Humans of SCinet: Q&A with SC20 Network Security Volunteer Soledad Antelada Toledano
Soledad Antelada Toledano, cybersecurity engineer with the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, is this year’s co-chair of the SCinet network security team, and also co-chair of the SCinet Women in IT Networking at SC (WINS) team.
Due to the virtual nature of SC20, we will not be building the cutting-edge SCinet infrastructure that our attendees have to come to expect as part of their SC experience. This feature aims to spotlight the dedicated volunteers and generous contributors whose tireless efforts and enthusiasm have helped shape the SC experience over the last 30 years.
- Years as a SCinet Volunteer: 4
- SCinet Team(s) with which you’ve participated: Network Security
- If you could be a superhero, what power would you possess? I am a superhero 🙂
How would you explain SCinet and what you do as a SCinet volunteer to a family member or friend?
The SC Conference is held once a year in the U.S. to showcase the latest technology advancements of the biggest and fastest supercomputers in the world. To give support to the conference and the supercomputer demos that are performed during the show week, a group of volunteers build the biggest network in the world every year at the conference. That network is called SCinet and it is a state-of-the-art model and vision of the future of networks. The network takes a year to design, a month to build, and a week to operate during the SC Conference. More than 200 volunteers are needed to build SCinet and make networking dreams come true!
What was your path to start volunteering with SCinet? What keeps you coming back as a SCinet volunteer each year?
I was honored to receive a WINS award in 2017 which fully funded my participation to join the SCinet network security team. The NSF-funded WINS program was developed as a means for addressing the prevalent gender gap that exists in information technology particularly in the fields of network engineering and high performance computing. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab has continued to support and ensure my participation in the following years since my first participation.
You are co-chair of SCinet security this year. Tell us more about your team and responsibilities.
This is my fourth year with the SCinet security team. I was the network security co-chair for SC19 in Denver, Colorado, and I’m in the same role for SC20. Along with my co-chair, Nathaniel Mendoza from Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), we are responsible for assembling a team of vendors that provides the hardware and software needed for building the security stack; assembling the team of volunteer engineers; closing the gender gap; designing a state-of-the-art network security architecture; hosting regular meetings with the team and vendors; and deciding strategies for tapping, distributing, and monitoring the SCinet network traffic and Network Research Exhibitors (NRE) experiments.
The SCinet security team has been working hard since January in preparation for SC20. What is one accomplishment that you are proud of?
One accomplishment I feel proud about is the increased participation of women engineers on this year’s SCinet security team: half of the engineers on our 14-person team are women! This is a first for the SCinet security team, and builds on an organizational commitment to increase the participation of women with technical backgrounds on SCinet teams. I’m encouraged by our efforts to attract talented women engineers and hope that they will find their time with SCinet to be a rewarding and worthwhile experience.
In addition to volunteering with SCinet, what do you do for fun?
I like traveling, learning new things, and getting to know different people and cultures. I’m also a big beach goer 🙂
Learn more about SCinet and Women in IT Networking at SC (WINS).
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Sara Aly, SC20 Communications, SCinet Liaison
Sara Aly is a communications manager at Internet2. This is her third year volunteering with the SCinet communications team.