Author Archives: Stem Trek

By: Kasandra Pillay (Principal Engineer at South African National Research Network (SANReN), National Integrated Cyberinfrastructure System (NICIS), Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa)

Hi everyone! My name is Kasandra Pillay. I am an engineer at the South African National Research Network (SANReN) in South Africa.

Last year I was unable to attend the Supercomputing Conference in-person due to financial constraints within my organization. We were facing similar challenges this year, but the day was saved by Elizabeth Leake and her super STEM-Trek team, as I was provided funding to attend not only the SC24 conference in-person, but also the pre-workshops and tutorials. This resulted in my organization only having to fund my flight and daily allowance.

I thus headed off to Atlanta, Georgia from Johannesburg, South Africa from 13th to 24th November 2024, on what turned out to be a much longer than expected round trip (airport …

By Strahinja Trecakov, New Mexico State University

This year I had a chance to attend an amazing ART@SC24 workshop organized by STEM-Trek and Elizabeth Leake. This workshop took place at the World Congress Convention Center on Saturday, November 16 before the International Conference on High-Performance Computing (HPC), Networking, Storage and Analysis, SC24. This was a great start to the busy week in Atlanta where we heard from different HPC center leaders about outreach, training, artificial intelligence (AI), networking and related initiatives. After a busy day, we enjoyed dinner and live entertainment at Medieval Times, thanks to sponsors Dell and Intel.

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By Horst Severini, University of Oklahoma (OU)

I was very happy to be back at SC24 with STEM-Trek. It had been a while since I was able to attend an SC conference, since travel funding for that is difficult to acquire for me as a research computing facilitator and high energy physicist. The last SC I was able to attend was SC18 in Dallas, and before that at SC17 in Denver, both also with STEM-Trek. So, I’m very grateful for the support I have gotten from STEM-Trek to attend these conferences.

I very much enjoyed Saturday’s ART@SC24 workshop. It was great catching up with several of the African colleagues again, some of whom I hadn’t seen in 6 years! I was happy to be one of the 40 or so attendees, and from a US EPSCoR state no less. All presentations were really interesting, and I learned a lot about …

by Brian Kyanjo (Georgia Institute of Technology Postdoctoral Scholar)

I was privileged to be part of the ART@SC24 jetlag day preparations and the overall SC24 conference. This event was more than just a gathering—it was a transformative experience that blended innovation, collaboration, and cultural exploration, leaving a lasting impact on my professional and personal growth.

The journey to SC24 began in July 2024, with brainstorming sessions and early planning. Weekly Wednesday meetings were dedicated to fine-tuning the details, from vendor coordination to venue arrangements, ensuring the event would be as engaging and colorful as possible. Months of preparation culminated on November 8th, marking the start of an extraordinary experience, thanks to Bryan Johnston, John Poole, Elizabeth Leake, and Hannah Moon.

The first day kicked off with reconnecting with colleagues from the HPC ecosystem across southern and eastern Africa. I also had the unique opportunity to meet speakers at …