Research Efficiency: Gamifying Smarter Compute Use

Description

When research computing jobs fail with “out of memory” errors, users often respond by requesting the maximum possible resources. It’s understandable—but in shared environments with finite capacity, over-allocation can limit access for others and increase energy and heat output across the system.

In this project, you’ll design and build a gamified dashboard that makes computational efficiency visible, measurable, and rewarding. By comparing requested vs. actual memory and CPU/GPU usage, your system will highlight wasteful patterns and celebrate users who thoughtfully tune their allocations. You’ll also incorporate energy consumption and heat output metrics to help researchers see the environmental and operational impact of their choices. You’ll experiment with badges, leaderboards, and “learning modes” that encourage improvement over time—creating a kind of fitness tracker for computational citizenship.

The platform will be built for NCShare, a coalition of NC institutions developing shared, state-wide research cyberinfrastructure. Along the way, you’ll gain hands-on experience with SLURM and real-world high-performance computing environments—while helping strengthen research infrastructure across the state.