Team Information
Location: Camarillo, California
Established: 2002
Enrollment: 7,000
Mascots: Ekhos the Dolphin
With CSU Channel Islands once again entering two teams in the 2025 Winter Classic, it’s safe to say that HPC fever has a solid foothold in Camarillo, California. Both Channel Island teams (Nautical Processing and The baraCUDAs) are full size, meaning that each has six undergrad students, the largest number allowed by law.
Team baraCUDAs students are new to this, or any other, student cluster competition. At this point, we don’t know if any of them have HPC experience or if they’ve been prepping for the upcoming trial by fire. We’ll learn a lot more about them as the competition gets underway.
2025 baraCUDAs Team Roster:
- Devin Prothero: "Hi, my name is Devin Prothero and I’m a Junior majoring in Computer Science at Cal State Channel Islands University. My interests include programming (of course), playing games, going for walks, and making pottery."
- Kieron Roe: "I’m Kieron Roe and I’m a Junior at Cal State University Channel Islands. I am majoring in computer science and minoring in robotics engineering."
- Rhythm Bansal: "Hi, I’m Rhythm, a Computer Science sophomore student at CSU Channel Islands. I’m passionate about technology, problem-solving, and exploring innovative solutions. I’m interested in AI, software development, etc and how it can make a real-world impact. Outside of academics, I enjoy listening to music and dancing a lot."
- Daniel Delgado: "I’m Daniel Delgado, I’m currently majoring in Computer Science and I’m a Junior. I’m interested in fishing, outdoors, video games and learning. Looking forward to participating in this competition this being my first time working with anything of the sort."
- Noah Soriano: "Hi my name is Noah Soriano. I'm a CSUCI Student majoring in comp sci. I'm a senior. I'm interested in gardening, hiking, snowboarding, cooking, exercising, and making small coding projects"
- Duc Le: "My name is Duc Le, and I’m a senior Computer Science student at CSU Channel Islands. My interests include automation for large-scale execution. Outside of academics, I enjoy exercising daily, playing video games, and watching documentaries."
Faculty Advisor/Coach: Dr. Scott Feister
First Interview: This is one of two teams from Cal State University Channel Islands, located in lovely Camarillo, CA. While Channel Islands has been sending two teams to the Winter Classic since 2022, most of the students on this team are new to HPC and Linux, but they do have a few who have some level of HPC chops.
So far in the competition, the team had nailed down third place on LINPACK and fourth on HPCG (by only one tenth of a point!) So after the first module, they were third overall and had some momentum heading into the grueling HPC Crash Course Exam. In the interview, we kick around the first module, what they did, and I give them a preview of the upcoming Oak Ridge Quantum Challenge.
baraCUDA follow up:
We caught up with Team barraCUDA before the final judging interview and kicked around what’s been going on with them. I gave them a scoring update up through the AWS WRF challenge (LINK). The team did well overall but stumbled a bit on the most difficult challenges (Oak Ridge Quantum, AWS WRF), which is certainly understandable and not uncommon this year.
Most of the team said they learned a lot during the competition, saying that the training and hand-on was really helpful when it came to understanding how HPC really works. One student didn’t get much out of it, he was expecting something very different. But that’s ok too, he was honest and direct (and lengthy!) in his feedback and that’s cool.
2024 High Performance Dolphins Deluxe II
2024 Team B Roster:
- Taylor Mack
- Sarthak Musmade
- Grace Reilly
- Seth Curtin
- Berkhan Berkdemir
Faculty Advisor/Coach: Dr. Scott Feister
2023 Channel Islands: Team High Performance Dolphins Deluxe
- Bennett Rousseau
- Berkhan Berkdemir
- Harrison Power
- Lars Haavaldsen
Team Faculty Advisor/Coach: Dr. Scott Feister
Berkhan Berkdemir: "I'm Berkhan Berkdemir and I am a computer science undergraduate student in California State University, Channel Islands. I am originally from Turkey but I have been studying computer science in both Santa Monica Collage and California State University, Channel Islands since 2017. I am interested in the high performance computing for the academic research."
Lars Haavaldsen: "I am a Computer Science and Cybersecurity student in my Junior year at CSUCI, and I also work for CSUCI’s ITS Solution Center. Outside of school I love being outside, hiking, biking, running or backpacking, I love it all! I also make music and recently have been building a modular synthesizer!"
Harrison Power: "My name is Harrison Power and I am a Computer Science Major at CSU Channel Islands. I’m originally from Hawaii but I’ve been living in California for about the last 10 years. When I’m not geeking out over computers, I like to practice Muay Thai, ride my motorcycle, and write."
Bennett Rousseau: "I am a senior mechatronics student at CSUCI. Most of my experience has been related to robotics but I do have an interest in high performance computing."
2022 Ekos Engineers
Cal State Channel Islands – Ekhos Engineers: First, the team name is based on their school mascot, a dolphin, and it’s echolocation capabilities. They have five members, including one who is competing while physically located in the UK. A mix of juniors and seniors, most have some computer science background, but none have had much exposure with HPC, so this is a baptism by fire. The team turned in good results on both LINPACK and HPCG, earning a seventh-place spot overall. Better yet, they’re slightly ahead of their chief rival, the CSCI Don’t Panic team, but only by a handful of percentage points. The team is looking forward to the NASA module, which is taking place the week of 3/7.