Expo and awards ceremony also at Laboratory
More than 300 New Mexico middle- and high-school students and their teachers are scheduled to be at the Laboratory April 23 - 24 for judging and the awards ceremony in the 17th annual New Mexico Supercomputing Challenge.
Seventy-six teams are still involved in the competition, the most in the last ten years, said David Kratzer of High Performance Computing Systems (HPC-3), Laboratory coordinator of the Supercomputing Challenge.
The goal of the year-long event is to increase knowledge of science and computing; expose students and teachers to computers and applied mathematics; and instill enthusiasm for science in middle- and high-school students, their families and communities. Any New Mexico high-school or middle-school student is eligible to enter the Supercomputing Challenge.
Laboratory personnel can visit the J. Robert Oppenheimer Study Center on Monday afternoon (April 23) to view posters that describe the students' computational science projects. "This event is a great opportunity to show off the talents of New Mexico's students and to show off to the students, some of the research we do here at the Laboratory," Kratzer said.
Also on Monday, participating students will present their projects and take part in tours, talks and demonstrations with Laboratory technical staff members.
Student projects will be recognized during an awards ceremony from 9 to 11 a.m., on Tuesday (April 24) at the Church of Christ, 2323 Diamond Drive in Los Alamos.
The Supercomputing Challenge was conceived in 1990 by former Laboratory Director Sig Hecker and Tom Thornhill, then president of New Mexico Technet Inc., a nonprofit company that in 1985 set up a computer network to link the state's national laboratories, universities, state government, and some private companies. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and John Rollwagen, then chairman and chief executive officer of Cray Research Inc., added their support.
More information on the New Mexico Supercomputing Challenge, including a list of student projects, can be found at http://www.challenge.nm.org/ online.
