Travel Support: Student Program for Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing Conference (PEARC19)

Computing and in particular advanced computing plays a vital role in virtually every aspect of society today, including the U.S. economy, manufacturing, science and engineering. Access to and an understanding of advanced computational resources by researchers and practitioners from a wide variety of fields from the traditional sciences and engineering to medical research and the humanities/social sciences is no longer a luxury but rather a necessity if they hope to stay at the forefront of their respective field, advance knowledge, and improve the quality of life. In order for this to happen, it is critical that there exists a robust pipeline of experts with the requisite skills needed to leverage advanced computing resources. The Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing (PEARC) Conference series goal is to provide a forum for discussing current practices, challenges, and opportunities across the entire spectrum of research computing practitioners, including computational scientists, end-users, students and support staff, as well as industry and government agency representatives. Building on the success of past conferences, this project aims to provide travel support to students to attend the PEARC19 conference and participate in the Student Program. This project, thus, serves the national interest as stated by NSF's mission to promote the progress of science and to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare. The PEARC conference (now in its 3rd year), follows the five-year NSF supported the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) conference series. Students, including importantly, students from underrepresented groups and economically disadvantaged sectors are recruited to attend PEARC19. The proposed PEARC19 Student Program provides the students with practical hands-on training in modeling, machine learning, scientific computing, data analytics and many other tools in the modern researcher?s toolkit that are needed to facilitate today's multidisciplinary research programs. The aim is to expose students to as broad a range of topics and practices in advanced research computing as possible with the goal of helping to recruit and train the next generation of research and computational scientists. Students participating in the student program receive an opportunity to contribute to the technical program by submitting a student paper and/or poster, sharing their research efforts and gaining feedback, insights and inspiration from like-minded experts at the conference. In collaboration with XSEDE Campus Champions program, students have the option to participate in the Student Champions program that provides them resources and a community of experts whom they may consult, which enables an opportunity to begin building a community around PEARC19 Student Program efforts that extends well beyond the one week in July when the students attend the conference. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.