Ten students and two teachers from Oakland’s Life Academy spent the morning of Friday, June 3, learning about what supercomputers are used for, what it takes to run a center like NERSC and the importance of high-speed networking. They also received a hands-on lesson in Arduino, an open source hardware and software program for controlling electronic devices.

The visit was arranged by Tokiwa Smith of BLEND, the Berkeley Lab Exploration of New Discoveries program managed by Berkeley Lab’s Workforce Development and Education. Life Academy is a small public high school in Oakland emphasizing health and bioscience studies.

Jackie Scoggins of NERSC’s Operations Technology Group led a tour of the machine room and gave a presentation on how the operations group supports the systems and the scientists who use them.

Kate Mace of ESnet’s Science Engagement Team gave a talk comparing “big data” on commercial apps to Big Data on research apps, pointing out how an entire day’s worth of Instagram posts is only as third as much data as that produced by one experiment at the ALS, and how networks underlie all data transfers.

James Welcher of IT’s Security Group and intern Arthur Frohlich led the hands-on Arduino demo in which the students needed to program their hardware and connect wires to the appropriate ports to light up an LED.

Cesar Martinez, a freshman, was the first to successfully complete the task. “It’s interesting to see what you can do with such a tiny computer like Arduino and also see how the big supercomputers are being used to support research in Switzerland. It was a really good experience.”