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By Eugene de Beste, Systems and Cloud Developer/Administrator with the South African National Bioinformatics Institute, a part of the University of the Western Cape

My journey with systems and HPC administration starts with the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) of South Africa and their Student Cluster Challenge (SCC). I was involved in the third-ever challenge of this kind in South Africa and went on to represent South Africa with my team at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) SCC in 2014, placing first. This proved to be a monumental part of solidifying my desire to continue in this field. As such, I joined my research unit as an HPC and Cloud systems developer from 2017. It is quite fitting then that the CHPC, along with STEM-Trek, would help me find my way to Supercomputing 2019 in Denver.

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By Henry Simfukwe, HPC Systems Administrator at ZAMREN

The seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations, the late Kofi Annan, once said “Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.” SC19 for me brings to life these words, as it sharpens one’s knowledge about high-performance computing (HPC), provides information, educates on the best practices and new technologies, and fosters new relationships with like-minded professionals from around the world.

My first experience with HPC came when I Joined the Zambian Research and Education Network (ZAMREN) in 2017 as a Systems Administrator. My duties involve managing and providing support to Linux and Windows Servers, managing the HPC systems and ensuring that all ZAMREN services have a 99.9% up time. Additionally, I am involved in managing Eduroam for the Zambian Federation, and facilitate workshops on Network Monitoring and Campus Network Design.

When I received …

By: Professor Marcus Bond, Southeast Missouri State University

I never expected to have a 1st SC.  As a chemistry faculty member and crystallographer, I have been active in computing my entire career.  But my involvement in high-performance computing (HPC) is more recent.  Several years ago it seemed like a good idea to install a small cluster in our department in order to promote computational science.  At the time, I was completely unaware of the larger supercomputing community.  It was only at the urging of Jim Paugh of Advanced Clustering Technologies (our vendor) that I attended the 2015 Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium.  It was a very new and confusing experience for me, so many new terms and acronyms—SC, XSEDE—that seemed of casual acquaintance to the other attendees. 

Bond & Students

With my background …

By: Anton S. Limbo, HPC System Administrator, University of Namibia

Attending SC19 was an amazing opportunity for me. I also attended SC17, ironically in the same place, Colorado’s Mile-High City. This time around I came all geared-up with a game plan for the tutorials, workshops and birds-of-a-feather (BoF) sessions that will be most relevant to our relatively new high-performance computing (HPC) site and to further my HPC knowledge.

About me

I work for the University of Namibia (UNAM) where I lecture on the topic of Systems Administration. Recently, the university received refurbished HPC racks from South Africa’s Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) and I am the system administrator of those racks. Being new to the HPC field and given the lack of expertise in the field in Namibia, it was challenging to get the hardware into production. However, with continued support from STEM-Trek, SC and CHPC, SADC HPC ecosystems …

By: Rosanne Els, Lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Kwa Zulu-Natal, South Africa

Having had the opportunity to attend SC17, I was delighted when I received the news that I had also been selected to receive an SC19 registration waiver, with tutorials and workshops included (thank you SC19 General Chair Michela Taufer).

I quickly set about booking flights and sorting out all the logistical things to make the trip a reality. At the time, I was in the final stages of supervising several Honours and Postgraduate projects, marking tests, finalizing class marks and setting examinations. Though feeling overstretched, I knew, having had the experience in 2017, that all the additional time in getting the logistics worked out would be worthwhile in the end. There seemed to be a hurdle at almost every step of the way, but I remained focused on the goal…getting to SC19. 

I …

By Michael Jeszenka (Georgia Tech)

​I’m back home after attending SC19 in Denver this last week. What an experience it was! I’m writing this with everything still fresh in my mind so hopefully, I won’t forget anything too important.

What is SC19?

SC is the biggest annual conference in Super Computing / High Performance Computing, and the 19 merely means this year’s edition. The terms Super Computing and High Performance Computing are inter-changeable and often simply referred to as HPC.

What is a super computer?

Super computers are exactly what they sound like! They are computers that are super, or bigger than computers you are probably using unless you currently work in HPC. I’ll borrow Wikipedia’s definition:

A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second …

by Vitalina Baptista, HPC Systems Administrator at MoRENet (Mozambique Research and Education Network)

It all started with an email I received from Bryan Jonhston at the Centre for High Performance Computing in South Africa (CHPC). He shared the STEM-Trek call for participation (which provides support to attend SC19 for those who are selected, and the competition is steep!). I was not going to apply; there were many factors to my disadvantage, including the financial one.

Two weeks before the deadline, Bryan again insisted that I submit my application.

So I applied. But I confess I didn’t have much hope of being selected.

But when I least expected it, I received a positive response from STEM-Trek’s Elizabeth Leake. At that time, there was no guarantee of support, but she asked me to wait while she searched for more funding. My hopes arose, once again.

STEM-Trek distributed registration waivers that were donated …

By Baylen Brus, HPC Systems Administrator

As a young professional just beginning my career in High-Performance Computing (HPC) Systems Administration, I was honored to have the opportunity to attend the Practice & Experience in Advanced Research Computing conference (PEARC19) in Chicago, Illinois last summer.

With my only HPC experience being with the Argon cluster at the University of Iowa, I was excited to learn about technologies outside of my environment and how other clusters are built and maintained. PEARC furthered my knowledge of the developments in HPC, and cyberinfrastructure, in general.

The thing I find the most fascinating about the field is the amount of open-source development that makes everyone’s lives easier when it comes to managing these massive systems. Hearing people talk about what software packaging was like before Spack or OpenHPC were around makes me pretty glad I’m starting in the field while these tools are …

By Trey Godbolt, Junior at the University of Iowa, Business Analytics program

Day 1:

The first day of the Practice & Experience in Advanced Research Computing (PEARC19) conference in Chicago, Illinois began with the car ride from Iowa City. I rode with Elizabeth Leake (STEM-Trek), and we picked up another student, Badisa Mosesane (University of Botswana), at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Badisa was completing a three-month cyberinfrastructure internship at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. After picking up Badisa, we all traveled to Oak Park, Illinois and the AirBnB we would stay at for the remainder of the trip. After dropping off our luggage, we went to the Hyatt Regency in Chicago for the Student Program Opening; a brief orientation to the conference.

Day 2:

This was my first full day at PEARC19. I was scheduled to work as a student volunteer for the session titled, …

Badisa Mosesane (University of Botswana) recently completed a three-month (plus two weeks) cyberinfrastructure professional internship at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). While he was there, he learned about the Blue Waters supercomputer, the XSEDE project, the NCSA Industry program, and much, much more!

Here’s his report.

In July, Badisa had the opportunity to attend the Practice & Experience in Advanced Research Computing (PEARC19) conference in Chicago. Badisa presented an update about the DRONES4GOOD project during STEM-Trek’s AI4GOOD@PEARC19 workshop.

Badisa Mosesane presenting an update of the DRONES4GOOD project during the AI4GOOD@PEARC19 workshop

Badisa’s NCSA internship was supported by the National Science Foundation. Gap funds were provided by Cray Computing via STEM-Trek Nonprofit.

We appreciate the care with which this opportunity was …