HPC Students Program

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

The HPC 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 initially works with UCSD undergraduates, and will be expanded to include other groups as time and budget permits.

Announcements 

Spring, 2022
Supercomputing 22 Student Programs Announced @ https://sc22.supercomputing.org/program/studentssc/
Consider applying to become a Student Volunteer or participate in the Student Cluster Competition 2022 announcement.
Jan 14,  2022
SDSC Annual HPC User Training Series for 2022 open for registration. See details HERE.
5/26/21 SDSC/UCSD SCC21 Team Selected to compete in the SC 2021 Virtual Student Cluster Competition! Watch this page for updates: https://hpc-students.sdsc.edu/2021/06/01/SDSC-UCSD-Team-Selected-for-SCC21.html

Join the HPC Students announcement mailing list: https://sc22.supercomputing.org/program/studentssc/  (choose "Join Group")

 

 Key Goals:

  • To facilitate and increase interactions between the San Diego Supercomputer Center and UCSD students.
  • To educate and train students in all things HPC: parallel programming, running applications, learning hardware.
  • To connect students to the wider world of HPC through events, meetings, interactions with industry, attending meetings.
  • To participate in HPC 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 User Training

SDSC supports training of its user community, including students, in all aspects of High-performance computing (HPC). The HPC User Training activity is designed to promote workforce development in technologies needed to work in HPC. The HPC Students training is provided free to all UCSD students (both graduate and undergraduate), post-docs, and other researchers. Plans are under way to offer this training to faculty, staff, and collaborators on SDSC systems.

The scope of the training effort includes several skill development activities, including:

  • Study HPC architectures, software, and admin skills.
  • Learn the basics of parallel programming, including MPI using C, Fortran, and possibly other languages.
  • Gain experience in cloud computing
  • Running HPC applications in the areas of benchmarking and performance characterization of the cluster, bioinformatics, numerical methods, password security, and other applications.
  • Visualization and analysis of big data sets.

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 Projects & Activities:

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 activities. 

Student Club Services

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.

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
In 2021, San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and UC San Diego have begun co-mentoring SCC teams. This year the team was selected SC22 Supercomputing conference in Dallas, TX.  SCC was developed in 2007 to immerse undergraduate and high school students in high performance computing.  The SCC teams consist of 6 students who will design and build a small cluster with support from mentors and hardware and software vendor partners.  They will learn designated scientific applications and apply optimization techniques for their chosen architectures. 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.  All team members are invited to attend the conference.
This years team was again selected to participate in the SCC22 competition. Last years SCC21 team placed 4th/10 teams in the overall competition. Check out this news article on our SCC21 team! See our SCC Team page for more information on our teams.
SCC22 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 SC22 Student Volunteer webpages for details.

 

Student Internship Positions:

SDSC paid internship positions are listed on Handshake. More info on Handshake can be found on TritonLlink. 

 

Become a Sponsor of HPC Students

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

Join the HPC Students announcement mailing list @ https://sc22.supercomputing.org/program/studentssc/