Ahmed Senior Ismail

Greetings to you all.

My name is Ahmed Senior Ismail, and I’m a Nigerian. Hitherto, my educational studies were in Nigeria. However, just about a year ago, specifically at the end of my first master’s degree in mathematics, which I undertook at the University of Ilorin, Nigeria. A congratulatory mail landed in my mailbox which conveyed the news of my selection for the InterMaths & Mathmods double degree program. Lo and behold, I saw this as an impetus with which I could leverage towards broadening my mental horizon as well as satiating my curiosity in the field of Applied Mathematics, which without hesitation I accepted the admission offer.

Confessedly, I became an European student afterwards. I have just completed the first year of my program in mathematical engineering at the University of L’Aquila, Italy. It will be worthy to remark that the final phase of my program will be at the University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland, which I am obligated to be at come September.

Conversely, I was a high school mathematics educator back in Nigeria. Additionally, I have held several leadership positions, besides, I’m currently an editor-in-chief of a blog page named Unilorin Voice, an educational research platform, with about ten thousand subscribers. Nevertheless, I am a lover of numbers, an exciting fan of technological innovations and other concepts that pose to facilitate human task (s). I also love to engage in sporting activities during my leisure, in fact I used to be a sport analyst on broadcast station in my hometown.

What led to HPC?

My interest in high performance computing  sprouted recently, precisely during my first course on parallel computing taken by Professor Antonio Cicone and Professor Denato Pera. This course exposed me to the fundamentals of high performance computing explaining its concepts and motivations of supercomputer, ranging from the ability to handle large dataset, multitasking which enhance high speed of computation, fault tolerance and more flexibility in the deployment models. Knowing the integrability of this field into other fields makes it more valuable to me. Undoubtedly, the high performance computation has come to play a significant role in the future technological advancement.

Here comes SoHPC; What is SoHPC and what are its aims?

The summer of HPC (SoHPC) PRACE Program was timely as I was willing to further on the already learned basics. Thanks to my vibrant lecturer Professor Antonio Cicone who shared the information regarding the PRACE Summer of HPC 2022 to all his students. The summer of HPC program offers students with the opportunity to learn while working on practical projects with experts across the Europe during the summer at HPC centers in a PRACE Partner country. The main goal of the program is to encourage all students in their path to become the next generation of HPC users.

Would you’d like to know the brain behind this great program? I guess yes!

PRACE is Not for Profit Association under the Belgian law, with its seat in Brussels. Her mission is to enable world-class scientific research through large scale simulation.  PRACE has partners in twenty-five countries with five hosting members which include France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland and has two observers Croatia and Latvia.

Here is how my journey with SoHPC started!

From among several excellent diverge projects offered this year, I chose to select project number 2208 optimization of neural networks to predict the results of mechanical models, which I find more interesting and relevant to my background and future endeavors. Though, I was doubtful at some point concerning the successful outcome due to the competitiveness of the program, but, obviously the committee found me most worthy to be granted the opportunity and which is one of many key reasons I shall put in my usual dedication and studious attitude towards the achievement of the project goals.  The main motivation for my choice of selection boils down to the zeal I have for machine learning concepts, and mathematical optimization where I had my first publication titled ‘’On the characterization of optimal control model of whooping cough’’ https://doi.org/10.34198/ejms.8122.175188.

The program started proper with virtual training week, with explanation of the overview of some important areas of high performance computing. Thanks to all the revered persons who made it a success, starting from Leon Kos, Pavel Tomsic, Alenka Maffi, Claudia Blass-Schenner, Moritz Siegel, Matic Bank, Leon Bogdanovic, the technical staff, and my wonderful colleagues.

Conclusively, it was a pleasure joining my mentors this week at Capgemini Engineering Company Toulouse, France. I am enthused and optimistic about the task ahead with a strong believe of producing a standard report leveraging the available resources. Until then, I say goodbye for now but stay tuned for the upcoming updates in a few weeks.

Feel free to drop your comments….