Monash DeepNeuron Student Team placed third in the 8th APAC HPC-AI Competition

11 December 2025

Congratulations to the Monash DeepNeuron team, who have won third place in the 8th APAC HPC-AI Competition.

The 8th APAC HPC-AI Competition is organised by the HPC-AI Advisory Council, with support from the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore and National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) Australia.

High-performance computing and artificial intelligence are the most essential tools driving the advancement of science. In order to handle the ever-growing demands for higher computation performance and the increase in the complexity of research problems, the world of scientific computing continues to reinvent itself at a fast pace.

In this year's competition, the Monash DeepNeuron team secured third place in a competitive field of  49 university teams from across the region. This is the third year in a row that the team has received a mention at this contest.

This year’s competition challenged students to optimise two demanding open-source workloads:

  • HPC Track: Minimising execution time for NWChem computational chemistry simulations on multi-node CPU clusters.
  • AI Track: Maximising inference throughput for the DeepSeek-R1 671B reasoning large language model deployed on GPU infrastructure using the SGLang framework.
Students completed this work on some of the largest academic computers in the Asia-Pacific region:
  • Singapore’s National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC)
  • Australia’s National Computational Infrastructure (NCI)
  • Firmus AI Cloud

"Most students wait years to touch a Supercomputer. I got to do it in my first year."  – Luca Lowndes, DeepNeuron student and Lead Researcher on the AI track.

Simon Michnowicz, from Monash eResearch HPC Team, has been heavily involved in this initiative for several years, advising and guiding students from an academic perspective.  Simon will be accompanying the students to Osaka, Japan, to receive their award at SupercomputingAsia 2026.

"It's a great pleasure to be part of a competition that allows Monash students to shine in an international setting. The APAC HPC-AI competitions are lengthy and challenging, with a steep learning curve. Despite the challenges, the team learnt not just about new technologies, but also how to learn and work cooperatively, dealing with multiple conflicting constraints. This result demonstrates Monash's leadership in HPC and AI training, and with MAVERIC coming online next year, Monash has the skills and expertise to make the best use of it. " –  Simon Michnowicz, Monash eResearch Senior HPC.

On behalf of Monash eResearch, congratulations to the entire team for their hard and innovative work!

Meet the team!

DeepNeuron Student Team
(L-R: Giacomo Bonomi, Simon Michnowicz (eResearch), Josh Riantoputra (Team Captain), Nathan Culshaw, Luca Lowndes, Isaac Barnes)

About DeepNeuron:

DeepNeuron is a student team dedicated to exploring and advancing Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Optimised Computing (OC). Monash DeepNeuron (MDN) leads in empowerment, engagement, and education. Through practical research projects, DeepNeuron aims to equip students and researchers with the skills and knowledge needed to navigate the ever-changing world of AI and OC.

With over 100 members, DeepNeuron comprises a diverse range of talented internal teams, including Artificial Intelligence, High-Performance Computing, Marketing, Industry, Outreach, and the Law & Ethics Committee. Learn more here: deepneuron.org.