Unlocking Potential

At SC23, Randles will provide a special showcase of her group’s unique work as part of an Invited Talk, Unlocking Potential: The Role of HPC in Computational Medicine, where she will touch on the rising importance of digital twins in the human healthcare landscape. Notably, she also has two accepted papers that delve further into her team’s hemodynamic modeling and simulation research.

In this I AM HPC profile, Randles offers a quick look into the spark that launched her award-winning career and shares what she deems the next steps for improving HPC accessibility.

amanda randles

Alfred Winborne Mordecai and Victoria Stover Mordecai Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University

amanda on LinkedIN

Q: What single event most made you realize you wanted a career in HPC/computing?

Randles: Booting up the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory BG/L [BlueGene/L from IBM].

Q: What do you consider your biggest contribution to the HPC/computing community?

Randles: Increasing the application of HPC for patient-specific hemodynamic models.

Q: In the past 35 years, what is the most significant overlooked breakthrough that has impacted the field in your eyes?

Randles: The advent of advanced domain decomposition techniques allows problems to be divided and distributed efficiently on massively parallel systems with minimal communication. Often, these methods can be taken for granted but play a critical role in efficiently using leadership-class systems.

Q: What would you like to see change about, within, or among the HPC/computing community?

Randles: Increased accessibility and interdisciplinary training. We have seen huge strides, especially when it comes to cloud computing, in making HPC hardware more available, but we still have a way to go to bridge the gap between HPC and other disciplines to foster more interdisciplinary advancements.

Enhancing Connections

As part of his outreach, Lam actively encourages every SC23 attendee, especially the many conference “veterans,” to make themselves available and open when seeing new faces at the workshops, on the panels, at the tutorials, among the exhibits, or even in the hallways. To Lam, the future of computing likely will begin with those individuals who realize their place in the community starting right now, where they can see themselves and say, “I Am HPC.”

Michael (Mike) Lam

Associate Professor of Computer Science, James Madison University

Mike on LinkedIN

Q: What single event most made you realize you wanted a career in HPC/computing?

Lam: The first SC Conference I attended was SC09 in Portland, Oregon. I was a graduate student at the time, and my research lab shared a booth on the exhibit floor. The conference itself was such an intriguing experience, and I really enjoyed sharing my work with the community. I’ve returned to SC every year since then except for SC14, which I missed because I was starting a new position at the time.

Q: What do you consider your biggest contribution to the HPC/computing community?

Lam: For SC20, I was asked to run Mentor–Protégé Matching. That year, obviously, did not go according to plan because of COVID-19. During the “lockdown” summer, I proposed and executed a plan for a new Mentor–Protégé Matching component where participants who signed up early were matched several months before the conference and began virtual engagement with guided activities in the months leading up to the conference. The goal was to help people establish new mentoring relationships and grow those relationships even when physical meetings were not possible. This additional early-matching component was continued for SC21 and SC22 and will be in place for SC23 as well. 

Q: What would you like to see change about, within, or among the HPC/computing community?

Lam: Personally, I would love to see less cynicism among computing communities in general. Snark and insults are satisfying to air. It is very tempting to show off one’s technical expertise during conversation by criticizing with humor, but this discourages innovation and experimentation. Keeping conversations positive and constructive requires more effort, but I believe it is an important part of building a stronger and more inclusive community.

Q: Can you share any “words of wisdom” for those new to HPC or curious about the SC Conference and how they may fit in?

Lam: One of the most important facets of an in-person conference is the “hallway track,” a term that is often used to refer to spontaneous interactions between attendees, often outside of (but facilitated by) a formal conference event. These interactions are especially important for the more junior members of the community (i.e., students and early-career individuals) because it allows them to network with others in the community and (hopefully!) to see good behaviors modeled by the more senior members of the community.

As the chair of the SC23 Student Networking and Mentoring subcommittee, I encourage SC attendees to participate in programs like our Mentor–Protégé Matching program, where mentors are paired up with students for one-on-one mentoring. This is a great opportunity to help make the benefits of the “hallway track” a bit more deliberate. I would also encourage all SC attendees to make an extra effort to reach out to students they encounter at the conference and to make an effort to include them in conversations and social interactions.

I will also be the Students@SC chair for next year, and, in that role, I’m excited to help facilitate opportunities for all students who attend SC to feel welcome and included and to maximize the benefits of attending the conference. Students are quite literally the future of our community, and I look forward to working with the rest of the SC24 Executive Committee to build the best conference experience possible for them.

Participate in Mentor–Protégé

You Belong Here

For Klinvex, the true test of I AM HPC will be when there are opportunities available throughout all computing communities for anyone with interest regardless of race, gender, disability status, or sexual orientation.

Alicia Klinvex

Naval Nuclear Laboratory, Department of Energy

Alicia on LinkedIN

Q: What single event most made you realize you wanted a career in HPC/computing?

Klinvex: When I was in high school, one of my teachers made a comment about the movie The Net. He didn’t think Sandra Bullock looked like a hacker. I didn’t like the idea that certain people look like they should work with computers and certain people don’t, and I wondered whether I was in the category of people who don’t. I always loved computers and all the math you could do with them, and I thought it was unfair that anything objective and scientific belonged to a small group of people who refused to share. I guess you could say that I became a programmer because I wanted programmers to look like me.

Q: What do you consider your biggest contribution to the HPC/computing community?

Klinvex: I wrote an automatic conference scheduler! It’s new, so I don’t know what the impact will be yet, but I hope that it stops very smart people from manually scheduling conferences. For reference, we used it to schedule SIAM CSE23, a conference with roughly 400 minisymposia, in a few hours. Beyond reducing the amount of time accomplished scientists spend moving Post-it notes around on a whiteboard, I hope it is used to reduce the amount of unconscious bias in scheduling. With a few modifications, we were also able to use the code for the Sustainable Research Pathways to connect students in underrepresented groups with lab scientists based on their research interests.

Q: In the past 35 years, what is the most significant overlooked breakthrough that has impacted the field in your eyes?

Klinvex: Well, I’m 37, so it’s tough to say. I think the most significant change that’s occurred during my life so far is the ubiquitousness of high-speed Internet and low-cost computing devices. Children are now growing up with access to smartphones and tablets, frequently through their schools. These children have much greater access to information than we did, and I hope that decreases the barrier to entry in our field. I’m curious to see whether this development changes the demographics of the tech space as these children grow up and enter the workforce.

Q: What would you like to see change about, within, or among the HPC/computing community?

Klinvex: I would like to see the community become more inclusive. I’ve been the target of behavior that makes women feel unwelcome in computing, and I hope the community makes it clear that this behavior will not be tolerated by the time my nieces are old enough to attend their first computing conference. It’s not enough to simply not be sexist or not be racist or not be homophobic on an individual level. We have to be anti-sexist, anti-racist, and anti-homophobic. When we see bad behavior, we need to counter it, and we need to take action to welcome the people we have traditionally left out.

Learn More:

A Genetic Scheduling Code for SIAM CSE23, https://github.com/tgkolda/genetic_scheduling (Date accessed: June 5, 2023)

SC Becomes Family Tradition

While his service at the SC Conference has been expansive, Hayden has the enthusiasm of a first-timer and is more than happy to share why everybody should take the chance, get to know the community, and find their place among the multitude of disciplines and research that stems from HPC and grows through participation in the SC Conference. For Hayden, it seems everyone should have a chance to proclaim: “I AM HPC!”

Kevin Hayden

Senior Network Engineer, Argonne National Laboratory

Kevin on Linkedin

Q: What single event most made you realize you wanted a career in HPC/computing?

Hayden: Attending my first SC Conference in Seattle (SC05).

Q: What do you consider your biggest contribution to the HPC/computing community?

Hayden: Being a member of the SC Steering Committee and SC Steering Diversity and Inclusivity sub-committee.

Q: In the past 35 years, what is the most significant overlooked breakthrough that has impacted the field in your eyes?

Hayden: Clean, inexpensive nuclear power.

Q: What would you like to see change about, within, or among the HPC/computing community?

Hayden: The community is getting older, and we need young people to be excited about the future of HPC and engineering as a whole. The United States has become a little soft, and other countries are catching us quickly due to their desire to make an impact on the world.

Q: Can you share any “words of wisdom” for those new to HPC or curious about the SC Conference and how they may fit in?

Hayden: I began my journey in HPC (support) at SC05 when I was asked to help set up the conference as a fiber optic cable installer as a member of SCinet. Since I was a fiber technician who didn’t directly work with the HPC community, I only supported the data pathway to the computers. I really had no idea what the conference was or what it was even about. Turned out, it was such a great experience! Not only did I help install, troubleshoot, and repair this incredibly fast network for the conference, I also had the opportunity to learn all the amazing things the HPC community did with their supercomputers, and I met the wonderfully captivating group of people that made up the SC Conference. I was so excited to learn more and couldn’t wait to go back again the next year and the next and the next. 

As my career progressed at work, so did my positions within SC. I worked my way through SCinet as the fiber team lead for several years, edge network lead for two years, then onto the management team. Eventually, I became SC20 SCinet Chair, where I was responsible for leading 100-plus SCinet volunteers through the challenges of the first virtual conference. While I am still a member of the SCinet team as the Physical Security Chair and still helping with the fiber team, I am also the SC Exhibits Deputy Chair and a member of the SC Steering Committee, where we set and approve conference policies, budgets, future sites, and work closely with the two sponsoring societies, IEEE-CS [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society] and the ACM [Association for Computing Machinery].

I was so fortunate to be asked to participate way back in 2005. I know I am lucky to work with such an amazingly talented, passionate group of volunteers from all around the world. SC is a family, and, as such, I have my family involved as well. My father-in-law has been a member of the SCinet wireless/edge team since 2018; my son, a wireless and fiber team member since 2021; my brother-in-law, a member of the SC21 SCinet logistics team; and my wife is now the SC23 Communications Chair after joining SC in 2016.

If you have the opportunity to volunteer at SC, I say, DO IT! And, have a great time meeting extraordinary people, expanding your horizons, working long (fun) days, and having a wonderful time. Who knows where it will take you?

My name is Kevin Hayden, and I am an HPC supporter… I AM HPC!

A Biz Dev Guru

For his I AM HPC profile, Kovach offers a glimpse at how he came to be part of the community and where he would like to see it go next.  

Jim Kovach

Director of Business Development in Higher Education and Research, Pier Group LLC

Jim on Linkedin

Q: What single event most made you realize you wanted a career in HPC/computing?

Jim: My first HPC Conference in 1990.

Q: What do you consider your biggest contribution to the HPC/computing community?

Jim: Selling HPC solutions to researchers.

Q: In the past 35 years, what is the most significant overlooked breakthrough that has impacted the field in your eyes?

Jim: Early adoption of GPUs.

Q: What would you like to see change about, within, or among the HPC/computing community?

Jim: More competition.

Randall started his SC journey as a student volunteer and is an SC23 lead student volunteer. Meet this year’s 19 leads!

Making of an SC Veteran

While Randall may be early in his own HPC journey, he is well versed in the SC Conference. He also has a mature outlook on the value of doing more with computing technologies, especially for creating and continuing connections that can build better, lasting opportunities. Here, Randall offers a glance at why he readily can say, “I am HPC.”

Thomas Randall

Graduate Research Assistant, Clemson University

Thomas on Linkedin

Q: What single event most made you realize you wanted a career in HPC/computing?

Thomas: Touring industrial server closets at my dad’s job showed me how physically large and interesting computing systems could be and really sparked a deeper interest in computing.

Q: What do you consider your biggest contribution to the HPC/computing community?

Thomas: I’ve volunteered at SC for several years now, and my own research efforts contributed significant speedups to Word2Vec implementations on GPU accelerators. More to come in the future!

Q: In the past 35 years, what is the most significant overlooked breakthrough that has impacted the field in your eyes?

Thomas: I think that greater incorporation of the Internet in conferences and online distribution of science has missed a lot of available opportunities over the last few decades. However, the pandemic has started to push our field to make better use of the very technologies we develop and study to improve our connections to one another and the broader world.

Q: What would you like to see change about, within, or among the HPC/computing community?

Thomas: As we push towards greater reproducibility and accountability in our field, we should also seek to promote longer-term initiatives beyond artifact preparations for conferences and journals. Online resources permit greater connectivity, transparency and lasting relevancy through continued updates that our community has to put effort in to introduce, adopt, and cultivate for a stronger future.

Read More

Randall T, T Allen, and R Ge. 2021. FULL-W2V: Fully Exploiting Data Reuse for W2V on GPU-accelerated Systems. In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Supercomputing (ICS ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 455-466.

Take Randall’s Path

Longstanding Dedication

Along with his longstanding dedication to the SC Conference and varied interests in parallel programming, operating systems, computer networks, and distributed systems, Hollingsworth has significantly invested in bringing students to HPC. In the past, he co-founded efforts such as the Experiencing HPC for Undergraduates Program to introduce more young people to HPC research and, in turn, the SC Conference. Today, after nearly 25 years of volunteer service to SC, Hollingworth continues to see computing as an exciting field and the SC Conference as a prime launchpad for those seeking to kick off their own I AM HPC story.

Jeffrey K. Hollingsworth

Vice President of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer, University of Maryland (UMD)

Jeff on Linkedin

Q: What single event most made you realize you wanted a career in HPC/computing?

Hollingsworth: Hearing that my undergraduate institution (Berkeley) was getting a Cray Supercomputer. I had seen a Cray computer on a visit to LLNL [Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory] and was excited that Berkeley was going to get one.

Q: What do you consider your biggest contribution to the HPC/computing community?

Hollingsworth: Helping to make auto-tuning of software a reality. HPC professionals spend so much time tuning code to get it to run faster. Automating part of that process is a real game changer.

Q: In the past 35 years, what is the most significant overlooked breakthrough that has impacted the field in your eyes?

Hollingsworth: How much more reliable computers have become (especially at the board/device level) over that period of time. The scale of systems today has, in large part, been made possible by increased reliability of individual parts.

Q: What would you like to see change about, within, or among the HPC/computing community?

Hollingsworth: More young people to view HPC as an exciting field to join.

Panels at SC23

Throughout his own career, Milojicic, currently a distinguished technologist at Hewlett Packard Labs, has done just that. He has managed multidisciplinary teams across the globe, including India, Brazil, Singapore, China, and the United States with many composed of a mix of industry, academia, and government researchers. He also was technical director of the OpenCirrus Cloud Computing Testbed with 16 academic and industrial sites in the United States, Europe, and Asia. He has served on various conference committees and journal editorial boards and has a longtime connection to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. In fact, as IEEE’s past Chair of Industry Engagement, Milojicic put his global ties to work, organizing board outreaches to Israel, Silicon Valley, China, Japan, and Germany.

Record-Tying Submissions

This year, Milojicic focused this need to extend HPC connections on growing and diversifying the SC23 co-hosted workshops—those “conferences within THE conference”—with notable results: SC23 Workshops tied a record for most submissions ever (52 ultimately were selected). Here, Milojicic offers some quick insights into why he can readily say, “I AM HPC.”

Dejan Milojicic

Hewlett Packard Labs / SC23 Workshops Co-Chair

Q: What single event most made you realize you wanted a career in HPC/computing?

Milojicic: My BSc [Bachelor of Science] diploma thesis, working on hybrid (analog-digital) computers back in 1982.

Q: What do you consider your biggest contribution to the HPC/computing community?

Milojicic: Starting HPC in cloud more than 12 years ago.

Q: In the past 35 years, what is the most significant overlooked breakthrough that has impacted the field in your eyes?

Milojicic: Artificial intelligence.

Q: What would you like to see change about, within, or among the HPC/computing community?

Milojicic: More cross-organizational collaboration.

Q: Can you share any “words of wisdom” for those navigating the state of HPC today?

Milojicic: Talk to me if you are interested in delivering fine-grained HPCaaS [high-performance computing as a service]: Heterogeneous Serverless Computing.

Accepted Workshops

Along with his prior role as Utah’s provost, Reed’s noteworthy academic resume includes serving as founding director of the Renaissance Computing Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; head of the computer science department and director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and professor of computer science, electrical and computer engineering, and medicine at the University of Iowa, where he also was vice president for research and economic development. Previously, Reed was Microsoft’s corporate vice president for technology policy and extreme computing, advancing technology innovations and overseeing the company’s policy engagement with governments and partners. Today, he serves as chair of the National Science Foundation’s National Science Board, the policymaking body that acts as an independent advisor on science and engineering activities to Congress and the president. He has particular interest in policies concerning HPC, big data, and edge networks.

Solving Important Problems

To say Reed has influence in the field of HPC may be an understatement — he readily represents the notion behind “I AM HPC.” Still, this multi-hyphenate scientist-professor-policymaker took time to share his insights about the current state of computing, how the field is changing, and why people should thoughtfully consider their place in the expanding HPC ecosystem.

Daniel Reed

Presidential Professor and Professor of CS & ECE at University of Utah

Dan on Linkedin

Q: What single event most made you realize you wanted a career in HPC/computing?

Daniel: Bringing physics equations to life (as a high school student) in Fortran on an IBM 360.

Q: What do you consider your biggest contribution to the HPC/computing community?

Daniel: Performance analysis techniques for parallel systems; bringing Linux clusters and the TeraGrid to production; cloud computing innovations; and science and engineering policy. 

Q: In the past 35 years, what is the most significant overlooked breakthrough that has impacted the field in your eyes?

Daniel: How much the web, clouds, and mobile devices disrupted the computing ecosystem. Deep learning is about to do that again.

Q: What would you like to see change about, within, or among the HPC/computing community?

Daniel: Less fixation on FLOPS and machine sizes and more focus on solving important problems — scientific, engineering, and societal.

Can you share any “words of wisdom” for those navigating the state of HPC today?

Daniel: HPC is at a critical inflection point. We have to reinvent ourselves, embrace new technologies and approaches, and build new kinds of interdisciplinary partnerships.

An HPC Community Leader

As an innovator and a proponent of HPC, Deelman has sound advice for those seeking their future in computing (Hint: artificial intelligence may not be the catch-all problem solver). Deelman also shares her team’s best work and the first time she realized “I AM HPC”… while doing math!

Ewa Deelman

Research Director, Science Automation Technologies Division at Information Sciences Institute

Ewa on Linkedin

Q: What single event most made you realize you wanted a career in HPC/computing?

Ewa: When I took a discrete mathematics course in college, I found it much easier to program the homework solutions than use pen, paper, and a calculator. I made fewer mistakes.

Q: What do you consider your biggest contribution to the HPC/computing community?

Ewa: My team and I conceptualized and developed the Pegasus workflow management system used in production by various scientific domains. For example, in 2016, LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) used Pegasus to analyze the data captured by their detectors and confirmed the first-ever direct detection of a gravitational wave. 

Q: In the past 35 years, what is the most significant overlooked breakthrough that has impacted the field in your eyes?

Ewa: It is hard to pinpoint one particular breakthrough. HPC is a fascinating field, where breakthroughs lead to increased, more sophisticated capabilities. These, in turn, directly impact the scale and type of science and engineering problems we can solve.

Q: What would you like to see change about, within, or among the HPC/computing community?

Ewa: I would like to see more students pursuing research in HPC and, more generally, computer systems. Today, most students study and look for careers in AI. However, one needs robust, performant, and energy-efficient systems to sustain the needs of AI and other large-scale, data-intensive applications.

Q: Can you share any “words of wisdom” for those navigating the state of HPC today?

Ewa: We have made tremendous progress in workflow management systems. Today, we can execute complex workflows across the computing continuum—from the edge to the cloud to high-throughput and high-performance systems. Yet, we have many new, exciting challenges ahead. Doing science is still not as easy as interacting with an app or ChatGPT.

Conde also has a firm interest in bringing STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and its colleague STEAM, which adds an “A” for “arts,” to the forefront, especially in building the inclusive and diverse workforce that will fuel HPC’s future.

An “A” for “Advocate”

Learn more about how Sidafa Conde is an “A” for “Advocate,” including his take on how HPC is a natural platform for helping young people realize their career goals, why he thinks exascale is so transformative, and why he proudly says, “I Am HPC.”

Sidafa Conde

Computational Scientist | STEM/STEAM Advocate

Sidafa on Linkedin

Q: What single event most made you realize you wanted a career in HPC/computing?

Sidafa: During my time in the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded CSUMS program at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, I was first introduced to the world of scientific computing. Programs like CSUMS are designed to introduce students to new fields and give them the skills and knowledge they need to succeed, and it achieved just that for me. I had never really explored this area before, but I was fascinated by the incredible power and potential of these systems to process vast amounts of data and perform complex simulations. I changed my focus from accounting to computational math, and I’m happy with my decision.

Q: What do you consider your biggest contribution to the HPC/computing community?

Sidafa: I am very happy with my research, the publications, and the many awesome projects I’ve been fortunate to work in my career. However, I consider my work with STEAM the Streets on STEM/STEAM outreach and advocacy as my most important contribution to the computing community. Encouraging underrepresented youth to explore the world of computing and other STEM fields is crucial for creating a more diverse and inclusive workforce that benefits everyone. By simply sharing my knowledge and experience with young people, I hope to help inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers and ensure that everyone has the opportunity to pursue their dreams and make a meaningful impact in their chosen field.

Q: In the past 35 years, what is the most significant overlooked breakthrough that has impacted the field in your eyes?

Sidafa: The exascale milestone represents a remarkable achievement in the world of HPC/computing, made possible through the innovative work of mathematicians, engineers, and computer scientists. The complex algorithms and numerical methods used in HPC and computing systems require a deep understanding of advanced mathematics and scientific computing, and the researchers who develop these technologies are often at the forefront of their fields. The exascale milestone is a testament to the tireless efforts of these researchers, who have pushed the boundaries of what is possible and paved the way for new discoveries and breakthroughs in a wide range of scientific disciplines. It’s truly awe-inspiring to witness the progress being made in this field. I, like many others, am excited to see what the future holds as we continue to push the boundaries of what is possible through advanced mathematics and engineering.

Q: What would you like to see change about, within, or among the HPC/computing community?

Sidafa: It’s crucial to reach out to diverse populations early on in high school to encourage their interest and involvement in various fields. By doing so, we can create a more inclusive and diverse workforce that benefits everyone. It’s essential to provide these students with resources and support, including mentorship, networking opportunities, and exposure to a range of career paths. Initiatives like these can help break down barriers and make it easier for underrepresented groups to pursue their dreams and achieve success.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Baylis, as SC23’s Inclusivity Co-Chair (with Raquell Holmes), seeks to extend the connections he has long fostered between underrepresented communities, government, academia, non-profits, and industry to the SC Conference. Part of this has entailed addressing how and why people are introduced to high-performance computing (HPC) and getting them to realize there are opportunities for everyone to find their niche in the HPC community. While growing attendance and participation at SC23 will be one measure of the conference’s success, Baylis would like Denver to welcome an even more “global” crowd that reflects the diversity and potential of the still-evolving HPC community.

Q&A with Tony

Get to know Tony Baylis and why he is happy to say, “I am HPC.”

Q: What single event most made you realize you wanted a career in HPC/computing?

Baylis: The single event that made me realize I wanted a career in the field was meeting the Visualization Team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois. The group was so close, and we got to do some amazing work together. Our Director, Dr. Larry Smarr, supported our ideas and gave us a place to be really creative in this field.

Q: What do you consider your biggest contribution to the HPC/computing community?

Baylis: I have a couple of contributions. One was working with the scientists and researchers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois to visualize their research. The second contribution was working with Jan Cuny, Jennifer Teig von Hoffman, Raquell Holmes, and the SC Steering Committee to create a new program called Broader Engagement that provided opportunities for women, Black, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian students to be exposed to HPC at the SC Conference.

Q: What would you like to see change about, within, or among the HPC/computing community?

Baylis: I would like HPC to become a more diverse community with representation from around the world.

Inclusivity at SC

¹ The State of DEI in Tech 2022 (report). Build In, 2023.