End of May an email from the WHPC team reached our chapter, asking if any of us would be interested to give a talk about “Women in HPC: Breaking Barriers and Shaping the Future” at the Supercomputing Day 2024, which is a side event of the large “Nexus2050” tech event in Luxembourg. How could we say no to such an opportunity?
By Karina Pešatová
This blog post summarises the insightful panel discussion that took place during the Birds of a Feather (BoF) session „Super(computing)heroes“ at ISC24 on 14 May 2024. The session featured a panel of distinguished women in high-performance computing (HPC) who shared their experiences, challenges, and visions for the future of HPC. The motivation of this panel session was to inspire and empower, in particular, young women in HPC by providing role models, challenging stereotypes, and celebrating successes. By joining this session, participants could engage with accomplished women in HPC, fostering an inclusive and supportive environment. Below are the main points and aspects of HPC that were discussed. The session attendees had the choice of questions, steering the discussion to the topics of their highest interest.
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.
On the occasion of the International Women’s Day 2024, our network JuWinHPC organised some events with the friendly support of the FZJ’s Equal Opportunities Bureau (BfC) and the Equal Opportunities Officer. The first big bang was a thought-provoking, engaging presentation by our colleague Carolin Penke titled “What could possibly go wrong – Dangers of recent AI advancements from a diversity perspective”. Afterwards, we discussed the “Gender Dimension in AI” with about 30 participants in the room, while the entire session was also followed by another about ten colleagues online.
Our blog has been quiet lately, perhaps quieter than we would like. But behind the scenes we were busy bees, making general plans for the year to come and organizing activities for the next weeks and months. Now it’s finally time to open the curtain a tiny bit and give you a glimpse of what we have in the pipeline.
It seems customary to write an end-of-year post in the blogging realm, so here we go…
The HPC community is very diverse – as are the jobs in the field – and there are many paths into HPC. In this mini-series we will share our personal journeys into HPC. We will describe our roles and explain how we got to our current positions.
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!“
So, how did it go? What did we discuss? Did we gain any new perspectives?
As we wrote in an earlier post, at JuWinHPC we firmly believe in inclusion. Therefore, we had organised a members meeting in September 2023, specifically inviting our male colleagues (who are also welcome to join any other meeting!) to offer space for their thoughts and opinions.
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.
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