A Day of Learning and Collaboration at CHTC for Summer Undergraduate Researchers

For a second year, the Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC) hosted undergraduate students from across the nation participating in the UW - Eau Claire Blugold Center for High Performance Computing Summer Research Experience for undergrads (REU) for a day of learning, networking, and sharing. The REU program at UW - Eau Claire provides a comprehensive research experience in computing, giving students an opportunity to conduct research in Bioinformatics, Computer Science, Chemistry, and other STEM fields.

CHTC Director Miron Livny and investigator Brian Bockelman welcomed the 10 students and discussed with them their individual projects, and how they could benefit from incorporating high throughput computing (HTC) tools into their work.

The CHTC Facilitation Team gave an overview of the work they do, and ran a tutorial on getting started running jobs through the OSPool. Research Facilitation lead Christina Koch walked students through how big problems can be tackled by leveraging approaches like high throughput computing. CHTC summer fellows Daniella Wright and Snikitha Siddavatam talked about their fellowship projects: enhancing CHTC documentation and measuring throughput computing using a standardized workflow.

The students networked with CHTC staff and the facilitation team over lunch and brainstormed how HTC tools can enhance their REU projects. Dr. Ying Ma, UWEC Professor supervising the students, notes that “It was a wonderful and memorable experience for all of the REU students. Beyond the REU program, I think there are many other opportunities to explore.” Dr. Rahul Gomes, UWEC Associate Professor, also remarked that “This visit gives the REU students a valuable opportunity to see high-throughput computing in action and learn about resources they can continue to use in their research even after the REU program ends.”