By: Addison Snell, Intersect360 Research

The whole point of supercomputing is to enable new scientific discovery. The whole point of a conference about supercomputing is to further the conversation about how we’re going to achieve that.

As we march through “peta” toward “exa,” there is no shortage of challenges to be faced. Simply building a more powerful supercomputer requires advancements in networking, processing, data management, cooling, power efficiency, and resiliency, and that’s just to turn the thing on. Using all that computational power will require new approaches to parallelism, programming models, operating environments, and applications. And assuming we succeed, advancement won’t stop there, as long as there are harder science problems to be solved.

Who’s going to do all that, now and in the future? The skills gap in HPC has been well-documented, including in studies from Intersect360 Research. There is a pressing need for our industry to attract incoming talent, to develop new generations of innovators to chart our course over the next horizon.

This week, the ISC High Performance conference takes an important step in creating that link to the future. On Wednesday, June 21, ISC is hosting its first STEM Student Day, for students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The program is free for students and offers an introduction to the world of HPC and its applications, including industry presentations and a guided tour of the conference expo.

“ISC High Performance is a forum for HPC community members to network and explore opportunities - for current experts but also for future generations,” says the ISC STEM Student Day website. “We have created a program to welcome STEM students into the world of high performance computing, [and to] demonstrate how technical skills can propel their future careers in this area.”

The day program for STEM students includes a peek at the Student Cluster Competition awards and admission to the Wednesday afternoon keynote session by Thomas Sterling. During the evening, students will hear a welcome address from Toni Collis of the University of Edinburgh Supercomputing Centre, who is also a co-founder of Women in HPC. The day’s events conclude with a career fair, dinner, and networking.

For decades, the ISC High Performance conference has been a premier event for the international supercomputing community to meet and discuss the issues at the forefront of HPC. With the addition of the STEM Student Day, ISC is helping to ensure that conversation will continue at a high level for decades to come.

Addison Snell is the CEO of Intersect360 Research, an industry analyst firm focused on accurate market intelligence for HPC and Hyperscale industries. You can hear Addison together with TOP500 News editor Michael Feldman on their weekly podcast, This Week in HPC. Intersect360 Research is a proud supporter of ISC and sponsor of the STEM Student Day.