Every November, thousands of researchers and industry representatives in high-performance computing and related fields, such as advanced networking, data storage, and data analysis, meet for the annual Supercomputing Conference (SC18) in Dallas, Texas, to learn about HPC and scientific applications and innovations from around the world.

SC18 marks the 30th Anniversary of the SC Conference Series, and hasn’t been back in Dallas for 18 years. This year’s event, with the theme “HPC Inspires” is set for Nov. 11-16 at the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center in Dallas. Exhibits will be on display Nov. 12-15.

HPC Inspires

Imagine the possibilities. Unlike any time in history, HPC allows us to analyze many points of data to make groundbreaking discoveries in all fields of inquiry, connecting humanity to the world around us as never before.

What is SCinet?

SCinet is a truly special collaboration among more than 180 highly-skilled volunteers from about 80 domestic and international organizations. All donate their time, energy, and unique skills to the overall success of the conference, with the generous support of their home institutions.

SCinet Chair Jason Zurawski is a Science Engagement Engineer at the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) headquartered and managed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. ESnet is the U.S. Department of Energy’s high-performance networking facility. In 2004, while Jason was a computer science graduate student, he volunteered to plan, build and operate SCinet, the SC Conference’s dedicated high-capacity network. SCinet supplies exhibitors with high-capacity feeds to run all their applications in addition to providing high-speed WiFi to more than 10,000 attendees. It is a giant task and requires the best in the business to create and manage it. Read more from Jason in this blog.

Quilt Members once again have joined many from the international supercomputing community to play an integral part of the annual event through demonstrations, booths, presentations and the building of SCinet. Those include: Great Plains Network (Booth 1035); Louisiana State University (Booth 1816); University of Utah (1828); Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (2028); NCAR (Booth 2000); Indiana University (Booth 2400); Ohio Supercomputing Center (Booth 3037); Starlight (Booth 2851); and Pacific Wave (Booth 3158), just to name a few.

Another Win for WINS

Five women IT professionals have been selected to participate in the “Women in IT Networking at SC” (WINS) inclusivity program at SC18. They will join peers from around the globe to help build and operate SCinet.

This year’s WINS participants are:

• Brenna Meade, telecom analyst at the University of Denver in Colorado
• Erika Kindlimann, network security engineer at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan
• Jessa Westclark, network specialist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Kalina Dunn, network engineer at GlobalNOC at Indiana University
• Loren Adams, network engineer at Georgia State University in Atlanta

In recognition for its work to provide professional development opportunities to highly-qualified women in the networking field, the WINS program received the 2017 Innovations in Networking Award for Experimental Applications presented by Quilt Member, CENIC. Read more about it.

This year’s WINS review committee was led by Wendy Huntoon of KINBER and included Carrie Gates of Securelytix, Eli Dart of ESnet, Dave Jent of GlobalNOC and the Quilt, John Kolb of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Amy Philipson of Pacific Northwest Gigapop, and Linda Winkler of Argonne National Laboratory.

WINS is funded by the NSF and the Department of Energy. It was initiated in 2015 as joint effort between ESnet, the Keystone Initiative for Network Based Education and Research (KINBER), the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), and SCinet.

As of 2018, WINS has funded 24 women to participate in SCinet.

Staying in the Loop

Real-time event conversations can be found @Supercomputing on Twitter or using #SC18.

If you or others from Quilt Member institutions plan to attend SC18, we would like to hear from you and your experience for a future blog. Please contact us or Tweet us @TweetTheQuilt.