Anwesha Das

I attended the Supercomputing conference (SC) at Denver this year, as a student volunteer. Around 12000 people around the globe participated at this conference in diverse roles, all with a common goal of enhancing different aspects of high performance computing. I thoroughly enjoyed my participation as a volunteer, as a listener, as a protégé at the mentor-protégé program and as a poster presenter. I have been to this conference before, but volunteering made this year’s participation more fun. I am extremely grateful to ACM for subsidizing my attendance at this premier technical meeting. I had the privilege of meeting various great researchers who are making a distinguishing mark in the field, whose work is very related to my research. Hence, their way of understanding and giving insights to a problem aided me to assess my work. I got a better understanding of the voluminous responsibility shouldered by technical personnels, human resources and the administrators without whom, coordinating multiple tracks of different technical activities in this scientific forum would have been a daunting task. On earlier occasions my primary attention has been on technical talks, disseminating novel results and ideas. However, in this year’s SC, I realized that being able to successfully engage and lead large number of people, who work with dedication with diverse interests and conflicts is as important, if not more, than having individual technical competence. I hope to consciously inculcate this trait from now on, apart from learning to do better research. I once again sincerely thank ACM, for helping me in enriching my experience for the same.