Study Abroad Summer Program for Graduate Students Using Research Computing

By Megan Johnson, NCSA
A graduate cap on a motherboard.

Are you a graduate student who’d like to learn more about High-Performance Computing? Perhaps you’re getting ready to plan your postdoc research and want to include supercomputing in your work. A new opportunity for U.S.-based students might be just the thing you’re looking for.

The 15th International HPC Summer School will be held July 6–11 in Lisbon, Portugal. Thanks to sponsorship by ACCESS Resource Providers (RPs), the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), students from the U. S. are eligible to enroll in the program in 2025. The deadline to apply is 23:59 AOE (Anywhere On Earth), January 31, 2025.

This unique program will offer students a wealth of information about the growing world of research computing and using cyberinfrastructure (CI) in advanced research. This weeklong expense-paid program will give students access to experts from some of the biggest HPC centers around the world, helping the best students in computational science learn more about the research computing tools they use in their work. Mentorship is just one facet of this summer program – participants will also gain valuable connections from their time working with international researchers, HPC experts and other students working with CI. These connections will facilitate the exchange of knowledge and ideas, as well as create new employment opportunities for attendees.

Throughout the weeklong program, the mentors will guide participants through a number of topics that will help students maximize the potential of their research.

Some of the planned topics will cover:

  • HPC and Big Data challenges in major scientific disciplines: short, high-level introductions to a variety of science areas, with a focus on HPC-related simulation approaches and algorithmic challenges in the respective fields. 
  • Shared-memory programming: Using OpenMP to learn how to use the multiple cores present in modern processors, as well as related issues and optimizations.
  • Performance analysis and optimization on modern CPUs and GPUs: the basics of performance engineering, how to collect profiles and traces and how to identify potential performance bottlenecks based on the collected profiles and traces.
  • Big Data analytics: how to use the powerful and popular Spark framework to analyze very large data sets and integrate this with machine learning techniques.
  • Deep learning: extend already-learned machine learning techniques to the leading edge with deep learning (also known as neural networks) using the standard TensorFlow framework.
  • Scientific visualization: how to use 3D visualization tools for large scientific data sets.
  • Australian, Canadian, European, Japanese and U.S. HPC infrastructures: information covered will include resources available in your part of the world and how to access them.

Applicants should have a basic understanding of research computing and familiarity with C/C++ or Fortran. Students from any research discipline are welcome to apply, as long as their research activities include computational work. To apply, visit the International HPC Summer School page where you’ll also find a full list of application requirements and more information about this opportunity.

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