REU Site: Interdisciplinary Program in High Performance Computing

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).The Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Marlyand-Baltimore County will host an REU site for eight students. This REU Site will ignite the interest of talented students majoring in mathematics, statistics, or computer science in (i) high performance computing, (ii) its use in interdisciplinary research, and (iii) will provide integrated training in crucial professional skills. The REU activities will include three weeks of intensive instruction in scientific, statistical, and parallel computing, with significant cross training between participants with different backgrounds. The following seven weeks consist of team work on projects from application areas mentored by professionals from industry, government agencies, or other academic departments. Also during the project phase, we will provide integrated professional development on subjects including interaction with peers and professionals from within and outside of own academic major, project and team management basics, informal verbal progress reports to mentor and other teams, technical writing skills in the sciences for technical reportsand journal articles, formal presentation techniques with visual aids, academic integrity and ethics, and graduate school preparation through a GRE preparation course, among other topics driven by project and student needs.Scientific, statistical, and parallel computing skills are critical to the 21st century workforce. Equally crucial are skills in interacting and communicating in teams and in interdisciplinary projects. This REU will provide a comprehensive program integrating these elements under the guidance of the two PI/co-PIs and two graduate assistants, all of whom have extensive experience with client-focused interdisciplinary consulting provided by students through the Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Consulting (www.umbc.edu/circ). By leveraging UMBC?s extensive connections through its Meyerhoff Program, Minority Access to Research Careers Program, Center for Women in Information Technology, Women in Science and Engineering, and other programs, we are committed to creating a student cohort that is diverse in gender, racial/ethnic background, academic major, and skill set, in order to ensure powerful experiences of synergies in the research teams.