Quick story about how UC Riverside made their way into the Winter Classic. It started in a hotel lobby bar at SC24 in Atlanta. HPC education mainstay Elizabeth Leake introduced me to a UC Riverside student who had never heard of the Winter Classic but wondered if he could get a team together. I gave him a card and said to reach out, he followed up in December and there we go. First time bar entrant for the Winter Classic, probably not the last.
While none of the members have a lot of direct HPC experience, they are all computing enthusiasts from way back in high school or earlier – programming, coding their own games, and stuff like that. There was a great example of a “big dog” when the last student to introduce himself casually mentioned he was coding his own games back in elementary school. I had to ask him if he was using an assembler (he wasn’t), because if he was, then I was going to advise him to leave school and go pro right now, he’s ready for it.
Anyway, a fun interview and a team to keep an eye on for sure.