PRACE Summer of HPC 2017: Awards Ceremony

The PRACE Summer of HPC (SoHPC) Awards Ceremony 2017 was held on 31 October 2017 at IT4Innovations, Czech Republic. The PRACE Summer of HPC, now in its fifth year, is a placement programme that allows twenty university students from all scientific disciplines to spend two summer months at HPC centres (PRACE partners) across Europe. Two exemplary students were awarded prizes based on their participation in the Summer of HPC 2017.

In addition to allowing students to complete their projects in a multidisciplinary and international environment, the aim of the Summer of HPC programme is to promote and disseminate scientific culture among the younger generation of researchers, making sure that students participating in the project can become the next generation of “computational scientists”. Furthermore, through the sharing of their experience on social networks and the Summer of HPC blog, the programme aims to ensure that the students themselves become ambassadors of supercomputing at their respective institutions, and of their peer groups.

Over the years, Summer of HPC has gained credit at leading universities in Europe. The tutor references that follow the projects are given particular consideration in the selections for PhD studies, or for access to certain courses of study. The programme itself is very much appreciated by the international scientific community and, in addition to helping students to create a network of reference, often allows students who have followed the programme to continue the projects even after the end of the study period.

Each year two participants are awarded for the excellence of their work.
The winners of this year, Arnau Miró Jané – who worked at CINECA on Viewing the Mediterranean Sea project and Mahmoud Elbattah – who conducted his project at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.

PRACE Summer of HPC 2017 Best Visualisation Award:
Arnau Miró Jané – Web Visualization of the Mediterranean Sea

• Arnau’s video is understandable for a layperson’s audience and links to current events such as climate change. The video will be an excellent example to show students who do not have a connection yet to HPC, what powerful tools are currently available, without becoming too technical.

Arnau spent the summer at CINECA working on the project “Web visualization of the Mediterranean Sea”. He developed the “OGSTM-BFM Viewer” web application which allows for interaction of NetCDF output data as a time series, where the variables to present in a visualisation can be easily filtered and selected based on the properties the user wishes to study.

Arnau had the following to say about the Summer of HPC Programme:
“Summer of HPC has been an amazing experience not just for meeting lots of people and new friends around Europe but also for gaining useful insight and knowledge about HPC. I would definately encourage people to apply and spend probably one of the best summers visiting around Europe and, of course, working on HPC.”

You can watch his video presentation

PRACE Summer of HPC 2017 HPC Ambassador Award:
Mahmoud Elbattah – Automated Extraction of Metadata from Climate Simulations: Helping Researchers Share, Discover, and Use Data

• Mahmoud has shown himself to be a hard worker with a keen interest in various aspects of HPC. Mahmoud showed his enthusiasm for HPC by going above and beyond what was expected from him in the project. He created an extra website (http://top500centre.apphb.com) with a visualisation that can be used for several purposes. He was an active blogger, and we hope to see more of him in the near future.

Mahmoud had the following to say about the Summer of HPC Programme:
“My SoHPC experience proved quite positive and useful. I liken it to exploring a new land; exploring HPC, the field of climatology, and certainly the beautiful city of Thessaloniki!”