VizREU: XSEDE14 Experience

Previously when I thought of a conference, I pictured a meeting in a huge room with many old and professional scholars and educators. I considered a conference to be no place suitable for a young leaner such as myself or any other undergraduate. This perception changed once I received a travel grant to attend the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) conference this year in Atlanta, Georgia. I was funded to attend the conference as a student volunteer. While my duties as a volunteer were my first priority, I was able to attend some pretty interesting classes and sessions.

There were numerous lightning talks that took place during the conference. They were not very long and they took place right after the other. Some of the topics included: Engaging Undergraduates in High Performance Computing, Benefits of Cross Memory Attach for MPI libraries on HPC Clusters, Methods For Creating XSEDE Compatible Clusters, and so on and so forth. I listened and tuned in more to the talks that sparked my interests such as: Launcher: A Shell-based Framework for Rapid Development of Parallel Parametric Studies. This particular talk was developing parallel parametric studies more quickly using the launcher.

I met plenty of new people at the conference. A good number of them came from the group of REU students who came from the University of Texas. They were a welcoming group who were fun to hang around. I made sure to introduce myself to a couple of the instructors who taught the classes that I attended. I stumbled across the opportunity to present my elevator pitch to a couple of important looking people that I met in the elevator and also during the breaks between classes.

I was asked to attend a session in which I was expected to talk about my REU experience. It went pretty well. It felt like a press conference as there were microphones and a long desk in the front of the room. Questions were asked and I answered them. It was an experience that I would love to experience again.

XSEDE14 was my first time attending a conference and it was an eye-opening experience. There were so many different nations and countries represented there. It was a professional atmosphere and I learned to how to act more professionally as to not stick out. I fully intend to apply to XSEDE15 next year.

We arrived at XSEDE14 Sunday afternoon. After unpacking we met and went to the student and mentors dinner where we shared tables with others from schools all over the nation. A small introduction was given to welcome us to the conference.

Monday was tutorial day. I attended a hands-on workshop about parallel computing with MPI and open MP. I did not realize that OpenMP is a tool that converts serial code into parallel and this was by far the most interesting thing I attended this week. Monday afternoon I attended a BOF titled “Science Gateway Security”. I was expecting a discussion about various types of security, protecting networks from attacks, etc. I misunderstood the description. The BOF was about updating the registration process for the XSEDE website and updating certificates. Tuesday I attended the XSEDE keynote and State of XSEDE which transitioned to the Plenary concerning the state of one of California's largest delta and how visualization is contributing to how the problem will be addressed. After this I attended a talk about various ways of utilizing NVIDIA GPUS in 2 and 3 way configurations and the benefits of each. The differences were a bit difficult to understand but I believe that performance gain with 3-way stems primarily from asymmetrical workloads. I spent the rest of Tuesday working a my project.

On Wednesday morning, I attended the joint BOF by Dr. Byrd and Dr. Samuel Moore about underrepresentation. There was also discussion about the REU’s from Clemson and Texas University. That afternoon I attended the Lightning Talks where 4 students took turns presenting their research. I was very glad to have attended this. It was a good example of what a concise presentation should be with relevant visuals. I noticed that not one of them was reading their posters verbatim and maintained good presence with the audience.

On Thursday there was a morning discussion about clusters that use the new Intel Xeon Phi cards. Once again, it was less about theory and more about how to manage and configure these computers using what tools and tips about which update versions have the highest capability, etc. This is probably my biggest complaint about XSEDE. It was less of introducing and teaching tools and more about discussion on niche hardware and software solutions in somewhat specific scenarios. Having said that, I feel that I would have gotten more out of XSEDE if all the tutorials hadn’t been relegated to just Monday and spread throughout the week. But overall it was a fairly interesting experience and I did get some insight into networking in the academic and professional world and it was a useful week.

Overall, I would say that the time spent at the XSEDE[14] conference was worth it. I was able to gain valuable information on how the academic world functioned and how my peers were doing in regards to becoming a part of that world. I also gained a good amount of motivation to continue my goals toward graduate school and a future career in Academia.

This being my first conference experience, I was unsure about what to do and how to do it in terms of asking my peers questions about their research and networking with people of interest. As a result, I felt that a lot of my time spent in sessions and at lunches were spent observing how other, perhaps more experienced, people did such things. I think that it was still a great experience in going to this conference and I would recommend it to others, even if would be their first conference, as it was for me.

I attended the first half of A Beginner’s Guide to Visualization to learn about how to use the visualization tool Gephi. I thought the tutorial was simple and easy to follow along with. It was also useful toward my project since I wanted to use Gephi to visualize my data. I also attended the last half of Secure Coding practices as I thought it would be useful toward my major. I think it may have been more useful if I had taken more computer classes as the tutorial was probably on an intermediate or advanced level. I think that’s probably the reason I didn’t really understand anything in the tutorial.

I also went to the Efficient Data Analysis with the IPython Notebook talk. I just wanted to know what IPython Notebook was. It was also a pretty advanced talk but I saved the files from the tutorial so that I could view them later when I knew more about computers as I thought it may be useful. From what I gather IPython Notebook is a tool used for coding. I was able to follow along for part of the tutorial that was using the IPython notebook to solve math equations.

I attended the Opening Session: Welcome to XSEDE14, XSEDE Address, and Plenary: Can a $25+ Billion Investment Help California Balance Water Supply Reliability and Ecosystem Sustainability? Does Science Play and Important Part? I thought it was an interesting talk but thought it was kind of strange to present a talk on California’s water problem in Georgia. It also didn’t really answer the title. I felt like the talk was like we really need someone to solve this problem. I also went to TECH: Descriptive Data Analysis of File Transfer Data and then later to the TECH: Building an Information System for a Distributed Testbed which again I had the feeling I wouldn’t understand much about either talk due to my lack of knowledge about computers but I recorded both the talks for later use. I feel like both the talks were just like here is what I do in my job. I also went to the Plenary: Learning Communities in the Mathematical and Computational Sciences: Success Stories and the Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute (MTBI) which was just a talk about the success stories of underrepresented students in those fields of study. I thought it was an interesting and inspiring talk. I also went to the Graduate School Speed Networking which I thought was really useful. Sometimes as an undergraduate you don’t really get to see the fun classes or what the major you’re in really does so it was interesting. It was also nice to learn that just because you undergraduate in one major doesn’t mean you’re stuck with that major in graduate school. It’s nice to know that I can still change my mind. attended the SRE Student Elevator Talks, Lightning Talks, and then volunteered for part of the day on Wednesday. I thought the Elevator Talks and Lightning Talks were useful to go to because it prepares me for those sort of events in the future for when I have to give one. I also got to help the judges enter in the scores for the posters so I actually knew who won before most people. I didn’t really tell anyone though because I thought it’d ruin the surprise.

I think attending XSEDE14 was really useful though and would recommend it to any students because it just furthers your experience. I really liked meeting new people and networking. I think it’s a useful skill to learn for anyone to help further their careers.