Our esteemed colleague Brian has been in the HPC field for quite a while now. In case you’re reading this, Brian, I’m not calling you old! Only experienced 😉 He’s seen many things (in his own words), and lately, he felt particularly annoyed by a picture taken at the International Supercomputing Conference 2022 of our JSC delegation.
It seems customary to write an end-of-year post in the blogging realm, so here we go…
The last two weeks of September were quite busy for me, as I participated in three different events featuring three distinct talks across three different fields. Each event required also preparation from my side and interaction with various audiences.
What can I say, for those who know me, it’s no secret that I enjoy talking, but each time before my talk, I could not shake the feeling, this feeling of self-doubt creeping in. I’d ask myself, „What am I doing here? Look at all these guys so brilliant and well-prepared. I feel like I have no idea of anything, and they’ll surely see right through me, I‘m a fraud!“
At JuWinHPC we firmly believe in inclusion. This might sound obvious, or at least in my head it sounded obvious, but after reflecting a bit it might not be that obvious. After all, our name is Jülich Women in High Performance Computing.
We have heard time and time again about the importance of role models in building our careers. Who did you look up to? Who inspired you to get where you are today? Who did you identify with and who made you think „if you can do it, so can I“? These might be easy questions: of course I know who inspired me, look at that great scientist! But I think inspiration can be a bit more subtle and is built up over the years.
Why are there not more women working in high performance computing (HPC)? That is basically the central question this blog is all about and perhaps you have already asked yourself this question once or twice, just like we did. We are Ruth, Anna, Claire and Cristina and are some of the board members of JuWinHPC, responsible for this blog.
[…] change this? Well, we could start by giving visibility (I really like that word; I think I use it…