EPCC HPC Summer School 2026

Summer School overview

The Summer School, which ran from 13–27 June, was open to undergraduates from UK universities with at least one full year of study remaining after the summer. Competition for places was very stiff this year, with 136 applications for the 15 available spaces.

All students received a £35 daily stipend towards living costs, and we covered the cost of travel to Edinburgh and provided accommodation in University of Edinburgh shared self-catered flats for all students (although this year a few local students already had their own accommodation over the summer). This accommodation was close to EPCC’s home at the Bayes Centre, where most of the teaching took place.

Learning about high performance computing

The first week began with introductions to bash and git and an overview of programming in C, to make sure everyone had the same baseline knowledge. The students then followed the 'Introduction to HPC' and 'Machine Learning' courses, with sessions set aside for practical exercises to help the students consolidate what they had learned.

During the second week, teaching focused on specific programming models for HPC systems, with sessions on OpenMP for CPUs and for GPUs, and an introduction to MPI. Further practical sessions let the students get hands-on with ARCHER2 and try out some real-world applications, including image processing and computational fluid dynamics simulations.

Visiting the supercomputers

Many of the students said that a particular highlight of the Summer School was their visit to the Advanced Computing Facility (ACF), where they were able to see ARCHER2,  as well as other hardware such as the refreshed Cirrus, a UKRI National Compute Resource. The students also heard about the ongoing preparations to host the UK's next National Supercomputer. With nice timing, the Summer School coincided with the first cutting of the turf as work began on the expansion of the ACF to house the new machine.

Wrapping up

The School ended with a morning of guest lectures, starting with EPCC Deputy Director Ritchie Somerville talking about the UK's Next National Supercomputing Service at EPCC, a talk which also summarised the 40-year history of supercomputing at the University of Edinburgh. Kirsty Pringle, Software Sustainability Institute Project Manager, then gave a talk about the role of research software engineers in public engagement. The session concluded with a talk from Senior Research Software Engineer Liz Ing-Simmons of King’s College London, on sustainable computing in the research lifecycle.

As well as the more formal parts of the programme, over the two weeks we also had two social dinners and a trip to the pub with the students, as well as doing an informative and entertaining walking tour of Edinburgh’s Old Town before dinner on the final evening. 

Needless to say, the students would be able to tell us that this was just a small part of the fuller social programme which they organised among themselves, which included trips up Arthur’s Seat, to the beach at Portobello, and to the Pentland hills to see Highland cows and to try out the Alpine Coaster. All this despite the fact that they experienced the classic Scottish experience of all four seasons over their two weeks here, if not quite all in one day!

Looking ahead

We hope our students left the Summer School with a strong understanding of what HPC is and what it can be used to achieve. Many of the students had clear ideas of how their new knowledge would help them, either in the near future as they complete their degrees, or with their career goals beyond graduating. We also hope that they took away with them great memories of their two weeks in Edinburgh, learning about HPC, getting to know the city, and making lasting friendships.

Subject to funding availability, we hope to run the EPCC HPC Summer School again in 2027. Watch out for the call for applications opening in February!

What our 2026 students say

"It was the best two weeks of my education so far."

"I really had such a great time and gained so much from the experience. Both the technical and non-technical aspects of the two weeks were excellently planned and I really appreciate it!”

“One of the best parts of the Summer School was getting to learn alongside students from a wide range of disciplines. Everyone brought different perspectives and expertise, making discussions and practical sessions even more engaging.” 

“It was especially exciting to be at EPCC at a time when the UK is preparing for the next generation of exascale computing and to hear first-hand about the plans for the Next National Supercomputer.”

Education and training at EPCC

EPCC is a leading provider of High Performance Computing and Data Science education and training in Europe. Read more about what we can offer you on our Education and Training pages.