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

科学有助于解决当前的问题，促进世界的繁荣与和平，丰富每个公民对世界的理解。通往科学家的职业道路是艰难的，而且往往是排他性的，吸引、鼓励和指导那些考虑从事科学事业的大学生是为国家福利服务的。该项目的任务就是做到这一点，并通过训练年轻科学家在理论和实践中使用计算来发现、理解和利用大型或复杂数据集的结构，从而预测科学性质的变化。该项目还通过定位和鼓励有才华的学生在研究项目比REU网站少的机构，扩大了科学研究的参与。提供了一个指导项目的组合。项目以计算为特征，用于数据的探索或操作，例如用于可视化或高性能GPU计算，或者用于计算的理论框架，例如用于理解大脑过程，深度学习和神经网络。由于计算科学的跨领域性质，这些项目来自不同的领域，导师来自不同的部门，包括计算机科学、化学、心理学、计算科学中心和医学院。每个学生与导师结伴完成一个共同感兴趣的项目，在为期十周的暑期体验中，参与真实的研究，经常与研究生互动。该体验以海报会议结束，以展示结果。参与者被鼓励到国家科学会议上展示海报，该项目将提供资金。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.