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Details about the 2026 International HPC Summer School

Graduate students and postdoctoral scholars from institutions in Australia, Canada, Europe¹, Japan, South Africa the United States will be invited to apply for the 16th International High Performance Computing (HPC) Summer School, to be held July 12-17, 2026 in Perth, Australia.

The 2026 summer school is sponsored by various organizations including Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre (Pawsey) in Australia, the Digital Research Alliance of Canada (DRAC), the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) in Europe, the RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS) in Japan, along with other institutions in South Africa and the U.S.; selection and financial support of students for participation is contingent upon availability of funding.

If you would like to be informed of the announcement of the call for applications for the 2026 summer school, please complete the Expression of Interest form. You will be notified once the call is live.

¹ Please note that additional eligibility requirements apply to applicants from European institutions: only individuals whose primary residence, place of employment/study and citizenship are all in a Participating State of the EuroHPC JU are eligible to apply.

In a nutshell

The summer school will familiarize the best students in computational sciences with major state-of-the-art aspects of HPC and Big Data Analytics for a variety of scientific disciplines, catalyze the formation of networks, provide advanced mentoring, facilitate international exchange and open up further career options.

Leading computational scientists and HPC technologists from partner regions will offer instruction in parallel sessions on a variety of topics such as:

• HPC and Big Data challenges in major scientific disciplines: You will receive short, high-level introductions to a variety of science areas, with a focus on HPC-related simulation approaches and algorithmic challenges in the respective fields. 
• Shared-memory programming: Using OpenMP, you will learn how to use the multiple cores present in modern processors, as well as related issues and optimizations.
• Distributed-memory programming: for those who already know the basics of programming with the Message Passing Interface (MPI) you will learn about how to optimize performance based on the way the MPI library works internally, and more advanced MPI functionality.
• GPU programming: Building on the OpenMP techniques taught earlier, you will learn how to program graphics processing units (GPUs), which are important enabler of modern scientific computing and machine learning.
• Performance analysis and optimization on modern CPUs and GPUs: You will learn the basics of performance engineering, how to collect profiles and traces, and how to identify potential performance bottlenecks based on the collected profiles and traces.
• Software engineering: You will learn state of the art technical approaches and best practices in developing and maintaining scientific software.
• Numerical libraries: You will learn how to take advantage of already implemented algorithms in your code.
• Big Data analytics: You will learn how to use the powerful and popular Spark framework to analyse very large data sets and integrate this with machine learning techniques.
• Deep learning: You will extend already learned machine learning techniques into the leading edge with deep learning (also known as neural networks) using the standard TensorFlow framework.
• Scientific visualization: You will learn how to use 3D visualization tools for large scientific data sets.
• Australian, Canadian, European, Japanese and U.S. HPC infrastructures: You will learn about resources available in your part of the world, as well as how to gain access to these resources.

The expense-paid program will benefit scholars from Australia, Canadian, European, Japanese, South African and U.S. institutions who use advanced computing in their research. The ideal candidate will have many of the following qualities, however this list is not meant to be a “checklist” for applicants to meet all criteria:

• A familiarity with HPC, not necessarily an HPC expert, but rather a scholar who could benefit from including advanced computing tools and methods into their existing computational work
• A graduate student with a strong research plan or a postdoctoral fellow in the early stages of their research careers
• Regular practice with, or interest in, parallel programming
• Applicants from any research discipline are welcome, provided their research activities include computational work.
• Familiarity with C/C++ or Fortran, as most examples and practicals are based on those programming languages. Python is used or examples included in some sessions.
• Please note the specific track prerequisites below.

Diversity

The IHPCSS is committed to diversity and inclusion in high performance computing.  We welcome applications from all students regardless of race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability status.

If you have any questions regarding your eligibility or how this program may benefit you or your research group, please do not hesitate to contact the individual associated with your region below. 

Health & Safety

The school is currently being organized as an in-person event (no remote participation) in order to create the best experience for all attendees. Selected participants are expected to abide by local COVID-19 rules and measures, if any, which will be posted on this website prior to the school.

Costs

School fees, meals and housing will be covered for all accepted applicants to the summer school. Reasonable flight costs will also be covered for those travelling to/from the school.