2023-24 Supercomputing Challenge Kickoff

Kickoff Conference at New Mexico Tech in Socorro will be held on the weekend of September 30 - October 1, 2023.

• 9:00-11:30: Registration, pictures and campus tours at Joseph Fidel Student Union building (building #18 on the map).
• 11:30: Lunch in the cafeteria. See the General Schedule for more information. 
• Room and board provided.
• Attendance at the Kickoff is not required for participation in the Challenge. Attendance at the Kickoff will be limited to 300 students.

THIS PAGE IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION, PLEASE CHECK BACK EACH WEEK.

After lunch Keynote, Melanie Moses

Keynote description: XXX Biography: Professor Department of Computer Science, University of New Mexico We live in a complex world. Many of the greatest challenges in science and engineering require understanding how complex systems evolve, what makes them efficient, scalable and robust, and why they fail. Our highly interdisciplinary research in the Moses Biological Computation lab seeks to understand complexity in natural and engineered systems: we develop computational and mathematical models of biological systems (particularly ant colonies and immune systems) and we apply what we learn in biologically-inspired computation (particularly swarm robotics).

After dinner Keynote, Nicole Lloyd-Ronning, X-treme Astro: A Multi-scale Investigation into the Universe's Brightest Explosions

Biography: Nicole Lloyd-Ronning is an astrophysicist in the Computational Physics and Methods group (CCS-2) at Los Alamos National Lab, and teaches physics and astronomy at the University of New Mexico, Los Alamos.  She models the multi-scale physics behind the bright, explosive deaths of very massive stars, the black holes they create, and uses these explosions as tools to learn about star formation and their evolution in our universe.  She is the author of Great Mysteries in Astrophysics: A Guide to What We Don’t Know, a book about the most pressing unsolved puzzles in our universe. She grew up all over the U.S. and Germany, moving about every two years, and graduated high school in Honolulu, Hawaii. She received her B.A. in physics from Cornell University and her Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University, and has been living in and loving New Mexico since 2003. In her free time, she likes to run, swim, listen to music, read, cook, and eat.

Sunday lunch Keynote, 2022-2023 Supercomputing Challenge Winners

Conference Tracks

Track 1 - NetLogo, Beginners

The students who participate in this session typically are Pre-Algebra students and have little to no experience in NetLogo coding.

Track 2 - Intermediate NetLogo

This session is for students who have taken Algebra 1 and have some experience in NetLogo programming.

Track 3 - Introduction to Python

This session is for students who have some experience with at least one programming language.

Track 4 - Experienced - Google Colab, Machine Learning, Python

This session is for students who have at least Pre-Calculus math level and have some experience with at least one programming language and/or have participated in the Challenge for multiple years.

Track 5 -  Serious Programming Workshop

This session is for any student who wants to learn Python programming on the Linux operating system. After the Kickoff, the students are supported with bi-weekly mini-courses on Python programming in various fields of research.

Teacher Session

This session is for teachers to familiarize themselves with the Supercomputing Challenge year and milestones.

Proposals

Remember that Supercomputing Challenge teams need to submit a Proposal prior to the Kickoff. See proposal guidelines.

Be sure students have registered and teachers have registered for the Supercomputing Challenge, submitted a TEAF and paid the registration fee.

Class Materials

Class materials

Housing Lists

Login, if you haven't, before trying to see the housing lists.

Comfort Inn - Schools: Capital High, Cleveland High, La Cueva, McKinley Mid, Melrose High

Econolodge - Schools: Acad for Tech & Classics, Harrison Mid, Justice Code, New Futures

Pictures

Check out the pictures from the Kickoff. 

To learn more about previous years' kickoffs, visit our archive.