Team Information
Location: Albuquerque, NM
Established: 1889
Enrollment: 25,400
Mascots: Lobo
The University of New Mexico is fielding two teams in the 2025 Winter Classic, making it two years in a row. They’re also sticking to tradition, using legacy Lobos and Roadrunners as the team monikers.
The 2024 edition of the Lobos finished an overall third and took home the Bronze Medal, a solid improvement over their fifth place finish in 2023. The 2025 team looks pretty good with six undergrads, including two members who have previous Winter Classic and also SC cluster competition experience. While the Lobos won the Battle of Albuquerque over cross-campus rivals the Roadrunners (who finished 5th in 2024), it was close, with the two teams swapping places on the leaderboard four times over the six scoring competition modules. So there’s no room for complacency on either team.
2025 Team Lobos Roster:
Sumaya Houssini: "My name is Sumaya Houssini Mohamed, and I am a senior computer science student at the University of New Mexico. I plan to graduate in December 2025. Currently, I work at the UNM Center for Advanced Research Computing, where I assist HPC cluster users."
Alex Knigge: "I am a third-year undergraduate Computer Science student at the University of New Mexico and this will be my third Winter Classic. I conduct HPC research with the UNM Moses Biocomputational Lab and work at the UNM Center for Advanced Research Computing where I provide technical support to HPC researchers. My research interests are in environmental modeling and sustainable HPC. I am excited to support UNM's teams as team manager and tackle the challenges from the Winter Classic sponsors."
Alex Maynes: "I am a U.S. Air Force veteran recently separated after nearly 5 years of service, and am continuing my education at UNM as a 3rd year in computer science. I will be applying to the shared credit masters program this spring 2025 semester, and hope to continue into a PhD afterwards specializing in computational neuroscience."
Reece Ransby: "I'm currently a senior Computer Science major working as a research lab assistant in Computational Biomodelling and Simulation with faculty. I plan to graduate in 2026 and move directly into the Master's program to become a better researcher and work with cancer."
Jonathan Tessema: "My name is Jonathan Tessema and I am attending the University of New Mexico for a degree in Computer Engineering and Psychology. I am currently working as a researcher at the University of New Mexico and plan on working with Sandia National Laboratories this coming spring. I have a strong interest in performance/ optical engineering with a touch of Machine Learning. I love spending time learning about new technological techniques that can benefit the world and my future endeavors."
Faculty Advisor/Coach: Dr. Matthew Fricke
First Interview: Very solid team with good HPC and this isn’t their first cluster competition rodeo. They’ve been in the Winter Classic since 2022 and have also sent teams to the SC competitions a couple of times.
They’ve been a bit snakebit in this Winter Classic, however, turning in a, well, bad LINPACK score. I think it was a mistaken submission; I know that they had better runs than what they turned in. They recovered a bit on HPCG and the HPC Crash Course exam.
But, and this is a big but….they knocked the ORNL Quantum Challenge out of the park and that was a big deal. In the interview we also find out that these students are seriously ambitious and all of them are certain to find a place in HPC/AI when they want it, so employers should take a look.
Lobo Follow Up: Let’s get this out of the way first: this is a crappy video. I use Zoom and always set it to record to the cloud, which gives me separate video and audio streams. The local computer recording gave me one video and one audio stream. The team deserves better, damn it. A strongly worded letter on finely crafted paper is called for.
Anyway, I managed to cobble together a video. This is a good interview and should be seen and heard. We start out with a little chit chat and then discuss Oak Ridge and their quantum shenanigans. This was the high point for Team Lobo this year, they beat the rest of the field on the Quantum Challenge, you gotta see and hear their reaction when they heard that.
There’s no question that this has been an off year for the Lobos. They had a submission mistake that resulted in a terrible LINPACK score and it just sort of set the tone, I think. They’re a highly experienced team overall, but the Big Board is merciless.
We discussed the various ins and outs of the challenges, which showcased that they know their stuff. I really have to respect team captain Alex Knigge’s approach. She had the most HPC experience and competition experience. But rather than do it all, she leaned more towards helping both teams learn the skills. Admirable, right?
2024 Team Lobos
"I'm Finn Ellis, a junior at the University of New Mexico majoring in computer science with a minor in business. I have a love for learning, and I discovered programming making video games throughout high school. I have a background in martial arts and really enjoy insightful discussion especially relating to philosophy or life experiences. I have a passion for entrepreneurship and see myself starting my own business highlighted by my skills in resourcefulness, programming, and communication."
"My name is Vincent Hilario, I am an undergraduate CS student at the University of New Mexico. My main interest in Computer Science lies in Extended Reality (VR/AR/MR) as evidenced by my internship at Sandia National Labs, but I recently became infatuated with optimizing computation performance which lead me to want to learn more about High Performance Computing and Quantum Computation. Outside of school, I enjoy playing volleyball and badminton. I am also a semi-avid reader, currently reading A Storm of Swords from the ASOIAF series."
Jimmy Hoang: "My name is Jimmy Hoang. I'm currently a sophomore at the University of New Mexico studying Computer Science. I've always been on the computer since I was a child and that just naturally led to me studying computer science. Outside of school, I have a large range of interests that goes from playing video games (really into Tekken 8 right now) to scuba diving (want to get my license soon) to biking (also need to get my license) and that carries into computer science. I'm interested in a lot of fields and am unsure of which subfield I want to dive into in the future."
"Hi! My name is Alex Knigge and I am a second-year student at the University of New Mexico. I am double majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics. For fun, I play trombone and baritone in the basketball band at UNM called Soundpack. I also love the outdoors, so I want to use my degree for environmental conservation and sustainability. I look forward to honing my HPC skills as a second-year participant in the 2024 Winter Classic."
"Hello, I'm Abdalaziz Raad, a Computer Science sophomore at The University of New Mexico. My academic focus is on visualization within the High-Performance Computing (HPC) field, and I aspire to contribute my skills to a pharmaceutical company dedicated to advancing medicine."
Ryan Scherbarth: "I am a senior working toward a bachelors in Computer Science w/ minor in Math. Currently, I am working concurrent internships at Sandia National Labs, as part of the Performance Engineering team, where I am working on optimization of HPC programs, including on the Astra cluster. I am also working for the University of New Mexico, where half of my time is spent as a faculty advisor for cs491: High Performance Computing, and the other half is spent at the Center for Advanced Research Computing, supporting users on the UNM owner HPC clusters."
Faculty Advisor/Coach
- Dr. Matthew Fricke
2023 Team Lobos
"Sachi Barnaby is a sophomore majoring in computer science. She is currently researching robotic cooperative transport inspired by ants, and she is interested in interdisciplinary work related to robotics and complex systems. Outside of the classroom, she plays the oboe in the Symphony Orchestra."
"Carter Frost is a transfer student from Santa Cruz, California he is just starting his third semester here at UNM. For over 10 years he worked in cybersecurity working on private key infrastructure like national ID systems, Certificate management and private key storage systems called HSMs(systems that establish and maintain trust). He has been taught at Cabrillo College/PVUSD engineering camps well over the 7 years, as well as being a supplemental instructor at Cabrillo College. Carter got into robotics ~5 years ago initially through his local community college in California (Cabrillo College's) Robotics club, He worked remotely with UNM's Moses Biological Computation Lab on various projects like with NASA's Houston space center on a new class of rovers for the Moon & Project ChiliHouse but he has made the move out to Albuquerque and is now working on UNM's VolCAN team."
"Alex Knigge is a first-year Computer Science student at the University of New Mexico. She is a former intern at the Center for High Technology Materials doing research on waveguides for optical lasers while her current research interests at Sandia National Laboratories involve environmental modeling and simulations. She also plays trombone for UNM’s Soundpack Band and is involved with the UNM Esports team."
"Ellie Larence is a junior studying computer science. Her current work focuses on encoding immunological signals to enhance SIMCoV, an agent-based model of SARS-CoV-2 infection, and is particularly interested in computational solutions to biological problems. She enjoys eating and making elaborate baked goods."
"Abigail Pribisova is a senior studying computer science at the University of New Mexico. Throughout her undergraduate degree, she has conducted research on mathematical and computational models of viral spread, satisfiability and interpolation algorithms, discrete event simulations, network theory, and applied machine intelligence. She also plays five instruments."
"Ryan Scherbarth is a sophomore Computer Science student at the University of New Mexico. Interested in the Cyber Security space, he previously worked as a software resiliency engineer within the space vehicles directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory, and is currently working as a solutions architect intern in the Cyber Security & Mission Computing Center at Sandia National Laboratories."
