ICL 2023 Winter Reception
The 2023 ICL Winter Reception took place on February 17th, 2023 at Calhoun’s on the River. This year’s event had special significance as it coincided with the retirement of ICL Assistant Director Joan Snoderly. At the event, Joan was honored for her service to ICL and presented with gifts of appreciation. Special guests to the event included Terry Moore and Tracy Rafferty.
ICL/GCLab Outdoor Venture Report
On Sunday, March 5th, a group of eight individuals from ICL and GCLab embarked on an outdoor adventure in the Black Mountain area west of Knoxville. The group, consisting of Geri, Anthony, Philip, Paula, Camila, Fritz, Thomas, and Heike (with German Shepherd Lex), spent the day exploring this area, which is known for spectacular views and compact, short sandstone cliffs. During the expedition, two members of the group hiked the 14-mile round-trip trail to Ozone Falls, while the other six members stayed at the trailhead to climb routes on the edge of the Cumberland Plateau. The weather was perfect, which added to the beauty of the scenery and made for an enjoyable experience for everyone involved.
ICL 233 Conference Room Reconfigured
ICL Technical Services Leader Gerald Ragghianti recently spearheaded a project to reconfigure and upgrade ICL’s main conference room to better suit Seminar Series talks. New displays were installed and a speaker podium is on the way. The large conference table was relocated next door to room 234, making room for more seating for audience members.
ICL Alumni Spotlight
Dorian Arnold Named to HPCwire’s People to Watch 2023
HPCwire, a prominent publication for news and information for the high performance computing industry, has announced its People to Watch 2023. The annual feature recognizes individuals who are driving the industry forward and making a significant impact in their respective fields. Among the 12 individuals who were selected to the list for 2023 was ICL alumnus Dorian Arnold. Congratulations to Dorian on the much-deserved recognition!
Conference Reports
SIAM CSE 2023
The 2023 SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering (SIAM CSE) was an event packed full of presentations, meetings, and adventures. For the first time in its history, SIAM CSE made it over the Atlantic Ocean and chose wonderful Amsterdam as its location. The meeting brought more than 5,000 attendees together. The RAI conference center came with its unique challenges in terms of navigation and making sessions on time, but the organizers were wise to schedule a lengthy lunch break.
ICL had a strong presence at SIAM CSE, and together with a group from KIT, could have filled up a complete conference program. While there were many highlights at the event, noteworthy is the 2023 SIAM/ACM Prize in Computational Science and Engineering going to the ECP SUNDIALS team from LLNL for their outstanding contributions, the packed conference room in the software libraries session organized by our colleague Julien Langou and featuring several ICL contributions, the forward looking panel bringing hardware discussions between Satoshi Matsuoka and John Shalf, the early career panel with ICL director Hartwig Anzt, and the blooming lawns in frosty Amsterdam.
How to better recognize #software development in academic career? It seems like a recurrent issue raised at #SIAMCSE23, as highlighted by the Director of @ICL_UTK @AnztHartwig in his take away slide on #Gingko journey at @exascaleproject.#HPC pic.twitter.com/OsZPjqo56k
— Hatem Ltaief (@HatemLtaief) March 1, 2023
Interview
Tokey Tahmid
Where are you from, originally?
I am from Bangladesh. It is a small country in South East Asia. I was born and raised there.
Can you summarize your educational and professional background prior to joining ICL?
My whole academic and professional background prior to joining ICL was back in Bangladesh. I completed my Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from BRAC University. After that, I did an internship at a software company called Cye, Ltd. During that time, I was also applying for my Master’s degree abroad. And after I got admitted to UTK, my journey in ICL also began.
How did you first hear about the lab, and what made you want to work here?
When I applied for my master’s program at UTK, I also reached out to multiple professors with whom my research interests aligned since I was keen to work at a research facility to further progress my research career. It was Dr. Piotr Luszczek who introduced me to ICL. After conversing with him online, he decided to get me onboard on one of his research projects here at ICL.
What is your focus here at ICL? What are you working on?
I am working with Dr. Piotr Luszczek on a benchmark project of scientific machine learning models. Our primary focus with this project is to build a flexible benchmark suite (sabath) of scientific ML models.
What are your interests/hobbies outside of work?
There are many. But the one that I love talking about is traveling. Whenever I get enough free time, I would like to travel. There’s so much to see out there in the world. There’s this one amazing aspect about traveling, which is, the more you travel the more stories you have to tell.
Tell us something about yourself that might surprise people.
Now, where’s the fun in that. You’ll get to know that once we interact in real life.
If you weren’t working at ICL, where would you like to be working and why?
At any research facility that focuses on Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning research. That’s what I find interest in and that’s where I want to work.
