HPC/CI Students Program

A program for educating and training the next generation of HPC and Cyberinfrastructure professionals and researchers

The HPC/CI Students Program focuses on educating and training the next generation of High-Performance Computing undergraduates, graduates, professionals and researchers; motivating them to pursue HPC careers; and serving as a bridge between students and HPC-related research and researchers at SDSC. The program  works with UCSD undergraduates and graduates,  and will be expanded to include other groups as time and budget permits.

For more details about HPC Students activities and updated timelines, see the HPC Students Projects page.

 Key Goals:

  • To educate and train students in all things HPC/CI: parallel programming, running applications, learning about hardware and cyberinfrastructure.
  • To facilitate and increase interactions between the San Diego Supercomputer Center and UCSD students.
  • To connect students to the wider world of HPC/CI through events, meetings, interactions with industry, attending meetings.
  • To participate in HPC/CI related events at SDSC/UCSD, in San Diego, and at relevant meetings. 
  • To mentor students to help train the next generation of scientists.

The program is committed to sponsoring and supporting student activities through funding and providing of resources. This includes:

  • Interaction and outreach to UCSD Clubs, including the newly formed UCSD Supercomputing Club.
  • Hosting student focused training workshops/bootcamps/hackathons/material. 
  • Support and advocacy for students applying to HPC related activities including applications for graduate school, grants, support to travel to meetings, etc.
  • Increased student participation at conferences & meetings, including local, national, and international.
  • Providing a path to getting credit for participation via the SDSC/UCSD Co-Curricular Credit Program.
  • Mentoring and sponsoring competitive teams, such as the annual Student Cluster Competitions.
  • Support of SDSC and NSF broader engagement goals.

 

HPC Students Activities & Opportunities

The program supports, advocates for, and mentors students applying for HPC-related activities: grants, support to travel to meetings, etc. Our goal is to increase student participation at conferences & meetings, including local, national, and international. HPC Students is designed to educate students from high school to grad school about HPC, to motivate them to pursue HPC careers, and to serve as bridge between students and HPC-related development, research and researchers. Check out our student project pages for a list current projects and activities. 

SDSC is providing support to the UCSD Supercomputing Club in the form of staff mentors, use of public spaces, access to HPC resources, and funding for some activities. The program is committed to supporting other relevant student organizations on campus with significant resources in support of common goals. Some of the benefits SDSC provides include:

  • Meeting and lab space
  • Access to SDSC (and the NSF-sponsored ACCESS project) supercomputing resources and expertise
  • Mentoring for projects, activities, and club events
  • Connections to industry and technology companies.
  • Funding for some activities.

UCSD IEEE Supercomputing Club 

The UCSD Supercomputing Club is a sub-community of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) UC San Diego student branch, dedicated to high-performance computing specifically. They focus on challenging projects in domains such as mesh networking, high-performance storage access, accelerated computing and highly-distributed applications. For more information, see https://supercomputing-club.sdsc.edu/

SDSC Students@Supercomputing

SDSC supports many student activities, including participating in student actvities at the annual Supercomputing meetings. This includes the Student Cluster Competition (SCC) and the Student Volunteer programs

Student Cluster Competition (SCC)

The SCC was developed in 2007 to immerse undergraduate and high school students in high performance computing. The SCC teams consist of a mentor plus 6 students who will design and build a small cluster, and learn to run scientific applications on thier systems. At SCC, teams compete against teams from around the world, in a non-stop 48-hour challenge to complete a real-world scientific workload, while keeping the cluster up and running, and demonstrating to the judges their HPC skills and knowledge. Acceptance to the SC competition is competitive and requires intense preparation and skill development. Since 2019, the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and UC San Diego (UCSD) have sent teams to SCC, and we hope to continue the tradition. See our SCC pages for more information.

SC Student Volunteers:  

Student volunteers perform a wide range of tasks for the SC Conference such as providing support for presenters, working the Information Booths, and staffing conference activities. Student volunteers work 15–20 hours during the conference, allowing plenty of time to engage in important educational and career-advancing activities such as tutorials, technical talks, panels, poster sessions, and workshops.  See the Supercomputing Conference Series

 

SDSC Student Internship Positions:

SDSC offers both paid and unpaid student internship positions. Some are listed on Handshake. More info on Handshake can be found on TritonLlink.  In addition, more information can be found on the pages:

 

Become a Sponsor of HPC Students
 

Contact Mary Thomas (mpthomas at ucsd.edu),  or contribute to HPC Students and the Supercomputing Club here.