University of Iowa Engineering graduate student in chemical and biochemical engineering Negin Sobhani received first prize for her research poster

entitled “Performance Analysis, Profiling and Optimization of Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model" at the 2015 Rocky Mountain Advanced Computing Consortium (RMACC) High Performance Computing Symposium was held August 13-15 at the University of Colorado.

As a SIParCS intern, Negin worked over the summer with her mentors Davide DelVento (CISL User Services) and Dave Gill (of MMM) to examine at the performance of Advanced Research WRF (ARW) using the performance profiling tools Vtune Amplifier and Tau, to zero in on the model’s performance issues. ARW is a widely used, fully compressible, nonhydrostatic weather model with complex dynamics and physics solver components. Sobhani analyzed its performance and discovered computational hotspots in certain calculations related to the transport of trace gases by winds, called advection, in the ARW model, and proposed approaches for making these calculations more efficient.

The annual symposium is focused on the continuing growth and future of high-performance computing in the Rocky Mountain region, and is recognized as one of the top regional events in high-performance computing in the country.

Sobhani also was part of the 2015 class of the Summer Internships in Parallel Computational Science (SIParCS) program. During the summer, SIParCS students had an opportunity for enrichment activities such as a technical writing seminar, high performance computing (HPC) training classes, and a field trip to the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC) to see the Yellowstone supercomputer.