SDSC Launches Computational Research Program for Undergraduate Students

Students to be Paired with SDSC Mentors during 10-Week Course

Oct. 28, 2010

By Jan Zverina

The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), at the University of California, San Diego, is launching a unique volunteer internship program for undergraduate students designed to provide valuable “on the job” experience in a cross-section of projects in computational research.

The program, called Computational Research Experience for Undergraduates (CREU), will begin January 10, 2011, and run for 10 weeks ending March 18. Interested students are asked to submit their applications no later than November 27, 2010 to participate in one of 19 research opportunities being offered as part of the program. Selected applicants will be contacted by SDSC to arrange a personal interview no later than December 10, 2010.

CREU is an extension of a successful pilot program offered earlier this year by SDSC to high school students, called Research Experience for High School Students (REHS). As with REHS, college students participating in CREU will be paired with an SDSC mentor and work as part of a team on a specific area of computational research.

“This new program is an extension of the high school program, but, as expected, the scope and complexity of the projects in the undergraduate program are more difficult,” said Ange Mason, Education Program Manager at SDSC and director of SDSC’s TeacherTECH program. “Students participating in the CREU program will be expected to have a working knowledge of certain programming languages.”

Mason said that in addition to UC San Diego, several colleges in the greater San Diego area, including San Diego State University, Cal State San Marcos, University of San Diego, Point Loma Nazarene University, and the San Diego Community College District, will give students research credit for participating in CREU.

“We are already seeing a high level of interest from undergraduate students who wish to learn more about opportunities throughout computational science,” said Mason, adding that there have been more than 300 visits to the CREU website outlining the program since it was posted this week.

One to three students will be assigned to each of the research projects being offered. Internship hours will be coordinated with the mentor, and can range from 10 to 20 hours per week.

Some of the 19 CREU project areas include:

• Data-intensive computing on the “cloud” under SDSC’s CloudStor program, which is exploring new strategies and technologies for data-intensive cloud computing.

• Analyzing renewable energy resources such as ‘microgrid’ systems to build energy-efficient, low-carbon projects.

• Researching the use of shared databases on the Web.

• Analyzing very large data sets in cinema, television, and online games using high-performance computing to create unique opportunities for multimedia data analytics.

• Modeling individual neurons and networks of neurons using NEURON, the gold standard in neuroscience modeling.

• Evaluating data mining tools for large memory, high-performance computing.

• Analyzing user behavior to develop next-generation computer job schedulers.

• Developing an extensible interface for mixed quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical (QM/MM) molecular dynamics (MD) simulations.

• Working with LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) remote sensing technology as part of SDSC’s OpenTopography facility.

• 3D modeling and interactive game development.

• Integrating data for analysis, anonymization, and sharing as part of the iDASH project.

• Processing large biomedical images on SDSC’s Triton Resource supercomputer.

• Developing new applications for ‘smartphones’, or wearable computers, as part of a High Performance Wireless Research Education Network (HPWREN) initiative.

Course overviews and links to a full description of these and other CREU research opportunities can be found here. To download an application form, please click here. 

About SDSC
As an Organized Research Unit of UC San Diego, SDSC is a national leader in creating and providing cyberinfrastructure for data-intensive research, and is celebrating its 25th anniversary this fall as one of the National Science Foundation’s first supercomputer centers. Cyberinfrastructure refers to an accessible and integrated network of computer-based resources and expertise, focused on accelerating scientific inquiry and discovery. SDSC is a founding member of TeraGrid, the nation’s largest open-access scientific discovery infrastructure.

Comments:
Ange Mason, SDSC Education and Outreach, 858 534-5064

Media Contacts:

Jan Zverina, SDSC Communications, 858-534-5111
Warren R. Froelich, SDSC Communications, 858-822-3622