If you could not make it to PEARC26, the venue was beautiful! 🤩
I was the invited speaker for the Systems technical track, which was an absolute honor. I realized that they do not record the talks, and walked back to my room to record a second time in front of my couch. 🛋️ It is not on par with the venue version, but thinking about my “Just Give them the Sandwich” talk from 10 years ago, it would have been so wonderful to see it again, in really any form, and I decided that this was important to do. This talk covers some of the major themes my team and I have been thinking about as we move into an era of autonomous scientific discovery. We explore where converged computing is heading, how an agentic orchestration approach works, and, ultimately, why AI needs our taste. 😋
If you are interested in learning about The HPC Sandwich of Scientific Discovery, 🥪 this talk is for you! I of course do not know what the future holds, but I am flexible to learning new things, and excited about the potential for science. Whether agents added to layers of our sandwich are supporting components or ants will wait to be seen. I suspect it will be a bit of both. I realize I did not come full circle with our little future job “Joby.” Perhaps not knowing that exact future is exactly the point.
I saw a large chunk of Minneapolis, on foot, and even in the high 90 degree days. I enjoyed seeing many different styles of buildings downtown, the historic mill district, Lunds & Byerlys market, the University of Minnesota (architecture!), art museums, the Dinkytown Greenway regional trail (and Grand Rounds), the Guthrie Theater and Mill City Museum, old Main Street, the riverfront and stone arch bridge, the Walker Art Center (and Minneapolis Sculpture Garden) and of course, the Mississippi River. I think my favorite thing was finding poetry scattered throughout the landscape.
The line that touched me is the last:
Kneel at the altar of your heart
Because indeed, although we are often trapped in routine and external expectations, we cannot forget to respect and honor ourselves. There is a level of vulnerability and surrender to see yourself and truly find self-compassion and love. There is sacrifice in placing ourselves in discomfort or uncertainty to enable growth. I aspired for that on this trip. I gave my first talk in ~9 years in person without wearing a mask. My contact lenses were so old they were about a dollar too weak in each eye. It was in the 90s and my hotel room did not have AC the first night. I was largely unbothered, because I was too immersed in feeling grateful for all of it. I finished almost two bottles of olive oil, slept in a massive hotel bed with three puffy pillows, and and explored the city with an open heart and mind for adventure. It was the ultimate joy to be able to share my smile after all these years, aligners and all! Thank you to PEARC for giving me opportunity to do that.
Suggested Citation:
Sochat, Vanessa. "The Agentic HPC Center: Orchestrating the Future of Science." @vsoch (blog), 29 Jul 2026, https://vsoch.github.io/2026/hpc-center-of-future/ (accessed 30 Jul 26).