MILWAUKEE — Mount Pleasant native John Cisler showcased his technical prowess and innovative spirit by securing third place at the Milwaukee School of Engineering‘s (MSOE) third annual Rosie Supercomputer Super Challenge. Competing among 47 talented students, Cisler and his team impressed judges with their project, “NourishNet: Proactive Severity State Forecasting of Food Commodity Prices for Global Warning Systems.”
A Computer Science major at MSOE, Cisler joined forces with Sydney Balboni, Ella Bruce, Caitlyn Grant, Grace Ivey, Ben Paulson, Tyge Plater, and Brett Storoe to develop NourishNet. Their project aims to leverage artificial intelligence to predict and manage the impact of fluctuating food commodity prices on global markets—a timely and critical issue. Their efforts earned them $2,000 in cash and two RTX 4090 graphics cards.
Record participation and high stakes
This year’s Rosie Supercomputer Super Challenge saw a record number of participants, all eager to demonstrate their ability to solve complex problems using MSOE’s state-of-the-art supercomputer, Rosie. The competition, which offers $10,000 in prizes, alongside cutting-edge technology such as RTX 4090 graphics cards and NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nanos, challenges students to go beyond their coursework and develop innovative solutions to real-world problems.
Five finalist teams were selected to present their projects to a panel of esteemed judges, including MSOE Regents Dr. Dwight Diercks ’90, NVIDIA Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, and Nick Haemel ’02, NVIDIA Vice President of Medical Imaging & System Software, as well as Dr. Derek Riley, MSOE Computer Science Program Director. The panel evaluated the projects’ technical merit, creativity, and potential impact.
Top innovators of MSOE recognized
The first-place team, comprising Nathan Cernik, Tyler Cernik, Jennifer Madigan, Kevin Paganini, and Jackson Rolando, won $5,000 and five RTX 4090s for their project on adapting large language models using retrieval-augmented generation. Second place went to Abagail Draper, Bart Gebka, Sonia Grade, Caleb Gray, Alex Neher, and Mikolaj Sordyl for their project on brain histology applications, earning them $3,000 and two RTX 4090s.
Highlighting the power of Rosie
The competition also featured a poster session, showcasing additional projects and awarding certificates for Most Novel Technical Implementation and Most Socially Beneficial. Attendees had the opportunity to win an RTX 4090 in a raffle, adding to the event’s excitement.
Rosie, MSOE’s supercomputer, played a pivotal role in the challenge. Since its installation in 2019, Rosie has supported nearly 150,000 computational jobs, facilitating groundbreaking research and development. Equipped with NVIDIA DGX-1 pods and the latest DGX H100 systems, Rosie provides unparalleled computational power essential for advancements in artificial intelligence, healthcare, climate science and more.
Editor’s note: Elements of this article were generated by ChatGPT.
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