Two cyber savvy students of the University of the Free State (UFS) will have their abilities tested at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) Student Cluster Competition in Hamburg, Germany, from 12 to 16 May. The pair of Itumeleng Khaka and Nhlonipho Shezi were selected to compete internationally on merited performance.
They were chosen at the National Integrated Cyber Infrastructure Systems (NICIS) CHPC Student Cluster Competition held at the Kruger National Park from 3 to 8 December last year.
Khaka and Shezi were part of one of the university’s teams (team five) that took third place in the national round of the competition. Bophelo Pharasi, studying towards a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in Information Technology (IT), majoring in Computer Science and Business Management, and Kgoboketso Mphahlele, in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree of Computer Information Systems, were the other team members.
Albert van Eck, head of the eResearch and High-Performance Computing (HPC) unit, was their mentor. The university entered three teams for the competition.
Both Khaka and Shezi are currently studying towards a BSc degree in IT, majoring in Computer Science and Business Management.
Another student, Limpho Senatla, also studying towards a BSc degree in IT, was awarded the prize for the female student with the most potential in the national competition. Some of the prizes awarded to her include an opportunity to work under the mentorship of sponsors such as Tsolo.io, Diplomics, Intel and the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (Sarao).
The UFS pair going abroad will battle it out against six other teams. The teams will represent different universities.
The teams will bring and assemble their own cluster on-site, and run the micro-benchmarks and HPC applications.
According to Van Eck, the students benefit from exposure to various technologies and networking with other delegates, even members of teams who do not make it into the top positions.
“To become an HPC specialist, one must master various field-specific domains, and each of these domains can become a career in itself, should a student identify a specific field of more interest to them.
“This type of exposure is usually only experienced once one enters the workforce. It may be difficult and costly to enter a specific domain by that time.
“Earlier exposure during a competition like this can assist a student in identifying which fields of science, engineering, or IT they would like to focus on and perhaps later specialise in,” he said.
