Empowering Diversity: NHR|WHPC Chapter Travel Grants and On-Site Highlights from SC24

Ayesha Afzal, the NHR|WHPC Chapter Founder and Committee Lead, was informed by WHPC on August 2, 2024, about an open call for WHPC sponsorship opportunities at SC24. Following discussions between Ayesha Afzal, Elsa Gonsiorowski (WHPC Workshop Chair at SC24) and the NHR office, a proposal was initiated to provide travel grants for young scientists from German universities.

Ayesha prepared the application call, which was subsequently revised by the NHR office to ensure alignment with the regulations of NHR Alliance. The finalized call was published on August 26, 2024, on the NHR|WHPC chapter website, marking the first successful implementation of such an initiative within a tight timeframe. Ayesha promoted the call via WHPC social media channels (blog, Linkedin, Twitter), NHR@FAU platforms (mailing list, website, Linkedin), and relevant HPC communities (HPC Announce mailing list, WHPC and SC Slack channels). The NHR office disseminated the call through multiple mailing lists, including NHR-announcement, NHR|WHPC chapter members, and organizers.

During the application period, which closed on September 30, 2024, Ayesha addressed several frequently asked questions, such as:

  • Is the grant gender-specific?
  • Is prior SC24 registration required?
  • Must the recommendation letter be from a professor in the supercomputing field?
  • Can those with already accepted SC24 papers apply?
  • Can applicants without a visa (given the 5–8 week processing time) still apply?

Applications were reviewed by Ayesha Afzal and the NHR office, and on October 7, 2024, five successful scientific applicants (Muhammed Coban, Kajol Kulkarni, Sumin Lee, Michelle Michelle, Sabiya Shaikh) were notified. Most awardees promptly initiated their U.S. visa processes, and ultimately, four awardees attended SC24.

WHPC Networking Reception: On October 16, 2024, Ayesha coordinated with Elsa Gonsiorowski to secure tickets for both mentors and awardees to attend the WHPC Networking Reception, which featured engaging activities and excellent food. WHPC’s support was greatly appreciated.

One-on-One Mentoring: Serving as the on-site mentorship program coordinator, Ayesha provided detailed guidelines to mentors and mentees, outlining key events, including the WHPC workshop and networking session. During the conference, mentors Georg Hager, Thomas Gruber, and Sarah Neuwirth did provide one-on-one on-site mentoring to the awardees, with each mentor supporting one or two travel grant awardees.

Feedback from the mentor Thomas Gruber can be seen below:

“Sumin Lee and I met at SC24 on Monday afternoon. I shared my personal and academic journey, highlighting my motivation for pursuing HPC and attending SC conferences. Sumin shared her academic background and dual interests in parallel programming and data visualization. She attended workshops like “Programming and Performance Visualization Tools” (ProTools) and “Performance Modeling, Benchmarking, and Simulation of High Performance Computer Systems” (PMBS). In the following days, she explored technical program talks, BoFs, panels, exhibition booths, and receptions.

In our recap meeting, Sumin expressed increased motivation to study HPC more deeply. I provided her with resources on parallel programming. As a first-time mentor, it was rewarding to share experiences and encourage diversity in HPC. For future mentorship programs, I would suggest a pre-conference meeting to help mentees navigate the schedule. Overall, the NHR|WHPC mentoring program was highly beneficial, and I would gladly participate again.”

Summary of mentor Georg Hager’s conversation with travel award grantee Mustafa Coban can be seen below:

“Mustafa Coban described his experience at SC24 as very pleasant and stimulating but also somewhat overwhelming. He found it rather difficult to network with people in a (for him) new community. He tried to connect with researchers at booths of several universities in order to ask about prospective PhD positions. However, there was usually no point of contact for such inquiries. In the tutorials program, Mustafa visited “Multi-GPU Programming” and “Distributed DL on Exascale.” From his perspective, some of the material was very basic while other things were quite advanced; he attributed this to the general tendency in tutorial programs to manage the balancing act of tending to beginners and advanced audience alike. He also visited the “Workshop on Software Correctness for HPC Applications,” the “HPC on RISC-V” workshop, and the “Julia in HPC” BoF. The poster exhibit was one of the program components that Mustafa spent most time on. Although he enjoyed the huge spectrum of topics he also noticed a wide variance in presentation and overall poster quality. On the exhibition floor, he noticed that a lot of new companies have appeared, many dealing with liquid cooling solutions. He was also surprised to encounter significant – what he called – “cultural barriers” when talking to Chinese representatives of companies. This made communication rather difficult at times. As for social events, Mustafa attended (of course) the WHPC reception, the AWS/NVIDIA reception, the Arm reception, the WEKA party, and the Tech Program Reception. To the question what he would consider to be viable improvements to the mentor program, he replied that (1) it would have been better to meet with the mentor before the conference and not (as we did) on Monday evening since part of the program (tutorials and some workshops) were already over at that point, and (2) it would be desirable to get a kind of one-page “quick navigation” for young first-time attendees such as himself, not unlike the “Know before you go” page by SC but more concise, to the point, and preferably written by the mentor from their personal point of view.”

 

Group Photo: Ayesha also coordinated the group photo of mentors and travel award grantees, which was taken on Wednesday, November 20, 2024, in Atlanta, USA.

 

 

NHR|WHPC Chapter Talk and WHPC Chapter+Affiliate Meet-Up: NHR|WHPC Chapter has been invited by WHPC to participate in the first WHPC Chapter+Affiliate meet-up on Tuesday, 19 November. During this event, all WHPC chapters did share insights and discuss ways to improve community support. Additionally, a three-minute lightning talk was presented from the NHR|WHPC Chapter side, sharing the chapter’s updates and success stories. The event went exceptionally well.

Details: NHR|WHPC Chapter website: https://www.nhr-verein.de/whpc

Contact: Ayesha Afzal, NHR|WHPC Chapter Founder and Committee Lead; Linkedin

Ayesha’s Short Bio: Ayesha Afzal is a researcher at the Erlangen National High Performance Computing Center (NHR@FAU), Germany, and is a Vice Chair of the IEEE Computer Society German Section Chapter. She was named in the 100 Top Future Leaders Role Model List 2022–2024, supported by Yahoo Finance and YouTube, and received the WeAreTheCity Global Award for Achievement in 2023.

Ayesha’s Further Contributions to SC24: Ayesha served as Vice Chair of SC24 Posters, overseeing the Research Posters, ACM Student Research Competition, Doctoral Showcase, and Art of HPC tracks. Her poster, “DisCostiC: Simulating MPI Applications Without Executing Code,” was a “Best Research Poster Finalist”. If you missed the presentation, you can catch the recording or learn more through additional resources.

Ayesha’s Upcoming WHPC Activity: Ayesha is Chairing the Women in HPC Posters track at ISC 2025. Submissions are currently open!