REU Site: Scientific computing for structure in big or complex datasets

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Science contributes to the national welfare to solving current problems, advancing towards a more prosperous and peaceful world, and enriching each citizen’s understanding of the world. The career path towards a scientist is difficult and often exclusive, and the national welfare is served by attracting, encouraging, and mentoring those undergraduates who are considering a scientific career. The project mission is to do this, and to anticipate the changing nature of science by training young scientists in the theoretical and practical use of computation to find, understand, and exploit structure in large or complex data sets. The project also broadens participation in scientific research by locating and encouraging talented students at institutions with fewer research offerings than the REU site.A portfolio of mentored projects is offered. Projects feature computation, either for the exploration or manipulation of data, such as for visualization or high performance GPU computation, or for the theoretical framework of computation, such as for understanding brain processes, deep learning, and neural nets. Because of the cross-cutting nature of computational science, the projects come from diverse fields with mentors from diverse departments, including Computer Science, Chemistry, Psychology, the Center for Computational Sciences, and the medical school. Each student pairs with a mentor on a project of mutual interest, and during the ten week summer experience, is involved in authentic research, often interacting with graduate students. The experience concludes with a poster session to present the outcomes. The participants are encouraged to, and the project will fund, travel to present posters at national science conferences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.