July 7, 2017
CSCS encourage exchange programs with some partner institutions around the world. Meet, Juan Pablo, who visited CSCS as a guest for three months and leveraged on the academic and research collaboration between CSCS and the Centro de Investigacion en Métodos Computacionales in Santa Fe in Argentina. Pablo supported the HPC Operations group and here he tells us his experience:
"I came to Lugano for a 3 months stay after have been selected for a scolarship for professionals of scientific institutions. I work as a professional in Centro de Investigación de Métodos Computacionales (CIMEC) in Santa Fe, Argentina that depends of Universidad Nacional del Litoral and CONICET.
My stay here had the intention of knowing, learning and analyzing the good practices in HPC, the new hardware and software technologies, the architecture and security and, principally, about the experience and skills of people and teams that have been worked since so many years in the first level of the supercomputing field in the world. Also, it includes collaboration in common projects and to create a bond between both institutions, and the Argentine HPC National System.
Just to though about all this idea was really exciting, but of course, at the same time I was worried about the implication of introducing myself into different working teams that might not feel so comfortable with an alien, a strange, inquiring about their jobs and tasks.
But that was easily dissipated: in my first day in CSCS, without even asking, they opened up the doors of the machine room, giving me the first of much more visits to that place. They introduced me all the CSCS's staff and indicated me where and to whom ask about each of my different concerns: "this is the SLURM guy", "he is gonna talk to you about storage", "whenever you need to know about memory, this is your man" and so on. The CSCS staff without any concern showed, explained and advised me about how they do their job, and how to adapt this experience to our research center in Argentina. I had the chance of having meetings with almost everyone in the staff, access to documentation and to continuous consulting about everything I need, always with enormous disposition and deference.
My experience here has been wonderful, rich and open-minding, beginning with the city of Lugano, warm, (not so) quiet and lovely. And following with the staff that made me feel absolutely welcomed and treating me not as a par, but as a special guest.
I wanted to thank all the CSCS staff and specially to Michele, Stephanie and Heidi, and also Antonio Russo from Argentina, because without the effort they made this visit wouldn't have been possible."