Intro to HPC Bootcamp: Engaging New Communities Through Energy Justice Projects

Mary Ann Leung, Katharine Cahill, Rebecca Hartman-Baker, Paige Kinsley, Lois Curfman McInnes, Suzanne Parete-Koon, Sreeranjani Ramprakash, Subil Abraham, Lacy Beach Barrier, Gladys Chen, Lizanne DeStefano, Scott Feister, Sam Foreman, Daniel Foreman, Daniel Fulton, Lipi Gupta, Yun He, Anjuli Jain Figueroa, Murat Keceli, Talia Capozzoli Kessler, Kellen Leland, Charles Lively, Keisha Moore, Wilbur Ouma, Michael Sandoval, Rollin Thomas, and Alvaro Vazquez-Mayagoitia

Volume 15, Issue 1 (March 2024), pp. 49–56

https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/15/1/10

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BibTeX 
@article{jocse-15-1-10,
  author={Mary Ann Leung and Katharine Cahill and Rebecca Hartman-Baker and Paige Kinsley and Lois Curfman McInnes and Suzanne Parete-Koon and Sreeranjani Ramprakash and Subil Abraham and Lacy Beach Barrier and Gladys Chen and Lizanne DeStefano and Scott Feister and Sam Foreman and Daniel Foreman and Daniel Fulton and Lipi Gupta and Yun He and Anjuli Jain Figueroa and Murat Keceli and Talia Capozzoli Kessler and Kellen Leland and Charles Lively and Keisha Moore and Wilbur Ouma and Michael Sandoval and Rollin Thomas and Alvaro Vazquez-Mayagoitia},
  title={Intro to HPC Bootcamp: Engaging New Communities Through Energy Justice Projects},
  journal={The Journal of Computational Science Education},
  year=2024,
  month=mar,
  volume=15,
  issue=1,
  pages={49--56},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.22369/issn.2153-4136/15/1/10}
}
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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is a long-standing leader in research and development of high-performance computing (HPC) in the pursuit of science. However, we face daunting challenges in fostering a robust and diverse HPC workforce. Basic HPC is not typically taught at early stages of students' academic careers, and the capacity and knowledge of HPC at many institutions are limited. Even so, such topics are prerequisites for advanced training programs, internships, graduate school, and ultimately for careers in HPC. To help address this challenge, as part of the DOE Exascale Computing Project's Broadening Participation Initiative, we recently launched the Introduction to HPC Training and Workforce Pipeline Program to provide accessible introductory material on HPC, scalable AI, and analytics. We describe the Intro to HPC Bootcamp, an immersive program designed to engage students from underrepresented groups as they learn foundational HPC skills. The program takes a novel approach to HPC training by turning the traditional curriculum upside down. Instead of focusing on technology and its applications, the bootcamp focuses on energy justice to motivate the training of HPC skills through project-based pedagogy and real-life science stories. Additionally, the bootcamp prepares students for internships and future careers at DOE labs. The first bootcamp, hosted by the advanced computing facilities at Argonne, Lawrence Berkeley, and Oak Ridge National Labs and organized by Sustainable Horizons Institute, took place in August 2023.