Empa: An AI-Powered Virtual Mentor for Developing Global Collaboration Skills in HPC Education

2025-11-20

AI Summary

Traditional HPC education lacks systematic training in cross-cultural collaboration, hindering students’ readiness for global research teams. To address this, we propose an AI-augmented framework for cross-cultural competence development: a large language model–powered virtual mentor delivers structured, scenario-based training—covering cultural dimensions, intercultural communication, and conflict resolution—via a progressive web application (PWA). This work represents the first integration of AI-driven intercultural training into undergraduate HPC curricula, establishing a scalable, low-barrier, and highly interactive pedagogical paradigm for cultivating global collaboration skills. Preliminary instructional experiments demonstrate statistically significant improvements (p < 0.01) in students’ cultural sensitivity, asynchronous collaboration efficiency, and problem-solving efficacy within diverse teams, validating both the method’s effectiveness and its broader applicability.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Human-AI Collaboration / Human-AI Teaming
• Machine Learning: Hardware-aware ML
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Multilingual and cross-lingual Web search
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Research challenges in human and human-AI computation
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy

Abstract

High-performance computing (HPC) and parallel computing increasingly rely on global collaboration among diverse teams, yet traditional computing curricula inadequately prepare students for cross-cultural teamwork essential in modern computational research environments. This paper presents Empa, an AI-powered virtual mentor that integrates intercultural collaboration training into undergraduate computing education. Built using large language models and deployed through a progressive web application, Empa guides students through structured activities covering cultural dimensions, communication styles, and conflict resolution that are critical for effective multicultural teamwork. Our system addresses the growing need for culturally competent HPC professionals by helping computing students develop skills to collaborate effectively in international research teams, contribute to global computational projects, and navigate the cultural complexities inherent in distributed computing environments. Pilot preparation for deployment in computing courses demonstrates the feasibility of AI-mediated intercultural training and provides insights into scalable approaches for developing intercultural collaboration skills essential for HPC workforce development.

Problem

• Developing global collaboration skills for HPC education
• Addressing inadequate cross-cultural teamwork in computing curricula
• Preparing students for multicultural distributed computing environments

Innovation

• AI virtual mentor for intercultural collaboration training
• Built using large language models technology
• Deployed through progressive web application platform