I had a great conversation with Dr. Niraj Nepal and Valerie Rossi from PSC. Dr. Nepal is a condensed matter physicist at PSC, so he’s an expert in QE and probably runs it more than I run Excel. Valerie manages educational outreach programs at PSC, and has run a few student cluster competition teams, so she gets what these competitions are all about and what they can do for students and the industry.
In the video, we discuss both topics in a wide-ranging conversation.
PSC did a great job of mentoring and also in helping us provide a long-term HPC training program for future Winter Classic competitions. Valerie walked me through setting up my company as an ACCESS organization, then getting an allocation, and then getting the students signed up. It all worked out great and is really going to do a lot of good for a lot of future HPC community members.
It helps us complete the loop so that schools who don’t have specific HPC courses or resources can still participate and excel in our competition. Coupled with the curated version of the Linux Foundation intro to Linux, any group of students can form their own team, learn Linux and HPC concepts through hands-on exercises, and then join the fray. We’re working on other ideas to enhance the competition, more on that later….
Next up is our gala Closing Ceremony….coming soon….