News
Invited Talk: Monday 06 May 2019 - Dr Daniel Moeketsi
11:30 - 12:30 Monday 06 May 2019
Title: Introduction to CHPC-DARA
Author: Dr Daniel Moeketsi
Senior Research Scientist
Computational Space Physics
Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC)
CSIR, South Africa.
Abstract:
The Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) is part of the National Integrated Cyber Infrastructure System of the Government of South Africa. It was established in 2007 by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and is managed by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Its mandate is to provide world class computational resources to the research community across the different fields of Science and Engineering in the country; and also to drive human capital development in the field of high performance computing. Over the past 10 years, the Centre managed to significantly grow itself from a flagship project to a more sustainable institution. In this presentation, I will share with you the temporal evolution of the CHPC, since it was established to date, and how it can benefit the African VLBI Network (AVN) and SKA readiness community, in particular, the recent partnership between CHPC and the Development in Africa with Radio Astronomy (DARA) human capital development project. The CHPC has introduced Linux (UBUNTU) and Python scripting training to the DARA project.
More about the author:
Dr Daniel M. Moeketsi is a Senior Research Scientist responsible for computational space physics at the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa. He is one of the pioneer staff of the Centre, and in the past 10 years, Moeketsi contributed to the development of the CHPC in South Africa. Moeketsi received a PhD in Space Physics from Rhodes University, South Africa in 2008. His thesis was the first comprehensive study of the impact of solar activity on the upper atmosphere ionisation over South Africa. He worked as a research assistant in HartRAO’s Space Geodesy Programme during the period of his PhD studies.
Moeketsi leads the Human Capacity Development (HCD) and Outreach projects at CHPC. One of his HCD initiatives is the annual CHPC Linux and Python School in 2011 for science and engineering students in South Africa, as part of capacity building in High Performance Computing. This project has now been expanded into Africa.
He is currently serving as Panel Member for the NASA Postdoctoral Programme. He was also invited to serve as panel member for several NRF funding instruments/programmes. He has published in peer reviewed science journals, served as reviewer for local and international journals, supervised postgraduate students in science, served as the external examiner for postgraduate theses, including being moderator for examinations in physical sciences. His passion is to provide leadership towards human capacity building in High Performance Computing in Africa.