Dr. Jose Monsalve Diaz is a postdoctoral appointee in Argonne National Laboratory. He started at Argonne in 2018 as a graduate student at the University of Delaware and is well aware of the power of such an opportunity. “I am originally from Colombia, and I try to find ways to engage with the Latinx community because that will help us expand the number of opportunities to join High-Performance Computing (HPC) and also join a [U.S. Department of Energy] National Lab,” notes Dr. Monsalve.
When he learned about the Sustainable Research Pathways for High-Performance Computing (SRP-HPC) program, designed to connect U.S. researchers and project leaders with students and faculty from all across the U.S. and its territories to encourage lasting collaborations, jump start careers, and build innovative workplace environments, Dr. Monsalve was thrilled to participate. Coincidentally, he matched with a team from his alma mater, the University of Delaware—Xiaoming Li, Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and two of his doctoral students, Diego Roa and Rafael Herrera.
Dr. Monsalve Diaz’s work focuses on compiler technology and future computer architectures, while Professor Li’s work with Rafael and Diego centers on the implementation of the CODIR dialect using MLIR and LLVM, and the development of a runtime for distributed and heterogeneous architectures based on Dataflow (DECARD). “The SRP-HPC workshop aligned perfectly with my interests and those of my students,” notes Professor Li. “The outstanding benefit was to learn the real-world applications for my research and meet other researchers at the National Lab.”
Dr. Monsalve Diaz also benefited from the program. “There was real two-way communication,” he says. “The level of professional development was on par for all of us.” For instance, Professor Li set up a meeting with a colleague from the Illinois Institute of Technology and Dr. Monsalve Diaz, where Jose learned more about how to better utilize caches in relation to his research. Moreover, the fact that the students were not tied to a specific National Lab gave the team greater freedom—not having to be driven by project deadlines actually helped them make greater progress on their research.
“This is my first year as a Ph.D. student, and I have had the opportunity to work at a National Lab,” says Rafael. “Not many people have this chance. It has been especially great because our interests matched. I am working on projects developed and maintained by the people working at this Lab!”
Based on the research they did during the SRP-HPC program, the University of Delaware team recently submitted an article for a workshop at LLVM-HPC 2022 as part of the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC22).
In addition Dr. Monsalve Diaz and Professor Li are continuing and extending the official collaboration between their two institutions. Diego and Rafael are continuing to work with Argonne, and Dr. Monsalve and Professor Li are developing a new proposal for working together that involves SRP.
“The SRP-HPC program was a great opening. It means I will continue to work at Argonne,” notes Diego. “It is an example that other programs should follow.”