Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness… (Mark Twain)

Jim Guibault, United Airlines By Guest Blogger Jim Guibault (United Airlines pilot)

Having breakfast at a little cafe in Hong Kong, I had an epiphany. All these years of international flying, I’ve been trying to describe the feelings of traveling the world – the exotic, strange, and wonderful. But this morning I realized what I’ve never articulated: the sense of normalcy! Be it in Asia, Europe, South or Central America, watching people go about their daily lives reinforces that there are no “Those People.” It’s all “us.” Sure, there are minor differences, but no more prominent than the regional differences you see across America. Schoolchildren heading to class, old folks buying their morning groceries, business people grabbing a cup of joe on their way to the office – …

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Team Wits-A reigned over 2014 CHPC Student Cluster Competition

Team Wits-A, from left: Ari Croock, James Allingham, Sasha Nidoo, Robert Clucas, Vyacheslav Schevchenko, Nabeel Rajab, Paul Osel Sekyere, and Jenalea Miller (as CHPC Director Happy Sithole looks on in the foreground).

At the Dec. 1-5, 2014 South African Center for High Performance Computing’s (CHPC) Ninth National Meeting, student-participants of their third annual student cluster challenge worked diligently under the leadership of CHPC Supervisors David Macleod and Nicholas Thorne. South Africa hopes for a three-peat victory in July at the HPC Advisory Council’s International Supercomputing Conference (HPCAC-ISC) Student Cluster Competition in Frankfurt, Germany.

When the week-long contest concluded, “Team Wits-A” from the University of Witwatersrand reigned supreme. “Computing-Moore” captured second, and “Team Wits-E” placed third. The award for best provisioning of nodes went to “Bi-Winning,” a team that believed whether they won or lost, they will consider themselves winners for having had the opportunity to compete. “Cluster-Buster” …

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Help us help WeFold, and scholars who need to travel!

Dear friends;

You may recall that Mary Ann Leung (Sustainable Horizons) and I served as SC14 Broader Engagement (SC-BE) program chair and deputy chair, respectively. Since we worked so well together, we plan to continue our efforts to promote a more diverse community at many more science, technology, engineering, and mathematics conferences in the future.

For starters, the National Science Foundation is supporting a Sustainable Horizons workshop for past SC-BE participants to help them prepare successful SC15 technical poster submissions. Anyone who has attended SC through the BE program is encouraged to apply by Jan.30.

The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory sponsored the first WeFold camp last summer under the direction of SC-BE program committee member Silvia Crivelli (LBNL). The immersive experience acquainted ten undergraduate scholars from diverse backgrounds with molecular modeling and protein folding skills so they could begin to …

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It’s a wonderful world. Get out, and enjoy it!

Jim Guibault, United Airlines United Airlines’ First Officer Jim Guibault has been a commercial pilot for more than 20 years. Before that, he trained fighter pilots at the U.S. Navy Strike Instructor Training School in Kingsville, Texas. He has trained to command seven models of commercial jet; each one more technically advanced than the last. Following the recovery of the AirAsia Indonesia recently, he agreed to share his thoughts about flight safety. 

 

 

 

STEM-Trek: As our hearts go out to the families, crew and passengers of the AirAsia Indonesia flight, the amount of press could make people worry about flight safety, in general. Do the aviation events of 2014 concern …

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STEM-Trek: An Entrepreneurial Journey

At the StartupHPC Meetup, November 17, 2014, STEM-Trek Founder Elizabeth Leake described how this global, grassroots, nonprofit organization was formed, and its unique business model that involves crowd-sourcing social capital to solicit donated travel points and other services so that scholars from underrepresented groups and regions can attend high-tech conferences. Beneficiaries are encouraged to pay-it-forward, and can do so in a variety of ways. While some have volunteered to help less fortunate people from their home communities, others have supported STEM-Trek in more creative ways.

STEM-Trek’s first beneficiary, Wa Yuan (Northwestern University, Materials Science PhD) believes that the challenge of finding meaningful employment has as much to do with WHO you know, as WHAT you know. She developed a business networking tool called Scitivate that is being used by the SC14 Broader Engagement (BE) program to pair …

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BE Matters to Robert Dunn, Saginaw’s Son

Robert Dunn, Jr. was born in Saginaw, Michigan in 1985. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science (CS) from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) in 2011, and is making progress toward a CS graduate degree. His thesis involves the use of Google Glass technology to reduce the amount of time it takes for emergency teams to respond after a traffic accident. Robert was one of more than 20 million people involved in automobile or motorcycle crashes in 2011. Thankfully, he only suffered a bad case of road rash, but the experience enlightened him to the difficulty injured motorcyclists would have calling 9-1-1. He therefore hopes to develop life-saving, smart technologies that will automatically alert responders, in addition to giving motorcyclists a safe way to view the console without taking their eyes off of the road.

“The Supercomputing Conference Broader Engagement (SC-BE) program, and those who are involved, continue …

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twenty hikers from EU-US HPC Summer School (Ben Payne fourth from left)

The infinite satisfaction of giving

infinity sign graphicSTEM-Trek beneficiaries are encouraged to pay-it-forward. Once funded, the debt weighs heavily on their mind until it’s satisfied. It doesn’t have to be repaid immediately—most early-career scholars are extremely busy. However, the opportunity will present itself at some point, and the debtor will find great satisfaction when the score is settled. In fact, it’s so gratifying, that philanthropy and volunteerism could become second nature to them. Many will become lifelong givers and helpers of others and good fortune will return to them time and again. That’s why our icon is an infinity sign.

Of course, it’s not necessary to be a STEM-Trek beneficiary to give. Even for the most successful professionals, the best cure for …

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SC13 BE participants (Leung, second from left. Henderson back row second from right)

Broader Engagement Matters to Corey and Richard

Having met Corey, I’m more cognizant of presentation pitfalls. I now take time to make sure everyone understands what I’ve said — especially those who might lack the confidence to raise their hand. I provide my presentation early, so students who struggle with a language barrier or disability have time to review it, in advance.”

SC13 BE Mentor Richard Barrett (Sandia National Laboratories)

This story began in 2011 when STEM-Trek Founder Elizabeth Leake met Corey Henderson (University of Wisconsin-Madison) at the XSEDE/PRACE High-Performance Computing (HPC) International Summer School in South Lake Tahoe, California. Leake was a conference facilitator, and Henderson was one of 60 participants from 20 countries. Henderson, like many people who struggle with disability, explained that he lacked confidence when it came to engaging with others in a crowded conference setting. Leake knew STEM-Trek and the Supercomputing Conference Broader Engagement Program (SC BE) could help.

After the HPC …

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Out of Africa: Exascale HPC

South Africa’s Center for High Performance Computing (CHPC) hosted its seventh annual meeting, “Solving industry challenges through HPC and data adoption,” December 2-6, 2013 at the Cape Town Convention Center. CHPC Director Happy Sithole welcomed 350 HPC enthusiasts from universities, computational centers, and industry for a five-day event, including two full days of parallel technical workshops.

Why exascale in Africa?

South Africa was recently awarded the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) project: the most powerful telescope ever designed. The iconic endeavor will be installed in the extraordinarily “radio quiet” Karoo region of South Africa in the Northern Cape Province, and will include remote stations in SKA African partner countries such as Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique, Mauritius, Madagascar, Kenya and Ghana. The installation includes full dish and dense aperture arrays, associated data center, and enhanced network topology throughout the region. Its sister project, a low-frequency, sparse aperture array, will be built …

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