Author Archives: Stem Trek

By:  Marcelina Nagales (Florida State University)

What an eventful and information-packed week SC21 was! 

I lodged with five others in STEM-Trek’s “UbuntuHouse,” which was two adjoined 3BR/3BA condos. There were two full-service kitchens stocked with snacks and breakfast items. A few of us coffee-drinkers congregated in one kitchen each morning, and we often shared transportation to and from the convention center. It was a great way to meet others who were also attending SC that week – we had our own tiny community. While this year’s attendance was 3,200 on-site (UPDATE: SC21 had ~3,200 in-person attendees and ~3,300 remote attendees.  ~380 sessions), SC normally draws 10-15,000. I can imagine it would be easy to get lost in the crowd if your work and …

The submission window is now closed. Thank you!

Would you like to attend SC21 in St. Louis, Missouri (US) November 14-19 but lack travel support? The SC international conference series draws more than 10,000 high-performance computing, storage and analysis enthusiasts from around the world. While SC20 was totally virtual, SC21 will have both virtual and in-person registration options.

STEM-Trek Nonprofit will help 28* individuals attend SC21 via three contests: ScienceSlam@SC, our inaugural “Pathfinders@SC21,” and a special opportunity for early-career communicators!  Three to eight-minute video submissions are accepted in the first two categories, and writing examples are required for the third.

Once again, cybersecurity thought leader and Toastmasters International enthusiast Mohamad Qayoom will serve as our host!

The “Pathfinder” contest welcomes career arc video testimonials from mid- to late-career research computing and data science (RCD) professionals. While examples at the above link are from a PEARC21 …

PEARC21 Student Program Cybersecurity Careers panel explores the career arcs of five experts in this August 5, 2021 HPCwire article. Video testimonials by panelists are found on the PEARC21 website (linked to panelist names).

Thomas J. Sterling (Indiana University) delivered his 18th International Supercomputing Conference (ISC21) keynote address on Wednesday, November 30. Before he closed, he expressed gratitude for the efforts of a number of industry icons, and included Elizabeth Leake (STEM-Trek) among them.

Senior Editor John Russell (HPCwire) captured the highlights and closed his article with this quote by Dr. Sterling:

“The final person here is one who frankly, we really need to acknowledge and that is Elizabeth Leake. Now many of you know Elizabeth, she is part of our community and always with a friendly smile. But she is much more than that. She is the founder of STEM-Trek…I can’t read to you the long list of accomplishments, but through STEM-Trek, students are encouraged and engaged in high performance computing. She has singularly managed to acquire travel grants for students who otherwise, frankly, would never get …

By Ana Solórzano (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)

Hello STEM-Trekkers! I would like to share my experience attending HPDC (ACM Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing) for the first time, virtually, June 21-25, 2021. I also served as a chair for the PERMAVOST’21 workshop which was held during HPDC.

In its 30th year, HPDC is one of the most prestigious international conferences in the HPC field, and features the latest research on the design, implementation, evaluation, and use of parallel and distributed systems for high-end computing. This year, there were seven workshops and a tutorial.

Monday was workshop day for the P-RECS’21 – 4th Workshop on Practical Reproducible Evaluation of Computer Systems, with a great keynote by Tanu Malik (Associate Professor, DePaul University-US), …

Apply by May 16!

STEM-Trek Director Elizabeth Leake (U-Iowa) and Adviser Alana Romanella (Virginia Tech) are co-chairing the PEARC21 (and PEARC22) Student Program! Be sure to register your interest, and apply for a registration waiver by May 16.

17th Annual HPCwire Awards Presented to Leaders in the Global HPC Community

SAN DIEGO, Ca.  — November 16, 2020 — STEM-Trek Nonprofit has been recognized in the annual HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards, presented digitally during the virtual 2020 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC20) via HPCwire.com. The list of winners was revealed and is accessible through the HPCwire virtual booth, and on the HPCwire website, www.HPCwire.com.   STEM-Trek was recognized with the following honor(s):

Readers’ Choice: Workforce Diversity Leadership Award

The annual, highly coveted, HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards are determined through a rigorous nomination and voting process that engages the global HPCwire community and includes intensive review and selections from the HPCwire editorial team. The awards represent prestigious recognition from the HPC community and have become a proud, prominent feature of the publication. These accolades are revealed each …

Congratulations, Bryan Johnston (Centre for HPC, South Africa). Bryan won first place in the Outreach category, then prevailed in the final run-off against four others.

The ScienceSlam@SC20 challenge was to communicate complex scientific content in terms that could be understood by a 13-year-old. Student judges for the first round ranged in age from 10 to 20 years; all were from rural communities in the U.S. and South Africa. For the final contest, the audience was a mixture of contestants, families, friends and others from the HPC community.

Bryan’s video described the history and evolution of a training initiative that prepares the HPC workforce in more than a dozen countries throughout southern Africa. While many of us reverted to an online format in 2020, his team made that move well before the pandemic when they realized that open-source training and VMs in the cloud are far more efficient than …

By Ana Luisa Veroneze Solorzano,Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

I was excited to attend the Practice & Experience in Advanced Research Computing (PEARC) conference for the first time. Even in this year’s virtual mode, I felt that the PEARC20 week was intense – almost as if I had attended in-person!

First, I set up my daily schedule using the conference interface, Brella. This allowed participants to enter virtual rooms to see each presentation and contribute to interactive dialogue, before migrating to the next session. I participated in the PEARC20 Student Program, too. It was a great week, and I felt extremely welcome by the PEARC community; I can tell that everyone …

Sixteen attended SC19 with help from STEM-Trek and friends. Nine offered blogs to share their experience, and we’ve captured the collection here.

We would like to thank SC19 General Chair Michela Taufer, Google, HPCNow! and STEM-Trek friends and advisers for their help.

Michael Jeszenka (Georgia Tech)

Vitalina Baptiste (MoRENET, Mozambique)

Umesh Upadhyaya (HPCNepal)

Eugene de Beste (U-Western Cape, South Africa)

Henry Simfukwe (ZAMREN, Zambia)

Marcus Bond (SE Missouri State)

Anton Limbo (U-Namibia)

Rosanne Els (U-KwaZulu Natal, South Africa)

Strahinja Trecakov (New Mexico State U)

Many worked together to make SC19 possible – more than:780 volunteers, 370 exhibitors, 1,150 presenters, and a …