Background

Verónica G. Melesse Vergara (Vergara Larrea) is originally from Quito, Ecuador. Verónica earned a B.A. in Mathematics/Physics at Reed College and a M.S. in Computational Science at Florida State University. Verónica has over a decade of experience in the high performance computing field and is currently Group Leader of the System Acceptance and User Environment Group at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility. In addition to providing assistance to OLCF users, Verónica is part of the systems testing team, led acceptance for Summit, and is leading acceptance for Frontier, ORNL’s exascale supercomputer. Her research interests include high performance computing, large-scale system testing, and performance evaluation and optimization of scientific applications. Verónica is a member of both IEEE and ACM and serves in the ACM SIGHPC Executive Committee and the SC Steering Committee.

Education

2011
Florida State University
Computational Science
Master of Science (M.S.)
2008
Reed College
Mathematics/Physics
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)

R&D Activities Contributions

SPEC High-Performance Group - The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) High-Performance Group (HPG) develops benchmarks that represent large, real applications, in scientific and technical computing, Active benchmark suites include…

Staff Activities

Committee Activity:

2020

SC Steering Committee

Verónica was elected to serve in the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC) in 2020.

2018

SIGHPC Executive Committee - Meetings Coordinator

As Meetings Coordinator, Verónica oversees the submission and review process of in-cooperation with SIGHPC proposals and sponsorship requests. Events granted in-cooperation status are eligible to publish their proceedings in the ACM Digital Library.

2017

SIGHPC Executive Committee - SC Workshops Coordinator

As SC Workshops Coordinator, Verónica oversees the submission and review process of in-cooperation with SIGHPC status proposals. SC Workshops that are granted in-cooperation with SIGHPC status are able to publish their proceedings in the ACM Digital Library.

Awards

2020 — UT Battelle Awards Night - Community Outreach

2020 — UT Battelle Awards Night - Technical Support for Research

2019 — UT Battelle Awards Night - Mission Support

2018 — U.S. Department of Energy Secretary of Energy’s Achievement Award

2015 — Cray User Group 2015 Best Paper Award

Publications

2017
Graham Lopez, M. Graham, Wayne Joubert, W., Vergara Larrea, V. G., Hernandez, O., Haidar, A., Tomov, S., and Dongarra, J. "Evaluation of Directive-based Performance Portable Programming Models". Special Edition of the International Journal of High Performance Computing and Networking, 2017.
2017
Vergara Larrea, V. G., Hernandez, O., et al., An in-depth evaluation of GCCs Ope- nACC implementation on Cray systems, Cray User Group 2017 Conference Proceedings, May 2017.
2016
Juckeland, G., Hernandez, O., Jacob, A., Neilson, D., Vergara Larrea, V. G., Wienke, S. and Bobyr, A., Brantley, W., Chandrasekaran, S., Colgrove, M., et al., From De- scribing to Prescribing Parallelism: Translating the SPEC ACCEL OpenACC Suite to OpenMP Target Directives, First International Workshop on Performance Portable Programming Models for Accelerators, January 2016.
2016
Lopez, M. G., Vergara Larrea, V. G., Joubert, W., Hernandez, O., Haidar, A., Tomov, S., Dongarra, J., Towards Achieving Performance Portability Using Directives for Accel- erators, Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Accelerator Programming Using Directives, November 2016.
2016
Oral, S., Zimmer, C., and Vergara Larrea, V. G., Darshan Evaluation at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, ORNL Technical Report, April 2016.
2016
Vergara Larrea, V. G., Joubert, W., Lopez, M. G., and Hernandez, O., Early experi- ences writing performance portable OpenMP 4 codes, Cray User Group 2016 Conference Proceedings, May 2016.
2016
Wang, F., Vergara Larrea, V. G., Leverman, D., Oral, S., FCP: A Fast and Scalable Data Copy Tool for High Performance Parallel File Systems, Cray User Group 2016 Conference Proceedings, May 2016.
2016
Zimmer, C., Gupta, S., Vergara Larrea, V. G., Finally, A Way to Measure Frontend I/O Performance, Cray User Group 2016 Conference Proceedings, May 2016.
2015
Harrell, S. L., Nam, H., Vergara Larrea, V. G., Keville, K. and Kamalic, D., Student Cluster Competition: A multi-disciplinary undergraduate HPC educational tool, Proceedings of the Workshop on Education for High-Performance Computing, November 2015.
2015
Vergara Larrea, V. G., Joubert, W., and Fuson, C., Use of Continuous Integration Tools for Application Performance Monitoring, Cray User Group 2015 Conference Proceedings, April 2015.
2015
Vergara Larrea, V. G., Oral S., Leverman, D. B., Nam, H. A., Wang, F., and Sim- mons, J., A More Realistic Way of Stressing the End-to-end I/O System, Cray User Group 2015 Conference Proceedings, April 2015.

Highlights

February 16, 2022

Demystifying the World of High-Performance Computing

January 25, 2022

Pioneering Frontier: Standing Up Exascale

November 19, 2020

OLCF Researchers, Staff, Recognized on UT-Battelle Awards Night

April 3, 2019

Troubleshooting the World’s Smartest and Fastest Supercomputer

Matt Ezell works with the HPC systems team and other OLCF groups to identify bugs and technical issues with Summit’s software before the machine comes online.
May 29, 2018

Faces of Summit: Leading a Systems Expedition