Last week, participants from underrepresented groups in high performance computing (HPC) attended a two-day workshop at Berkeley Lab to improve their research presentation skills in preparation for SC15.

The workshop’s aim was to involve more people from underrepresented groups in the main technical track of the annual supercomputing conference by providing training and assistance for submitting to the technical program poster session. It covered training and discussion on organizing research results, taking advantage of SC resources and tips on successful poster submission and presentation. In working sessions, participants prepared and received feedback on draft submissions with the aim of having a draft poster submission that they can finalize and submit to SC15. The workshop doesn’t guarantee success, but is instead aimed at strengthening participants’ chances of winning a place in the highly competitive SC technical program.

The workshop was organized by Tony Drummond of the Computational Research Division (CRD) and Mary Ann Leung from the Sustainable Horizons Institute. Berkeley Lab Deputy Director Horst Simon delivered a keynote presentation on the state and application of HPC and CRD’s David Brown, Jonathan Carter, Silvia Criveli, Osni Marques, Khaled Ibrahim and Dan Martin judged posters during an exercise presentation. Also participating in the judging was Krishna Muriki from lab IT-HPC Services and Larisse Voufo from Google. »See more photos.