Říha, Milan Jaroš, Petr Strakoš; IT4Innovations, Czech Republic, VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, Czech Republic

Best Visualization

Virtual Certification of Gas Turbine Engines – Visualizing the DLR Rig250 Compressor

Arun Prabhakar, University of Warwick; Christopher Goddard, Rolls-Royce; Dario Amirante, University of Surrey, England; Axel Gerstenberger, Rolls-Royce Deutschland; Jan-Friedrich Suhrmann, Rolls-Royce Deutschland; Istvan Reguly, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Hungary; Leigh Lapworth, Rolls-Royce; Stephen Jarvis, University of Birmingham, UK; Gihan Mudalige, University of Warwick

Best Student Paper

Scalable Automatic Differentiation of Multiple Parallel Paradigms through Compiler Augmentation

William Moses, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Sri Hari Krishna Narayanan, Argonne National Laboratory; Ludger Paehler, Technical University Munich; Valentin Churavy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Michel Schanen, Argonne National Laboratory; Jan Hueckelheim, Argonne National Laboratory;  Johannes Doerfert, Argonne National Laboratory; Paul Hovland, Argonne National Laboratory

Student Cluster Competition

Highest Linpack Benchmark

Team 2MuchCache

Students: Stefanie Dao, Davit Margarian, Anish Govind, Michael Granado, Matthew Mikhailov, Yuchen Jing; University of California San Diego, United States; Advisor: Mary Thomas; University of California San Diego, United States 

Overall Winner

Team NTHU

Students: En-Ming Huang, Fu-Chiang Chang, Hsu-Tzu Ting, Pin-Yi Kuo, Pang-Ning Wu, Chan-Yu Mou; National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan; Advisor: Jerry Chou; National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan

The SC22 Conference is underway in Dallas, bringing together members of the international high performance computing, networking, storage, and analysis community to share the latest research, technologies, and demonstrations.

Exhibitors and visitors at the SC Conference this year will enjoy access to 5.01 terabits per second of bandwidth across 1 million square feet in the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center Dallas thanks to SCinet, the dedicated high-capacity network for the conference.

SCinet is a collaborative effort by over 175 volunteer experts from 80 volunteer organizations that span industry, academia, and government. This spirit of collaboration is a major driver for the success and innovation that SCinet delivers on a yearly basis.

Seventeen organizations in particular were instrumental in supporting large-scale international science at the SC Conference this year, and they are being recognized with the SCinet Spirit of Innovation Award:

“The winners of the 2022 SCinet Spirit of Innovation Award have embraced the spirit of collaboration and cooperation that showcases the best there is to offer in demonstrating, implementing, and operating leading-edge solutions to challenging problems,” said Matt Zekauskas, SCinet Chair. “This collaboration is truly special to SCinet, and we are all encouraged by and appreciative of their efforts to showcase partnership and innovation.”

The research innovations are being demonstrated at the NICT booth at SC22 this year, and feature several experiments that will leverage International connectivity and technology support being provided by the collocating partners. These demonstrations will transmit data and video streams of various qualities across a multi-continental path, use cloud and edge computing approaches to perform at scale video processing and measuring and monitoring of the network infrastructure, and use this intelligence to dynamically control the network path.

SCinet contributors donate millions of dollars in equipment, software, and services that are needed to build and support the network each year for the SC Conference. At this year’s conference in Dallas, it’s estimated that contributions from 29 organizations will total $70 million.

AARNet, APONET, ARENA-PAC, CENIC, Ciena, Cisco, HARNET, Internet2, KISTI, NICT, NII, Pacific Northwest Gigapop, REANNZ, SingAREN, TransPAC, University of Hawaii, and Verizon were recognized at a private ceremony on Monday, November 14.

Like any large city, use common sense. Be aware of your surroundings. Remove your badge when not inside the convention center. Take advantage of the conference shuttle bus service or these walking options.

Safety Walks

You can request a courtesy walk throughout downtown Dallas seven days a week, 6 am–11 pm.

Call 214-741-1151 or use the See Say app.

For more information on safety initiatives Downtown Dallas Inc. has in place, including download links for the See Say app, see their website:

Downtown Dallas Inc.

Preferred Walking Route

The preferred walking route for attendees staying in the Adolphus, Residence Inn, Hampton Inn and the Magnolia hotels is to make your way down Commerce Street to the plaza at the AT&T Discovery District (the “park” between the AT&T buildings and The Exchange) and proceed through the plaza down Akard Street to the convention center’s Akard Street entrance. Review the map below for guidance.

Meeting up with old friends and making new ones is something that post-attendee surveys consistently tell us is a key reason why people attend the SC conference. And there will be plenty of folks to see at SC22 in Dallas.

Registrations for the conference are mounting, tracking at pre-pandemic numbers and predominantly for in-person attendance. If you’ve been on the fence about attending, now’s the time to make your plans to join the HPC community for what’s shaping up to be an outstanding conference. There’s still plenty of time to register; read about your registration options and then use the links in Step 4 to register.

SC22 strives to be an inclusive conference; ALL are welcome. We offer family resources including session access, a Parents Room that provides private feeding areas, and on-site care for children ages 6 months and older.

What’s Happening at SC22

Speed is the foundation of HPC, and will be at the forefront of our industry over the next year as more exascale systems come online. So it’s fitting that speed also serves as the foundation for SC22, with the theme HPC Accelerates. The conference offers a robust technical program, plus programs geared just for students and those early in their careers. Due to popular demand, pocket-sized, a program-at-a-glance guide is available at the registration desk.

A key metric of how an SC conference is shaping up is exhibit booth sales. And exhibitors are turning out to show their wares in Dallas; the exhibit hall will be filled with 350 exhibitors. Many exhibitors have increased their booth space from previous years. We’re also excited to welcome more than 50 new exhibitors, too. Be sure to grab your exhibitor map at the registration desk when you claim your badge so you can plan your stops and more easily navigate the exhibit hall.

There are options to connect with other attendees in the SC22 mobile app that will go live on November 1. The app is available for free for both Android and Apple devices; download from your app store (links will also be on the SC22 website). Once you configure the app’s settings to let you be visible to other attendees, you can interact with others whether they’re in Dallas or participating digitally.

If this will be your first time attending an SC conference, please check out the first-timers page and plan to attend the first-timers session on Monday, November 14, at 4 pm. You’ll learn tips for navigating the conference and have a chance to ask questions.

So join us in person in Dallas – or via the Digital Experience. It’s shaping up to be a great conference and we can’t wait to see you!

By engaging computer engineers, scientists, academia, students, and industry professionals from all areas of the HPC community, SC sets the standard for the education and engagement that fuels continued global technological advancement. All indicators are showing that the standard is staying strong and SC22 is going to be the place to be in November!

Exhibit Hall

– filled from one end to the other –

Registration

– on par with non-pandemic years –

Hotel Blocks

– filling up with reservations –

Email Inquiries

– about attending SC on the rise –

Exhibitors Are Back

SC empowers, shapes, and guides the future of not only our attendees, but the greater industry, enabling new opportunities to better serve our world. A key metric of how an SC conference is shaping up is exhibit booth sales. And exhibitors are turning out to show their wares in Dallas; the exhibit hall will be filled with over 300 exhibitors.

Many exhibitors have increased their booth space from previous years. We’re also excited to welcome several new exhibitors, too. Be sure to grab your exhibitor map at the registration desk when you claim your badge so you can plan your stops and more easily navigate the exhibit hall.

Watch a brief video featuring an interview with SC22 Exhibits Chair Jim Stewart.

The Community Gathers

Meeting up with old friends and making some new ones is an aspect of the conference that post-attendee surveys consistently tell us is a key reason why people attend. We’ve had many anecdotal reports of attendees already making arrangements for business and social meetings with others who will also be attending the conference.

The SC22 theme is HPC Accelerates. Speed is the foundation of HPC, and will be at the forefront of our industry over the next year as more exascale systems come online. So it’s fitting that speed also serves as the foundation for SC22. The conference offers a robust technical program, plus programs geared just for students and those early in their careers.

SC22 strives to be an inclusive conference; ALL are welcome. We offer family resources including session access, a parents room that provides private feeding areas, and on-site care for children ages 6 months and older. If this will be your first time attending an SC conference, please check out the first-timers page and plan to attend the first-timers session on Monday, November 14, at 4 pm. You’ll learn tips for navigating the conference and have a chance to ask questions.

So join us in-person in Dallas – or via the Digital Experience. It’s shaping up to be a great conference and we can’t wait to see you!

Why do scientists, researchers and engineers – across the globe – flock to SC every year?

The answers are many, but most center on their quest for discovery, to learn about the latest and most innovative high-performance computing and next-generation networking technologies that are redefining the way we live and work.

And at SC22, that thirst for advanced technological solutions also applies to the conference’s customized wireless network, which will enable thousands of attendees and exhibitors to connect and communicate seamlessly with colleagues inside and outside the spacious Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas.

Thanks to the contribution of millions of dollars in equipment and manpower by PIER Group, a 2022 SCinet Diamond contributor, the conference’s SCinet high-capacity network will – for the first time – feature Wi-Fi 6E (6 GHz) technology. But don’t worry, it’s backwards compatible so your current electronics will connect.

According to PIER Group’s Director of Networking Shannon Champion, who is leading a 10-person team from the company that will install and oversee the network, Wi-Fi 6E is “unexplored territory” for most Wi-Fi network users in research, education or enterprises.

“This is new technology that very few have deployed at scale,” Shannon explains. “Wi-Fi 6E will give SC22 attendees a wired-like experience, just like being connected to a switch, anywhere in the conference area that is covered by wireless.”

Recently, PIER Group completed the largest deployment of Wi-Fi 6E technology to date for the entire University of Michigan campus. Serving more than 63,000 students with 16,000 access points across 225 buildings, the new network can accommodate up to 70,000 concurrent Wi-Fi connections at download speeds up to 750 megabits per second.

Of course, SCinet is no stranger to innovation. Since its birth in 1991, for the fourth SC event held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, SCinet is annually the most powerful and advanced network in the world for the duration of the conference. To learn about SCinet’s many networking milestones, visit the SCinet History page.

Every year, network experts who either volunteer or participate through sponsorships join together to design, build and administer the SCinet wireless and wired infrastructure. Leading the approximately 200-person team this year is SCinet Chair Matthew J. Zekauskas, senior researcher at Internet2.

While PIER Group has been a longtime SC exhibitor and SCinet participant, the company was asked to provide additional support last year. This was due to the need for additional wired and wireless capacity to accommodate the thousands of attendees who attended virtually due to the pandemic, and thus could only view presentations and events via streaming.

“The feedback we received was that a lot of the exhibitors didn’t need to plug into (wired network) switches because the wireless service was so good,” notes Shannon. “And we’re expanding beyond that this year.”

Beyond its ability to enable exhibitors and attendees to maintain connectivity, SCinet serves as the platform for demonstrating advanced computing resources by supporting a wide variety of bandwidth-driven supercomputing and cloud computing applications through workshops, demos and collaborations.

As always, the SCinet hub for SC this year will be in its show floor-based networking operating center (NOC), which also serves as a display area for the latest commercial equipment used to run this high-performance wired and wireless network.

Learn more about SCinet and discover how to become a SCinet volunteer or contributor. SCinet also includes opportunities for Student Volunteers and Women in IT Networking at SC (WINS) participants.

Vaccination No Longer Required for Attendance

Planning a conference in a world of COVID-19 is challenging as we never know what the virus will do next. The SC22 Planning Committee has followed the science along with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization recommendations, and integrated that information with the views and input of the HPC community. As vaccinations for this virus have significantly reduced serious illness, hospitalization, and death, the SC22 attendance policy was for all in-person attendees to be vaccinated.

Because Texas prohibits such requirements, going forward, all SC22 in-person attendees are strongly encouraged to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, follow the CDC guidance, and to properly wear (covering nose, mouth and chin) a high-quality KN-95 or N-95 face mask while at SC22. SC22 will have a supply of KN-95 masks available to attendees during the conference.

Registration Changes

Anyone who would like to modify or update their registration may do so by using the change/modify screens on the registration site.

SC22 Registration Site

Digital Experience & Mobile App Available

The custom-built Digital Experience option is available for those who are not attending the conference in person. The interface is easy-to-use and will include live-streaming as well as recording for on-demand viewing of nearly all conference events.

Based on feedback from the last two years, we have created a new platform that has been made more intuitive, enabling participants to easily access the preponderance of lectures, panels, exhibitor sessions, tutorials, and showcases taking place throughout the conference. For Digital Experience attendees to benefit from automatic closed captioning, the content will be live-streamed with a 12- to 15-second delay.

The SC22 mobile app is returning to the conference this year and will, among other things, allow you to virtually connect and network with other attendees.

You’ll be able to download the app from links on the Mobile App page closer to the conference.

SC22 Is the Place to Be No Matter How You Attend

We are confident SC22 will be terrific. All of the things that make SC a special experience will be happening. The technical program is nearly finalized, with the depth and breadth you’ve come to expect from an SC conference. For in-person attendees, more than 290 exhibitors have committed to be on the show floor in the exhibit hall, ready to share their latest offerings with you. And, as always, old and new friends are ready to share their experiences and help you solve your challenges or advance your career regardless of how you connect.

We look forward to seeing you in November,  in person or through the Digital Experience!

Register for SC22

Is the annual SC conference relevant for HPC professionals from outside the U.S.? Is the time commitment, plus the expense of traveling from Europe, Asia or elsewhere, worth it?

“Absolutely yes, to both questions,” says Dr. Bernd Mohr. And he should know, as the Germany-based scientist has attended SC on an almost annual basis since 1993’s event in Portland; he served as the first European on the SC Steering Committee in 2010 in New Orleans; and was the first person from outside the U.S. to be the conference’s General Chair, for SC17 in Denver.

“It’s THE conference on everything HPC,” says Bernd, who is a senior scientist at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Germany. “Everyone in the industry is there. When I go to SC22 in Dallas this year, I will meet more Europeans there than at any other HPC event, even those in Europe. It’s the best way to stay up to date on what’s happening in our industry.”

Clearly, plenty of other attendees based outside the U.S. agree. According to statistics from the most recent SC conferences, about 25% of attendees make the journey to the event from international locations.

Meeting Other HPC Professionals Is Invaluable

While acknowledging that international travel is expensive, Bernd believes the costs associated with attending SC are more investment than expense. “My organization has the most powerful supercomputer in Europe and we have been [exhibiting] at SC for more than 20 years. We have to be there to keep up to date and to share what we’re doing with the world.”

Beyond the panels, research presentations, exhibits, keynote speeches and tutorials, Bernd believes one of the most important benefits of attending SC for individuals is the opportunity to meet – face-to-face – with longtime colleagues as well as new acquaintances who may share common challenges and opportunities despite working on opposite sides of the globe.

“Yes, you learn about the latest science and discoveries at SC,” notes Bernd. “But having the chance to talk to people on the exhibit floor who you don’t know or typically don’t reach is an enormous opportunity. My feeling is that a lot of young people underestimate the importance of networking. We’ve missed that [since the pandemic] because it’s impossible to make those connections in a virtual world.”

While Bernd, who typically attends SC alongside 10 or 15 of his Jülich Supercomputing Centre colleagues, always looks forward to learning about the latest HPE advancements, this year’s event holds special meaning after enduring two pandemic-affected years.

“The big thing this year is to reunite with people I haven’t seen in two or three years. I hope to revive old connections and make new ones.” — Bernd Mohr

Advice for International Travelers

Based on his years of experience as both attendee and leader of the SC conference, Bernd has some advice for international travelers: Arrive a few days early and do some sightseeing (his favorite activity is hiking in national parks). “It’s fun and, if you do it before the conference, the fresh air and sunshine will help you with jet lag. Then, you’re ready to focus all of your attention on the conference.”

See What’s New in Dallas

You May Need a Visa

SC22 attendees from most countries outside the United States are required to have a visa in order to enter the country. For guidance on how to apply for a visa, as well as other information and tips pertinent to international travelers:

Visa Applications

If you haven’t been to Dallas in a while, the host city for SC22 has really grown and evolved – and continues to live up to its nickname, “Big D.”

There are numerous reasons why Dallas is ranked among the top five cities in the nation for meetings and conventions. Restaurants and boutiques, lively entertainment, world-renowned art – Dallas has it all. This friendly, diverse city is sure to be an exciting destination for SC22 attendees to explore after each day’s exhibits, workshops and networking events at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center.

The most dramatic addition to the downtown landscape is the AT&T Discovery District, where technology, culture, and entertainment combine to create a unique experience. It’s rapidly become the city’s cultural hub, featuring trendy retail shops, restaurants and bars, art installations and even an outdoor concert venue featuring entertainment almost every night.

In addition, the AT&T Discovery District is a technophile’s dream come true. The 6.5-acre area features free ultra-fast 5G and WiFi (so you can plug back into SC22 at any time).

Even cooler is a nightly multimedia light show called Digital Double, which is projected from a 104-foot-tall, 9,000-square-foot, 6K outdoor media wall. Its colorful, high-definition displays are intended to interpret communication in the natural world.

Nearby is The Globe, a 30-foot-tall, 3D representation of AT&T’s iconic logo that is decorated with 30,000 LEDs. Visitors can walk inside the installation to experience various arrangements of light and sound that fuse art and technology.

As noted on the AT&T Discovery District website, the district’s “ultimate goal is to bring delight, cultivate imagination, and spark discoveries that foster communication and reinforce the links between all of us.” Sounds just like what we’re trying to do at SC22!

Dallas: Diverse and Dynamic

The AT&T Discovery District is one of many stops on a downtown Dallas electronic bike tour. This two-hour scenic ride has you pedaling to and from numerous fascinating sites, such as the JFK Memorial, Dealey Plaza, Winspear Opera House and Klyde Warren Park. You’ll also be able to glide through the Dallas Arts District, Deep Ellum and other neighborhoods while your guide shares tidbits about Dallas’ history and heritage.

Fortunately, Dallas is also blessed with an extraordinary mass transit system: Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART). With a light rail station right at the convention center, and a free D-Link shuttle bus to area shopping and entertainment, you’ll be able to easily explore a bit farther away from downtown if you’d like.

The options for dining, art, entertainment and more are endless in Dallas – a primary reason the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex led the U.S. in metropolitan population growth from 2020–2021. Here are just a few of the many neighborhoods and attractions to consider adding to your “Big D” experience.

Dallas Arts District

Encompassing twenty square blocks of downtown, the Dallas Arts District is designated as a creative hub, featuring award-winning museums and performing arts venues including the Crow Collection of Asian Art, which is dedicated solely to the arts and cultures of Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia; the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House, which is home to the Dallas Opera and Texas Ballet Theater; and the Perot Museum of Nature and Science.

Nifty Neighborhoods

Dallas has a number of interesting – and easily walkable – neighborhoods that showcase the diverse nature of the city and its residents. For instance, the Design District features antique shops, upscale art galleries and high-end interior design showrooms just two miles northwest of downtown. Also, Deep Elum – a former warehouse district – has been transformed into a nightlife hotspot with live music, cool bars and casual eateries.

Delectable Dining

In a diverse city with 7.2 million residents, the food choices are endless. D Magazine recently ranked the Top 50 Restaurants in Dallas, a cornucopia of eateries featuring Tex-Mex favorites and taco joints, as well as elegant restaurants offering the finest in Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern and other enticing cuisines. One of the swankiest new openings downtown is Brasserie Toussaint, a modern French brasserie that blends French classics with Vietnamese and New Orleans flavors.

Oak Lawn

Dallas has a reputation for being welcoming to the LGBQ community. Just two miles from downtown, Oak Lawn has been voted the top “gayborhood” in the U.S. and is the heart of LGBTQ culture in Dallas, with gay bars, nightclubs and popular restaurants.

Catch a Game

Home to several professional sports franchises, Dallas offers SC22 attendees opportunities to see a home game of pro teams who will be in season during November: Dallas Cowboys (NFL football), Dallas Mavericks (NBA basketball) and Dallas Stars (NHL hockey). Check their websites for schedules and tickets closer to the event, or peruse the sports schedules for the city’s 16 colleges and universities.

Safe and Clean

Dallas also has a well-earned reputation for safety and cleanliness. These values are upheld by the Downtown Security and Clean Team, with community participation via the See Say Now smartphone app. It allows individuals to instantly and anonymously report safety or cleanliness concerns.

See You in Dallas!

For more information about what makes Dallas such a vibrant and popular city, go to the Visit Dallas website or visit our SC22 page about the convention center and other Dallas highlights.

March is Women’s History Month, a time to acknowledge and celebrate the essential roles and impact women have had throughout history. That impact is especially significant in the field of high-performance computing. We’re honored to highlight here just a few of the women in HPC. Their contributions – and those of many other women, including more than 200 women on the SC22 planning committee, led by General Chair Candace Culhane – are helping accelerate HPC and leading our field into an even brighter tomorrow.

Fouzhan Hosseini

Technical Sales Specialist, Intel

A computer scientist with a strong interest in parallel programming and HPC, Fouzhan works closely with customers to understand their needs, helping them choose HPC solutions that best meet their current requirements while informing them about upcoming technologies. 

“While many people still do not know much about HPC, it touches the lives of every human on our planet through its various applications in science and technology. It is the engine that enables [astounding] innovation – and that motivates me to be part of this force.” 

FOUZHAN HOSSEINI

Much of Fouzhan’s work involves choosing the best HPC solution for a customer, which is often “a complex process which involves choosing the best solution that meets both technical and financial needs.” Fouzhan helps them understand and explore relevant trade-offs, helping decision-makers select a solution that maximizes the benefits to their end-users, the scientists or technologists who use HPC systems to advance human knowledge and improve lives.

She encourages women in HPC to “pursue their interest with courage and to not worry too much about having perfect results at every step of their journey. It is the ‘not-trying’ that we often regret.”

Fouzhan also suggests women participate in the HPC community, seek help when they need it and help others when they can: “Our community is realizing the importance of diversity, and [women] are part of the solution.” 

AJ Lauer

CISL Outreach, Diversity, & Education (CODE) Team Lead, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Computational & Information Systems Laboratory (CISL)

AJ’s work is an extension of her lifelong passion for diversity and inclusion (D&I), and she recalls facilitating D&I educational training activities as far back as middle school. Throughout her professional career, she has continued to focus on D&I. She started in HPC by running the Summer Internships in Parallel Computational Science (SIParCS) program at NCAR, which has a goal of preparing a diverse workforce for 21st-century computing.

“As I’ve learned more about the field,” AJ says, “I’ve expanded from working only with students to also working with full-time members of the HPC community.”

AJ is excited about working in HPC because “it touches every one of our lives. But what I think we sometimes forget about HPC is that it is more than just our supercomputers and what we do with them. It’s also the people who create and use those machines.”

As a result, AJ’s work is focused on advancing the field by providing resources and training to make the field as inclusive of all identities and ways of thinking as possible.

“We need a diverse,  inclusive workforce to ensure that HPC will continue advancing at this rapid pace, and if we want to make sure these machines are used for good, for all people.”

AJ LAUER

She encourages women and anyone interested in HPC to take advantage of every opportunity to learn about the field, including participating in a multitude of events and groups through SC, including the Early Career Program, WINS or the SIParCS program. As she says, “There are lots of people out here who want you to succeed, so come hang out with us!”

Laura Parry

HPC Specialist, EMEA Global Black Belt HPC Team, Microsoft

In her role at Microsoft, Laura leads HPC work relating to the energy, life sciences and research vertical markets, and enjoys working with a wide variety of customers and industry partners, all of whom are either active in the cloud or in the process of transitioning to a more cloud-based way of running HPC workloads.

“Cloud-based HPC adoption is bringing huge innovation to the industry. A move to cloud-based HPC is typically a phased approach, so helping customers determine what makes most sense for them, in their unique scenario, is a key part of my role.”

LAURA PARRY

Laura has enjoyed a wide-ranging career: working as a music teacher before making the switch to oil and gas data management, during which time she traveled the world. With three small children she took on a role closer to home in 2011 to work for HPC Wales at Bangor University, the first-of-its-kind Welsh national supercomputing initiative.

“This provided excellent exposure to the variety of HPC applications and the very real need not only for hardware but also for support services, collaboration and training to ensure research impact,” Laura notes.

Staying in the HPC world, she next joined Dutch HPC systems integrator ClusterVision and then the Atos UK HPC team before joining Microsoft in 2020. “What I love about working in this field is the pace of change, the community and the variety,” Laura adds. “It is amazing how quickly technology is developing and how things have changed over the past few years alone: seeing customers achieve life-changing and transformative science through cloud-based HPC is enormously motivating.

It’s also been great to see the drive to increase diversity and inclusion within the HPC community itself: there are very many opportunities to get involved and learn, so I’d definitely encourage young women to consider HPC as an interesting, varied and exciting career path.”

Heidi Poxon

Principal HPC Technologist, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

For more than 25 years, Heidi has worked in HPC, designing and building tools and solutions that enable science and new technology discovery. As she describes it, “I like to find ways to extract the maximum performance from a system while providing easy-to-use interfaces so that scientists can focus on their science.”

Throughout her career, Heidi has worked to identify and deliver the capabilities needed for large-scale application development and execution. Her particular area of expertise is application developer environments, especially the MPI distributed memory programming model and application profiling.

She has worked at AWS since February 2021 and is currently investigating how technology can be used to meet HPC computing needs in the cloud, searching for strategic solutions that advance HPC application performance.

“I am motivated by [finding creative solutions to] challenging problems,” Heidi explains. “I also like to make things go fast, which is why I gravitated towards leadership-class computing.” 

An astrophysics major at the University of Minnesota, Heidi began her career at Cray Research, working on a compiler team and then developing software for shared and distributed memory parallelism. She then moved to application performance tools and to leading the technology direction for developer environments to help users reduce time to solution and to scale their codes, enabling the use of more complex models or more parameters in simulations. 

“I find I am good at combining technical detail with the big picture to advance a product or a technology, and listening to users to find a solution to an issue or a pain point. I make it a point to learn something new every day and find some way to contribute.” 

HEIDI POXON

She encourages women interested in HPC to be “willing to try something new. Find mentors to learn from, while bringing your own talent and skills to the table. HPC is full of extremely talented people who want to advance computing capability and to make new scientific discoveries, and who are happy to share their knowledge.”

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