Research Experiences for Undergraduates

A significant effort has been undertaken to establish Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs). I have invited outstanding undergraduates to join my research group, providing funds from my own capitalization account. If this proposal is funded, I plan to request supplementary funds for these projects. For example, this summer I am hosting Notre Dame upper classmen, a sophomore from CalTech, a junior from Duke, and a senior from Goshen College. There are computer science and engineering, as well as electrical engineering, biology, chemistry, and physics majors among them, men and women, national and international students. They are working in a wide range of projects: (i) Software design, including a large part of the front end design and implementation effort, database connectivity, high performance interactive MD interfaces, including a demo for freshmen interested in Computer Science, and an exhibit in Supercomputing 2000, see letters of support for some of these projects; (ii) Algorithm development; for example, Tom Slabach, a senior in computer engineering, was funded by the Center for Applied Mathematics to do research this summer on multiscale integrators (see letter of support); (iii) Simulation, including the hands-on setup of the binding of the anti-cancer drug to DNA and the setup of the QCA simulations described below. These research experiences have served to make some of them consider graduate school; two of them are seriously considering continuing graduate school in my research group. Several of them will be funded by my department to attend a computational science and engineering conference organized by SIAM in Washington this September.