SC23 Celebrates Thirty-One Women in HPC for Women’s History Month

This March we are proud to profile thirty-one women in HPC, covering every day of the month, in celebration of their contributions to the field of supercomputing.

Part One of a Four-Part Series

Diversity drives innovation. With so many complex problems to solve, the field of HPC is well positioned to speed results in areas such as chemistry, physics, sociology and much more. Compute power aside, all of what we achieve in HPC is made possible by the talents of many. In celebration of Women’s History Month we are placing the focus on the female leaders, researchers, managers, scholars, and the many roles they have undertaken to make supercomputing solutions possible.

We are delighted to feature two of our female leaders here in the first part of our blog series – but our highlights do not stop there! Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram to see all thirty-one of our profiles as they unfold over the month of March.

I Kept on Running Into HPC

I was developing solutions in vertical partnerships across financial services, health care, and manufacturing and with each one I kept running into HPC. As I dug further, I learned how HPC is incredibly important for our business and, even more pressing, an integral means of doing more and better science and engineering. I’m in my seventh year of working on HPC for Google Cloud and remain excited about how we can contribute to the HPC community. One of my proudest accomplishments is launching our partnership with SchedMD, which helped produce our cutting-edge Slurm on Google Cloud solution, which makes HPC more accessible to all.

Annie Ma-weaver

Tech/ISV HPC Partnerships Lead for Google Cloud

Annie on Linkedin

When I think of how we can bring more diversity into HPC, I think of two things. First, accessibility. To become more accessible means welcoming more diversity. Being a woman, a person of color and an immigrant in HPC gives me the privilege of being a role model and mentor, as well as the power to identify and champion the change that brings more folks into the fold. And second, mentorship. I’m an active part of our Google DEI initiatives and mentor underrepresented groups, including women. I’m also a member of the Columbia College Women group and have had the honor of being a mentor to multiple undergraduates.

Diversity helps improve the quality of our collaborations in HPC and I want to increase it however I can.

My Path to HPC Was Not a Straight Road

I was destined to be engaged in IT, one way or another! Growing up my Mom went to school for IT, and even though my educational path was Psychology, the time I helped her to study filtered through and when I graduated I ended up with a degree from Purdue studying Psychology, Organizational Leadership and Supervision and… a minor in Computer Programming Technology. My initial career field was Human Resources (HR), where I developed a specialisation for HR in IT, including HPC and Research Computing. In the last few months I’ve made the transition fully into the HPC field, serving as a Senior Research Operations Administrator, or more commonly thought of a Project Manager for Research Computing, specifically for the NSF funded Anvil project.

Amanda Hassenplug

Senior Research Operations Administrator, Purdue University

Amanda at Purdue

My work focuses on managing the many intricacies of the Anvil project and helping the PI/Co-PI’s implement their vision for the project and associated programming come to fruition. Part of the programming that I am currently focused on is building up a pipeline of future HPC professionals. Anvil has an REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) program that has just entered its second year, so I’ve spent a lot of time building up the framework to support growth. We want to be sure there is a lot of opportunity to bring in diversity: diversity of undergraduate programs, diversity of universities, and diversity of the candidates themselves. Providing opportunities for students to gain experience and exposure to HPC, especially for undergrads, and looking to the future for those that choose the HCP field as a profession is important to the project and to me personally.

In order for HPC to continue to grow and flourish we need to have a variety of viewpoints, backgrounds, and experiences represented. Having a more consistent representation of the nation as a whole in HPC is paramount to the growth of the field and the effectiveness of ongoing innovations. Without this representation we run the risk of missing the mark of where HPC could and should go, or making errors of omission in how we get there, limiting the effectiveness and possibility for this field.

A Continuing Series