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Virginia Women in HPC – Career Paths in HPC
April 16 @ 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
VA-WHPC hosted three speakers who shared their unique backgrounds and experiences. Participants got to gained valuable insights on how your skills and passions can drive you toward a fulfilling career at the forefront of technological advancement. The event was organized to inspire participants to consider diverse career paths as well as build new connections in those areas.
Speakers:
Christina Gancayco – Computational Consultant at Stanford University
Whether it’s debugging code or demystifying HPC, Christina loves to help researchers solve tough problems. Christina currently supports researchers as a Computational Consultant with Stanford Research Computing, but her HPC career began at the University of Virginia in 2017. During her tenure with UVA Research Computing, Christina led user support operations for the Ivy secure computing environment and collaborated with researchers from a variety of disciplines, including pharmacology, emergency medicine, and neuroscience. Christina’s first exposure to HPC was as a research assistant in the UVA Functional Neuroradiology Lab, where she initially wondered how in the world, she was going to complete her analyses within a reasonable amount of time. Christina earned her B.S.E. in Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Theater Studies from Duke University.
Jacalyn (Jackie) Huband, Ph.D. – Assistant Director of the Data Analytics Center, University of Virginia
Jacalyn (Jackie) Huband, Ph.D., is the Assistant Director of the Data Analytics Center within University of Virginia’s Research Computing group. She provides computational support to researchers at the University, especially for those who are transitioning their codes onto the University’s high-performance computing (HPC) cluster. In addition to her work at UVA, Jackie has been an Associate Professor in Computer Science and a programmer in industry. Her Ph.D. is in Computational and Applied Mathematics; she did the research for her dissertation at NASA Langley Research Center.
Eric J. Walter, Ph.D. – Executive Director of Research Computing, William & Mary
Eric Walter serves as the Director of Research Computing at W&M. He manages a group of 4 FTEs and 2 student workers. Eric Walter received his B.S. in Chemistry in 1995 from Drexel University and Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001. His graduate work involved computational chemistry and physics of molecule/metal interfaces. Eric started at W&M working for the physics department as a scientific programmer for the Center for Piezoelectrics by Design, a multi-institution center for theoretical work on piezoelectric materials. In 2012, Eric took the position of applications analyst with the W&M HPC group and in 2015 became manager of the HPC group. In 2020, the HPC group became the Research Computing group with Eric as its inaugural director.