The seventh International HPC summer school in 2016 took take place in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia and European Green Capital 2016, from June 26 to July 1. This unique event brought together 80 excellent students from many parts of the world, to participate for one week in an exciting program coupled with dedicated mentoring and networking.
XSEDE reports that this year’s International Summer School on HPC Challenges in Computational Sciences was a rousing success.
A total of 79 graduate students and postdoctoral scholars from 18 countries from institutions in Canada, Europe, Japan and the United States gathered in the European Green Capital 2016, in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in the last week of June 2016. These students were selected from among the best in theirs fields through a rigorous review process from several hundred applications, to participate in the Seventh Annual International Summer School on HPC Challenges in Computational Sciences. Twenty-seven nationalities and four continents were represented, with a female participation of 23 percent.
The summer school was jointly sponsored by the European Union H2020 Framework Program’s Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe Implementation Phase project (PRACE-4IP), the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), Japan’s RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (RIKEN AICS), and Compute/Calcul Canada. Leading Canadian, European, Japanese and United States computational scientists and high-performance computing technologists offered instruction and advice on a variety of topics, including:
- European, U.S., Japanese, and Canadian supercomputing infrastructures
- HPC challenges in disciplines such as life sciences, materials science, earth sciences, engineering, astrophysics
- HPC programming proficiencies
- Performance analysis and profiling
- Data-intensive computing
- Scientific visualization
In addition to promoting knowledge of high-performance computing and its applications, by bringing together participants and presenters from 18 countries, the workshop also encourages international collaborations and friendships. The multi-disciplinary program, representing different areas of computational sciences along with important HPC aspects from computer science, dedicated mentoring and the strong interaction among people from all over the world have all contributed to the uniqueness of this annual series of HPC summer school.
Below are a few quotes from the student participant evaluations:
This program is an excellent mix of high performance computing knowledge and meeting international people involved in the field. There are a lot of training programs in the USA, but very few of them combine it with interaction of international colleagues and immersion in another culture.”
“I would rate this school as excellent since it featured very good, approachable speakers, covered a variety of topics and brought nice networking opportunities with both people in my field and in other fields, who were encountering similar high performance computing problems, from all over the world (and the delicious food and beautiful setting in Ljubljana were of course also much appreciated).”
“To be honest, this is the most useful school I have attended so far. This is mostly due to the hands-on sessions where you can directly try out the techniques you have learned and always can ask questions directly. Also this is due to the personal mentor that is assigned to you, such that there is always that one person you are less shy to approach and ask questions of any kind.”
This was the seventh in an ongoing series of summer schools, this year jointly organized by Compute/Calcul Canada, PRACE, RIKEN, and XSEDE. Planning has begun for the eighth summer school, to be held during the summer of 2017 in North America.
