Courses

Last Updated: August 13, 2025

Every semester, Texas A&M High Performance Research Computing (HPRC) offers short courses covering a range of topics for beginning, intermediate, and advanced researchers. Courses taught early in the semester on the clusters and schedulers form the basis for using the respective clusters effectively. We also offer short "primer" classes taught throughout the semester to brush up on basics quickly. All courses will be delivered in an interactive style through a live login session. In general, slides and other supplemental materials are available on each course page.

Registration is required for each primer or short course. Attendees will need to use their own device. Workstations are not provided. The typical short course runs for 2.5 hours, unless otherwise noted. Each primer runs for 1 hour.

Most courses will require one of two accounts:

In-class short courses have a seating limit of about 45 students.

For our course offerings from previous semesters, please consult this page.

Short Course List for Spring 2025

ACES: Introduction to Composable Computing on ACES

Instructor(s): Dr. Josh Winchell

Time: Tuesday, September 2, 2025 — 10:00AM-12:30PM CT

Location: Online using Zoom

Description: Introduction to research computing on the composable ACES cluster. Topics covered include hardware, access, policies, file systems, and batch processing.

Prerequisite(s): Current ACCESS ID, basic Linux/Unix skills

View Details Remote Attendee Registration

ACES: Using the Slurm Scheduler on Composable Resources

Instructor(s): Dr. Michael Dickens

Time: Tuesday, September 2, 2025 — 1:30PM-4:00PM CT

Location: Online using Zoom

Description: Introduction to using the Slurm scheduler on the ACES cluster, a composable accelerator testbed at Texas A&M University. Topics covered include multiple job scheduling approaches and job management tools.

Prerequisite(s): Current ACCESS ID, basic Linux/Unix skills

View Details Remote Attendee Registration

Primer: Introduction to Linux

Instructor(s): Sahil Vartak

Time: Friday, September 5, 2025 10:00AM-11:00AM CT

Location: Online using Zoom

Description: This primer introduces the basics of working in a Linux environment. The material covered here is a prerequisite to most other courses.

Prerequisite(s): Active HPRC Account

View Details Remote Attendee Registration

Primer: Introduction to Grace - An HPRC Resource

Instructor(s): Ananya Adiki

Time: Friday, September 5, 2025 1:30PM-2:30PM CT

Location: Online using Zoom

Description: An introduction to HPRC's flagship computing cluster, Grace, shown via a live login session.

Prerequisite(s): Active HPRC account, basic Linux skills

View Details Remote Attendee Registration

ACES: Software for AI on HPC

Instructor(s): Dr. Zhenhua He and Richard Lawrence

Time: Tuesday, September 9, 2025 10:00AM-12:30PM CT

Location: Online using Zoom

Description: This short course will provide an overview of the resources available on the ACES cluster to support AI workflows and applications. We will introduce a wide range of tools useful for management of software, data, and jobs. Later classes taught by HPRC will expand on individual topics.

Prerequisite(s): Active ACCESS ID, basic Linux/Unix skills

View Details Remote Attendee Registration

ACES: Applying for Allocations - ACCESS, NAIRR, TAMUS and TAMU

Instructor(s): Dr. Sandra Nite and Sheri Stebenne

Time: Tuesday, September 9, 2025 1:30PM-4:00PM CT

Location: Online using Zoom

Description: This course covers the process of applying for allocations on the ACES testbed high performance cluster at Texas A&M University. This will cover both ACCESS and NAIRR allocations.

Prerequisite(s): None

View Details Remote Attendee Registration

Introduction to Linux

Instructor(s): Dr. Wes Brashear

Time: Friday, September 12, 2025 — 10:00AM-12:30PM CT

Location: Blocker 220

Description: Topics in this short course include basic commands, process and filesystem concepts, shells, I/O redirection, and shell scripts. The material covered here is a prerequisite to most other courses.

Prerequisite(s): Active HPRC account

View Details In-Person Attendee Registration

Introduction to HPRC Computing Resources

Instructor(s): Dr. Josh Winchell

Time: Friday, September 12, 2025 — 1:30PM-4:00PM CT

Location: Blocker 220

Description: Introduction to using HPRC clusters includes policies, hardware overviews, getting connected, file systems, computing environments, development environments, batch processing, and common problems.

Prerequisite(s): Basic Linux/Unix skills, active HPRC account

View Details In-Person Attendee Registration

ACES: Python for New Programmers

Instructor(s): Dr. Josh Winchell

Time: Tuesday, September 16, 2025 — 10:00AM-4:00PM CT

Location: Online using Zoom

Description: This short course for new programmers (no programming experience required) introduces concepts of programming and the Python programming language. This course will establish a foundation for HPRC courses taught later in the semester that will cover data science and AI in Python.

Prerequisite(s): Current ACCESS ID

View Details Remote Attendee Registration

Intermediate Linux

Instructor(s): Dr. Wes Brashear

Time: Friday, September 19, 2025 — 10:00AM-12:30PM CT

Location: Blocker 220

Description: This course assumes a working knowledge of the Linux environment. Participants will practice running commands on the Grace cluster, including: vim, sed, awk, grep, bash scripting, and bc. We will also be covering how to customize your environment.

Prerequisite(s): Active HPRC account, basic Linux/Unix skills

View Details In-Person Attendee Registration

Introduction to Next Generation Sequencing Analysis

Instructor(s): Dr. Michael Dickens

Time: Friday, September 19, 2025 — 1:30PM-4:00PM CT

Location: Blocker 220

Description: Covers concepts of sequence mapping, variant calling and ChIP-seq analysis utilizing tools available on the HPRC clusters.

Prerequisite(s): Active HPRC account, basic Linux/Unix skills

View Details In-Person Attendee Registration

Primer: Introduction to ACES: A Composable Cluster

Instructor(s): Victor Valdez

Time: Friday, September 23, 2025 10:00AM-11:00AM CT

Location: Online using Zoom

Description: An introduction to the composable cluster ACES, covering a variety of topics relevant to computing that are demonstrated through a live login session.

Prerequisite(s): Active ACCESS ID, basic Linux skills

View Details Remote Attendee Registration

ACES: AI TechLab in Jupyter Notebooks

Instructor(s): Dr. Zhenhua He

Time: Tuesday, September 23, 2025 — 1:30PM-4:00PM CT

Location: Online using Zoom

Description: This technology lab contains a set of sessions to help a new user start an AI project on the ACES cluster, a composable accelerator testbed at Texas A&M University.

Prerequisite(s): Current ACCESS ID, basic Python skills

View Details Remote Attendee Registration

Introduction to PETSc: A Hands-on Workshop

Instructor(s): Iman Borazjani

Time: Friday, September 26, 2025 — 10:00AM-12:30PM CT

Location: Blocker 220

Description: Learn to use PETSc, which can solve large linear or nonlinear systems using advanced iterative techniques on parallel computing clusters.

Prerequisite(s): Active HPRC account; proficiency in a programming language such as C, Fortran, or Python.

View Details In-Person Attendee Registration

NGS Metagenomics

Instructor(s): Dr. Wesley Brashear

Time: Friday, September 26, 2025 1:30PM-4:00PM CT

Location: Blocker 220

Description: This short course introduces concepts of metagenomics analysis based on data generated by Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology.

Prerequisite(s): Active HPRC account

View Details In-Person Attendee Registration

ACES: Python for Programmers new to Python

Instructor(s): Dr. Josh Winchell

Time: Tuesday, September 30, 2025 — 10:00AM-4:00PM CT

Location: Online using Zoom

Description: This short course for experienced programmers introduces the basic algorithm-oriented and object-oriented programming styles of the Python programming language.

Prerequisite(s): Active ACCESS ID, some prior programming experience

View Details Remote Attendee Registration