Student Cluster Competition
2017 Competition
Denver, Colorado
University of Texas at Austin / Texas State University
United States
- What is the name of your team and why did you choose it?
We decided our team name should be equally representative of our group, and unorthodox at the same time so we decided on The Texas Longcats. It is a combination of the University of Texas at Austin mascot (Bevo the Longhorn) and the Texas State University mascot (Boko the Bobcat). This was our primary reason for choosing it, although when we Googled it, we found out that it was a meme, so we had to absolutely go with it after that.
- Why do you think your team will have an edge in the event (what's your secret sauce)?
Thanks to our great relationship with the Texas Advanced Computing Center, we have had unprecedented access to the supercomputer systems with cutting edge hardware. Our team mentors are knowledgeable and experienced in their field, and have always done their best to support and advise us. They have also worked to ensure that regardless of how the competition turns out, we will all walk away from this having learned a great deal, and be better students, programmers, engineers, and people as a result. Our team is composed of the best of the best from central Texas, covering a wide variety of majors and interests which give us a great deal of interdisciplinary strength, while being similar enough to relate easily to one another as teammates and friends.
- What have you done to prepare that makes your team unique?
Our preparation for the competition began early this year (around April) when we first started holding preparatory meetings. Even though most of us were out of state, or even country for the summer, we still worked diligently on our applications and met up as much as we could. Since the school year recommenced, we’ve been continuing to have productive weekly meetings, with many hours of work being done on our own time. We have performed thorough research on all of our applications, delving deep, deep into the internet, hoping to discover some long lost secrets on how to optimize our application. While what we found was interesting, Allinea Forge was more help than most of what we found.
- What are you most looking forward to in the competition?
All of us are excited about the trip to Denver, not only for the competition but also to do some networking within the HPC community. While we’re using this opportunity to learn new, applicable skills for our careers, we’re also all excited to attend the convention and view the latest cutting edge hardware. Lastly, we’re interested in hanging out with other teams and hearing about their experiences.
- How long will it take you to get to Denver?
Many thanks to the Texas Advanced Computing Center who will be flying us non-stop out of Austin to Denver. The whole trip will only take 2.25 hours one way.
- What do your team members do for fun?
We come from a wide range of backgrounds, but some activities we enjoy doing include playing video games, watching movies, going to concerts, playing racquetball, fencing, eating, parenting, mountain biking, hiking, and hanging out with friends. When we aren't hard at work optimizing our applications with Allinea Forge, we like to enjoy the occasional beverage at a well known University of Texas engineering hotspot, Crown and Anchor.
When it comes to our members, when Austin's not busy working as a System's Administrator for a local Austin company, he enjoys speaking and learning French, as well as music. Jeremie, when not studying or doing computational mathematics research, is an avid concert goer and is attending this year's ACL. Jamie is a veteran member of UT Austin's nationally ranked fencing team. Collin enjoys hiking multi-day trails and looks forward to hiking the Appalachian trail or Pacific Crest Trail after graduation. Carlos came to the United States at the age of nine when he moved to Austin, Texas and resided ever since. Carlos also just welcomed a second baby boy into his family! Outside of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Vivian enjoys embarking on personal projects from designing musical shoes for an art exhibition to creating an embedded systems video game.
- If your team had a theme song, what would it be?
As for our theme song, that's a tough one. Depending on who you ask they’ll tell you it's Mr. Bassie by Horace Andy, Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf or Elementary Particles by Bluetech.
- Can you share an interesting fact about your team?
An interesting fact, in terms of the team, is that this year will be the sixth showing of the University of Texas team, and the second year of which we have collaborated with Texas State University.
