Changing the narrative – Women in HPC at ISC23 – Hamburg, Germany
The volunteers, mentors, members, and allies of WHPC were very pleased to present two outstanding events (+ one informal celebration) at this year’s ISC23 in Hamburg, Germany. This year instead of our usual separate workshop schedule the team at ISC brought both our talks and our posters into the main session.
Frank Herold, CEO of ThinkParQ, presents at the WHPC Take Over during the Exhibitor Gala.
Women in HPC take over the HPC Solutions Forum – May 22, 2023
On May 22nd senior supporting members and our early career speakers took over the HPC Solutions Forum (aka the Exhibitor Forum) to talk all about careers and research happening within the HPC community. Part of this year’s Exhibitor Gala, the forum covered the main portion of the evening, and included a packed house of exhibition attendees. Hosted by Executive Board Member, Cristin Merritt of Alces Flight, the evening was broken up into three sections to allow as many guests as possible to attend but also allowed everyone to enjoy the festivities of the evening.
Our night was kicked off by Paulo Cappuccio of DoITNow, who was pleased to announce the company’s inclusion as part of our WHPC Champion Program. DoITNow’s support will be directed at bringing more women to global HPC conferences and events to allow them the opportunity to present and grow their network.
Paulo was followed by Cerlane Leong, who gave us a full update on the latest WHPC Chapters and Affiliates to join us from European countries. Currently, there are seven chapters throughout the EU with Germany, Spain and Switzerland joining us in 2023. Thanks to the growth of chapters and affiliates WHPC members and allies can get involved locally and make a direct impact in the community. Don’t forget – when you sign up as a member can can join a chapter or affiliate – all of this for FREE!
Frank Herold, CEO of ThinkParQ, came next. He walked us through the transformation the company has undergone to foster a culture of inclusivity. Best known for their BeeGFS parallel cluster filesystem product, Frank and his team at ThinkParQ have placed inclusivity into the heart of their workplace. This has not only resulted in greater diverse hires, but also in creating products and services that are more in tune with the ever-growing and evolving HPC Community.
Dr. Jenny Wong gives her poster talk onstage at the WHPC Take Over event.
After a short break we welcomed the first group of early career speakers to take the stage at ISC23. These women showed incredible confidence in presenting to the public – and we are thrilled to report – packed in to hear their short talks on scalability, data driven discovery, equity in the workspace, and weather in space!
Our second session was introduced by Deb Goldfarb, Director of Product and Strategy for HPC and Batch at AWS. Deb’s talk was focused on lessons learned – from laying a career foundation, coping with imposter syndrome, to having the courage to just get up and do it. Her talk set the tone for our final set of early career speakers, who took the stage to present on software performance, making research easier to access through AI, decoding biosensors for better medical diagnosis, and improving HPC resource usage.
Posters and Networking – May 23, 2023
Our festivities followed on May 23rd, at the Poster Networking Reception hosted for all poster presenters at ISC. We were thrilled to be joined by HPC leadership, including Bill Magro of Google, the University of Cambridge Research Computing Team, and Tom Tabor of HPCWire, amongst many other luminaries and guests. We were also thrilled to see Stamatina Moraiti, one of our bursary winners, give a full poster interview as part of the HPCWire re-cap! You can see her in action in the May 22nd video.
Carla Santana fields questions about her work from an ISC attendee.
May 23rd also served as our informal Diversity Day! We were so happy to see so many attendees wearing this years and past years WHPC shirts, as well as sporting pins and badges celebrating all the different people and communities which make up HPC. Special thanks to our allies, who took the opportunity to educate and lift up their female colleagues during this event.
We want to send a huge thank you to the volunteers and mentors who made all of our events happen, as well as to the fantastic supporters who have not only given us funding to create travel and networking opportunities, but also brought leaders and mentors to ISC to work with our early career presenters.
Finally, a thank you to the ISC Committee – whose request to bring our events inline with the main session resulted in an incredible success for all involved.
You can download slides from our May 22nd Take Over event here. Posters are available to view for ISC23 ticket holders with access to Swapcard – simply head to ‘Schedule’ and filter in ‘Type’ for ‘Women in HPC Poster.’
Want to get involved with our next global event? We’ll be in Denver this November for SC23. Details, sponsorship packages, and call for early career speakers are NOW OPEN!