ECP Broadening Participation Initiative
A multipronged initiative to expand the pipeline and workforce for DOE high-performance computing (HPC)
Achievements in high-performance computing ─ including computational and data-enabled science, analytics, learning, and artificial intelligence (AI) ─ impact virtually all aspects of our world. These interdisciplinary fields offer countless opportunities across mathematics, computer science, diverse scientific and engineering disciplines, data science and AI. The ECP sponsored numerous efforts to reach out to students and faculty to encourage involvement in the ECP community ─ and cutting-edge research and development activities to provide the foundation for fulfilling careers and broad impact on society.
The ECP Broadening Participation Initiative established a sustainable plan to recruit and retain a diverse HPC workforce by fostering a supportive and inclusive culture within the computing sciences at DOE national laboratories. Activities included:
- Engaging talented people with the potential for strong skills and interest in HPC from underrepresented groups, including:
- Black or African American, Hispanic/Latinx, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islanders, women, persons with disabilities, first-generation scholars, students and faculty from smaller colleges and universities, and others
- Raising awareness of DOE activities and needs related to scientific applications, software technologies, hardware, and infrastructure;
- Providing pathways for interactions, including training, internships, collaborations, and careers.
Our approach had three complementary thrusts that leveraged and complemented already established efforts on workforce development in DOE national laboratories, computing facilities, and the HPC computational science community.
More info: ECP Launches Programs to Extend DOE’s HPC Workforce Culture
HPC Workforce Development and Retention Action Group
This group managed efforts to:
- Influence culture in DOE labs and communities to promote the workforce pipeline for, and the retention of, a diverse DOE lab HPC workforce.
- Foster a community within the DOE HPC community that gathered on a regular basis to share ideas, catalog best practices, and develop recommendations and strategies for improvement.
Check out the webinar series on topics related to developing a diverse, equitable, and inclusive work culture in the computing sciences.
Intro to HPC
We provided accessible introductory material to the HPC community, thereby addressing gaps in, and expanding the pipeline of, people with foundational HPC skills.
This became a pathway to build experience for (and interest in) advanced programs—such as the DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (CSGF) Program and the Argonne Training Program on Extreme-Scale Computing (ATPESC)—and HPC careers.
Sustainable Research Pathways for HPC (SRP-HPC)
We established a multi-lab cohort of students from underrepresented groups (along with faculty), who worked side-by-side with ECP teams on world-class HPC projects, such as:
- Advancing discoveries in chemistry, materials, energy, Earth and space science, data analytics, optimization, AI, national security, and more.
- Building software technologies that power HPC discoveries (open-source programming models, math libraries, data and visualization packages, development tools, and more)
