ACM’s Special Interest Group on High Performance Computing (SIGHPC) has announced the six recipients of the ACM SIGHPC Computational and Data Science Fellowships for 2023. The fellowships are highly competitive, and are awarded after a rigorous merit review.

The fellowship program, funded exclusively by SIGHPC, is intended to increase the diversity of students pursuing graduate degrees in data science and computational science, including women as well as students from racial/ethnic backgrounds that have been historically underrepresented in the computing field. The fellowship provides $15,000 annually for study anywhere in the world.

“Inclusion and diversity are critical for the HPC community to be successful, because they bring a range of diverse perspectives and ideas, which are the bedrock of innovation,” says Stephen Lien Harrell, chair of the Fellowship program for 2023. “Our SIGHPC Fellowship is targeted for that purpose, to bring in new and different perspectives. With that in mind, I am proud to announce that our 2023 cohort has been chosen. We are honored to be able to award these fellowships and reaffirm our commitment to a diverse and inclusive community.”

Students were nominated by their graduate advisors. Nominees spanned disciplines from computational biology and data visualization to mechanical engineering and deep learning for quantum systems. They represented large, mid-sized, and small institutions in countries around the world. More than 85% of nominees were female, and 71% identified as an underrepresented minority in their country of study.

The nominations were evaluated and ranked by a panel of experts (who were themselves diverse with respect to race, gender, discipline, and nationality) based on nominees’ overall potential for excellence in data science and/or computational science, and the extent to which they will serve as leaders and role models to increase diversity in the workplace.

Of the six students named as winners this year, 83% identify as female, and 67% are underrepresented minorities in their country of study. They are pursuing MS and PhD degrees in a variety of applied fields:

·   Jeremy Williams (PhD, High Performance Computing and Visualization), KTH Royal Institute of Technology

·   Alyssa Smolensky (Master's, Natural Resources), University of Missouri

·   Van Truong (PhD, Genomics and Computational Biology), University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine

·   Lauren Ostrowski (PhD, Computational Neurosciences), University of California San Diego

·   Michelle Garcia (PhD, Chemistry), Dartmouth College

·   Beauty Chabuka (PhD, Computational Chemistry), Florida State University

Funding will be awarded in August. The winners will be recognized during the awards ceremony at SC23. They will also receive a complimentary membership in SIGHPC for the duration of their fellowship

SIGHPC is the first international group within a major professional society that is devoted exclusively to the needs of students, faculty, researchers, and practitioners in high performance computing. SIGHPC's mission is to help spread the use of HPC, help raise the standards of the profession, and help ensure a rich and rewarding career for people involved in the field. https://www.sighpc.org