How the XSEDE Scholars Program Fosters Career Opportunities

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XSEDE Scholar Paul Delgado, top right, works with his team at the XSEDE13 conference computer modeling competition in San Diego in July of 2013. Image credit: XSEDE Scholar's Program.

XSEDE Scholar Paul Delgado, top right, works with his team at the XSEDE13 conference computer modeling competition in San Diego in July of 2013. Image credit: XSEDE Scholar’s Program.

Over at XSEDE, Scott Gibson writes that Computational Scientist Paul Delgado Says the XSEDE Scholars Program helped him realize his dream of solving real-life problems.

XSEDE Scholars receive a travel grant to attend the annual XSEDE conference, meet their peers in a special session at the conference and via an online community throughout the year, and participate in at least six online technical training and mentoring webinars with other XSEDE Scholars. The XSP also serves as a connection to internships and other career opportunities.

Delgado says the XSEDE scholarship set the stage for him to receive other honors, one of which was the National Science Foundation Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program fellowship. “That was one of the greatest moments of my life, and I really think I owe a lot to the people I met through XSEDE,” he says. The LSAMP program fellowship provided him full tuition, research funds, and a generous living stipend. As an XSEDE Scholar, Delgado wrote a paper on what eventually became his doctoral dissertation project, which involved parallelizing a problem across computer nodes. He also presented a webinar to his fellow Scholars titled “Qualifying Exams Demystified: Effective strategies to prepare and excel in graduate preliminary, qualifying, and comprehensive exams,” based on his own experiences as a doctoral student.

Now a computational scientist at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation, Delgado working on various problems ranging from thermodynamics to fluid dynamics, solid mechanics, and electrodynamics. “I basically incorporate very advanced mathematical and numerical methods to realize multiphysics simulations for engineering applications,” he explains.

Reflecting on his professional journey of the last few years, Delgado is satisfied with the decisions he’s made and is very grateful for the help he’s received along the way. “I liked teaching for the most part, but I think there’s no comparison to the kind of challenges you get from research,” he says. “I actually get to use everything I’ve learned in graduate school as a part of my day-to-day job, but especially parallel computing skills. I now realize how valuable and marketable those skills really are, and I’m so fortunate to have honed them thoroughly through XSEDE.”

Source: XSEDE

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