SC19: Nepal’s HPC Champion pushes forward with help from his friends

By Umesh Upadhyaya, HPCNepal

One of my presentations at the HPCKP’19 conference in Barcelona focused on the “Importance of High-Performance Computing (HPC) in the Himalayas.”

My participation in Barcelona was supported by HPCNow! and I learned a lot from their Singularity and EasyBuild workshops.

I did not know I would be able to attend SC19 until Elizabeth Leake (STEM-Trek) contacted me to let me know that they could help. A surprise, last-minute donation made it possible. Since I was already in New Jersey, U.S., it was easier, and cheaper, for me to travel to Denver than it would have been from Kathmandu.

This was my second time to attend SC, but this time I was representing my own startup, HPCNepal, which my friend and I co-founded to build the human capital and infrastructure required for our country to succeed.

It was possible for me to explore ‘outside of the box’ in areas related to HPC only after I was able to attend the International Supercomputing Conference, ISC17, and SC17 conferences. My technical and networking skills were considerably enhanced and I was able to connect with lot of people, including professors, researchers and vendor representatives. The hunger to attend the SC conference was still there and I was provided with the opportunity to attend once again this year.

As cloud technologies are not readily available to us in Nepal due to issues with online payments, I received free coupons from Amazon and Google Cloud which will help me explore what the cloud has to offer. Coming from a resource-constraint environment and country where HPC is a rare resource, support from STEM-Trek to attend SC has helped motivate me to continue our work in this field, though it’s a tough challenge. Relationships I have made at these conferences have given me the peer support and encouragement needed to keep moving forward.

Many thanks to STEM-Trek (their surprise donor), Jordi Blasco Pallares, David Tur and the rest of the team at HPCNow! who worked together to make my SC19 attendance possible.

Thank you HPCNow! for donating an exhibition pass for Umesh!

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