From Spark to Flame: Introducing the IndySCC25 Teams

The Australian National University’s IndySCC25 team was formed through the year-long TechLauncher program, which connects students with industry partners and real-world projects. Proposed by Dr. John Taylor, the HPC professor, the project attracted students with shared interests in parallel programming and HPC. While this is the team’s first appearance at the IndySCC, they bring plenty of enthusiasm and a mix of coursework experience & fresh perspectives to the competition.

The team began preparation in February with 8-hour weekly collaborative sessions focused on infrastructure setup, software tuning, & benchmarking. Before receiving their cluster hardware from their vendor sponsor XENON, the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) supported the team by providing access to nodes from the retired Raijin supercomputer as well as the current Gadi system for training. Andrew Howard, Associate Director of Cloud Services at NCI, offered guidance on network setup, software deployment, and technical resources. As part of their preparation, the team also met with the CEO and CTO of XENON, who traveled across Australia to provide direction and arrange hardware access.

What makes ANU’s team stand out is its diversity. Members come from backgrounds spanning science, engineering, and software—disciplines that rarely overlap in the same workspace. They believe this multidisciplinary approach will help them tackle problems from climate modelling to molecular dynamics with synergy. Their collaborative sessions helped the team forge a strong bond that accelerated learning and harmonized their skill sets. Backed by both academic mentors and industry leaders, ANU enters IndySCC25 eager to learn, compete, and contribute a unique perspective to the global HPC community. 

The California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI) “High-Performance Dolphins” return to IndySCC with momentum from last year’s debut, and this year’s team continues to build on that spark. Without a formal HPC program at CSUCI, the students created their own path forward by constructing a cluster from donated servers and establishing peer-led training sessions to sustain interest and expertise. Several teammates also competed at the Winter Classic Invitational, gaining valuable experience with benchmarking and job scheduling on the Frontier supercomputer, as well as cloud-based cluster configuration and MPI program workflows.

The team began preparation during the summer with remote training sessions held twice a week to develop essential skills in benchmarking, job scheduling, and debugging of MPI applications. Once the semester began, they hosted in-person rehearsals to simulate competition conditions that emphasize communication, technical problem-solving, and decision-making under pressure. They also work with the university’s Programming Club to host HPC-themed events, workshops, and coding classes that broaden community involvement.

What makes the High-Performance Dolphins unique is their resilience and commitment to access. As a regional public university with no dedicated HPC courses, they built their own cluster, created a training ground for themselves, and fostered a growing HPC community from scratch.

Many team members are first-generation college students, transfer students, or balance academics with jobs and family responsibilities. Their diverse backgrounds — engineering, computer science, robotics, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence — drive innovation and reinforce the belief that HPC should be accessible to all.

Danil Zanozin

Irvin Ortiz-Cortez

Kieron Roe

Julian Nemo

Not Pictured

Salam Khalaf

Maxwell Scharkopf

Scott Feister
(Advisor)

ClusDur is a vibrant team of Durham University students who share a deep passion for HPC. Though ClusDur has only been around for three years, the team has already logged significant core hours together. The team was formed through word of mouth, attracting the most dedicated and enthusiastic students eager to dive into the world of HPC.

ClusDur’s preparation centers on hands-on training through advisor-led courses, vendor collaboration, and self-paced learning. With access to HPC resources like the Hamilton supercomputer and COSMA8 cluster, the team sharpens its skills. Knowledge is shared via student-led teaching and mini challenges, while regular meetings and Slack keep everyone aligned and ready.

ClusDur maintains a commitment to never competing with the same team twice. They continuously onboard new members, giving everyone – regardless of background or experience – a chance to compete in a real SCC. This year, the new members are eager to take on IndySCC, and the team is excited to get ClusDur on the leaderboard once again.

Durham University’s CompuDur team brings together undergraduates with complementary skills and practical experience from Durham’s HPC Society. Over the past year, they’ve learned HPC concepts directly from experienced members, including past IndySCC competitors and alumni of last year’s winning team. Weekly meetings and tailored exercises gave the group early exposure to cluster competition challenges, making CompuDur well prepared for their IndySCC debut.

Preparation has been closely tied to coursework and society workshops. Assignments modeled after previous competitions introduced applications like HPL and NAMD, giving the team hands-on practice with performance optimization and parallel programming fundamentals. Beyond coursework, members joined student-led workshops on profiling, benchmarking, build systems, and system administration tools such as SLURM and munge. This combination of academic and extracurricular training has built both technical expertise and confidence.

What makes CompuDur unique is its commitment to diversity and inclusion. The team includes students from Germany, Estonia, Malaysia, and Hong Kong, bringing a mix of cultural perspectives that strengthen collaboration and creativity. They also emphasize representation in computing, highlighting the visibility of LGBTQ+ individuals through their teammate Avesta. With their multicultural background and inclusive approach, CompuDur seeks not only to compete but also to model the future of computing as a space that is both innovative and welcoming.

Karl Southern
(Advisor)

Erik Tallinn

Not Pictured

Ethan Burkinshaw

Avesta Afshari-Mehr

Jaden Yuen

Wilfred Fung

Laura Kraft

Friedrich-Alexander-Universität returns to IndySCC with a team of undergraduates eager to deepen their HPC experience. For many, this is their first time competing in an international HPC event, & the opportunity to represent FAU on the IndySCC stage has sparked strong enthusiasm. Building on prior exposure to parallel programming, systems courses, and SCC knowledge, the team views IndySCC25 as both a learning opportunity and a chance to expand FAU’s student HPC community.

As part of the team’s preparation for IndySCC, the Erlangen National High-Performance Computing Center (NHR@FAU), in cooperation with the Chair of Computer Architecture at FAU, offered a dedicated course focused on HPC and competition preparation for all students. NHR@FAU also provided access to the Alex cluster & the Jetstream 2 cluster, which both utilize the same GPUs. The team’s strategy took a paired-partner approach so that each student can focus on one specific task to become the team expert of the subject. The onsite teammates then met each week to share their progress and experiences. 

What makes FAU’s team is a unique strong sense of collaboration and inclusivity. Many members are first-generation students from diverse backgrounds, reflecting FAU’s values of equality and support for all. The team proudly identifies as allies of the LGBTQIA+ community and is honored to represent them on the international stage. This combination of diversity, inclusion, and mentorship has fostered a problem-solving culture where creativity and persistence are as important as technical knowledge. With their dedication to learning and teamwork, FAU’s competitors are ready to bring fresh energy to IndySCC25.

HPC Brazil Force brings together students from seven universities across Brazil spanning the South and Southeast regions: Federal University of Pampa, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, UNICAMP, Federal University of Santa Maria, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, and Mackenzie Presbyterian University. The team unites students with complementary strengths in competitive programming, parallel computing, and hardware/software development. Their shared passion for HPC has been shaped by extensive experience in the Marathon of Parallel Programming, a national competition held annually since 2006.

Each member studies HPC-related topics at their home institutions, including computer architecture, parallel and distributed systems, and system optimization. Many use the Brazilian textbook “Parallel and Distributed Programming” as a reference in their courses. Beyond their academic foundations, the students bring practical skills in IoT, FPGAs, profiling, and parallel programming techniques such as OpenMP and CUDA. Their training for IndySCC25 focuses on Linux-based HPC system administration, performance profiling on known problems from the marathon, and tuning target applications with support from the National Laboratory for Scientific Computing and mentors at their home universities. 

With members selected for their diverse talents and experiences, HPC Brazil Force embodies the country’s growing HPC community. Their combined expertise — from algorithm design and system optimization to embedded systems and technical communication — reflects the strength of collaboration across Brazil’s leading universities. 

Florida International University’s IndySCC25 team brings together students from across disciplines — computer science, mathematics, biology, cybersecurity, physics, and even music theory — united by a shared drive to explore HPC and contribute to scientific research. While this is their first time competing in the IndySCC, they were drawn to the competition for its focus on accessibility and reproducibility, two principles they see as vital to their future research careers. 

The team is supported by FIU’s strong cyberinfrastructure ecosystem. As a partner in the Partnership for Advanced Throughput Computing (PATh) and home for Center for Internet Augmented Research and Assessment (CIARA), FIU offers access to advanced training, mentorship, and computing resources. Leveraging these connections, the team has designed a structured preparation place centered on technical training, peer-led learning, and iterative experimentation. Weekly sessions focus on competition rules, past challenges, and essential topics such as operating systems, Unix processes, computer architecture, schedulers, networking, and reproducibility. To build practical skills, the students deepened their knowledge of scheduling systems by comparing HTCondor and SLURM, and working through hands-on tutorials from the Open Science Grid and PATh workshops. This training has helped them connect theoretical knowledge to real-world workflows, including job submission strategies, DAGMan workflows, and container execution on FIU’s Panther and RAPTOR clusters.

What sets this team apart is their interdisciplinary makeup and determination to grow. Many come from underrepresented groups in STEM, bringing diverse perspectives and a collaborative spirit as they step into the world of HPC for the first time.

Pooja Lad

Lucas Arabi

Marco Pucitta

Jessica Olivera

Not Pictured

Tyler Hebron

Thomas King

Dr. Anthony Bellantuono
(Advisor)

Team Phoenix has a well-established history with SC, where it has competed in several SCC (2017, 2020, and 2021) and IndySCC (2022, 2023, and 2024) competitions over the years. Our current team, composed of 2 returning members and 4 new members, worked together in Georgia Tech’s Vertically Integrated Project (VIP) course. This course specializes in preparing undergraduate students for cluster competitions via hands-on instruction in compilers, benchmarking, job schedulers, and tuning. Six academic disciplines within GT’s College of Computing relevant to HPC will be represented at IndySCC 2025: information internetworks, modeling and simulation, systems architecture, computer theory, intelligence, and cybersecurity.

Through GT’s VIP course, our team meets weekly during the Fall and Spring semesters where members participate in weekly sessions focused on application readiness and performance tuning. To maximize preparedness, our team has access to a 9-node bare-metal teaching cluster in the VIP lab, enabling flexible system setup, reconfiguration, and testing. This system features a mix of CPUs, GPUs, Intel Optane memory, and storage nodes, allowing students to train on real-world HPC configurations with diverse memory and compute hierarchies.

A special highlight of this year’s Team Phoenix is the return of two senior members who competed on-site at last year’s IndySCC. This is particularly meaningful for us, as it has been several years since we’ve had returning team members. Their decision to come back reflects the excitement and fulfillment of competing on-site and exploring the opportunities the conference offers.

Alexander Ichetovkin

Alex Kim

Seth Shi

Hangzhou City University’s IndySCC25 team formed through a shared passion for high-performance computing (HPC) and a desire to challenge themselves on an international stage. Most members are active in the university’s HPC Lab and Supercomputing Team, where they have competed in domestic contests like the ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge and Pacific-Asia Student Cluster Competition (PAC). Late-night debugging sessions, hardware tuning experiments, and post-competition debriefs have turned classmates into close collaborators. While this is their first appearance at the IndySCC and their first outing to the SCC series, their prior competition experience has built a strong technical foundation and an appreciation for the collaboration needed to thrive in fast-paced cluster challenges.

The team follows a structured, collaborative preparation plan with weekly meetings focused on individual specializations—benchmarking, system tuning, application optimization, and HPC theory. These sessions serve as both peer-review checkpoints and mentorship opportunities with their advisors. Outside meetings, they study past competition problems, review open HPC courses like CMU 15-418, and run simulated competition scenarios. Internal workshops have strengthened their skills with MPI, OpenMP, various schedulers, and applications like HPL, HPCG, and GROMACS. Their university’s Supercomputing Center has provided local HPC infrastructure for early testing and performance tuning before vendor hardware arrives.

What sets this team apart is their tight-knit community and interdisciplinary mindset. Alongside their technical training, they support each other through a student-run laptop repair team on campus, building trust and teamwork outside competitions.

With members from computer science, software engineering, and mathematics, they approach problems from diverse angles—blending rigor with creativity. Though newcomers to IndySCC, they bring the experience of domestic HPC contests and a team culture rooted in curiosity, persistence, and shared learning.

Zhuhan Bao

Juncheng Lv

Yanan Sheng

Xunuo Xie

Not Pictured

Zheng Cai

Binhao Gong

Rui Hu
(Advisor)

Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi makes its debut at IndySCC with a team of students brought together by a shared curiosity for computing and the vast possibilities of HPC. Though new to the field, the team was drawn to IndySCC as an opportunity to explore large-scale computational systems and gain hands-on experience beyond the classroom.

As newcomers to HPC, they have been actively learning and experimenting with new tools and technologies. They are learning about cluster environments, parallel programming basics, scheduling systems, benchmarking frameworks. They meet regularly to share what they’ve learned, teach each other new skills, and discuss strategies for approaching the competition challenges. This collaborative, peer-led learning style has helped them rapidly grow their understanding of HPC concepts while fostering teamwork.

What makes this team stand out is their enthusiasm and curiosity. They represent a new wave of students eager to dive into HPC from diverse computing backgrounds. For them, IndySCC is more than just a competition—it’s a launch point into the broader HPC community. With determination, creativity, and a willingness to learn, they are ready to take their first steps into HPC on the international stage.

Indiana University and Purdue University have teamed up once again to form Team INpack for IndySCC 2025. Most students are new to the Student Cluster Competition series, while one returns as a veteran of the 2023 IndySCC with the previous joint team. This collaboration continues a shared tradition of Indiana–Purdue teams competing in SCC and IndySCC events, most recently at the 2022 SCC and 2023 IndySCC. The students are excited to carry that legacy forward while forging their own path as a new team.

They began preparation asynchronously over the summer while balancing internships and research jobs, coordinating through weekly online meetings, group chats, and a Jetstream allocation for training. As the semester began, their meetings ramped up, with plans for two in-person sessions in September and October to practice collaborative problem-solving and communication under real competition conditions. Their technical training spans Unix administration, parallel programming with OpenMP and MPI, HPC system performance analysis, code profiling, and using Exosphere to deploy clusters of virtual machines.

What makes INpack stand out is its blend of expertise across two universities. The Purdue students contribute experience from the Rosen Center for Academic Computing, industry internships, and national lab work, while the Indiana students bring backgrounds from the REN-ISAC networking center, national labs, teaching, and system administration. Together, they form a well-rounded team ready to take on the challenges of IndySCC25 — and to prove what’s possible when two powerhouse universities join forces.

The 2025 Mississippi State University Special Interest Group – High Performance Computing (SIGHPC) team returns to IndySCC for its second year, building on the foundation laid during its 2024 debut. The team has since grown into a dedicated community focused on developing real-world HPC skills. This year’s roster is a blend of returning members and newcomers, with returning students like Isha stepping into leadership roles to guide preparation efforts. Team members come from a variety of backgrounds — many from India and Nepal — and bring interests ranging from HPC and AI to computer vision, data science, and computer engineering, contributing diverse perspectives to problem-solving.

The team meets weekly to prepare for IndySCC 2025, combining structured learning with hands-on training on a Dell-donated cluster system that mirrors MSU’s production environment. These sessions are regularly supported by faculty and HPC staff who assist with technical challenges and provide insights into advanced topics. The team has also collaborated with domain experts across campus to deepen their understanding of competition workloads. While members have experience in areas like MPI, optimization, and system administration, this year’s focus includes cross-training and addressing key areas identified for improvement from last year’s competition.

What sets this team apart is its broader mission: to grow a sustainable HPC learning community at Mississippi State University. Knowledge gained during IndySCC prep is shared with the wider SIGHPC group to ensure long-term impact and continuity. The 2024 competition was a formative experience that revealed both the breadth of HPC applications and the high level of expertise in the field. With that foundation, the team is excited to return to IndySCC 2025 with sharpened skills, renewed focus, and a strong commitment to collaboration and learning.

The NTHU SCC team, led by Professor Jerry Chou, brings together a group of students with enthusiasm. All members participate in the SC contest for the first time. However, under the training of experienced senior teammates and coaches who have previously competed in SC, the team has developed a solid foundation and demonstrated outstanding performance in other competitions. Their collaborative spirit, quick learning ability, and hands-on practice through internal workshops have prepared them well for the challenges.

The team follows a structured training plan with weekly progress reports, mock contests, and system setup practices. During the summer, we co-hosted an advanced HPC bootcamp with NCHC, aiming to promote HPC and AI among high school and undergraduate students. As part of our preparation, we built the Structural Simulation Toolkit on the Taiwania2 and Nano5 clusters and profiled several examples to identify potential bottlenecks. We also reviewed related papers to find ways to enhance performance and generate new ideas. For the Exascale Climate Emulator, we studied the reference paper thoroughly and experimented with building additional PaRSEC-dependent applications to deepen our understanding. We are investigating ways to reduce the time spent on Cholesky factorization and exploring how PaRSEC can improve efficiency in scientific applications. To better align our efforts with competition demands, we plan to watch the official webinar and adjust our strategies and pace accordingly — ensuring a faster and smoother transition once we gain access to the actual machines.

Participating in SC24 was not only a competition, but also a valuable opportunity to showcase the team’s growth and technical skills on an international stage. The team sees SC25 as a chance to meet international teams and challenge themselves in the real world.

Ke-Ying Chen

Johnathan Tian Hsu

Min-Shin Tsai

Jo-Ching Ma

Jerry Chou
(Advisor)

Not Pictured

Bing-Hong Lin

Yi-Jia Chen

This year marks the debut of New Jersey’s first-ever SCC series team. Students from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), Princeton University, and Rutgers University came together after one student’s research experience sparked an interest in HPC. Word spread quickly across campuses, drawing in like-minded peers eager to take on the challenge. The final roster blends expertise across fields, including neuroscience, cybersecurity, programming languages, and computer engineering—disciplines not often found on the same team but united by a shared drive to explore HPC.

The team is advised by Dr. David Bader, a pioneer who helped develop the first Linux supercomputer, and supported by the staff behind NJIT’s Wulver cluster. With their guidance, the students built a structured training program covering every stage of cluster computing: hardware selection, assembly, software stack deployment, performance tuning, and optimization. They meet twice weekly to study SCC-related topics and run hands-on workshops in collaboration with NJIT’s HPC faculty. They’ve also secured a dedicated space to assemble, test, and tune full-size clusters, using it as both a workshop and an “HPC classroom” to train new students on system administration, benchmarking, and workload optimization.

What makes this team stand out is its spirit of collaboration across both institutions and disciplines. They experiment with Beowulf clusters built from decommissioned machines, train on NJIT’s Wulver cluster, and even help newcomers build small SBC-based clusters using specialized guides they created themselves. As the first team to represent New Jersey on the SCC stage, they aim not just to compete — but to lay the foundation for a lasting HPC community across their home universities.

Peking University’s team brings together students united by a shared enthusiasm for HPC. Members discovered HPC through different paths — some through science and technology courses, others through hands-on applications — but all were drawn in by PKUSC’s vibrant team culture and collaborative opportunities. Through access to educational clusters, peer discussions, and team projects, they’ve gained practical skills and developed a deeper appreciation for HPC. Although PKUSC has a long tradition of cluster competition participation, every member of this IndySCC25 team is a first-time competitor, reflecting the organization’s commitment to giving new students opportunities to engage in real-world challenges.

Preparation has been both structured and hands-on. The team meets weekly to share progress, tackle technical issues, and set goals. They organize “HPC From Scratch” workshops covering CUDA, OpenMP, OpenACC, and Linux system management, pairing demonstrations with assignments and mentoring. To strengthen their skills, they built a cluster with Intel Xeon CPUs, A800 GPUs, and 100G InfiniBand, giving members daily experience in software setup, system configuration, and benchmarking. To complement this practice, professionals from academia and industry gave talks on system management and optimization. Each competition task has a lead and co-lead to balance accountability and teamwork, with guidance from advisor Professor Chun Fan.

What makes PKUSC’s IndySCC25 team unique is the diversity of its members and their shared passion for learning. Backgrounds range from mechanics to computer science to foreign languages — one student even studies Hindi but developed a personal interest in HPC. Another brings a practical approach from mechanics, while the team also takes pride in having a woman in their ranks. Together, these perspectives foster creativity, inclusivity, and resilience as they bring PKUSC’s energy and spirit to IndySCC25.

Team Plum Juice was formed at Sapienza University of Rome through a multicore programming course taught by their professor, who has long encouraged students to participate in the IndySCC. Inspired by his stories about the real-world challenges and collaborative atmosphere of the competition, the group of students, who were already enthusiastic about parallel computing and HPC, decided to take on the challenge. While this is their first time competing at IndySCC, Team Plum Juice is eager to put their technical foundation to the test and represent their university on an international stage.

To prepare, each member explores different HPC tools, frameworks, and programming models, then the team meets weekly to share their newfound knowledge and stay in sync. Members also present findings on profiling, optimization, and distributed systems to help them exploit their cluster’s underlying hardware. In addition to these sessions, they launched a self-guided simulation project, parallelizing a small application across multiple nodes to gain hands-on experience with real performance bottlenecks. Access to the Leonardo supercomputer at CINECA has given them the chance to work in a production-grade environment that mirrors the systems they will encounter during IndySCC.

What sets Team Plum Juice apart is their global perspective and diverse research backgrounds. All members are non-U.S. students, bringing unique viewpoints to the competition. Many are also engaged in HPC-related thesis projects and research, ranging from MPI collectives and GPU programming to Cerebras hardware and work with the Sapienza Flight Team. Together, these experiences give the team both a practical and innovative approach to HPC as they step into their first IndySCC.

Team Xflops was formed under the leadership of the Center for High-Performance Computing at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, bringing together students with a shared passion for HPC. Drawn by the opportunity to apply knowledge in both scientific computing and AI-related fields, the students saw IndySCC as the perfect chance to test their skills and explore cutting-edge technologies. This year marks their first appearance in the competition, and while newcomers, they are eager to learn, collaborate, and showcase their commitment to advancing HPC.

Preparation has focused on consistent communication and collaborative learning. The team holds meetings every one to two weeks to share progress, resolve challenges, and set new goals. Alongside these updates, they organize knowledge-sharing workshops where members present insights, techniques, or experiences from their own areas of expertise. These workshops not only raise the collective skill level of the team but also build a strong collaborative atmosphere. By combining structured updates with peer-driven learning, Team Xflops ensures that every member contributes while staying aligned with the group’s overall objectives.

What makes Team Xflops unique is its youthful composition. The team is made up mostly of freshmen, supported by a few sophomores, which brings a surge of fresh energy and new perspectives. While they acknowledge their relative lack of experience, they believe their enthusiasm, creativity, and willingness to take on challenges will drive them forward. With this mix of curiosity and determination, Team Xflops is ready to bring a vibrant spirit to IndySCC25.

GeekPie_HPC at ShanghaiTech University is a team brought together by a shared passion for HPC. Led by veterans who previously competed in IndySCC24, the team welcomes new faces from diverse academic and research backgrounds stepping into the spotlight for the first time. With access to a dedicated EPYC cluster on campus, the team is able to hone skills and simulate real-world scenarios throughout the year. GeekPie_HPC has made multiple appearances at the SC conference, achieving strong results in the past. This year, they carry forward the team’s legacy dating back to 2019, striving to add a new chapter to its history of friendship and achievement.

Preparation includes on-campus HPC races and short-term training sessions designed to screen and mentor new members. These activities help build technical depth while fostering the collaboration and teamwork needed for the competition. Experienced members share knowledge from prior SCC events, ensuring the group combines proven approaches with fresh energy from first-time participants. With both structured training and hands-on experimentation, the team is sharpening its competitive edge.

What makes GeekPie_HPC stand out is its cross-disciplinary expertise and flexible competition setup. Members have worked at organizations like NVIDIA and quantitative investment firms, bringing unique perspectives on HPC tuning and optimization. Others bring backgrounds in web development, computer architecture, or math competitions. This year, the team won’t all be in the same physical location—one member will compete from Berkeley while others rotate shifts remotely. This arrangement ensures continuous cluster usage and maximizes efficiency, all while demonstrating GeekPie_HPC’s adaptability and commitment to innovation.

Sun Yat-sen University’s (SYSU) team is a group of six HPC enthusiasts united by their passion for solving complex problems and exploring the possibilities of supercomputing. Most members competed in the ISC’25 Virtual Competition, where they learned to work under pressure and built a strong framework for collaboration. That experience sparked them to take on IndySCC and attend SC in person for the first time. For the team, this competition represents not only a technical challenge but also a chance to grow, test their skills, and proudly represent SYSU on a global stage.

Preparation has been both strategic and hands-on. The team meets weekly for strategy planning sessions and workshops covering cluster configuration, benchmarking, application profiling, and performance tuning. Alumni and senior club members play a key role in mentoring, offering guidance drawn from their own competition experiences. These weekly efforts help the team steadily improve while reinforcing a culture of collaboration and shared learning. Each step brings them closer to being ready for the high-pressure environment of IndySCC.

This year’s competition is full of firsts for the team. It is not only their debut at SC in person, but also the first time many members will travel to the United States. The team looks forward to meeting fellow competitors, exchanging ideas with experts, and experiencing the HPC community up close. IndySCC isn’t just a competition; it’s an opportunity to broaden our horizons, make connections, and bring new perspectives back to SYSU to strengthen their growing HPC community. 

Many members of Team CUHKSZ first connected during a challenging parallel computing course, where they discovered both core technical concepts and a shared passion for HPC. That experience built trust and camaraderie, eventually leading them — under their professor’s guidance — to form a competitive supercomputing team. Although their initial goal was IndySCC, they first competed together at ASC, which proved transformative. The event taught them lessons in optimization, time management, and teamwork under pressure. Now, with renewed motivation and stronger collaboration skills, they are eager to bring that experience to SC for the first time.

During the academic term, the team holds weekly seminars where members present topics ranging from programming models to profiling tools and optimization strategies. These sessions often include code snippets, debugging stories, and problem-solving exercises, creating a culture of open exchange and continuous learning. They are supported by a faculty advisor who provides resources and infrastructure, as well as guidance from seniors with competition experience. To ensure knowledge sustainability, the team contributes tutorials and documentation to their university’s technical library, supporting future students while reinforcing their own expertise.

What makes CUHKSZ unique is their mix of technical strengths and close personal ties. Teammates often tease one member whose Python habits lead to memory leaks in C++ code, and they recall late-night coding sessions filled with both debates and breakthroughs. One memorable moment came when an MPI optimization deadlocked because of swapped process IDs — frustrating at first, but ultimately a rewarding lesson. These shared challenges strengthen their bond and highlight the spirit they bring to IndySCC25.

The Southern University of Science & Technology’s team combines experience and fresh enthusiasm for HPC. Some members have competed at the ASC, ISC, APAC HPC-AI cluster competitions while this is the first time all six are teaming up for IndySCC. Their mix of sophomores, juniors, and a freshman provides both knowledge and new perspectives, fueling a collaborative and dynamic environment.

Preparation for IndySCC is multifaceted. Team members participated in the Distributed and Cloud Computing course, and attended CUDA training workshops at CCSE to strengthen their technical skills. They have access to the Qiming/Taiyi clusters, which feature over 200 NVIDIA V100 GPUs, and an experimental cluster with A100 GPUs and FPGAs. Weekly sessions allow members to focus on areas like cluster design, CPU acceleration, and heterogeneous computing. Mentorship from faculty, including Prof. Li and Dr. Fan, and guidance from senior competitors help the team refine strategies and optimize their workflows.

What sets Team CCSE apart is their diverse expertise and interdisciplinary interests. Members contribute strengths ranging from distributed machine learning research to reinforcement-learning-based EDA projects, while the first-year student brings fresh curiosity. The combination of experienced competitors and newcomers allows the team to balance proven approaches with innovative thinking. Their collaborative spirit, broad skill sets, and shared commitment to learning position them to make the most of their first IndySCC together.

The Diablo team from Tsinghua University is a well-established group with a rich history of achievements in the SCC competition. This year, the team has been carefully assembled through a series of HPC-related courses and competitions within the university, aimed at cultivating talent and fostering collaboration. The team features a strategic mix of seasoned members with prior SCC experience and eager newcomers ready to dive into the world of HPC. This blend of experience and fresh perspectives is designed to enhance the team’s capability and innovation as they prepare for the challenges of IndySCC25.

Extensive training has been a cornerstone of the team’s preparation, supported by robust hardware resources provided by the PACMAN Lab. The team has access to a training cluster equipped with Intel Xeon CPUs and NVIDIA accelerators, along with diverse platforms including ARM and AMD processors, AMD accelerators, and FPGAs. This variety enables the team to explore different architectures and optimize their performance across applications. Weekly meetings are held to discuss progress, and specific applications are assigned to team members for focused optimization. Feedback from faculty and senior team members is integral to refining their strategies and ensuring they are well-prepared for the competition.

Diversity and dynamism are central to the Diablo team’s ethos. The team is committed to promoting diversity in HPC by including members from various majors, including physics and Information and Computational Science. This range of experiences and backgrounds enriches the team’s collaborative environment. Moreover, team members share a variety of hobbies, from basketball, table tennis to diving, painting, and game development, creating a relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere. The Diablo team is excited to showcase their talent at IndySCC25 and eager to exchange knowledge and experiences with the global HPC community.

The University of California Santa Cruz’s Not-So-Slow-Slugs are a team reborn. While the name carries a legacy of past competitions, this year’s roster is entirely new, guided by the wisdom of a former member. Forged in the crucible of the 2024 Winter Classic Invitational Student Cluster Competition, the team rapidly transformed from HPC novices into a determined competitive force. That first taste of running real workloads on powerful supercomputers ignited a fire within them. Now, they arrive at the IndySCC hungry to push their boundaries and prove themselves on a grander stage.

The team’s preparation is a weekly immersion into the art and science of supercomputing. In their sessions, they experiment with complex workloads, sharpening their skills in scripting and bottleneck analysis. Their curiosity drives them deeper as they study the intricate architectural differences that define modern hardware (i.e. ISA, protocols, IPC, etc.). From their humble home system, “Hummingbird,” to the massive-scale resources at NERSC, the Slugs are leveraging every available tool to ready themselves for the intense demands of the competition.

At the heart of the Not-So-Slow-Slugs is a philosophy of collective growth and individual passion. As a team new to the field, they believe their greatest strength lies in working together, ensuring every member gains invaluable experience. They champion a culture where each student is encouraged to explore their own interests, allowing them to carve out a role that fuels their curiosity. For them, this competition is more than a challenge; it is a launchpad for the next generation of HPC innovators.

As the sole team representing Argentina, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba’s Team Carpinchos carries the pride of a nation. Their roster is a dynamic blend of veteran competitors and fresh talent, united by a mission to ignite a passion for HPC at their university. They actively recruited new members from diverse disciplines, building a team that reflects their commitment to community. For them, the IndySCC is more than a competition — it is a chance to push their limits, connect with the global HPC family, and show the world what Córdoba can do.

The team’s preparation is built on collaboration and mentorship. They sparked a supportive spirit with an internal competition where mixed-experience squads tackled challenges together, allowing newcomers to learn directly from veterans. This philosophy extends to their weekly strategy sessions, where open discussion and strong communication are paramount. Through member-led workshops, they are transforming individual expertise into a powerful collective strength.

The team’s name, “Carpinchos” (capybaras), is a nod to a resilient animal known for its communal nature — qualities the team embodies. It’s a symbol of their deep pride in their Argentinian heritage. As ambassadors for their home province of Córdoba, a region with few data centers, their journey is a testament to perseverance. Fueled by the invaluable support of UNC Supercomputo, they are not just competing; they are representing the passion and potential of their community on the world stage.

This team forges a unique collaboration between students from two of Rio de Janeiro’s leading universities, UFRJ and PUC-Rio. Their paths crossed in competitive hackathons, where a shared passion for rapid, creative problem-solving under pressure was ignited. Now, they are channeling that same collaborative energy into HPC. As newcomers to the IndySCC, they bring a battle-tested hackathon mindset, ready to tackle new challenges and proudly represent Brazil on the global stage.

Their approach to preparation is relentless. The team dedicates their weekends to a rigorous training regimen, fusing focused individual study with intense, hands-on collaborative sessions in the UFRJ labs. They are fortifying their knowledge with university coursework in parallel computing and operating systems, while a shared code repository serves as their virtual training ground for exercises and mini-challenges. Guided by their dedicated advisor, they are not just learning — they are building a cohesive, competitive unit.

At the heart of this team is a powerful social mission: to prove that innovation thrives on diversity. They have actively worked to break down barriers, bringing in talented peers from suburban and low-income backgrounds who are often underrepresented in such competitions. They carry the conviction that representation matters and that groundbreaking ideas come from all voices. This purpose, combined with their agile hackathon spirit and strong institutional support, creates a unique energy they are eager to unleash at the IndySCC.

The University of Botswana’s Team BASCO unites a dynamic group of students, from ambitious second-years to disciplined fourth-years. This team was forged by a mentor who saw their immense potential and made it a mission to not only elevate their skills but also to spotlight the rising tide of talent in Botswana. A tour of the university’s on-campus supercomputers ignited their passion for HPC, transforming curiosity into ambition. As newcomers to the SC conference, Team BASCO is fueled by the honor of representing their country and a powerful drive to prove their capabilities on the world stage.

The team’s preparation is as rigorous as their ambition. Through weekly deep-dive sessions, they are mastering the fundamentals of HPC and scientific computing. Their training extends to advanced skills in Python and Linux through the Red Hat systems administration course, complemented by hands-on workshops in building HPC clusters led by the university’s own administrators. Determined to leave no stone unturned, they are committed to leveraging every resource offered by the SC competition, from expert webinars to intensive office hours.

Team BASCO’s story is one of remarkable resilience and a deep commitment to building a legacy. With no prior experience, they recently entered a cybersecurity Capture The Flag competition where their second-years defied expectations to qualify for a conference. The team proudly champions diversity, with a third of its members being women who showcase the strength of women in STEM in Botswana. Their structure is intentionally designed to create a mentorship cycle, ensuring this year’s experience becomes the foundation for future generations. Facing limited resources not as a barrier but as a catalyst, Team BASCO is ready to challenge limits and make their mark.

UC Merced’s FeLineOPS forges a highly interdisciplinary team that blends scientific computing expertise with fresh perspectives. This roster of determined newcomers is anchored by the experience of a returning student leader and a dedicated community of alumni and faculty mentors. Motivated by the frontier of scientific problems and machine learning, they see this competition as a full immersion into the world of HPC. They are not just here to compete, but to absorb, innovate, and contribute to the field.

The team’s journey began with an intensive summer on UC Merced’s “Pinnacles” cluster, supported by experts from the university’s Cyberinfrastructure and Research Technologies (CIRT) team to understand real-world applications like climate modeling. Their preparation is a continuous, iterative process, featuring a unique model where each member becomes a “concept lead,” mastering and then teaching key topics to the group weekly. This philosophy of shared ownership ensures a deep, collective understanding, equipping them to tackle any challenge as a unified force.

Embodying the spirit of their university — the youngest Hispanic-Serving Institution in the UC system — the team is composed of first-generation students from underserved communities. They are driven by a profound mission: to empower one another and blaze a trail for future students. For FeLineOPS, this competition is a platform to champion diversity in STEM and build a sustainable legacy of HPC excellence and access on their campus, proving that the next generation of innovators can and will come from anywhere.

University of New Mexico’s team, the UNM Roadrunners, unite six students driven by a shared mission: to apply the power of HPC to the critical challenges facing their home state of New Mexico. Their individual ambitions form a powerful, solutions-oriented team, with members focusing on everything from designing greener, sustainable HPC systems and modeling precious groundwater resources to simulating fluid dynamics for new energy solutions. For them, IndySCC is a crucial proving ground to forge their skills and confidence, transforming academic knowledge into real-world impact.

The team’s preparation is a disciplined blend of focused training and academic immersion. After spending the summer mastering the fundamentals of parallel computing and hardware, they meet twice a week to tackle competition challenges. Their experience is designed to create a leadership pipeline; members will step into mentorship roles in UNM’s HPC courses, transforming their competition expertise into a vital resource that will strengthen their university’s entire HPC community.

Returning for their third SC competition, the Roadrunners are more than a team — they are the modern torchbearers of an incredible HPC legacy. UNM researchers were foundational contributors to technologies like LAPACK, the HPL benchmark, MPI Standardization efforts, and Beowulf clusters. Today, that pioneering spirit is alive in these students, as they channel a rich history of innovation into solving the problems of tomorrow in sustainability, hydrology, and scalable system design. 

Forging a new legacy of statewide collaboration, the Inaugural Oregon IndySCC team unites students from four distinct institutions: the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, Portland Community College, and Portland State University. Brought together by a shared and passionate interest in high performance computing, these students are trailblazers for their state. They are driven by the excitement of exploring a new field, the challenge of the competition, and the unique honor of representing Oregon as a single, unified team.

This pioneering team is backed by a powerful, statewide network of support. Mentors include a diverse group of HPC professionals and researchers from across Oregon’s top institutions — including Oregon Health & Science University — who are all providing hands-on workshops and expert guidance. To sharpen their skills, the team has access to ORCA, the Oregon Regional Computing Accelerator, allowing them to explore HPC and train on a formidable regional resource as they prepare for the competition.

This team represents something far greater than a single competition; it is a catalyst for a new era of partnership across Oregon. Their journey is bringing together not only students but also HPC staff, IT leadership, and researchers from all participating universities. They are not just competing for a prize; they are building a foundation for future collaboration and strengthening the entire state’s research and technology ecosystem for years to come.

Forged in the heart of the ROMEO supercomputing center, this team from the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne (URCA) was born from a shared passion for HPC, AI, and simulation. As six students in the university’s CHPS Master’s program, the idea to compete sparked organically during hands-on collaborations. While they make their debut on the SC stage, they are not novices, but they bring real-world experience in building clusters, managing infrastructure, and optimizing AI workflows. They are driven to test their skills against the world’s best and show what a motivated team from Reims can achieve.

The team’s preparation is powered by world-class infrastructure and expert mentorship. Their curriculum provides a foundation in parallel programming with MPI and CUDA. They train daily on ROMEO 2025, a BullSequana XH3000 system with NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips and ranked #2 on the Green500 list for energy efficiency. They are guided by the center’s professional technical team as they master SLURM scheduling, system monitoring, and power-aware computing. Their strategy is further sharpened by a faculty advisor from the SC Reproducibility Committee, who instills a culture of high-quality science, ensuring their work is both fast and reproducible.

What truly sets this team apart is their deep integration with a live, cutting-edge supercomputing environment. They are not just users of ROMEO; they are analysts and testers who understand the deep connection between hardware and software. This diverse group of engineers, data scientists, and bioinformaticians fuels their creative problem-solving. But their ultimate advantage is their philosophy: a team built not on a single star, but on mutual trust and shared learning. This cohesion is their secret weapon and they firmly believe it will carry them far in the competition.

For this team from Zimbabwe, the spark of collaboration was ignited at the World Robotics Olympiad. It was there that students from different fields — computer science, data science, and mechatronics — realized their individual talents could merge to achieve a powerful, shared vision. Inspired by the possibilities of technology, their strength was amplified by the addition of a key member from Zimbabwe Open University, cementing a team founded on diverse skills and a common goal to innovate and inspire.

The team’s preparation follows a powerful rhythm of virtual strategy and physical immersion. Students from multiple institutions convene virtually every two weeks to share knowledge and updates, then gather physically during holidays at the Zimbabwe Centre of High Performance Computing. This dedicated time provides critical hands-on access to hardware, allowing them to execute models in a production environment. Guided by mentors in virtual workshops on topics from parallel processing to containerization, they have built a dynamic cycle of discovery, refinement, and execution, ensuring that every team member grows technically and collaboratively.

The team’s true power lies in its incredible diversity of expertise. Comprising a mechanical engineer, a mechatronics engineer, an ICT expert, two data scientists, and a computer hardware expert, they bring a wide spectrum of problem-solving approaches to every challenge. This fusion of disciplines — merging statistical insights with hardware design and software engineering with mechanical precision — fuels their creativity and opens doors to novel solutions. Their collaboration is a testament to what’s possible when distinct minds unite with a shared purpose.

A new chapter begins for the Daemon Deacons as a brand new team of six students steps up to represent Wake Forest University. Many team members bring valuable undergraduate research experience and a familiarity with HPC clusters. They are driven by the opportunity to build on their existing skills and fully immerse themselves in the dynamic, challenging environment of HPC at the highest level of competition.

The team stands on a strong foundation of practical HPC knowledge, with half its members having completed an introductory HPC course featuring hands-on work with OpenMPI and GROMACS on the university’s DEAC Cluster. During the fall semester, their training intensified as it became a core component of a new, advanced elective, “Architecting High Performance Computing Clusters.” This unique integration of the IndySCC competition and curriculum ensures their training is both academically rigorous and strategically focused.

What makes this team truly unique is the historic partnership it represents. For the first time, students from Wake Forest University are joining forces with a student from Salem College to compete in the IndySCC. This pioneering collaboration is building a new bridge between the two institutions, forged by a shared passion for technology and a collective desire to innovate and succeed on the world stage.

Zhejiang University’s Team ZJUSCT is a powerful fusion of veteran leadership and dynamic new talent. The team is anchored by seasoned IndySCC24 and ASC ’24 SCC competitors who bring valuable expertise in cluster management and application optimization. This battle-tested experience is complemented by fresh perspectives from newcomers in fields as diverse as Information Security, Business Big Data, and even the English department. This unique blend of skills is driven by a shared passion to compete with the world’s best and explore the limits of hardware performance in the age of AI.

The team’s preparation is a testament to their role as leaders in their university’s HPC community. In addition to leveraging ZJU’s comprehensive curriculum on HPC and AI4Science, the team organized a specialized two-week “HPC-101” summer course for their peers, taught by professors and industry experts. This cycle of learning and teaching is reinforced by weekly meetings, deep analysis of past competition problems, and hands-on assignments in cluster maintenance, ensuring they are technically sharp and strategically aligned.

What makes Team ZJUSCT truly exceptional is its radical commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration. By bringing together award-winning veterans with newcomers from disparate fields, they are able to approach supercomputing challenges from every conceivable angle. This blend of seasoned expertise and novel viewpoints — where different modes of thinking inform technical strategy — is their core advantage. It is this synergy that fuels their innovative spirit and prepares them to deliver outstanding results.

SC also hosts the Student Cluster Competition. Learn more about this competition which happens concurrently with IndySCC.