HPC Carpentry Enters Lesson Program Incubation

We are thrilled to announce that HPC Carpentry has entered Lesson Program Incubation. This is another big step towards the project joining Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry and Software Carpentry as our The Carpentries Lesson Program.

Toby Hodges, The Carpentries Director of Curriculum, said:

I am delighted to see HPC Carpentry move a big step closer to joining The Carpentries. I attended my first HPC Carpentry workshop in Dublin in 2018 – the day before the first ever CarpentryCon! – and have been enthusiastically following them ever since. I know from previous roles how challenging it can be for researchers to get to grips with high-performance computing environments, and the positive impact good-quality training in these skills can have on the scale and reproducibility of their work. So I find the prospect of adding HPC Carpentry workshops to the list of training offered by The Carpentries really exciting. The project is also supported by an inspiring community that shares the values of our own: adopting the project as an official Lesson Program and merging our two communities will strengthen both groups.

Alan O’Cais, a member of the HPC Carpentry Steering Committee said:

I organised that first workshop in Dublin in 2018! Even before then, there were others in the community working hard for a Carpentries direction for HPC training. Given all those incremental efforts of different people over the years, it’s really satisfying to see the tree they planted and nurtured start to blossom in the way they hoped. Of course this is only the beginning, but we are now in a place where we can really address the pedagogical and technical challenges that an HPC Carpentry Lesson Program raises. I look forward to a time when any lingering sense of eliteness around HPC is gone, and it is seen for what it should really be: just another tool in our learners’ box!

How You Can Get Involved

Help with Workshops

During Lesson Program incubation, the HPC Carpentry community will continue to teach and gather feedback on their workshops. You can help with this!

If you are interested in teaching an HPC Carpentry workshop to your local community, hosting a workshop taught by other Instructors, or getting involved in an existing workshop as an Instructor or Helper, HPC Carpentry wants to hear from you!

Contribute to Lessons

HPC Carpentry is looking to expand its community of contributors to the existing lesson projects. Many members of The Carpentries community will have expertise and experience to bring to the project’s lessons. During the Incubation phase, HPC Carpentry will be establishing and polishing its core curriculum, and you can help to guide the ongoing development of the lesson program.

Tell Your Friends!

Do you know somebody who may be interested in contributing to HPC Carpentry, or who could benefit from learning the skills it teaches? If so, tell them about it and share the information below about how they can learn more and get involved.

• Contact: maintainers-hpc@lists.carpentries.org
• Website: hpc-carpentry.org
• Community Calls: 11:00 & 21:00 UTC on the first & third Thursdays of every month
  • Find these calls in the Community Calendar

More About HPC Carpentry

As computational power has exploded, and with it the size of problems that can be solved computationally, High Performance Computing (HPC) has become fundamental science lab equipment. Not using HPC is likely to put you at a disadvantage, but new users are often unable to engage because of the complexity of HPC resources and the lack of formal curricula to teach HPC skills. The mission of HPC Carpentry is to lower the barrier to entry to HPC operations for a wide range of users, so that more learners can benefit from the increasing availability of increasingly sophisticated computer systems.

The core curriculum of HPC Carpentry bridges the gap between using a laptop and wielding a supercomputer through 3 lessons:

• the Software Carpentry Unix Shell lesson,
• an Introduction to High Performance Computing lesson, and,
• a lesson on HPC Workflow Management (with Snakemake)

More about the Incubation Process

After several years of development and informal communication between the organisations, HPC Carpentry applied for and was invited to enter the Incubation process to formally join The Carpentries. Incubation is the second of three phases in a process that onboards new projects into The Carpentries. During this phase, a new Lesson Program has 18 months to demonstrate high-quality curriculum, demand for workshops, a healthy community of contributors, and structures and policies that can align with The Carpentries existing governance. We’re excited to take this step towards onboarding another Lesson Program into The Carpentries and invite you to support the efforts of HPC Carpentry as they continue to build out their community and lesson infrastructure!

Learn more about the Lesson Program Incubation process in the Community Handbook.