HPC Creates CommUNITY – A New Initiative

Spring is here. The sun is shining. Flowers are blooming. There is a sense of renewal and optimism. New opportunities waft through the air. This is especially true for SC24 organizers as they focus on bringing this year’s HPC Creates-themed conference to Atlanta’s Georgia World Congress Center in November. By then it will be fall, but the feeling of fresh opportunities will linger as the conference rolls out its newest pioneering program, the CommUNITY Computing Initiative (CommUNITY@SC24), aimed at strengthening the high-performance computing (HPC) community in and around the Atlanta area by fostering inclusivity and creating new ties among its participants.

Spearheaded by Veronica Melesse Vergara, SC24 Inclusivity Chair, and supported by Angie Asmus, SC24 SCinet Chair, CommUNITY@SC24 aims to open new paths for underserved communities into HPC. This year’s program will offer tailored workshops, hands-on training sessions, and mentoring opportunities designed to empower individuals with the skills and knowledge necessary to thrive in HPC, networking, and other related fields. By launching CommUNITY@SC24 in Atlanta, SC24 expects to bring fresh perspectives into the HPC ecosystem while creating deep HPC roots that will grow and thrive long after the conference has passed.

Many are familiar with the Women in IT Networking at SC (WINS) program, celebrated for its role in advancing women within SCinet. SCinet builds the world’s most powerful temporary network to support the data movement needs for SC throughout the week it is active. Building on the success and lessons learned from WINS, the CommUNITY@SC24 Professional Development program will extend the impact of these efforts while leaving the seed of a unique community in its wake in the SC’s host cities. With this year’s pilot program will target underserved and underrepresented groups, creating a broad, inclusive platform for professional development, networking, and mentorship. By building on the success of WINS, SC24 hopes to create a winning formula that not only celebrates diversity but actively cultivates it, ensuring the HPC community becomes more reflective of the world it aims to innovate.

“The inception of the CommUNITY Computing Initiative was truly a collaborative effort,” Melesse Vergara shared. As she took on the role of Inclusivity Chair, she explained her priority was to use the lessons learned from her experiences as a Latina and international student in computing in the United States. 

“My experience with the WINS program and its success made me think about how we could extend diversity efforts beyond WINS,” added Asmus, who also serves as Interim Director of Network and Telecommunications at Colorado State University. “Verónica and I share a deep-rooted philosophy of giving back to the community where the conference is held, and we saw the this new program as an opportunity to do so while also enhancing diversity at SC.”

“During an SC planning meeting, Angie and I both expressed an interest in creating a program that reaches out to underserved groups and provides them with resources to engage with the opportunities that HPC and AI are creating in virtually every industry today,” Melesse Vergara explained.

At the heart of the CommUNITY@SC24 Professional Development program is a two-pronged professional development opportunity for underserved communities in the Atlanta region. The two specialized tracks include one for networking engineers and another for systems administrators — a strategy that allows participants to develop specific skills relevant to their interests and career aspirations.

The networking engineering track will open the door to being on the SCinet networking team, collaborating with some of the brightest networking professionals in the world to design and construct the world’s fastest and most powerful temporary network. The systems administrators track, a novel addition to this year’s program, will engage participants in building a small HPC cluster — another fresh program SCinet is launching for SC24. 

“We are piloting the systems administrator program to provide an opportunity for SCinet volunteers to gain exposure to the operational dynamics of HPC systems,” she explained. “Many network engineers don’t have the opportunity to work with high-performance systems.

Getting hands-on experience is a real challenge. With AI becoming such an emerging technology, broadening people’s technical skills is important. It’s been great to see these ideas merge into something that hopefully can create new opportunities for people to learn and develop career paths that might not otherwise have been possible.”

“Many network engineers don’t have the opportunity to work with high-performance systems. Getting hands-on experience is a real challenge.”

For Melesse Vergara, the motivations for breaking down barriers into HPC are personal, stemming from her experience studying systems engineering at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador to pursuing a doctorate in data science and engineering at the University of Tennessee while finding her path to becoming the Section Head of HPC Operations for the National Center for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Melesse Vergara’s road included gaining exposure to the HPC industry through the SC Conference in New Orleans as a student volunteer.

“My journey in HPC began as a student volunteer at SC10,” she recounted, highlighting how the experience opened her eyes to the possibilities within HPC and drove her to pursue a career beyond her initial plan in software engineering.

Her path through roles at a collection of universities and now at ORNL has shaped her career and advocacy for diversity and inclusion in the tech world.

“The lack of representation of women and Latinas in computing was a major motivator for me,” said Melesse Vergara. “As a woman, Latina, and international student in the U.S., I encountered numerous barriers in accessing opportunities during my undergraduate and graduate studies. My goal as the Inclusivity Chair has been to identify the obstacles and support these communities in not only attending the SC conference, but also in becoming integrated and feeling part of the community long term.”

“My goal has been to identify the obstacles and support these communities in not only attending SC, but also in becoming integrated and feeling part of the community long term.”

According to Melesse Vergara, the idea for the CommUNITY Computing Initiative has been an instant hit with the SC24 leadership. 

“Phil Roth, the SC24 General Chair, has been very supportive of the project and encouraged us to pursue it — he was all in from the beginning,” she said, noting that the conference’s support provides the program with the resources it needs and sends a message about the value of diversity and inclusion to those involved with the conference.

But more help is needed. Melesse Vergara and Asmus are working to ensure the program will have a sufficiently broad reach in this formation stage to inspire enough people to apply. 

“Getting the word out about this program is one of the biggest challenges we have, combined with getting candidates to understand the value of participating,” explained Asmus. “The program could be a huge value to their career development, but it’s hard for candidates to really understand just how valuable it is until you can get your hands dirty and experience everything that goes into it. We do have a lot of great contacts in the Atlanta area, but we hope the community at large will help to evangelize it and encourage people to get involved.”

Melesse Vergara added, “We really hope that it continues every year in the communities that the SC Conference visits and that the people who get involved stay connected to each other and the HPC community long after the experience is over.” 

“Getting the word out about this program is one of the biggest challenges we have, combined with getting candidates to understand the value of participating,” explained Asmus.

For more information about the program, including application details, objectives, selection criteria, and timeline.

If you have questions about this new program, please contact the Inclusivity committee.