George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship now accepting applications

The fellowship named for pioneering Lawrence Livermore computational scientist George Michael is now accepting applications from exceptional PhD students whose research focus is on high-performance computing applications, networking, storage, or large-scale data analysis using the most powerful computers currently available.

Recipients of the George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship receive a $5,000 honorarium, travel and registration for SC13, and recognition at the SC13 Awards Ceremony.  Sponsored by the ACM and the IEEE-CS, the fellowship seeks to address the critical issue of training the next generation of high performance computing scientists and engineers.

Abhinav Bhatele, a 2009 George Michael fellow from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, found the fellowship an effective vehicle for spreading the word about his research. "The fellowship award has been instrumental in disseminating my research and dissertation work on 'topology aware task mapping' within the field of HPC," he said.  "It also has helped me to connect with others in the field and I have become good friends with other George Michael fellows."

Bhatele is now a computer scientist in LLNL's Center for Applied Scientific Computing working on scalable load balancing and topology aware task mapping and with a particular interest in performance analysis and visualization. "It was a great honor to be awarded one of the most prestigious fellowships for graduate students in HPC," he said. "It means much more to me given that George Michael was instrumental in starting one of LLNL's first computing research departments and I am a part of what is now known as the Computation Directorate at the Laboratory."

"The vitality of the HPC community depends on a flow of young talent and the new ideas they bring that advance high performance computing," said Bruce Loftis, chair of the 2013 George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship Committee. "Injecting new blood into the community is especially important as we look to develop next generation technologies and applications at a time of intense global competition."

To qualify, applicants must be enrolled in a full-time Ph.D. program at an accredited college or university and are expected to have completed at least one year of study in their doctoral program. Women, minorities, and all who contribute to workforce diversity are encouraged to apply. 

The application includes:

?        Description of current research and its connection to HPC

?        Academic progress to date including classes taken, presentations made, and publications

?        Description of a plan to enhance HPC-related skills

?        Description of current and future use of HPC resources

The late George Michael, a computational physicist at Lawrence Livermore, was a founder of the annual supercomputing conference (SC), which is now in its 25th year. Michael, who died in 2008, is remembered for his ability to bring together diverse talent from academia, industry and national labs to advance HPC. For more about Michael, see Newsline . 

For more information and access to the application, visit the SC13 site . Submissions opened in early March and will close on May 1.

Send any questions to this hpc-fellowship-questions [at] info.supercomputing.org ( e-mail ) .