Purdue University

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Meet Your Mentor!

We sat down with our 2024 Anvil REU Mentors to discuss their role at RCAC, what their REU students will be working on, and much, much more. Keep reading below to learn more about your mentor.

 

Nannan Shan

Please introduce yourself:

My name is Nannan Shan. I am a computational chemist by training and became a senior computational scientist at the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing at Purdue.

 

What do you do?

I am in the user support and application team to facilitate the usage of computation and storage resources at RCAC. We are working with both researchers/users and engineers to initializing, conducting, and optimizing research efforts.

 

Why would I come to you for help?

If you are working in the computational chemistry and materials modeling field and seek suggestions to optimize your workflow on HPC clusters at Purdue, I am here. Of course, if you are interested in any HPC resource at RCAC and want to learn more, let me know too!

 

What’s one professional skill you’re currently working on?

Machine learning in materials modeling.

 

What’s your go-to productivity trick?

Set my laptop to Focus (Do Not Disturb) mode and close both Slack and Outlook.

 

What was your first job?

I was an inventory clerk at my mom’s grocery store while I was in college. I had to be there to help during summer and winter breaks and I got some money to support my life in the next semester

 

What are you currently excited about in your job?

Every day we would receive questions from researchers/users and lots of questions are interesting and mind opened.

 

What’s the biggest misconception people have about your position?

Many people would think I should have traditional sysadmin skills because I am in a team of Purdue IT. Well, I was doing research at the material modeling domain for a decade before I joined RCAC. I am equipped with scientific research skills on materials simulations and learning knowledges on sysadmin every day right now.

 

How long have you been on the Anvil team/at RCAC?

15 months.

 

Fun fact:

I changed my name when I went to high school because the name I was using before high school was not consistent with my official name, given by my grandfather to the officials. My grandfather did not know my official name and he just put my pet-name on the book. Thus, my official name is indeed my pet-name and I have to use it until now.

 

Why did you decide to become a mentor for the REU program?

I had excellent experience while I was a mentor to a REU student back to 2018. I really enjoyed working with my mentee and dedicating time to figure out the results for a project. Not mention that I was inspired by my mentees all the time. Working with students from REU program is really rewarding.

 

What will your REU students be working on specifically?

We will work on the building of Gromacs Web Portal on Anvil. Gromacs is one of the popular materials modeling packages and widely used in the scientific research. Beginners might encounter numerous challenges when starting out, primarily due to the steep learning curve, especially when navigating through a Linux-based interface. Our Gromacs Web Portal aims to reduce difficulties for novices, providing a user-friendly gateway. Through this project, REU students will acquire proficiency in web development, programming, and gain familiarity with one of the most widely used scientific simulation packages.

 

Why RCAC/Purdue?

RCAC/Purdue stands as a prominent HPC center within the national institutions of the US. Anvil holds the notable rank of 143rd on list of world’s most powerful supercomputers. Moreover, RCAC boasts teams of incredibly talented professionals spanning a diverse range of IT and scientific expertise.