Campinas, April 16 – The campus of the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) was the stage for an important meeting between academia and the high-tech industry. The TecDay – UNICAMP, themed “Accelerating Science with HPC and AI Using GPUs,” brought together dozens of experts to discuss the latest innovations in High-Performance Computing (HPC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The event was an initiative of the Center for Computing in Engineering and Sciences (CCES) at Unicamp in collaboration with the companies Versatus HPC and NVIDIA.
Held at the “Casa do Professor Visitante” (CPV) at Unicamp, the event attracted an audience primarily composed of researchers, postdoctoral fellows, and students, not only from Unicamp but also from various educational and research institutions in the state of São Paulo. With 40 in-person attendees and also broadcast via streaming, the TecDay aimed to discuss how graphics processing units (GPUs) are empowering scientific research and AI solutions.
The schedule, which ran from 2:30 PM to 5:30 PM, was opened by Prof. Dr. William Wolf of CCES Unicamp and featured a series of presentations that addressed the intersection of simulation, HPC, and AI. Industry representatives, such as Eiji Kawahira from Versatus HPC, Fábio Alves de Oliveira from NVIDIA, and Rogério Chola from Dell Technologies, presented their platforms and visions on the role of these technologies in advancing scientific discovery.
Researchers from Unicamp itself were also featured, demonstrating the practical application of these tools in their work. Brener Ramos, a Machine Learning Specialist at CCES, spoke about accelerating scientific applications with GPUs. Following him, Prof. Dr. Tarcísio Costa Déda Oliveira, a postdoctoral researcher, presented his work with neural networks for flow control. Prof. Dr. Orlem Lima dos Santos, also a postdoctoral researcher, concluded the presentations with his “w2v-SELD: A Sound Event Localization and Detection Framework for Self-Supervised Spatial Audio Pre-Training”.
One of the most anticipated moments was the panel discussion, which promoted an in-depth debate on the event’s themes. Moderated by Prof. Dr. William Wolf, the panel featured prominent experts such as Prof. Dr. Munir Skaf, Director of CCES, and Prof. Dr. Paulo José da Silva e Silva, Coordinator of CENAPAD-SP, in addition to the representatives from NVIDIA, Versatus HPC, and Dell Technologies.
The TecDay Unicamp successfully fulfilled its objective of being a forum for updates and networking, culminating in a happy hour for the attendees. The event reinforced the importance of collaboration between universities and companies to drive innovation and accelerate science, empowering researchers with the most advanced tools available in the field of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence.