Meet the SC15 Student Cluster Competition Chair: Hai Ah Nam

The SC15 Student Cluster Chair Hai Ah Nam from Los Alamos National Laboratory.

In 1999, the Los Alamos National Laboratory's Hai Ah Nam left graduate school for a summer hiatus to take care of her ailing father and save a marriage that was cracking under the grad school pressure. The summer hiatus ended up lasting five years.

“I had a master’s degree in physics at that point,” Nam says, “but it wasn’t getting me anywhere in southern California. I went to work in the internet industry for a while and then taught high school math, but it wasn’t fulfilling that part of me that wanted to know more, do more.”

By now a single parent with an 18-month-old daughter, Nam sat down at her desk one evening and took stock.

“I felt nearly as lost as when I had first gone off to college,” Nam recalls. “I loved physics, but I did not see a path forward and needed to take a step back.”

Nam was at a turning point and in the end decided to join another graduate school, but this time a joint doctoral program in computational science through San Diego State University and Claremont Graduate University.

“Going back to school when everyone else was at least five years younger and didn’t have to rush home after classes to struggle with the joys of potty training was tough,” Nam notes with a smile. “I had to push down a lot of insecurities and convince myself that the sacrifice would pay off.”

While spending her summers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Nam was asked whether she would be interested in helping the 2007 Student Cluster Competition as a volunteer. Although she was not sure what the competition entailed or how to fit it into her busy schedule, she said yes and was glad she did. The initial yes ended up leading to a wide variety of professional development and networking opportunities, including staff positions at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and now Los Alamos, and a new husband to boot.

Nam with SCC co-chair Tiki Suarez-Brown and Awards Chair Jack Dongarra with the 2010 SCC winner, University of Texas at Austin.

Student Cluster Competition
Since volunteering for her first Student Cluster Competition, Nam has been an active member of the event’s organizational team and in 2010 served as that year’s Student Cluster Competition chair.

“Over 10,000 high-performance computing professionals and students from all over the world attend SC annually, which includes the Student Cluster Competition,” Nam explains. “Students from as far away as Australia, Colombia and China compete on the global stage to build and operate powerful cluster computers—smaller versions of high-capacity supercomputers—and everyone has a lot of fun.”

But offering chances to compete and have fun are only part of the event’s contributions.

“The Student Cluster Competition provides students with training beyond what they are able to get through their universities,” Nam says, “and they learn about new research, have a chance to network and get a taste of future career paths that they probably never even knew existed.”

Click here to read the full article.

Click here for more information about the Student Cluster Competition.

Article courtesy of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

SC15 Announces Student Cluster Competition Details

Last year’s overall SCC winner was the team from University of Texas – Austin – pictured here with SCC14 co-chairs Dustin Leverman (far left) and Barbara Chapman (far right) .

SC15 is excited to hold another nail-biting Student Cluster Competition, or SCC, now in its 9th year, as an opportunity to showcase student expertise in a friendly yet spirited competition. Held as part of SC15 Student Programs, the SCC is designed to introduce the next generation of students to the high-performance computing community. Over the years, the competition has drawn teams from throughout the United States and around the world.

In this real-time, non-stop, 48-hour challenge, teams of undergraduate and/or high school students assemble a small cluster on the SC15 exhibit floor and race to complete a real-world workload across a series of applications and impress HPC industry judges. In the competition, teams of six (6) students partner with vendors to design and build a cutting-edge cluster from commercially available components that does not exceed a 3120-watt power limit (26-amp at 120-volt), and work with application experts to tune and run the competition codes.

More information about this year’s competition can be found here:Competition Rules & Submission Guidelines and Competition Applications

Important Dates
Team submissions to compete in the SC15 SCC will be accepted from February 2, 2015 - April 17, 2015. Notifications of team acceptance into the SC15 SCC will go out the week of May 11, 2015.

Team submissions must be completed here.

NOTE:  Teams that are accepted to the competition will need to submit a final architecture proposal by October 2, 2015 through the submission site.

Contact the organizing committee here:
student-cluster-competition@info.supercomputing.org 

Frequently updated information about the competition details can be found here.

Sponsors
The SCC is funded by the SC conference and by generous sponsors who understand the importance of building the next generation of HPC.  If you are interested in sponsoring the SCC, please contact us for sponsorship levels and benefits.  Sponsorship levels range from $5,000 to $25,000.