A record number of high school and college students from around the country participated in advanced computing competitions during the third annual TeraGrid conference, making it the most successful TeraGrid conference yet in encouraging young people to enter careers in high-performance computing, scientific visualization, and grid computing.

Students submitted a total of 13 projects among two competitions for the TeraGrid ’08 conference held June 9-13 at The Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas.

Entries ranged from using cyberinfrastructure to help deter crime to using scientific visualization to predict weather events to an analysis of betting strategies to beat the house in blackjack – befitting the Las Vegas theme.

Caption: Cadeal Chase, Patapsco High School and Center for the Arts, won an Honorable Mention for his poster titled “The Impact of Cyberinfrastructure on Life.” His work conveyed how cyberinfrastructure and HPC systems can help with everything from environmental issues to decreasing crime recidivism rates to integrating worldwide communications.

The increased learning and excitement about these careers that the conference promotes is already visible, said Laura McGinnis of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, who recruited and mentored the contestants from Pittsburgh.

“Many parents have cited the increased interest in supercomputing that the TeraGrid competition generates locally, both in high schools and in regional science fairs,” McGinnis said. “As the number of participants continues to grow, the program’s ability to encourage young people to enter the fields of science, technology, engineering and math will also increase.”

Diglio Simoni, senior HPC scientist of RTI International, and Jesse Bemley, director of the Joint Educational Facilities, organized a panel of judges who evaluated the entries based on scientific merit and potential for impact. Bemley said the panel praised the breadth of projects which included “highly imaginative” projects and “more traditional research” projects.

In “The Impact of Cyberinfrastructure on Your World” competition, high school and undergraduate students showcased ways in which cyberinfrastructure can impact communities.

Matthew Stoffregen, a junior at Woodland Hills High School in Pittsburgh, won this competition with his entry, The Applegate, Jacobson, and Sleator Conjecture. Building on the work of mathematicians, Stoffregen used computational science to improve the conjecture. He ran calculations on his personal computer, and stated he could run more complex cases of the conjecture with access to high-performance computers.

In the “TeraGrid Student Research” competition undergraduate and graduate students described the benefits of grid computing.

Caption: Jessica Travierso of Austin Peay State University in Tennessee won the undergraduate division of the “TeraGrid Student Research” competition with her entry, Spallation Neutron Source Data Analysis.

Jessica Travierso of Austin Peay State University in Tennessee won the undergraduate division with her entry, Spallation Neutron Source Data Analysis, which detailed work she did as an intern at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Travierso plans on returning to ORNL to continue working on the project, which helps users analyze and visualize their data on the TeraGrid.

The graduate competition featured a one-two finish by students from Purdue University. Sanjiv Kumar won the graduate division with his work on a multidisciplinary Soil Water Assessment Tool used to determine water quality. The goal of the project, Kumar said, is to create a stable portal capable of helping researchers determine the water quality for the next 20 to 30 years. Vinaitheerthan Sundaram placed second with his project, A Scalable Integrated System for Real-time Interactive 3D Visualization of NEXRAD Data. This project aims to make 3D visualizations of national weather data available to anyone.

Many of the student competitors expressed aspirations to improve the world using supercomputers. Shivam Verma, a first place winner from last year’s conference and this year’s second place winner, is interested in getting computers to “integrate directly into their [scientific] topic.” Verma’s project this year involved no calculations; instead, he proposed using high-performance computing resources to monitor sensors in the body to detect life-changing medical issues well before their onset. Verma envisions computers that can “interact directly with the world” in a positive way.

Full Results

Impact of Cyberinfrastructure on Your World

• Honorable Mention: Cadeal Chase, Patapsco High School And Center for the Arts (Baltimore, Md.)/Joint Educational Facilities.
• Honorable Mention: Fred Smith, Charter School of Wilmington (Wilmington, Del.).
• Honorable Mention: Tyrell Ferguson, North Point High School (Waldorf, Md.) /Joint Educational Facilities.
• 3rd place: Srihari Seshadri, Franklin Regional Senior High School (Murrysville, Pa.).
• 2nd place: Shivam Verma, North Allegheny School District (Pittsburgh, Pa.).
• 1st place: Matthew Stoffregen, Woodland Hills High School (Pittsburgh, Pa.).

Undergraduate Student Research Competition

• 3rd place: Bryan Bemley, Bowie State University (Bowie, Md.).
• 2nd place: Maxwell Hutchinson, Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, Pa.).
• 1st place: Jessica Travierso, Austin Peay State University (Clarksville, Tenn.).

Graduate Student Research Competition

• 3rd place: Quan Pham, The University of Chicago (Chicago, Ill.).
• 2nd place: Vinaitheerthan Sundaram, Purdue University (West Lafayette, Ind.).
• 1st place: Sanjiv Kumar, Purdue University (West Lafayette, Ind.).