One of the Argonne team mentors, Jose M. Monsalve Diaz, is a postdoctoral appointee who received his Ph.D. from the University of Delaware. Since he had the opportunity to work with the ALCF while completing his thesis, he wanted to pay it forward by participating in SRP-HPC.
Having worked with students in the Latin community at the University of Delaware, Monsalve Diaz knew the connections from the SRP-HPC program would be vital for students’ careers and help Latin students see Argonne as a potential future employer.
Monsalve Diaz’s team consisted of two students and a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at his alma mater. Rafael A. Herrera Guaitero, a first-year Ph.D. student, and Diego Roa Perdomo, a third-year Ph.D. student, were joined by associate professor Xiaoming Li. The students both worked on improving OpenMP, a programming framework that will be critical for Aurora.
Looking back at his experience, Herrera Guaitero called it incredible. “I was able to contribute to high-impact HPC projects created and maintained by the people who work at Argonne. It was a memorable experience that I hope to repeat next year.”
Roa Perdomo agreed, confirming that Monsalve Diaz did an exceptional job guiding the team through their project and Argonne’s daily life. “Working side by side with scientists and engineers at Argonne showed me the importance of their work and inspired me to pursue a career at the Laboratory,” he said.
“We could really connect what they were doing in their Ph.D. programs and their interests with the research we are doing at Argonne,” said Monsalve Diaz. “Having students of differing levels was a great experience. As a first-year student, Rafael really wanted to learn everything, and as a seasoned Ph.D. student, Diego narrowed the work down to his level.”
Even though the summer program has ended, Herrera Guaitero and Roa Perdomo will continue to collaborate with Argonne throughout the rest of their academic year and Ph.D. program. In the fall, Roa Perdomo started participating in Argonne’s Graduate Research Program, which gives students the opportunity to carry out their thesis research at the Laboratory under the co-sponsorship of an Argonne staff member and a faculty member at the student’s home institution.
Monsalve Diaz hopes their experience will be similar to his own; Argonne played an integral part in his thesis experience and his career path.
“I would like students to be able to see that there are endless opportunities at DOE labs going forward. We can give them this opportunity to see that this is a potential career path,” recalled Monsalve Diaz.
The SRP program is gearing up for next summer, where Monsalve Diaz has already applied to participate again and hopes to bring even more students to Argonne.
The four additional SRP-HPC Argonne teams during summer 2022 included:
- The team from San Diego State University included master’s student Dylan Mather and faculty member Vivian Huangfu. They were mentored by Argonne’s Thomas Brettin, a strategic program manager, and computational scientist Hyunseung “Harry” Yoo.
- The team from the University of North Dakota included undergraduate student James Chegwidden, master’s student Kuang Hsu Wang and faculty member Anjali Sandip. They were mentored by Argonne’s Jeff Larson, a computational mathematician.
- The team from Wichita State University included master’s students Duncan Campbell and Nowshin Nawal and associate professor Abu Asaduzzaman. They were mentored by Hong Zhang, an Argonne computational mathematician and research professor at Illinois Tech.
- The final team included Gideon Idumah, a fourth-year Ph.D. student from Case Western Reserve University, and Bilas Talukdar, a second-year Ph.D. student from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. They were mentored by Argonne computer scientist Prasanna Balaprakash.
Additional Argonne staff who are key contributors to the ECP Broadening Participation Initiative include Kevin A. Brown, Anshu Dubey, Yasaman Ghadar, Rinku Gupta, David Martin, Victor Mateevitsi and Michael Papka.
Moreover, Valerie Taylor, director of Argonne’s Mathematics and Computer Science division, serves as liaison for the initiative from the multi-lab Computational Research Leadership Council.
“It is exciting to have this program continue for Summer 2023,” said Taylor.
==========
The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility provides supercomputing capabilities to the scientific and engineering community to advance fundamental discovery and understanding in a broad range of disciplines. Supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science, Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program, the ALCF is one of two DOE Leadership Computing Facilities in the nation dedicated to open science.
Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.
The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science