Team Information
Location: Lubbock, Texas
Established: 1912
Enrollment: 40,332
Mascots: The Masked Rider
This is the fourth year that Texas Tech has fielded two teams: Team Matador and Team Red Raider. The goal for each of the teams is to, of course, win the overall championship. However, there’s a lot to be said for winning The Battle for Lubbock and beating their cross-campus rivals, right? In 2024, Team Matador finished fourth overall, slipping a little bit from their Bronze Medal performance in 2023. But still a pretty good performance, right? Yeah, until you factor in the fact that their sibling Red Raider team took home first place. Moreover, that was the first TTU championship in the Winter Classic. Ouch.
Heading into 2025, I would have to imagine that Team Matador will be looking for a bit of payback.
The 2025 Matadors are four members strong, all undergraduates, at least one freshman and one sophomore. We’ll add the other team members as we receive the data.
2025 Team Matador
Graysen Gould: "Hello, my name is Graysen Gould, and I’m currently a sophomore here at Texas Tech, where I’m pursuing a degree in Computer Science. Outside of academics, I enjoy unwinding and channeling my creativity through playing the acoustic guitar. On campus, I’m an active member of the Google Developers Student Club, where I serve as the Event Planning lead, helping to organize impactful Computer Science events. I also have done computer programming for quite a few years, my best languages being Python and C. I am particularly interested in fields like Machine Learning and High-Performance Computing, and I look forward to exploring these opportunities and seeing where my career takes me."
Tannar Mitchell: "My name is Tannar Mitchell, and I am a freshman at Texas Tech. I am studying Computer Science, and I plan on minoring in mathematics. In my free time, I like being around animals, running, playing sports, and playing video games. After I graduate, I would like to work as a software engineer at a company where I can see my impact."
Luis Ayerdi-Morales
Batuhan Sencer
Coach: Michael Beebe (PhD candidate, former TTU competitor)
Texas Tech Team Matador: This edition of the Matadors are totally new to HPC (and even Linux), but have picked up the basics under the tutelage of team coach (and former competitor) Michael Beebe. Despite that, the team is doing decently in the early going with an overall seventh place finish after LINPACK and HPCG.
It was a fun interview. I did my best to stir the pot between the Matadors and their cross campus rival Red Raiders. We also went ahead and forced a freshman to make big life decisions during the call, also fun. Another student discussed their upcoming accelerated master’s program, and I think I convinced him to accelerate it even more. Most of them are considering advanced education. When I suggested that maybe taking a break and working in the real world might be helpful, there was a long, long silence on their side. This prompted me to say “boy, you guys really don’t want to go to work, do you?” Much fun in this one.
Matador follow up: It had been quite a while since I checked in on the Matadors and a lot had happened. We started the conversation by discussing the HPC Crash Course, which they thought was very helpful. We also went over their results to date and hit on some topics like profiling (this came up a lot during these interviews) and some alternate ways to approach some of the challenges.
After a slow start, which landed them in seventh, the team has steadily improved. After the PSC Quantum Espresso Challenge, the team is in third place, which is damned good for a group of undergrads with no HPC experience.
As you’ll see in the interview, they’re all interested in HPC/AI careers now, which, again is the point of this whole production. One of the kids said he wanted to do ‘research’, and, when pressed, said he wanted to work for NASA – which is very cool. But this led to me accusing of him of wanting to be a NASA researcher just to impress people in bars. Fun interview and a great team…
2024 Team Matador
2024 Matador Team Roster:
"My name is Ian De Vries, and I'm a junior studying Computer Science at Texas Tech University. I enjoy browsing used bookstores and finding really old books. In the future, I'd like to be employed as a software engineer at a company where I can make the most positive impact. Currently, I am proficient in Python and the C programming language."
"Hello, my name is Jonathan McPherson, and I am a Junior at Texas Tech University who is pursuing a Computer Science degree and an Electrical Engineering minor. My hobbies include: D&D, Video Games, Soccer, Programming, and ECE Projects. I just have a passion for computers. My technical skills mostly fall under programming languages I've learned such as: Java, Javascript, C, C++, C#, and Python. This year I've made a theme for myself to be application. I want to take my skills and apply them to more projects to expand my horizons while I learn more and see how much I've learned. In the future I would my career future to take me to a place where I can work on computers and possibly EE components, which took me to this competition to understand computers at their base level and scaling them all the way up to clusters."
"My name is Nicholas Anderson, I am a Senior at Texas Tech university, dual majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics. My interests are obviously CS and Math, but also Martial Arts. I enjoy learning new and challenging things, and I feel like that reflects in my interests. Academically, I hope to make it into a good PhD program once I finish my undergraduate career and move into either research on artificial intelligence or algorithm efficiency in complex simulations. Once I finish up my schooling I hope to continue doing research, but I have not made a decision yet on where I would prefer to grow my career. All I know is I want the research I am doing to affect other people's lives, even if I do not get to witness it."
Faculty Advisors/Coaches
- Michael Beebe
2023 Team Matador
From left to right: Ryan Lee, Nicholas Anderson, Yoo min (David) Park, Yash Sharma, Isaac Doggett, and Caleb Canales.
"My name is Yoo min Park and I am one of the members of the Team Matadors for the 2023 Winter Student Cluster Competition.
A couple of things about me, I am a junior at Texas Tech University studying Computer Science and I have a huge interest in technology as well as learning new things. I do not have much experience with Linux or HPC but I am very excited about joining and learning from this experience."
2022 Matador
2022 Matador Team Roster:
- Adam Rusaw
- Braden Ross
- Samuel O Adetunji
- Stephen Devaney
Faculty Advisors/Coaches
- Dr. Yong Chen
- Misha Ahmadian
Texas Tech Matadors/Red Raiders Dinner – the Sequel: In the second video, we find the team at “Torchy’s Tacos”, another fine Lubbock institution. This place has a hilarious menu, including entries dubbed “Trailer Park”, “Tipsy Chick”, “Tokyo Drifter”, and the ever popular “MoFaux.” With the Trailer Park taco, there’s a “Make it Trashy” option that substitutes queso for lettuce. The team and I bantered about their meals, the competition standings, and what was coming up in a fun filled video. Check it out.
Texas Tech Matadors/Red Raiders Meal Night #1: this was pretty cool, the team manager, the Mighty Misha Ahmadian, got both teams together not once, but twice for meals events. Their first bread-breaking took place at the “One Guy From Italy” Italian restaurant in Lubbock, TX.
What really made me smile was obvious it was that the teams were having a good time together. During this first meal, I shared the ORNL final results with them, which were pretty good. The Matadors scored 95% and the Red Raiders took home a perfect 100%. During the video, I passed judgement on their meal choices in an even-handed way, handing out plaudits for the meat-oriented selections and expressing doubt about a buffalo cheese and chicken pizza and Margharita pizza selection
Texas Tech Matador Update: This was a very consistent team, typically nailing down fourth or fifth place in every task. Through talking with them, you can see that they’re improving and growing stronger as the competition marches on. During this call, I gave them their Oak Ridge results (95%), which pleased them despite the fact that four teams scored 100% on this task. We explored student career aspirations, with most of the students already having their immediate futures mapped out with internships, school, or full-time positions in areas as diverse as automotive and financial services. I prove once again that my short-term memory is shot as I mix them up with students from the other TTU team.
Texas Tech University – Team Matador: Texas Tech is a first time entrant into the Winter Classic cluster competitions and, as is typical for Texas, they’re going big with two teams – the Matadors and the Red Raiders. Throughout the call, I do my best to stir up a bitter rivalry between the two teams. The Matadors grabbed fourth place in both LINPACK and HPCG, which is when we recorded this interview. Right now, a disappointing result on the HPC Pop Quiz set them back, hopefully temporarily, to sixth place overall – four slits behind their chief rivals the Red Raiders. We finish out our conversation with Team Matador with some Texas food talk, Bucky’s chat, and the promise of free snacks for their team meetings.