Ninth Grade Student One of Nine Finalists in Supercomputing Challenge

Marcus Dominguez-Kuhne ’16 just completed his year-long 2012-2013 New Mexico Supercomputing Challenge on April 23, with a presentation before panels of judges at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Marcus and other participants in the challenge also took classes and a tour of various lab activities.

The topic chosen by Marcus — “Model of Disease Propagation to Predict the Spread of an Outbreak” — required extensive research, as well as writing a large program using C++ with some portions written in OpenGL (for graphical presentation of the results).

This year students from throughout New Mexico submitted over 60 entries. Although most entries were team efforts, Marcus competed as an individual. His project was selected as one of the best nine, which advanced Marcus to the finals. He also received the Epidemiology Modeling Award and the Newcomer Award.

The supercomputing challenge begins with students submitting a proposal for their study in September. This is followed by classes at New Mexico Tech in October, submission of an initial report in December, a presentation at the University of New Mexico in February, and the submission of a lengthy final report in early April. Details can be found at the sponsor’s web site.

Congratulations, Marcus!