News and Announcements
Chancellor Donde Plowman Hosts Reception for Dongarra
On May 10th, Chancellor Donde Plowman welcomed ICL staff and guests to a reception honoring Jack Dongarra, 2021 A. M. Turing Award Recipient. Attendees gathered at Neyland Stadium West Club for refreshments, mingling, and festivities before the ceremony. In attendance were, along with the Chancellor, were State Senator Richard Briggs, and State Representative John Ragan. Following opening remarks from Tickle College of Engineering Dean Matthew Mench, ICL’s own Piotr Lusczcek, and Chancellor Plowman, Representative Ragan read to the assembly the contents of Tennessee House Joint Resolution 1381, a resolution to formally congratulate Jack from the State. Following, Chancellor Plowman spoke and presented to Dr. Dongarra the Chancellor’s Medal. Dongarra then delivered some remarks highlighting the arc of his career from humble beginnings growing up in Chicago and spoke about the important role of the community that helped shape his success along the way. Regarding the Turing award, Jack stated that “an award like this couldn’t have happened without the contributions of many generations of colleagues, post-docs, students and staff of ICL who really helped and influenced me over the years.”
ISC 2022 to Feature a Special Session Celebrating Jack Dongarra
A special session will celebrate the life and work of Jack Dongarra, who was the recipient of the 2021 ACM A.M. Turing Award. This session will recognize Dongarra’s scientific achievements and contributions to HPC. It will take place on Monday, May 30, and will be chaired by Horst Simon of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Several guests will offer their own perspectives on Dongarra’s work in benchmarking, linear algebra, and HPC.
The session will be held onsite in Hamburg on Monday, May 30, 2022, at 10:45 AM local time; it will also be livestreamed.
Dongarra featured on Knoxnews.com
ICL’s Jack Dongarra was featured on Knoxnews.com. The article focuses on the Turing Award and the history of Dongarra’s work. More than just a factoid, the story covers the history of Dongarra’s work. The Knoxnews.com column showcases the impact of ICL developed software and their household uses, while relating Jack’s research to the layperson reader.
Jack Dongarra Chats with HPCpodcast
In a wide ranging discussion, Jack Dongarra and the HPCpodcast hosts talk about the Turing Award, the TOP500, the state of HPC benchmarks, China’s exascale supercomputers and future directions in algorithms. They also touch on the future of supercomputing and AI systems. They reminisce about a period when a proliferation of system architectures provided fertile ground for experimentation, and whether we are entering a similar era now.
You can find the podcast at insideHPC’s @HPCpodcast page, on Twitter and at the OrionX.net blog.
Alan Alaya to attend International HPC Summer School
The International HPC Summer School is an invitation only event that aims to gather the best PhD students and young scientists on HPC from the US, Canada, Europe and Japan.
Alaya was first selected to go to the fully expense-paid event in 2019 in Kobe, Japan. This year HPC Summer School returns to in-person interaction in Greece this June.
Among the activities will be a competition called the “Test of Time” where all participants are invited to optimize an HPC code using programming tools like OpenMP, MPI, CUDA and OpenACC. The fastest code wins.
Natalie Beams featured on ECP Podcast
ICL’s Natalie Beams was the featured guest on the ECP Podcast. The Podcast explores the efforts of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Exascale Computing Project (ECP)—from the development challenges and achievements to the ultimate expected impact of Exascale computing on society.
An interesting sidenote/connection to ICL: the host of the ECP podcast is former ICLer Scott Gibson.
ICL33 Event Reminders
We at ICL are looking forward to seeing many of you on July 1 to celebrate with Jack. We want to remind you all that there is still time to record a tribute video to Jack, whether you are attending in person or not able to attend. Please click on the link below and follow the instructions. He would love to hear from everyone.
Additionally, if you have photos to share they can be Uploaded Here
Conference Reports
ECP Annual Meeting May 2-6
On May 2-6, Exascale Computing Project held its annual meeting, with ICL members attending. ICL faculty joined sessions, such as Performance Tools for Emerging Exascale Platforms: Status and Challenges, and AMD Software Tools for Exascale Computing.
The ECP meeting highlights the many technical accomplishments of research teams, while providing a collaborative working forum that includes featured speakers, workshops, tutorials, and numerous planning and co-design meetings in support of integrated project understanding, team building and continued progress.
The ECP annual meeting has evolved into a widely recognized and well-respected gathering of computing technology leaders, industry luminaries, computational pioneers and forward-thinking application, software and hardware experts pushing the boundaries of HPC to shape the nation’s future exascale ecosystem.
2022 ICL ECP Posters
Penchoff Panels AI Session at MARC Conference
ICL’s Deborah Penchoff joined the panel on “Artificial Intelligence, Computing, and Robotics” session at the International Conference on Methods and Applications of Radioanalytical Chemistry, 2022.
Since MARC I in 1987, this series of conferences has become the major international forum for discussion of advances in radioanalytical chemistry and its applications, despite the somewhat remote location for many participants. A wide variety of topics are covered in the scientific program including environmental radioactivity measurements, activation analysis, biology and medical applications, radiation detectors and instrumentation, nuclear proliferation prevention and safeguards, education, and mass spectrometry methods for detecting radioactive materials.
In addition to panels, the conference included both oral and poster sessions grouped around specific topics.
Interview
Jack Dongarra WUOT Interview
Following the announcement of University of Tennessee professor Dr. Jack Dongarra as the winner of the 2021 ACM A.M. Turing Award, he spoke with WUOT’s Chrissy Keuper about his career, the development of supercomputers, and what it means to receive such a prestigious award in his field.
