DEFENSE

The LSU Center for Computation & Technology is hosting a boot camp for high school students – only, instead of sit-ups, push-ups and running laps, students at this boot camp will get a crash course in the emerging world of high-performance computing. In this camp, which CCT staff developed around the work of Chief Scientist Thomas Sterling, co-inventor of the Beowulf class cluster that today is a building block of the world’s supercomputers, students from five area high schools will work with CCT researchers and professors to learn the basics of supercomputing. The High-Performance Computing Boot Camp will take place at LSU from July 30 – Aug. 3. Sterling will instruct 25 students from Tara High School, Istrouma High School, Glen Oaks High School, Baton Rouge High School and LSU’s University Lab School in building basic supercomputing clusters, then using them for applications. CCT has invited principals and teachers from each of the five high schools to attend the camp so they can apply high-performance computing to their classroom lessons. At the end of the camp, the students will be able to bring the clusters they’ve built back to their classrooms to use during the year. As part of the camp activities, CCT will host a reception to honor the students on Aug. 2 at 6 p.m. in the Magnolia Room of the LSU Union. Sterling hopes these kinds of summer activities will encourage more students to pursue science and technology-related careers. “This is just a wonderful contribution to Baton Rouge, to the state and to the high school students,” Sterling said. “Hopefully, when these students graduate high school, they will come back to LSU and become our advanced students.”