Travel: Student Travel Support for MVAPICH User Group (MUG) 2026 Conference

This project focuses on the rapidly evolving landscape of Modern High-Performance Computing (HPC) and AI systems and the importance of preparing the next generation of engineers and scientists to navigate these advancements. With the emergence of multi-/many-core platforms like Intel Xeons, AMD EPYC, and NVIDIA Grace; and various GPUs (NVIDIA and AMD), coupled with RDMA-enabled networking technologies such as InfiniBand, RoCE, iWARP, Omni-Path, and Slingshot, it is crucial to understand and utilize these technologies to design HPC software stacks. The MVAPICH open-source MPI library and its derivatives have played a significant role in exploiting the potential of RDMA-capable networks, resulting in the rapid growth and adoption of InfiniBand in the HPC community. The popularity of MVAPICH is evident, with over 3,500 organizations worldwide (in 94 countries) utilizing these libraries, resulting in more than 2.0 million downloads from the OSU website as of June 2026. Moreover, an annual MVAPICH User Group conference (MUG) provides a collaborative platform for users, researchers, administrators, and students to exchange knowledge, share experiences, and discuss optimization strategies, troubleshooting guidelines, and other relevant topics. This project not only advances the fields of HPC and AI but also supports education, workforce development, and benefits society at large. The 2026 MVAPICH User group (MUG) Conference is a gathering of experts, including users, system administrators, researchers, engineers, and students, focused on sharing knowledge about the MVAPICH libraries. It provides a platform for discussions and presentations from renowned researchers, users, and system administrators in the field. The event also features contributed presentations selected by the MVAPICH team, focusing on tuning, optimization strategies, and troubleshooting guidelines. Scheduled to take place in Columbus, OH, from August 17-19, 2026, the conference is organized by a distinguished group of specialists in message passing (MPI) and networking technologies. To support student participation, the project will provide funding, enabling them to engage with the MVAPICH research and user community. The conference serves the national interest by fostering research dissemination, facilitating connections among researchers, and training the next generation of scholars, aligned with the mission of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The organizers aim to recruit students from all backgrounds. Attending the conference offers students various benefits, such as exposure to cutting-edge high-performance computing (HPC) technologies, in-depth understanding of designing open-source software environments for HPC systems, training on optimization techniques, and opportunities for interaction with industry professionals and national laboratory experts. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2627589 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Dhabaleswar Panda | Institution: OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, THE, COLUMBUS, OH | Award Amount: $10,000 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2627589 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2627589.html