 Hello beautiful humans and welcome back to Supercomputing. We're here in Dallas, Texas, giving you live coverage with theCUBE. I'm joined by David Nicholson, thank you for being my left arm today. Thank you Savannah. It's a nice little moral. Very excited about this segment. We've talked a lot about how the fusion between academia and the private sector is a big theme at this show. You can see multiple universities all over the show floor as well as many of the biggest companies on earth. We were very curious to learn a little bit more about this from people actually in the trenches and we are lucky to be joined today by two Purdue students. We have Lucas and Carl. Thank you both so much for being here. One Purdue, one IU. I think, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. Well then wait, let's give Indiana University their fairer due. That's where Lucas is and Carl is at Purdue. Sorry folks, I apparently need to go back to school to learn how to read. In the meantime, I know you're in the middle of a competition. Thank you so much for taking the time out. Carl, why don't you tell us what's going on? What is this competition? What brought you all here? And then let's dive into some deeper stuff. Yeah, this competition. So we're a joint team between Purdue and IU. We've overcome our rivalries, you know. We can age old rivalries to compete at the competition. It's a multi-part competition where we're going head to head against other teams from all across the world. Benchmarking our supercomputing cluster that we designed. Was there a moment of rift at all when you came together or was everyone peaceful? We came together actually pretty nicely. Our two advisors, they were very encouraging and so we overcame that, you know, no hostility, basically. I love that. So what are you working on and how long have you guys been collaborating on it? You can go ahead and start, Lucas. So we've been prepping for this since the summer and some of us even before that. Wow. And so currently we're working on the application phase of the competition. So everybody has different specialties and basically the competition gives you a set of rules and you have to accomplish what they tell you to do in a lot of the timeframe and run things very quickly. And so we saw, when we came and first met you, we saw that you were running, there are lights and sirens and a monitor looking at the power consumption involved. So part of this is how much power is being consumed. That's right. They explain exactly what are the rules that you have to live within. Yeah, so the main constraint is, you know, the time as we mentioned and the power consumption. So for the benchmarking phase, which was the one, two days ago, there was a hard camp of 3,000 watts to be consumed. You couldn't go over that, otherwise you would be penalized for that. You have to rerun, start from scratch, basically. Now there's a dynamic one for the application section where it's a modulates at random time. So we don't know when it's going to go down, when it's going to go back up. So we have to adapt to that in real time. Oh, oh. Dealing with a little bit of real world complexity, I guess it's probably what the situation is here. I think that's pretty fascinating. I want to know, because I am going to just confess, when I was your age last week, I did not understand the power of super computing and high performance computing. Lucas, let's start with you. How did you know this was the path you wanted to go down in your academic career? Yeah, what's your background? Yeah, give us a run up. So my background is intelligent systems engineering, which is kind of a fusion. It's between, I'm doing bioengineering and then also more classical computer engineering. So my background is biology, actually. But I decided to go down this path kind of on a whim. My professor suggested it, and I've kind of fallen in love with it. I did my summer internship doing HPC, and I haven't looked back. When did you think you wanted to go into this field? I mean, in high school, did you have a special teacher that sparked it? What was it? That's funny that you say that. What was it in your background? I mean, in high school, towards the end, I just knew that I saw this program at IU and it's pretty new, and I just thought this would be a great opportunity for me and I'm loving it so far. Family in tech? Or is this a different path for you? Yeah, this is a different path for me. But my family is so encouraging and they're very happy for me. They text me all the time, so I couldn't be happier. I just felt that in my heart. I know I was going to say for the parents out there, get the tissue out. These guys, they don't understand, but so Carl, what's your story? What's your background? My background, I'm a major in unmanned aerial systems. So this is drones, commercial applications, not immediately connected as you might imagine, although there's actually more overlap than what one might think. So a lot of unmanned systems today, a lot of it's remote sensing, which means that there's a lot of image processing that takes place, mapping of a field, what have you, or some sort of object like a silo. So a lot of it actually leverages high performance computing in order to map, to visualize, much replacing either manual mapping that used to be done by humans in the field or helicopters, so a lot of cost reduction there and efficiency increases. And when did you get this spark that said, I want to go to Purdue? Did you come, now you mentioned off camera that you're from Belgium. That's right. Did you come from Belgium to Purdue? Were you already in the States? No, so I have family that lives in the States but I grew up in Belgium. Okay. I knew I wanted to study in the States. But at what age did you think that science and technology was something you'd be interested in? I've always loved computers from a young age. I've been breaking computers since, before I can remember, much to my parents' dismay. But yeah, so I've always had a knack for technology and that sort of has always been a hobby of mine. And then I want to ask you this question, then Lucas and then Savannah will get some more time. I just sit here and look pretty. Dream job. Dream job. So you're undergrad, you both under... I'm hovering one of my questions. Am I, am I? Okay. Kind of, it's adjacent though. Okay, you're undergrad now. Is there grad school in your future? Do you feel that's necessary? Do you, is that something you want to pursue? I think so. Entrepreneurship is something that's been in the back of my head for a while as well. So, an MBA or something. So when I say dream job, it could understand the, you know, could be working for yourself. So just if you're just piggyback. Dream thing after academia or stay in academia, what do you think at this point? That's a tough question you're asking me. You'll be able to review this video in 10 years. Oh boy. Please say give us your five year plan and then we'll have you back on the queue. But I'll see you 24, what's seven? What's the dream? There's people out here watching this. So I go, hey, internship. So as I mentioned, entrepreneurship, I'm thinking I'll start a company at some point. Okay. Hell yes. In what? I don't know yet. We'll see. Lucas, any thoughts? So after graduation, I am planning to go to grad school. IU has a great accelerated master's degree program. So I'll stay an extra year and get my master's. Dream job is, boy, that's impossible to answer. But I remember telling my dad earlier this year that I was so, so interested in what NASA was doing. They're sending a probe to one of the moons of Jupiter. That's awesome. That's awesome. From a parent's perspective, the dream often is let's get the kids off the payroll. So I'm sure that your families are happy to hear that you have- I think these two will be all right. I think they're gonna be okay. And that's apartment. Yeah, I love that. I was curious, I want to piggyback on that because I think what NASA's doing amazing. We have them on the show. Who doesn't love space? I'm also an entrepreneur though. So I very much empathize with that. I was gonna ask to your dream job, but also what companies here do you find the most impressive? I'll rephrase, because I was gonna say who would you want to work with? Anything you think is interesting? But yeah, have you even had a chance to walk the floor? I know you've been busy competing. Very little, you, yeah, I was gonna say very little. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to roam around very much, but I look around and I see names that I'm like, I can't even, you know, it's crazy to see them. Like, these are people who are so impressive in the space. These are people who are extremely smart. I'm surrounded by geniuses everywhere I look, I feel like. So... That includes us. Yeah, I... He wasn't talking about us. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to say any of these companies I would feel very, very lucky to be a part of, I think. Well, there's a reason why both of you were invited to the party. So keep that in mind. Yeah. So not a lot of time because of, because you're here to get work. Oh, yes, tomorrow you get to play and go talk to everybody and let them recruit you because I'm sure that's what a lot of these companies are going to be doing. Yeah, hopefully, hopefully. It's a plan. Have you had a second at all to look around, Carl? A little bit more. I've been going to the bathroom once in a while. Yeah. That's allowed. I mean, I can imagine that's a vital part of the journey. I've been, you know, averting my gaze a little bit to what's around. All kinds of stuff. Higher education seems to be very important in terms of their presence here. I find that very impressive. You know, Purdue has a big stand, IU as well, but also others, you know, from Europe as well and Asia. I think higher education has a lot of potential in this field. Absolutely. And it really is that union between academia and the private sector. We've seen a lot of it. But also, you know, one of the things that's cool about HPC is it's really not agist. It hasn't been around for that long. So, I mean, at this scale, it's obviously the show's been going on since 1988 before you guys were even probably a thought. But I think it's interesting. It's so fun to get to meet you both. Thank you for sharing about what you're doing and what your dreams are, Lucas and Carl. Thanks for taking the time. I hope you win. And we're going to get you off the show here as quickly as possible so you can get back to your teams and back to competing. David, great questions, as always. Thanks for being here. And thank you all for tuning in to theCUBE, live from Dallas, Texas, where we are at Supercomputing. My name's Savannah Peterson and I hope you're having a beautiful day.