Los Alamos hosts statewide student computing challenge at Lab expo

Sixteen teams of middle and high school students turned the J. Robert Oppenheimer Study Center at Los Alamos National Laboratory into a showcase for New Mexico’s next generation of coders, bringing yearlong computing projects to Los Alamos for the 36th Annual Supercomputing Challenge expo on April 20 and 21.

Judges selected the winners at the Lab-based expo, where the state’s student computing marathon reached its public finish line after months of work. The Challenge runs through an academic year and asks students to use computational science techniques to solve real-world problems. Its 2025-26 calendar listed final judging on April 1, the Los Alamos expo on April 20 and the awards ceremony on April 21.

The event did more than hand out prizes. Teams received tours of Los Alamos National Laboratory facilities, including the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies and the Data Communications Center, along with demonstrations of scientific computing hardware and software, talks with scientists and scientific poster presentations. All teams that submitted a project received a certificate and a memento, while finalists earned special certificates and awards.

For Los Alamos County, the expo reinforced a familiar economic role: the county is not just a place where science is discussed, but where students can see the machinery of research up close. That matters for schools and families because the path from classroom STEM to lab careers becomes easier to imagine when students can stand inside the institutions that use the skills they are learning. The Supercomputing Challenge has now drawn more than 12,000 Challengers over 35 years, and its partner network includes Los Alamos National Laboratory, Triad National Security, the New Mexico Consortium, Sandia National Laboratories and PNM.

The 2026 gathering also marked a return to Los Alamos after last year’s expo was held at Santa Fe Community College. LANL’s 2024 recap said the 34th annual Challenge brought 130 students from across New Mexico to Los Alamos, underscoring how the program has repeatedly used the county as a statewide stage for young scientists and programmers.

The venue added another layer of meaning. LANL’s history materials trace the National Security Research Center to the technical library formed by J. Robert Oppenheimer in 1943, placing today’s student coders in a building tied to the laboratory’s origins and its continuing research mission. For a county built around science, the expo showed how the local identity now extends beyond a one-day event: it is part of the talent pipeline that can help shape New Mexico’s computing workforce for years to come.