Unlocking the Potential of Diversity

Lofstead was the SC22 Inclusivity Committee Chair and currently serves as the SC23 Reproducibility Committee Co-Chair along with many other committee roles at SC23. In this I Am HPC profile, Lofstead shares his experiences in making inclusive workspaces a reality, as well as his plans for implementing change to make SC23 a truly reproducible and inclusive environment for all participants.

Jay Lofstead

Principal Member of Technical Staff, Sandia National Laboratories

Jay on LinkedIN

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

Lofstead: I’ve been seriously involved in computing starting when I was about 10. As a middle-aged man (that was a long time ago), I found that computers were the ultimate tool that could be made to do almost anything. I loved science but didn’t enjoy math once I got into upper-level undergrad classes and focused more strongly on computer science. When I went back to grad school, I saw that I could work to support science while doing computing, entered the HPC field, and never looked back.

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

Lofstead: I do a lot of mentoring. As a first-generation college student, I had no guidance growing up about how to navigate an education. All anyone could tell me was I needed a “good” GPA [grade point average]. What “good” even meant was unknown. I was lucky and managed to make a number of good decisions that eventually helped me make it into a Ph.D. program then through it into my career at Sandia. Since joining Sandia, I have spent a tremendous amount of time and effort helping other students (any level, including grade school) understand what their career options really are, what education made that easiest, and what is necessary to enter these programs. As I’ve hired summer interns, I’ve paid 13 different students, and all 13 have generated an external to Sandia peer-reviewed publication. In most cases, I have taken the students to the conference venue and had them present to the research community. While I have had a few other students I did not pay, not all of them were able to succeed at the same level largely due to conditions I could not control. Building a more diverse and inclusive workforce will make science, computing, and the world a better place. I strive every day to make that a reality.

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

Lofstead: For HPC, the Raspberry Pi is used to make “toy” clusters as an educational tool. I don’t think enough people see the power that having such a tool has in shaping minds. Seeing that you can make things work on a pretty cheap machine you can build yourself is empowering. It can get more people into HPC rather than just computing in general.

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

Lofstead: We need to accelerate diversifying the community. Students today expect a diverse and inclusive environment. If we do not offer a place where they feel comfortable, they will find something else to do. Related to this is reproducibility. Incorporating strong reproducibility standards for all computing will raise the quality standard for research and make learning new things from primary sources easier. Textbooks are expensive. Through a research library, research papers are available at no cost to library visitors. Having these other resources can help people explore new areas and help drive building a more diverse computing environment. We need everyone that can do the work to join us in building a better tomorrow.

This opportunity provides a dedicated space on the exhibit floor for 24 newly established and/or underrepresented research teams or institutions that lack the means to present their work at SC through the usual channels.

SC hopes this new initiative will attract content that would otherwise go unseen, and to foster quality discussions and interactions as part of a larger effort to better highlight the breadth and depth of the HPC community.

The Benefits

Participating organizations may showcase technical material, presentations, and demos from a kiosk provided in the HPC Illuminations Pavilion. Areas designed for informal discussions and networking will also be provided. Travel support will be available for a limited number of under-resourced participants. Qualified applicants will be invited to apply for travel funding.

HPC Illuminations Pavilion Kiosk

Complimentary

Includes:

• Cabinet with desktop, stem light, and stools
• Back drop panel
• Header graphic panel
• Electrical outlet
• Carpeted area

Application Requirements

Ready to Apply?

Huda Ibeid

SC20 Early Career Participant

Huda Ibeid is an HPC performance architect at Intel, working to enable exascale computing. Prior to that, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. She earned her doctorate in Computer Science from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Her research interests lie broadly in the field of high-performance computing, with a particular emphasis on two areas of development: performance models for parallel architectures and applications and scalable numerical algorithms for partial differential equations.

She is a recipient of the Google Women Techmakers Scholarship (2014) and Rising Stars in EECS (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) (2019). Currently, Huda serves on the SC23 Early Career Program (ECP) committee. 

“I attended the Early Career Program at SC20, and it was truly an invaluable experience. Despite the program being shifted online due to the pandemic, it provided me with incredible opportunities to engage in diverse sessions and connect with fellow participants. I found this virtual format to be particularly inclusive, allowing individuals from various geographical locations to participate and contribute. As someone who had recently completed a Ph.D. and postdoc in academia and was transitioning into industry, the ECP served as a timely platform for me to gain invaluable insights and guidance.”

Bruno Abreu

SC22 Early Career Participant

With a background in computational condensed matter physics, Bruno Abreu joined the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois in 2021 as a research programmer after immigrating to the United States from Brazil in 2019. At NCSA, he provides research consulting, facilitation, and application development for large-scale simulations, machine learning, and quantum computing projects in various science fields. He obtained a doctorate in physics in 2018 from the University of Campinas, Brazil, where he studied quantum phenomena, such as superfluidity, using Monte Carlo simulations. He was a visiting scholar with Professor David Ceperley at the University of Illinois in 2015-2016.

These experiences helped him develop expertise with supercomputers, programming languages, and frameworks, such as Python, C/C++, Fortran, OpenMP, MPI, and CUDA. He is also a research affiliate at the Illinois Quantum Information Sciences and Technology Center and a trained National Science Foundation CyberAmbassadors program facilitator.

“SC’s Early Career Program was a fantastic experience that showed me how broad and nonlinear career paths in research computing can be—ultimately making me even more excited about my career prospects. The program covered a well-distributed range of topics, including the importance of mentoring, work-life balance, development of effective communication skills, and several others. It gave me a unique opportunity to network with people from a wide range of backgrounds and institutions, both in early- and advanced-career stages, making me confident to reach out, ask for advice, find collaborators and colleagues, and help others by sharing my experiences. SC is a massive conference, and it can be overwhelming. People with mile-long badges can look intimidating. ECP made it a much smoother and more fruitful experience, setting me up for a successful journey using advanced cyberinfrastructure to boost scientific research. If you are starting your journey, I highly recommend this program!”

Anjali Sandip

SC22 Early Career Participant

Anjali Sandip is a senior lecturer in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of North Dakota (UND). Her research interests include numerical modeling, uncertainty quantification, and parallel computing. Anjali’s PI-led research projects have received support from the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, and NVIDIA. She currently is investigating numerical solution algorithms that optimally leverage exascale hardware capabilities with performance-portable implementations for unstructured mesh applications. Before joining UND, she was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Nebraska, where she developed patient-specific computational models of the superficial femoral artery/stent interaction to treat peripheral artery disease.

Anjali serves as a mentor for both undergraduate and graduate researchers. She is an active member of the International Association of Computational Mechanics and has delivered numerous presentations and published journal articles. Anjali has bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering. Outside of work, she enjoys reading and all things outdoors.

“I enjoyed being part of SC’s ECP 2022 and connecting with fellow batchmates, established scientists, and researchers from all over the country and the world! The program provided valuable resources on how to build a successful research career. I found the session on grant writing particularly helpful. My biggest takeaway was the network I built.”

Ayesha Afzal

SC20 Early Career Participant

Ayesha Afzal is a researcher at Erlangen National High Performance Computing Center (NHR@FAU) in Germany. She holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s degree in computational engineering. Her doctoral research meets at the crossroads of analytic performance models, performance tools, and parallel simulation frameworks with a focus on first-principles performance modeling of distributed-memory parallel programs in high-performance computing. Ayesha contributes to significant scientific community events as an active speaker, conference program committee member (SC, CLUSTER, ICPP, CSTA), journal reviewer (IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems), and workshop (PERMAVOST@HPDC) or mentoring (WHPC@SC) co-chair.

She has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications and scored First Place in the ISC Ph.D. Forum Award 2021 that honors outstanding doctorate work. She was named in “100 Future Leaders Role Model List 2022” supported by Yahoo Finance and won the 2023 WearetheCity Global Award for Achievement.

“The epidemic prevented me from having much of an opportunity to get involved in the HPC community activities and attend events in person to network with HPC specialists. With my participation in ECP@SC22, I had the chance to have conversations with many experienced professionals in the HPC field and had established a few successful networking connections that had a beneficial impact on my career path. I found the program to be engaging, enjoyed the invited talks, and, particularly, the ‘speed networking activity’ and ‘mentor protégé mixer’ were my favorite parts of the workshop-style program. In the pre-conference webinars, irrespective of the fact that a few talks were more concentrated on a funding opportunities forum with a U.S. focus (and not Germany-focus), the general recommendations and guidelines nevertheless had an influence on my learning. I really appreciate the speakers’ and mentors’ provocative thoughts.”

Sagnik Singha

SC22 Early Career Participant

Sagnik Singha graduated with a doctorate in mechanical engineering in the field of computational fluid dynamics in 2021. His training is in mathematical modeling and employing computational numerical approaches to solve partial differential equations, mainly for multiparticle systems suspended in fluids. Presently, he is a research associate at the user support group at Texas Tech University. During his tenure as a graduate student, apart from the technical aspects, he also polished his interpersonal skills. This involved working in a team of diverse computational and experimental researchers, as well as presenting research findings at various depths, depending on the audience at national and international conferences such as American Physical Society and the United States National Congress of Theoretical & Applied Mechanics.

Sagnik cites his current role in augmenting his skills, especially in screening the essential components of his experience and expanding on them in the domain of computational methods and applications. In the future, he wants to apply his physical-modeling background to contribute to addressing high-impact environmental problems by utilizing HPC systems and allied methodologies as tools.

“First, the ECP introduced me to researchers working in a variety of fields like environmental pollution, software stacks, and bioinformatics, to name a few, from prestigious institutions, e.g., national labs, that drive fundamental and applied research. This was very important I felt since most research pipelines have a wide range of experts collaborating to address multiple aspects of the project. It therefore encouraged me to venture out of my domain of research, which is important for my personal future growth. Second, the organizers included us in a variety of social and professional activities to encourage mingling amongst participants and mentors. Through the program, I found a couple of successful mentorship relationships in two early career research staff at Sandia National Laboratories. I also connected with a fellow ECP participant over common methodologies used in our Ph.D. research. Third, it opens one’s perspective about what is possible in the field of research in terms of lateral shifts or vertical leaps in career by interacting with other mentors. These are some of the ways in which the ECP impacted my professional life.”

Creating Understanding

In his I AM HPC profile, Miller, who also serves on the SC23 Inclusivity Committee as Vice Chair and Demographics Chair, focuses on the sometimes overlooked value and capabilities of scientific data modeling and its contribution to computing. He also draws a line from cool science fiction to his current role as an engineer at LLNL.

mark miller

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Mark on github

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

Miller: Two movies with early awesome computer graphics, Tron (1982) and The Last Starfighter (1984).

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

Miller: Helping the community understand the impact of scientific data modeling technologies on our ability to share, interoperate, and exchange not only data but, more importantly, software.

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

Miller: Data abstraction through formal, math-based, scientific data models. Most abstractions are ad hoc, unnecessarily constrained, and fail to support wide appeal across application domains and/or computing technologies.

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

Miller: To understand that what we are ultimately building is not just hardware or software but the virtual equivalent of scientific instrumentation such as you might see in any real experimental facility (laser, accelerator, reactor, observatory, cleanroom, etc.) and to expect that what we build meets the same standards of rigor, certainty, and quality as our real-world counterparts.

Early Career Support

The Early Career program is intended for people still starting their computing career journey and is designed to prepare participants for significant contributions in their chosen career paths. Early Career encompasses panel sessions, hands-on activities, and pre-conference webinars with the goal of enhancing participants’ skills pertaining to funding opportunities, publication venues, mentor relationships, resiliency, communication, and time management.

The program will feature networking opportunities with the panelists from industry, academia, and government labs, who will share their expertise and discuss what it takes to succeed in a chosen career path. Ultimately, these exchanges are expected to encourage participants to continue seeking broader engagement and find their own place within the HPC community. Here, Stephanie shares her perspectives on what it means to say, “I AM HPC.”

Stephanie Dempsey

Software Test Engineer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Stephanie on Linkedin

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

Stephanie: There was no single event that led me to a career in HPC. I worked in private industry for several years and found the tech industry to be exciting in general, but it was after coming to LLNL and working in the WSC [Weapons Simulation and Computing] division on the supercomputers that I became hooked on HPC. The work is always challenging, the problems are world-class and meaningful, the collaborations have been exciting, and the people in the HPC community are inspiring.

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

Stephanie: My career journey is unique in that it has spanned from large tech companies to startups to research.  It’s been a path of making choices about how, when, and why I work. Building relationships is a valuable part of my work-life experience, and the collaborations provided in the HPC environment and community have provided me with the best opportunities to grow professionally and personally. As the Early Career Chair, I want to bring a focus on inclusivity and relationship building as it pertains to successful collaborations in one’s career. 

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

Stephanie: It’s been proven over and over that inclusivity and psychological safety are keys to building great collaborations and successful teams. I would like to see how investment in these areas will change work-life experiences to enable more individuals to contribute to the amazing science enabled by HPC.

Accepting Applications

Bautista, currently the group lead for the Operations Technology Group at NERSC, the primary scientific computing facility for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Elizabeth’s team aids in providing a central location for problem reporting, diagnosis, data collection, escalation, and resolution to maximize the scientific productivity of users. 

An Inclusivity Powerhouse

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

Elizabeth: I didn’t know I was being interviewed. I was invited for a tour of the NERSC data center but ended up staying six hours and talking to a whole bunch of staff. When I finally got the tour, Mcurie, their latest supercomputer, was recently delivered, and I wasn’t sure if it was even in acceptance yet. However, when I saw the black Cray system with red decoration, it looked like a Christmas present. I had just graduated from my CS degree, and I did my final report on Seymour Cray and his innovations. Seeing one in person was well worth the six hours of talking to staff. Since I didn’t know I was being interviewed, I went home thinking, ‘Maybe someday I’ll get to work in HPC.’ The following month, after I filled out a bunch of paperwork, I got a job offer. Realizing I would get to work on a Cray system, how could I say no?

Elizabeth Bautista

Group Lead, Operations Technology Group, NERSC

Elizabeth on Linkedin

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

Elizabeth: The development of our Operations Monitoring and Notification Infrastructure (OMNI) was a big step toward putting heterogenous data into one data warehouse to make it easier to corroborate data from multiple sources. The data is archived and curated with the intention of being used for years to come. In our experience, data is gathered and analyzed, but, once that is done, the data can potentially be abandoned. That doesn’t happen with OMNI. Once we start collecting it, we continue to collect it. We’ve had multiple use cases over the years that have either saved us cost, assisted us in making business decisions, or helped us improve our overall processes using data gathered by OMNI.

The work I performed to create opportunities for minority women in STEM, the work in diversity and inclusion through various committees, publications, and presentations, while they haven’t moved the needle significantly, I would hope that the ideas of fair hiring practices, seeking diverse candidate pools, taking a chance on potential talent rather than solid experience, community building for minority retention, and supporting the next generation of scientists and engineers in their careers, has made some impact in the community.

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

Elizabeth: As we look toward the acquisition of N10, NERSC’s next supercomputer, we have to consider innovations in chip technology. For years, the market was dominated by x86 and Arm. Today, companies must write code that will work with an x86 and Arm in order to compete in the market while paying millions to the big players who have kept their design proprietary.

A shift in the chip industry is happening now with RISC-V, a new open standard that can be used by any manufacturer, free of charge. Just as Bluetooth, Ethernet, and wi-fi open standards have revolutionized the industry and made these products interoperable with other products—even though they are made by different manufacturers—RISC-V can potentially change hardware used by HPC. RISC-V chips are now available in small products like earbuds, hard drives, and processors, with about 10 billion of these chips shipped within the last two years. As 3100 members across multiple industry organizations and academia collaborate on the standards through the RISC-V International, how soon will these chips become available as a competitor to the big established supercomputing companies providing an alternative to data centers? I am excited to see what the next supercomputer will be at NERSC, especially if it will be a RISC-V-based system.

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

Elizabeth: Minority women in HPC continue to be a small percentage, especially at the top positions. According to a 2021 study of the representation of women in HPC conferences, ‘women represent 10% of all HPC authors. Representation is particularly low at higher experience levels.’ This study counted all women. Breaking down the statistics to minority women, the number becomes three percent. Counting only Black, LatinX, American Indian, Pacific Islander, and Filipino, the number becomes less than .05%. When I attend an HPC technical conference, I look around and very rarely see my face in the crowd.

I’d like to see a more targeted recruitment into groups that represent minority women. We need to have more minority women in the candidate pool and hope the numbers allow them to get hired. We need to write more gender-neutral job descriptions and job postings to end the idea that women can’t apply to a job unless they are 100% qualified. Change interview practices to remove all biases, not just gender bias. Build transparency in salary policies to minimize gender based pay gaps. And, finally, create a community that supports women and their challenges to improve retention.

Building Collaborative Cultures

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

Alana: I have always felt a calling to make a positive impact in society and be a part of a larger purpose. This led me to pursue studies in politics and eventually work in government. However, fate intervened, and I found myself on a completely different path, venturing into the world of HPC and computing. At first, I felt uncertain and unsure of my place, but I was supported by the nurturing and supportive community of HPC researchers and cyberinfrastructure professionals. I quickly became involved in various roles, such as building and supporting a booth for SC and serving on committees for both SC and PEARC [Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing]. These experiences allowed me to find my place in HPC and realize the immense potential for making a difference in this field. 

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

Alana: Community building and outreach! With my background in governance, policy, and pedagogy, I have been fortunate to blend my expertise to help prepare the next generation of students and researchers to leverage the power of advanced computing technologies. Through my Co-Chairing of the PEARC23 conference, serving as a Campus Champion, and a Cyberinfrastructure Community Organizer for the NSF ACCESS Support team [National Science Foundation Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support], I have the unique position and community networks to build strong, inclusive, and sustainable cyberinfrastructure. I have also loved every minute of my work with various student programs over the last decade and seeing their success brings me immense joy.

Alana Romanella

Cyberinfrastructure Community Organizer

Alana on Linkedin

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

Alana: The bridge between high-performance computing and non-STEM users often goes unnoticed, despite the fact that non-traditional users have important and pressing questions that require solutions. However, they may feel lost in how to connect the dots to utilize HPC resources effectively. Thankfully, experts from various fields, including machine learning, artificial intelligence, and computational experts, have come together to develop products like ChatGPT. This product has proven successful in making Natural Language Understanding (AI) accessible to a broad audience. By breaking down barriers and providing access to HPC resources in a user-friendly way, ChatGPT represents a vital step in bridging the gap between HPC and non-STEM users.

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

Alana: I am passionate about the need to foster a strong education-to-career pipeline that is inclusive of individuals from diverse backgrounds and non-traditional disciplines. In order to achieve this, I believe that we must develop stronger partnerships with high schools and community colleges, invest in easily accessible and free training and resources, and support existing and new research that may fall outside the traditional scope of HPC. It is also important to promote openness and collaboration within the HPC community, especially in terms of data sharing. By building a more inclusive and collaborative culture, we can create opportunities for individuals from all backgrounds to contribute to the field and pursue fulfilling careers in HPC.