Giving Humanists a Helping Hand in HPC

Giving Humanists a Helping Hand in HPC

With the proliferation of LLMs, more and more researchers will be able to utilize complex computational resources with less and less technical expertise. In the next few years, this will cause an exodus of researchers away from personal computers to HPC (high-performance computing) clusters for their research needs. While many default to the easy, well-advertised, but eventually expensive services of Google (Co-Lab) and other tech giants, they are often unaware of the free/highly-subsidized services available at their own institutions. This is only exacerbated by the fact that many HPC centers remain unaware of a burgeoning need for compute in humanities and social science disciplines.

In this talk, Brad will focus on low-cost, high-impact DIY strategies for integrating humanities and social sciences into academic HPC infrastructures. With a decade experience in HPC, both inside and outside centers, Brad has developed a variety of programs and projects to raise awareness of compute-intensive research in these disciplines, and help connect researchers to the resources they need for their work. We'll look at a variety of case studies to identify approaches that fit in a variety of different contexts, and conclude by looking at some aspirational programs for taking the next step.

Biography

Brad Rittenhouse holds a PhD in English and is a Research Computing Consultant at Stanford Research Computing. He has published on C19 American Literature, video games, DH Lab Management, and the Age of Revolutions. He's worked in and around HPC centers since 2015.

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