For a week, Alicia Oliveira and Beatriz Cepa left INESC TEC’s laboratories in Braga and went to Barcelona – the city that welcomed the ACM Summer School. The researchers explored some of the elemental HPC concepts and realised that – in a context dominated by computer science – their training in biomedical engineering was an asset.
In early September, Alicia Oliveira and Beatriz Cepa travelled to Barcelona; on the other side of the Peninsula, a week of learning awaited them at the ACM Summer School 2024 – dedicated to “HPC Computer Architectures for AI and Dedicated Applications”. With academic paths in biomedical engineering, the two INESC TEC researchers feared being the “outsiders” among the 60 participants.
But they were eager to learn more about relevant concepts in high-performance computing (HPC) – e.g., AI and machine learning – that could be useful to their research. “We worked a lot with HPC, but we didn’t know what was behind it – the foundations. Our expectation was very much in the sense of better understanding certain concepts”, explained Alicia.
And so they did: through a complete programme and “diversified” sessions that included lectures, talks and interviews. But learning was not limited to theory. “The practical nature of the sessions was something I did not anticipate but could actually confirm. I thought they would favour a more expository approach; but the way they promoted the event ended up enriching my experience”, she claimed.
The environment they found – provided by the organisation and participants from more than 16 countries – also contributed to the researchers’ positive feedback. “We weren’t expecting to meet people from so many different nationalities”, mentioned Alicia. Through this contact, the researchers “realised that there were many people from very different areas”, which contributed significantly to knowledge exchange. “We came from different countries, with completely different experiences. It was very easy to talk to everyone: we talked about customs and traditions, for instance”, recalled Beatriz – currently exploring the Distribution of Neuroimaging Pipelines for dMRI Tractography.
In the end, the two researchers assured that the week they spent in Barcelona was a “boost” of information that they can apply to their research work. Beatriz mentioned that her participation in the Summer School gave her a whole “different and richer notion of HPC“. “Thanks to this newfound knowledge, I’m confident that, when applying parallelisation techniques, I will be able to grasp what’s being explained, while further clarifying what I must do”.
Alicia Oliveira highlighted the “tools” addressed throughout the sessions, which she might keep using – since all the information was made available for future consultation. “The programs are quite updated, and they might be very useful!”
The researchers mentioned in this news piece are associated with INESC TEC and U.Minho.
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