2026 Educational Award For Outstanding Contribution to Computational Science Education

The ACM SIGHPC Education Chapter is pleased to announce that the 2026 recipient of the Educational Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computational Science Education is Henry Neeman.

Dr. Neeman, the Executive Director of Research Computing at the University of Oklahoma, is being honored for his work as the principal architect and leader of the Virtual Residency (VR) program, an initiative focused on building the skills and community needed to support researchers using advanced computing and cyberinfrastructure. The VR program covers topics including effective communication with researchers, research computing technologies, proposal development, and institutional leadership, preparing the workforce that makes advanced cyberinfrastructure usable across scientific disciplines. Since 2015, VR has reached almost 2,000 participants from 547 institutions spanning 20 countries. We congratulate Henry Neeman on his devoted efforts to improve workforce development in computational science and high performance computing.

In addition, two honorable mentions have been selected, Radovan Bast and Bryan Johnston.

Dr. Bast, a senior scientist at Oceanbox, is being recognized for his work as the founder and project manager of CodeRefinery for almost a decade. CodeRefinery provides open, reusable materials for lesson development and workshop organization, focusing on topics such as FAIR research principles, collaborative software development, and testing best practices. To date, over 3,000 individuals from 15 countries across the career spectrum have participated in CodeRefinery programs. The project also provides train-the-trainer events and detailed workshop tools to amplify its reach. In addition, Dr. Bast has fostered a dynamic community around workshop content and planning, ensuring impact beyond individual workshops. We thank Dr. Bast for his dedicated work to build research software skills in communities across the Nordic region and beyond.

Bryan Johnston, at the University of Cape Town, is being recognized for his role as developer and champion of the OpenHPC Virtual Lab project. OpenHPC Virtual Lab supports computational science education in resource-constrained environments by providing an educational framework, online learning materials, software environment, and delivery model needed for participants to deploy and experiment with an HPC cluster on their own computers. The program has expanded beyond its original role in the Africa HPC Ecosystems project to reach over 2,100 participants from 86 countries on 5 continents, a testament to Johnston’s efforts and the power of democratizing access to HPC. We thank Bryan Johnston for his long-term commitment to lowering barriers to entry for HPC training and to sharing HPC education with all.

Basis for the Award

The award for outstanding contributions to computational science education is based on these criteria:

• The work provides innovative training and education materials for computational, data-enabled, and HPC education
• The impact metrics for the project or program, if available
• The work has received widespread adoption of their approach and/or materials by other groups/organizations
• The project or program enhances the ability to engage, serve, and retain a diverse community of participants
• The work has been recognized through presentations and publications.

The award is granted biennially. The next award competition will be in 2028.