As part of her role in a nationwide effort to democratize data access and high-performance computing (HPC), Jack Dongarra Professor Michela Taufer guided a cohort of seven young data scientists to Denver, Colorado last month for the 2023 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC23).

Taufer (far right) with SC23 General Chair Dorian Arnold (center), Taufer lab members, and six NSDF travel award winners (Chuntida Harinnitisuk not pictured).

Taufer is a co-Principal Investigator on the National Science Data Fabric (NSDF) Pilot, which is dedicated to creating a nationwide, scalable network for equitable data distribution and analysis. Taufer is spearheading the NSDF outreach initiatives along with Christine Kirkpatrick, the division director for research data services at the San Diego Supercomputing Center, and Valerio Pascucci, the lead researcher of the NSDF and director of the University of Utah’s Center for Extreme Data Management Analysis and Visualization.

The NSDF’s outreach programming includes granting travel awards to help young researchers at minority-serving institutions attend the yearly SC conference. The inaugural cohort includes Heberth Martinez, a research scientist at Taufer’s own Global Computing Lab, and undergraduate and graduate students, career researchers, and computing staff from Louisiana, New York, Texas, and Utah.

“We are thrilled to provide the opportunity to this year’s NSDF travel award recipients—including some who will be attending the conference for the first time—to make valuable contributions to the discussion on data democratization and actively engage with the SC community,” Taufer said.

Four graduate students and a research assistant professor in Taufer’s group also traveled to SC23, presenting their work and maintaining UT’s presence at the major HPC conference.

Contact

Izzie Gall (865-974-7203, egall4@utk.edu)