STEM-Trek News

By Mphenduli (Oscar) Ntsizi – University of Fort Hare

Introduction

When I received the notification from STEM-Trek Nonprofit confirming my selection for the TANGO@SC25 – HPC Ignites! Pre-Conference Workshop, I knew immediately that this was going to be a transformative opportunity. With international participation supported by STEM-Trek sponsors and U.S. participation supported by the National Science Foundation, the award covered essential expenses—lodging, meals, and registration—making it possible for me to attend both the two-day TANGO/CoNGA workshop and the full Supercomputing Conference (SC25) in St. Louis, Missouri (Nov 13–21, 2025).

This experience could not have been more aligned with my PhD research on OS-centric resilience in HPC systems for low-resource universities, particularly in the Eastern Cape. It also connected directly to the broader strategic aims of the University of Fort Hare (UFH): establishing a sustainable, scalable, and inclusive HPC culture that supports both research and teaching.

But beyond the technical value, …

By Mfundo Mdwadube, HPC Ecosystems Project Intern – Centre for HPC, South Africa

“STEM Trek didn’t just give me training. It gave me vision — a vision of what Africa can become with the right access, teaching, and collaborative spirit. These two days became the foundation for everything that followed at SC25: a reminder that the world is open, the work is urgent, and the next generation is waiting for someone to build the bridge.“

There are moments in life when preparation meets opportunity and a sense of purpose. These times remind us that with perseverance, humility, and vision, we can shape our own paths and help others along the way. My journey to SC25 in St. Louis was one of those times; a turning point that made me reflect deeply on where I started and where I am going.

It was:

● My first time ever leaving South Africa● …

By Strahinja Trecakov, New Mexico Consortium

This year I had an opportunity to attend the TANGO@SC2 workshop organized by STEM-Trek in collaboration with Texas A&M University and the Conference on Next-Generation Arithmetic (CoNGA). This workshop took place at the Americas Center Convention Complex in St. Louis, Missouri on Friday and Saturday, November 14-15 before the International Conference on High-Performance Computing (HPC), Networking, Storage and Analysis, SC25. This year’s topic was nonTraditional Architecture and Next-Gen Computational Orchestration where I learned about Compute eXpress Link (CXL), RISC-V and Math that is driving more energy-efficient supercomputers. I was able to attend all CoNGA paper presentations, and keynotes by Jeffrey Sarnoff, Editor in Chief @ IEEE P3109, and John Gustafson, Arizona State University (of Gustafson’s Law). Moreover, during the TANGO workshop, I learned about the National Research Platform (NRP; San Diego Supercomputer Center) and Rogues Gallery testbed (Georgia Tech). This was a great start …

By Surada Suwansathit, Student – Computer Science & Applied Mathematics, Texas A&M University High Performance Research Computing

The SC25 conference in St. Louis proved to be a transformative experience, taking me from nervous presenter to confident contributor in the HPC community. As someone whose research typically focuses on adversarial machine learning and network security, presenting work on Python environment management represented both a significant expansion of my skill set and an opportunity to contribute to a conversation about making HPC more accessible.

Making Connections: From Exhibition to Presentation

The exhibitions opened on the third day, and I explored several posters at the Texas A&M University booth. One that immediately stood out discussed building a Jupyter AI assistant for scientific workflows. With my software developer background, this project felt especially relevant. It wasn’t just about automation, it addressed a fundamental challenge: how do we empower domain scientists who aren’t HPC experts …

By Wenyu Wang, PhD Student, Urban Planning, The Ohio State University

On my first day at SC25, I felt jet-lagged, nervous, and excited all at once. The day began with a friendly check-in and getting to know people around me, which helped me relax and step into the community. Later, I got to visit the Post Building in downtown St. Louis, an experience that stood on its own and meaningful in showing me the spaces and organizations supporting science and innovation in the region. Meanwhile, my understanding of GeoAI came from the sessions and conversations earlier in the day, where I was introduced to how spatial data and AI are evolving together.

On the …

By Vijay Shankar, Director of Bioinformatics and Statistics, Clemson Institute for Human Genetics

The title of this blog has multiple contextual meanings. The first comes from the fact that the number of members attending the Supercomputing Conference through STEM-Trek has doubled from 2017 to 2025. This growth is thanks to the incredible effort put forth by the STEM-Trek team in securing funding that enables HPC professionals to attend meetings and conferences for career-development opportunities. The community is stronger than ever before. This became especially apparent when, after attending SC24, I was invited to join the HPC Ecosystems Slack workspace hosted by members of STEM-Trek. Being able to collaborate, share knowledge, and solve problems collectively within this community has become a true highlight of my professional life. I’m delighted to see this group actively growing and developing. Strength in numbers, indeed!

The second meaning of the title points to this year’s …

By Horst Severini, University of Oklahoma (OU)

I am again very grateful for STEM-Trek’s support so I could attend SC25 in St. Louis. I met old friends, found new ones, and learned lots of new and exciting information, in both the TANGO/CoNGA workshops and at SC itself.

The GeoFutures Coalition presentation at the TANGO workshop on Friday morning made clear that there is always a trade off between privacy and convenience, such as when we give Google maps our location information in order to get directions. They also emphasized that US Intelligence gathering is only supposed to happen on foreign soil, not in the US — although I’m not convinced that that’s actually what’s happening. The Esri/ArcGIS talk also had lots of good information and reminded me that I went to a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) workshop at the OU Libraries a few years ago, which was also very informative, …

By Himeshi De Silva, Scientist at Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore

The Conference for Next Generation Arithmetic (CoNGA) found a new home this year in the form of TANGO (nonTraditional Architecture and Next-Gen Computational Orchestration) ahead of the Supercomputing (SC)25’ Conference in St. Louis, Missouri. CoNGA is the brainchild of Professor John Gustafson and provides an open venue for researchers and practitioners aiming to explore alternative forms of number representations and their arithmetic for various scientific applications to present their work. While I had been involved with organizing CoNGA for several years – joining as a student volunteer at its inception in 2018 and serving as program chair last year – attending the conference this year seemed uncertain, and I was facing the unfortunate possibility of missing it for the first time. Thankfully, Elizabeth Leake and TANGO fully embraced CoNGA and went even further to support …

By Babar Khan, Babar Khan Research

SC25 has concluded. I just checked the latest post on the LinkedIn page of SC Conference Series that SC25 welcomed 16,499 attendees and featured 559 exhibitors making it the second-largest SC conference by attendance and the largest ever in exhibition participation. That is impressive. Now that I am back home, sitting at my desk with a cup of coffee, the temperature nearing zero and Christmas not far away, this feels like the perfect moment to reflect on the experience and put my thoughts into my first ever blog for STEM-Trek.  Yay!

I would start by writing THANKS to our very own Elizabeth Leake and STEM-Trek for providing me this opportunity to attend SC2025 in St. Louis, USA. I truly mean it, because I know it is not an easy task to invite scholars from around the world while also ensuring that everyone remains safe, engaged, and …

By Maria E. Adonay, Clemson University Institute for Human Genetics

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I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Supercomputing Conference for the second year in a row, thanks to STEM-Trek. This year’s event (SC25) was held in St. Louis, MO — my first time visiting the city since childhood! Here’s a look back, told in “postcards.”

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Nov 14–15: Pre-Conference Hello from St. Louis!

The STEM-Trek group kicked off our pre-conference activities at The Post Building, where we heard a variety of talks, including some fascinating geospatial topics. (I left with several ideas about how geospatial analysis options could one day support our own cluster users!) The highlight of the day, though, was coasting down to ground level via the repurposed St. Louis Post Dispatch slide — just like …