The Student Training and Engagement Program (STEP) is just one of the great offerings hosted by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s ACCESS program. Envisioned as a way to bring new experts into the field of cyberinfrastructure, STEP has promoted the development of a diverse, competitive STEM workforce by providing opportunities to students, with a focus on recruiting and enrolling those from underrepresented groups (Black, Hispanic, American Indian) and any who identify as women.

“Our main goal is to contribute to raising the level of awareness about cyberinfrastructure as a viable career path while also providing students with high-quality training that will lead them in the workforce,” said Winona Snapp-Childs, Ph.D., STEP director and chief operating officer of Indiana University’s Pervasive Technology Institute (PTI). “It’s important that our current cyberinfrastructure expertise gets shared with the next generation of cyberinfrastructure professionals.”

This year, STEP received a record number of applications, proving the high demand for internships in High-Performance Computing (HPC). Interns who completed the second leg of the internship, STEP-2, continue to find the program highly rewarding. Kevin Dong is a first-year Master’s student at the University of Pennsylvania. He’s studying computer science and was placed with ACCESS Operations staff who were working on a project to implement a new design for existing and new infrastructure pages on the ACCESS website. “Before participating in STEP I barely knew this field, so the program did a pretty good job in introducing me to this exciting arena,” he said. Being in STEP gave Dong some new options to consider once he graduates. “I think Cyberinfrastructure (CI) is a very interesting and challenging field of work, and I will definitely consider it in the future.”

Kalia Dowd is a rising senior at Trinity College, double majoring in Psychology and Computer Science. She has an interest in national security, so was placed with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications cybersecurity team at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to learn more about securing CI resources. Students in STEP2 are taken to the annual PEARC conference during the summer, and for Dowd, this was a highlight of the program. “PEARC24 was definitely the coolest part of STEP-2,” she said.

Leslie Hernandez, an incoming junior at Stetson University, is majoring in computer science and is part of the pre-engineering program. She got to work directly with the HPC resources. “The work I focused on in STEP was in the networking area in hardware maintenance to ensure the test rack switches in the machine room at NCSA were up to date with the latest firmware available.” She was even able to see a supercomputer in the process of being put together. “The coolest thing I did in STEP-2 was visiting the NPCF (National Petascale Computing Facility) building and being able to see some of the process when DeltaAI was being installed.”

Sharon Colson is one of the STEP-2 interns who will be going on to STEP-3, a year-long internship embedded with one of the resource providers for ACCESS. Colson is a senior computer science student at Tennessee Tech University who is minoring in science and humanities with a concentration in data science and artificial intelligence.

“My focus during STEP has been in operations,” she said, “specifically in software-defined networking. The team that I have been working with is the AtlanticWave-SDX project. My team members are based at Florida International University in Miami, but the project collaborates with teams in other locations as well.”

Colson has found the work to be fascinating and the main driver for her interest in continuing the program. “I am developing a Python library for use in Jupyter Notebooks. It simplifies the network setup process by abstracting away the complexities involved, making it easier for users to configure and manage networks efficiently. The really cool part of it is that researchers will be able to use the library to set up their network configurations with minimal effort, allowing them to focus more on their research and less on the technical setup.”

I’m passionate about making the technology as easy to use as possible so that the researchers can focus on the research. Being able to do this with my internship project has been a nice bonus to the technical skills that I have improved and enhanced.

–Sharon Colson, STEP intern

Colson’s plans have been to pursue a career in CI for some time now. Once she found out about it, STEP was the only summer internship she applied for. “I had work already lined up on my campus as a student research computing and data facilitator for the HPC system administrator, Dr. Mike Renfro, and I was looking forward to working as his teaching assistant for the Tennessee Governor’s School for Emerging Technology,” Colson said. “Last summer, we had a group of seven high school students that we worked with over the month of June, teaching basic principles of high-performance computing (HPC). We worked through the OpenHPC install guide with them and configured a very basic HPC using eight surplus (slated for disposal) servers. It was very satisfying watching them learn and seeing how excited they were doing their final presentations.”

Colson was all set with her summer plans until she heard about the STEP program. She has no regrets about the decision to work as an intern for ACCESS. “When the STEP opportunity came to my attention, I saw it as a perfect opportunity to add to my skill set. My experience reinforced that I have chosen my path wisely.  It was also a really great way to learn something new, as my knowledge of networking was nonexistent at the beginning of the summer. I chose it because I like to learn new things and explore new challenges. This is why a career in cyberinfrastructure and research computing is appealing to me; I like new and varying challenges.

Colson further praises the program for filling a training gap in the world of HPC. “There’s a significant opportunity to introduce students to the diverse and rewarding career paths within cyberinfrastructure,” she said. “While industry and research roles often take center stage, the critical support functions that underpin these areas are often overlooked. The STEP program is working to bridge this gap by providing students with valuable experience in research support.”

STEP is particularly positioned to help students at smaller institutions where access to CI resources is rarer, especially for students interested in learning about them, something Colson recognizes well. “My own journey into research computing was largely fortuitous. I was drawn to the position of Student Research Computing and Data Facilitator because it aligned with my desire to contribute to the campus community. This role has provided invaluable experience and a deeper appreciation for the importance of cyberinfrastructure, but I am not certain that this type of opportunity is available for many other students, especially at smaller universities.”

You can read more about STEP-2 intern experiences here, and you can find STEP-3 intern stories here. If you’re interested in applying to the STEP program, the application period opens again early next year.