Project Profile

Science and technology of the twenty first century will be dominated by computing. The training of well prepared computational scientists and engineers demands an approach that transcends the strictures of the standard academic curriculum. This IGERT... more »

Science and technology of the twenty first century will be dominated by computing. The training of well prepared computational scientists and engineers demands an approach that transcends the strictures of the standard academic curriculum. This IGERT project will provide students who follow discipline-specific studies with a multidisciplinary program of training in computational science that will maximize their exposure to the cross-disciplinary nature of computational science and to its realm of industrial applications. This program will build a three-way interface between graduate students, the academic faculty training them, and industrial, government, and academic research laboratories who may ultimately be their employers. It will offer training opportunities through a program of visits and internships at such institutions. As the students proceed towards a Ph.D. within their chosen field, they will also earn a certificate in computational science in recognition of the special expertise that they have developed. The students will have access to state-of-the-art computational facilities at the University and will participate in multidisciplinary seminars, workshops and regular meetings with faculty and students in this program. They will also attend specialized lectures on ethics and issues of law that are relevant for scientists in the computational field. Special efforts will be made to enhance the participation of students from groups underrepresented in the sciences. The IGERT project will have the merit of providing a large number of doctoral students pursuing disciplinary research with broad education on the methods and scope of application of computational science, through the teamwork of faculty from many different departments. The results of this interdisciplinary project will be widely disseminated through seminars, workshops and web publishing and thus it will have the broad impact of establishing a model for training in computational science students who are pursuing education in a variety of disciplinary fields.

IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the multidisciplinary backgrounds and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. In the fifth year of the program, awards are being made to twenty-one institutions for programs that collectively span the areas of science and engineering supported by NSF. « less

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