EduHPC-24: Workshop on Education for High-Performance Computing

Sunday, 17 November 2024 – 9 am – 12:30 pm US Eastern

From supercomputers forecasting weather and developing vaccines to multicore desktops, laptops, and mobile devices, most people use the methods and paradigms of high-performance computing (HPC) and parallel and distributed computing (PDC), either directly or indirectly.

Consequently, companies and laboratories require skilled personnel to efficiently utilize these modern computing systems. It's essential that Computer Science (CS), Computer Engineering (CE), Data Science (DS), Machine Learning (ML), Computational Biology (CB) and similar compute-intensive programs provide students with HPC/PDC skills. However, rapid changes in hardware, programming languages, and development environments pose challenges for educators in deciding what and how to teach to suitably prepare students for HPC/PDC careers.

The EduHPC workshop invites unpublished manuscripts from academia, industry, and national laboratories on topics in HPC and PDC relating to computation-oriented undergraduate and graduate curricula, education, professional training, and workforce development. This year's workshop places emphasis on Machine Learning/Deep Learning at scale, reflecting the increasing importance of AI workloads on HPC systems. Previous workshops have featured papers from diverse fields, including Computer Science, Computational Science and Engineering, Data Science, and computational courses across STEM and non-STEM disciplines.

The workshop unites stakeholders from industry, national labs, and academia in the context of SC (Supercomputing) to discuss pedagogical challenges, share approaches, and exchange ideas on incorporating HPC/PDC education in undergraduate and graduate curricula. Activities include paper presentations, panels (e.g., sustainability and reproducibility in technical education), special sessions like “Peachy Assignments,” “Lightning Talks,” and collaboration opportunities, resource sharing, educator training, internships, and other cross-sector interactions.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Pedagogical issues in incorporating HPC and PDC in core course of undergraduate and graduate ML DS, CS, CE, and CB education.
• Evidence-based educational practices and innovative teaching methods in ML, DS. CS, CE, and CB, etc..
• Professional training and workforce development initiatives.
• Reports on integrating HPC and PDC topics into core CS/CE courses and into other STEM fields and areas.
• Pedagogical tools, materials, infrastructures, languages, and projects for HPC/PDC/DS/AI/ML/IoT/Edge education.
• Employers' experiences and expectations regarding new graduates’ proficiency in HPC/PDC/IoT/Edge.
• Resources based on advanced programming languages and environments/frameworks.
• Projects or units introducing concepts related to distributed computing at scale.
• Evaluating generative AI impacts on teaching HPC.
• Addressing the gender gap in computing disciplines and enhancing the pipeline to research/development careers in HPC/PDC and related areas.
• Addressing software engineering challenges.

SC Reproducibility Initiative: Manuscripts describing attempts to reproduce previously published PDC and HPC research results. Authors are encouraged to include an artifact description appendix with their manuscript and a DOI to the artifact using an approved service such as ArXiv, Figshare, Zenodo, or OSF.io. Any service capable of ensuring a permanent DOI is also acceptable. Please contact the program chair if you wish to use a service not already on our approved list.

EduHPC-24 Invited Speaker: TBD

Full Papers: A Full Paper is a previously unpublished work that addresses the abovementioned topics and themes of the workshop. Full papers are limited to 8 pages, including figures, tables, and references (fully counted toward the page limit), with an optional additional 2 pages for the Artifact Description (AD) appendix. All submissions are peer-reviewed (single blind) and are eligible for a Best Paper award.

Lightning Talks: A Lightning Talk is a short (5-minute) presentation of a new or innovative idea, preliminary or intermediate research results, opportunity for partnership and collaboration, preliminary curriculum adoption experience of TCPP early adopters, or similar brief talk that will be of interest to HPC/PDC educators.

To propose a Lightning Talk, submit a (maximum) 2-page document that includes the following elements: an abstract of 250 words, a description of the challenge/problem/educational need that your submission is addressing, a detailed description of the work and its significance or novelty, and lessons learned or potential insights to be drawn from your talk. The 2-page limit includes figures, tables, and references. An additional 2 pages can be used for the optional Artifact Description (AD) appendix.

All accepted lightning talks will be curated into a summary paper co-authored by the Lightning Talk authors and the Lightning Talks chair. The summary paper will be posted to a service capable of generating a permanent DOI, e.g. Figshare or ArXiv. Authors of accepted talks will also be required to upload materials needed to give the Lightning Talk a permanent DOI (see SC Reproducibility Initiative).

Peachy Parallel Assignments: Peachy Parallel Assignments are HPC/PDC educational assignments that cover any topics related to HPC or PDC education, and are:

• Tested - Assignments should have been used successfully in a class.
• Adoptable - Preference will be given to assignments that are widely applicable and easy to adopt. Traits of such assignments include coverage of widely taught concepts, use of common parallel languages and widely available hardware, having few prerequisites, and (with variations) being appropriate for different levels of students.
• Engaging and Inspirational - Peachy assignments should be fun and inspiring for the vast majority students, encouraging students to spend time with the relevant concepts. Ideal assignments are those that students want to demonstrate to their roommate. Ideally, peachy assignments will be of interest to students of all backgrounds and experiences and have broader societal impacts.

Peachy assignments should be submitted as a 1-2 page paper that includes a 250-word abstract describing the assignment and the context in which it was used, plus a link to a public web page containing the complete set of files actually given to students (assignment description, scaffolding code, etc.)

The document should include the following:

• What is the main idea of the assignment?
• What concepts are covered?
• Who are its targeted students?
• In what context was it used?
• What prerequisites does it assume of the students?
• What are its strengths and weaknesses?
• Are there variations that may be of interest?

Between the submission and the online materials, it should be clear what an instructor needs to do in order to use the assignment. The 2-page limit includes figures, tables, and references. An additional 2 pages can be used for the optional Artifact Description (AD) appendix.

All accepted peachy assignments will be curated into a summary paper co-authored by the Peachy Assignments talk authors and the Peachy Assignments chair. The summary paper will be posted to a service capable of generating a permanent DOI, e.g. Figshare or ArXiv. Authors will also be required to upload materials needed to give the assignment to a permanent DOI (see SC Reproducibility Initiative).

Publication

All accepted full papers will be published in the SC Workshop Proceedings and will be included in the IEEE Xplore digital library. The Lightning Talks and Peachy Assignments summary papers will be published only to the CDER website with a permanent DOI for each. The accepted peachy assignment abstracts and course materials will be published on the CDER website and archived with a permanent DOI (see SC Reproducibility Initiative).

General Submission Guidelines

All the submissions in the three categories - Full Papers (6-8 pages), Lightning Talks (2-page abstract), and Peachy Parallel Assignments (1-2-page abstract) - must use the IEEE Conference template at https://www.ieee.org/conferences/publishing/templates.html. We strongly encourage the use of LaTeX to prepare your submission but will accept LaTeX or Word prepared with the IEEE template. Regardless of your preferred writing format/tools, a PDF version of your manuscript is required for submission and review purposes. Submit papers in PDF format through SC's Linklings submission site at https://submissions.supercomputing.org/.

For those new to LaTeX, consider using Overleaf, which provides an intuitive collaborative editing framework similar to modern word processing systems with direct access to the IEEE conference template at https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/ieee-conference-template/grfzhhncsfqn.

Important Dates

• Submission deadline: July 15, 2024 August 5, 2024
• Author notification: August 26, 2024 August 28, 2024
• Camera-ready deadline: September 8, 2024

These deadlines are for all submission types: papers, lightning talks, and peachy assignments.

Organization

• Workshop Chair: Sushil K. Prasad, University of Texas at San Antonio
• Program Chair: George K. Thiruvathukal, gthiruvathukal@luc.edu
• Program Vice Chair: Erik Saule, esaule@uncc.edu
• Peachy Assignments Coordinator: David Bunde, dbunde@knox.edu
• Lightning Talks Chair: George K. Thiruvathukal, gthiruvathukal@luc.edu
• Proceedings Chair: Satish Puri, satish.puri@mst.edu
• Previous Program Chair: Apan Qasem, Texas State University
• WebMaster: Buddhi Ashan Mallika Kankanamalage, University of Texas at San Antonio

Program Committee

• Kishwar Ahmed - The University of Toledo, United States of America
• Neelima Bayyapu - Manipal Institute of Technology Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India
• Steven Bogaerts - University of Michigan
• David Brown - Elmhurst University, United States of America
• David P. Bunde - Knox College
• Katharine Cahill - New Jersey Institute of Technology, United States of America
• Valeria Cardellini - Tor Vergata University of Rome, Italy
• James C. Davis - Purdue University
• Samantha S. Foley - University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, United States of America
• Eric Freudenthal - University of Texas, El Paso; Freudensong LLC, United States of America
• Henry Gabb - Intel Corporation, United States of America
• Sheikh Ghafoor - Tennessee Tech University, National Science Foundation (NSF), United States of America
• Anshul Gupta - IBM Corporation
• Joseph A. Insley - Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Northern Illinois University, United States of America
• Konstantin Läufer - Loyola University, Chicago
• Jens Mache - Lewis & Clark College
• Suzanne J. Matthews - United States Military Academy, United States of America
• Tia Newhall - Swarthmore College
• Virginia Niculescu - Babes-Bolyai University, Romania
• Zulkar Nine - Tennessee Tech University, United States of America
• Maria Pantoja - California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo; Esencia Technologies Inc, United States of America
• Satish Puri - Missouri University of Science and Technology, United States of America
• Apan Qasem - Texas State University, United States of America
• Silvio Rizzi - Argonne National Laboratory (ANL)
• Erik Saule - University of North Carolina Charlotte, United States of America
• Elizabeth Shoop - Macalester College
• Alan Sussman - University of Maryland, United States of America
• Shubbhi Taneja - Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI)
• Ramachandran Vaidyanathan - Louisiana State University
• Charles Weems - University of Massachusetts, Amherst, United States of America
• Öz lIşıl - Izmir Institute of Technology, Turkey