Behind the Scenes: How SC Volunteers Power One of the World’s Fastest Growing Conferences and Trade Show

With more than 16,500 attendees and 500 exhibitors, SC, The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis, performs on another level. Named one of Trade Show Executive’s fastest growing conferences in 2025 in both attendance and exhibit, the conference delivers six days of research advances via the technical program, a one-of-a-kind network in SCinet, three days of product development on the SC exhibit floor, and so much more.

But to the average attendee, those points reflect the strength of the conference; they may remain blissfully unaware of the work that it takes to make it all happen—work that occurs courtesy of a massive volunteer community. More than 900 volunteers make up the conference committee, addressing everything from paper reviews to infrastructure demands, security, housing, and beyond, many holding multiple roles. With conference management almost entirely led by industry volunteers, it takes thousands of volunteer hours to facilitate the event every year.

In fact, for SC leadership, managing the conference becomes a full-time job of its own, countless hours that they tack on to the top of their day jobs. Yet, volunteers come back year after year, with many of the planning committee having served in varying SC roles for decades.

A personal connection

With such a significant time commitment, one would think burnout would occur, but with so many SC volunteers in their tenth, fifteenth, or even twentieth year participating, weariness is the furthest thing from their minds. Volunteers are excited to return year after year, and if you ask anyone on the SC Planning Committee why they do it, they point to one main concept: the SC family.

“It is such an amazing group of people to work with, and they become part of your family,” said Kevin Hayden, SC26 General Chair and senior network engineer with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill., U.S. “The driving factor to the SC26 biomedical theme is that my first wife was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer at the age of 29 with no family history or health risks. After a 13-year battle, she passed away in 2014 days before the start of SC14. I initially canceled my plans to attend but was encouraged by family to go after all, and I’m so glad I did. My ‘SC family’ knew exactly how to comfort me, make me feel like the world hadn’t ended and to look forward to better times. This interaction with the volunteers on the committee really solidified my desire to remain a part of this group as long as I could.”

That level of connection fuels a deep engagement with the conference and the community it serves. While SC is an esteemed technical conference in one of the most highly evolving fields of computing, the drive to attend extends far beyond typical conference decision-making. Tapping into this sense of an SC community and family also deepens an attendee’s engagement and supports a growing volunteer pool.

“I first experienced the conference as an attendee and was just instantly attracted to the hugeness of it, the energy of it. It was very high caliber technically, but it also had the excitement of the exhibit floor,” said Kathryn Mohror, SC26 Deputy Chair, SC27 General Chair, and director of the Center for Applied Scientific Computing at DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., U.S. “Anybody you wanted to meet was going to be at SC. It always felt like a homecoming or family reunion. So, I just really wanted to contribute as a volunteer, and found that was true for other people, too. It’s why there's this family dynamic in the committee as well.”

And those committee relationships demonstrate why prominent HPC professionals stay engaged.

“Everybody that I know really enjoys the camaraderie that we have with each other. We talk about an SC family, and it really is, with the friends that I've come to know and love on this committee.” explained Jay Cliburn, SC26 Executive Director, of Silver Creek, Miss., U.S.

A world of expertise

One of the beautiful details of the SC volunteer experience is that it creates an environment where everyone’s unique skillsets flourish. From SCinet, which seeks out network engineers, to conference communications and operations and beyond, HPC expertise isn’t required to support this global community.

“My degrees are in print journalism and humanities. I am a complete non-scientist in this world, and

that's probably the most rewarding part of volunteering with SC for me,” remarked Charity Plata, SC26 Communications Chair and Computing and Data Sciences (CDS) communications lead with DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., U.S. “It's about engaging with people, learning from everyone, and then just building the conference.”

On the flip side, other volunteers do bring a deep knowledge of the technical side of HPC. For instance, Mohror came up through the technical program, having first served as a reviewer, which gradually led to leadership roles from posters chair to technical program chair, as well as in operational roles like housing chair and security.

The wide berth of roles available means that as volunteers move into new positions, they are able to explore skillsets that would not be available in their daily work environments.

“You can really stretch yourselves in ways that you've never imagined by volunteering with SC. You're put in situations where you would never be in your day job because you're planning a conference. It’s completely different than anything within HPC,” said Michael Kercher, SC26 Infrastructure Vice Chair and Datacenter Facility Lead for a U.S. Federal Installation. “You can really grow professionally and apply new knowledge to your day-to-day job. SC has helped me become a higher-level employee and expand my skillset.”

A professional network

To that point, volunteers consistently point out how much they appreciate that their employers allow them to work on the conference, but at the same time, they feel their work with SC gives back to their day jobs. For instance, SC helps volunteers expand their network of peers, which ultimately supports them in more efficiently handling issues that arise at their own places of business.

“For my employer, SC provides such a great learning opportunity and a wealth of knowledge and resources for our day-to-day network operation,” explained Hayden. “SCinet works with so many top-tier manufacturers of networking equipment, and if any of us have an interoperability or troubleshooting issue, we can reach out to other team members with our questions and have an answer in a matter of minutes.”

Kercher concurred, “On the technical day-to-day side, you develop all these relationships, and you take them back to your home institution. You can reach out to other sites and say, ‘I just ran into this problem,’ or ‘I'm experiencing this issue with a vendor,’ and as, ‘Have you seen the same thing? How did you fix this problem?’ You can bring your incidents down very rapidly because of that relationship.”

A volunteer opportunity

While SC26 is still months away, the committee is already working on planning for SC27, and they have issued a new call to action to this community: Become a volunteer.

“The volunteers of SC, they’re you,” explained Plata. “They are the folks who do computing research.

They build and deploy networks. They manage departments and are professors that teach computing classes. SC is community-driven by the people who understand that community, and it’s a welcoming community. If you have ever considered volunteering, just step into it.”

New volunteers are welcomed with open arms and embraced as a key part of the SC family. “You walk in, and you're now part of something, and you just feel it right away, because everyone wants to help you and wants you to succeed. Because if you succeed, the conference at large does as well,” summed up Cliburn.

Anyone interested in getting more deeply involved in SC should complete a volunteer form. Committee slots for SC27 open 15 June 2026.

“One of my goals is to bring that feeling of family to the entire conference. How do you get your foot in the door and become part of that community? If I can help open those doors for new people, and build on that feeling, then together we can do amazing things for SC and in HPC,” Mohror concluded.

For more information on SC26 or to register, and/or to find out more information about volunteering for SC27, visit sc26.supercomputing.org.