Brenna Meade, a network engineer for IU’s Internal Networks, puts the word “travel” in the phrase “travel for work.”
“I’ve been to Italy, Czech Republic and Singapore,” Meade said.
A network engineer her whole career, Meade joined IU during the pandemic.
“When I interviewed for this position, they told me there would be a lot of traveling involved,” Meade said. “It was one of the things that attracted me to this job and even though I didn’t travel my first year or so because of the pandemic, I’m so glad to have this opportunity to meet people all over the world face-to-face and not just on Zoom.”
Recently, Meade traveled to Singapore for SupercomputingAsia 2023. Co-organized by supercomputing centers from Australia, Japan, Singapore, and Thailand, and anchored by the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore, the conference incorporates events that promote a vibrant high performance computing (HPC) ecosystem for public and private sectors in Asia.
“It was really interesting,” Meade said. “I’ve been to the national supercomputing conference here in the U.S, but SupercomputingAsia was so different.” She highlighted how the U.S. national conference focused on a variety of new products, techniques, and innovations while SupercomputingAsia had a singular theme.
“This year was all about sustainability,” Meade said. “If we keep running high performance computing the way we are now, we’re eventually going to run out of power, so the conference was all about different sustainability models and how to best approach the topic of sustainability.”
According to Meade, one of the best things about the conference and her travels in general is the opportunity to meet and talk with other networking professionals.
“The research and education networking community is pretty small, and international networking is even smaller,” Meade said. “So even though I’m traveling to all these different places and conferences, I still see the same people and it really changes your perspective on things. These aren’t just people on a Zoom call and there is something about seeing them in person that I feel makes our collaborations that much more effective.”
Throughout her 12 years as a network engineer, Meade said that collaboration has always been vital, especially within the public sector.
“My focus is on research and education,” she said. “And without collaboration, we wouldn’t have the kind of networks, universities, and students we have today.”
