The University of Wyoming has announced that a Wyoming middle school student has won a statewide competition to name one of the world’s fastest supercomputers.
The winning name, Derecho, (dr-ei-choe) is for the new system currently being installed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) at the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC) in Cheyenne. It was selected out of more than 200 submissions from Wyoming K-12 students as part of a naming competition that NCAR conducted in partnership with the Wyoming Department of Education and the Wyoming Governor’s Office.
“We are very excited to have such a meaningful name for this powerful new supercomputer,” Anke Kamrath, director of NCAR’s Computational & Information Systems Laboratory, said. “The state of Wyoming has been a wonderful home for the supercomputing center, and we could not be more pleased that ‘Derecho’ comes from a Wyoming student.”