Broader Engagement

Our Mission

The Broader Engagement (BE) Program’s goal is to increase the participation of individuals who have been traditionally under-represented in HPC. The Program offers special activities to introduce, engage and support a diverse community in the Conference and in HPC. Competitive grants will be available to support limited travel to and participation in the SC14 Technical Program. Consideration will be given to applicants from groups that traditionally have been underrepresented in HPC, including women, African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Pacific Islanders and people with disabilities. We encourage applications from people in all computing-related disciplines—from research, education and industry.

Clck here to view the SC14 Broader Engagement Program Schedule

Two Participation Tracks: The On-Ramp and Superhighway

At SC14, we will be organizing our funded participants into two tracks: On-Ramp and Superhighway. Competitive grants will be awarded to participants in both tracks. We expect On-Ramp participants to be new to HPC and/or the SC Conference, to participate fully in BE, and to stay through at least the end of Thursday to get the most out of the SC14 Technical Program. Applicants who have participated in an SC Conference/Program in the past are not eligible for the On-Ramp track.

We expect Superhighway participants to have basic HPC experience, and to at least partially fund their participation in SC14. The Superhighway participants will get the opportunity to participate in the SC14 Tutorials without any direct cost to them, but will be required to cover their own Technical Registration fee.

Each of these groups will benefit from a diverse lineup of top-flight speakers from industry, academia and government laboratories.

The application deadline for the BE Program is now six weeks prior to the SC14 poster submission deadline. This will facilitate leveraging the Mentor/Protégé Program to provide pre-submission mentoring to those submitting posters. Consistent with this, we are adjusting the focus of the Mentor/Protégé Program to center around mentoring that leads to participation in the SC Technical Program. Of course, we hope that broader academic- and career-oriented mentoring will happen as a natural by-product, but our intention is to serve the HPC research community directly by expanding it.

Program Activities

These activities will be features of the SC14 Broader Engagement Program:

• Technical Sessions with academic, government and/or industry professionals
• Workshop on preparing, submitting and presenting a poster for the main Conference Technical track
• Workshop on interviewing techniques including mock interview sessions
• Opportunity to present research and interact with peers and get mentoring/feedback
• Mentor-Protégé Program to guide participants through the SC14 Conference, maximize their experience at the Conference and to engage in HPC and network
• Scavenger Hunt incentive to help participants navigate the Conference and exhibits
• Full access to main Conference Technical Program.

** SUBMISSIONS FOR THE BROADER ENGAGEMENT PROGRAM IS NOW CLOSED**

Important Dates:
Web Applications Open: Friday, April 4, 2014
Application Deadline: Sunday, June 15, 2014
Questions: be@info.supercomputing.org

Don’t Need Support, But Want to Participate?
If you don’t need support to attend the Conference, but would like to participate in the BE Program there are several ways:

• Register for Workshops (either Workshop Only or as part of the Technical Program) and select "Broader Engagement Workshop - Sunday" and/or "Broader Engagement Workshop - Monday." If you would like to participate in the "Joint Broader Engagement/Student Volunteers Networking Event," select it when you register for the Workshop.
• To register as a Mentor for the BE Program, answer "yes" to the demographic question in the online registration form, "Would you like to mentor a HPC Interconnections participant while attending the Conference?"