Mapping the HPC Landscape: Christina Hymer to Share Lessons from ATPESC 2026

What does it take to understand the full landscape of high-performance computing? University of Kansas doctoral student Christina Hymer will explore that question during an upcoming presentation highlighting her experience at the 2026 Argonne Training Program on Extreme-Scale Computing (ATPESC).

Hymer will present “Mapping the HPC Landscape: An Overview of ATPESC 2026” from 11 a.m. to noon Wednesday, Oct. 7, in the Executive Conference Room at Nichols Hall.

ATPESC is an intensive, two-week program that exposes researchers to the many layers of modern high-performance computing, including computer hardware, programming models, numerical software, performance analysis, scientific data, artificial intelligence and emerging computing technologies.

During her presentation, Hymer will share how the program broadened her perspective on HPC beyond algorithms and parallel programming. Drawing on her research in parallel high-order mesh generation, she will discuss the connections among scientific software, communication, data movement, hardware and performance. She will also highlight lessons from ATPESC that have already influenced her research at KU, including an example using HPCToolkit to analyze her parallel mesh-generation software.

Hymer is a doctoral student in Mechanical Engineering at KU, where she conducts research in high-performance scientific computing with Dr. Suzanne Shontz. Her research focuses on parallel high-order mesh generation, distributed-memory computing and numerical linear algebra. She was selected to attend ATPESC in 2026.

Shontz is a professor in KU’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the Mathematical Methods and Interdisciplinary Computing Center (MMICC) within KU’s Institute for Information Sciences (I2S). Hymer is a member of MMICC, which brings together researchers working across mathematical methods and computational techniques to address complex problems and create new technologies. 

The presentation offers an opportunity to learn how exposure to advanced computing technologies can shape both a researcher’s understanding of HPC and the questions they bring to their own scientific work.