NCSA to collaborate with four researchers through summer fellowships

released 05.23.06

Contact
Trish Barker
NCSA Public Information Specialist
tlbarker@ncsa.uiuc.edu
217.265.8013

URBANA, IL — The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) has selected four researchers from institutions across the country as the first beneficiaries of its new summer cyberinfrastructure fellowships. The fellows will collaborate with NCSA staff on projects to advance the creation of a national cyberinfrastructure for science and technology. The fellowships provide these distinguished researchers will 10 weeks' salary, local housing expenses, and travel to and from Urbana-Champaign.

The four fellows and their projects are:

• Wendy Cho, Northwestern University, "A Scientific Approach to Redistricting Analysis."
• Frederico Fonseca, The Pennsylvania State University, "An Ontology-Driven Model for the Efficient Use of Provenance Information."
• Timothy Huerta, Texas Tech University, "Public Health Cyberenvironments: Defining Scope and Needs in the Health Service."
• Thanh Truong, University of Utah, "Developing a Grid-Enabled Cyberinfrastructure for Education in Computational Chemistry."

The summer fellowships address the four main themes of NCSA's research and deployment activities:

• Cyber-resources: NCSA provides the high-powered computing resources that are vital to the nation's scientists and engineers. The collaborative fellowships allow NCSA staff to engage with individuals who are exploring ways to make these resources better suit the communities they serve and to improve the computing infrastructure in which they operate.
• Cyberenvironments: NCSA is creating cyberenvironments that integrate distributed computing and data resources into end-to-end scientific processes, providing a boost in productivity. A key part of the cyberenvironment development process is close collaboration with the researchers who specialize in scientific and engineering applications, graphical user interfaces and portals, workflow and collaboration software, and data analysis and visualization tools.
• Innovative systems: Petascale computing is now a realizable goal that will impact all scientific and engineering research, but the best pathway to petascale computing is unclear. Partnerships with high-performance computing experts and with the scientists and engineers who seek petascale performance are essential in determining the best path forward.
• Education: Few of the advantages of a national cyberinfrastructure will be realized without scientists and engineers who understand the new capabilities that it provides. NCSA is interested in collaborating with faculty to bring cyberenvironments into the undergraduate and graduate classroom.

For more information on the summer fellowships, go to http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/summerff/.

 

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