Women in High Performance Computing (WHPC) announces the launch of a Chapters and Affiliates Programme to bring its vision and mission to the worldwide community and assist those passionate about diversity and inclusion in bringing about positive change in their localities.
The pilot programme consists of six chapters and three affiliates across Europe and North America, and will allow WHPC to assess how a worldwide network of such chapters and affiliates might operate.
A WHPC chapter is a community-level group that serves a specific area or organisation and fulfils the WHPC mission locally. Each chapter is responsible for its own fundraising efforts, programmes, relationships, and volunteers. Chapters are formed by individuals or an organisation that wants to support women and the vision of WHPC in its community.
A WHPC affiliate is a community-level group that may not be suitable as a chapter but still wants to promote the vision and mission of WHPC. For example, an affiliate may be engaged in providing HPC services, but does not have a community of women within its organisation that it would directly support if it were a chapter. Instead, an affiliate may be active outside its organisation.
The WHPC Chapters and Affiliates Programme provides regional grassroots outlets for a wide range of activities that support diverse HPC communities. ‘Networking, early career support, and creating a platform for women’s voices are foundational to our mission and have proven to be successful approaches to strengthening women’s visibility in every sector,’ said Dr Toni Collis, Chair and co-founder of WHPC and Chief Business Development Officer at Appentra Solutions.
WHPC will work with chapters and affiliates to build a sustainable solution to diversifying the international HPC landscape. The WHPC community represents a broad variety of groups, in every sector from specialist HPC service providers to academia and industry.
‘The WHPC Chapters and Affiliates Pilot will enable us to reach an ever-increasing community of women, provide these women with the network that we know is essential to help them excel in their career, and retain talent in the workforce,’ says Dr Sharon Broude Geva, WHPC’s Director of Chapters. As Director of Advanced Research Computing (ARC) at the University of Michigan (U-M), Dr Geva also leads the University of Michigan Chapter of WHPC. ‘At the same time,” she continues, “we envisage that the new chapters will be able to tailor their activities to the needs of their local communities, as we know that there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution to diversity.’
WHPC will be accepting applications for new chapters and affiliates in 2019, after the pilot allows the organisation to assess the viability and workload of the programme.
WHPC Chapters:
- ARC University of Michigan (USA)
- Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) (UK)
- Purdue University (USA)
- Texas (USA)
- Thomas Young Centre The MMM Hub (UK)
- EPCC at the University of Edinburgh (UK)
WHPC Affiliates:
- Women@NCSA (USA)
- Calcue Québec (Canada)
- PRACE (Europe)
