REU Site: Computational Methods with applications in Materials Science

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This project is jointly funded by the Division of Materials Research and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).NON-TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION: Computational methods and data analysis are now widely used to predict the properties of materials and to understand data from materials experiments and simulations. While these computational techniques are commonly taught in graduate programs in science, math, and engineering, few undergraduate students have an opportunity to learn about them or participate in this rapidly expanding research field. This Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site addresses this shortcoming and provides a unique opportunity for undergraduate students to participate in meaningful research with a group of researchers from the Center for Computational Sciences (CCS), an interdisciplinary computational research center at Mississippi State University (MSU). A significant portion of participants for this REU program are recruited from historically black colleges and universities and primarily undergraduate institutions from across the United States. An annual one-day workshop for high school teachers offers the teachers guidance on research that they can perform with their own students. Graduates of this REU site are well prepared for graduate study in science, engineering, or mathematics.TECHNICAL DETAILS: The student participants recruited for this REU spend 10 weeks over the summer in multidisciplinary research with eight faculty mentors in Mathematics, Statistics, Physics, and Chemistry from CCS. The students are first trained in the basic science and computational techniques necessary for their research projects. Additional training activities improve the participants’ computational skills as well as written and oral presentation skills. The eight research projects are: (1) electron-electron correlation physics; (2) numerical Methods for Phase Field Models; (3) interfacial properties in high-performance composite materials; (4) materials research for rare earth-free permanent magnets; (5) image denoising and segmentation methods for material analysis; (6) Bayesian parameter estimation and model comparison; (7) photophysical properties of novel polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and their complexes; and (8) high-dimensional material data analysis. REU participants are given access to supercomputing resources at the MSU High Performance Computing Collaboratory. The students participate in weekly group meetings, seminars and training sessions on scientific and computational topics, and a Graduate Record Exam workshop. At the end of the summer they present the final results of their project to the REU group and at the MSU Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium.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.