High School Students to Learn Supercomputing Skills
released 06.14.04
Contact
Trish Barker
NCSA Public Information Specialist
tlbarker@ncsa.uiuc.edu
217.265.8013
Stephenie McLean
NCSA Coordinator, Emerging High Performance Communities
mclean@ncsa.uiuc.edu
703.248.0122
WASHINGTON, DC —
Four D.C.-area high school students will gain hands-on training and experience with high-performance computing through a unique summer program offered by the Joint Educational Facilities (JEF) and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).
Through a range of K-12 activities, JEF aims to increase the quantity and quality of underrepresented minorities successfully entering science and engineering baccalaureate programs. The partnership with NCSA's Minority Serving Institutions program is intended to advance and broaden the skills of high school students who have previously participated in JEF's advanced computer science training.
The students' training will begin at a five-day workshop, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. June 14-18, at NCSA's ACCESS Center, 901 North Stuart Street, Suite 800, Arlington, Virginia.
There the students will be guided by instructors from Bethune-Cookman College (Alson Been), Bowie State University (Larry Mathews), JEF (Jesse Bemley), NCSA (Tom Coffin, Gail Tate, Andrew Wadsworth), Florida International University (Amado Gonzalez), and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Rebecca Hartman-Baker). While some instructors will be on-site at ACCESS, others will conduct their sections of the workshop via the Access Grid, an advanced communications system based on grid computing technologies and high-speed data networks that supports group-to-group interactions across high-speed networks, with large, high-resolution multimedia displays, advanced interactive environments, and interfaces to Grid middleware and visualization environments.
The workshop will cover the use of cyberinfrastructure tools such as cluster computing, the Access Grid, and visualization applications.
Once they've been given the foundational skills they need, the students will spend the rest of the summer developing their applications and using clusters for their individual areas of research, which include cluster security, video editing, animation, and networking.
The students will be able to remotely access and use a 26-processor computing cluster housed in Illinois at TRECC, the Technology Research, Education and Commercialization Center. TRECC is a program of the University of Illinois that is administered by NCSA and is funded by the Office of Naval Research.
On August 18, the students will return to ACCESS and will present the results of their research via the Access Grid to points across the country.
NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) is a national high-performance computing center that develops and deploys cutting-edge computing, networking and information technologies. Located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, NCSA is funded by the National Science Foundation. Additional support comes from the state of Illinois, the University of Illinois, private sector partners and other federal agencies. For more information, see http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/.
ACCESS brings the technological advances of NCSA to all sectors of society in order to strengthen the competitiveness of business, enrich the educational environment, and improve the overall quality of life in our nation. ACCESS is located at the Ballston Metro Center Office Tower 901 North Stuart Street, Suite 800 Arlington, Virginia 22203. For more information, see http://www.accesscenterdc.org/.
Joint Educational Facilities, Inc. (JEF) is an all volunteer non-profit community-based K-12 organization that works primarily with junior and senior high school students and teaches them advanced computer science topics with an emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI). For more information, see http://www.jef.org/.
The Technology Research, Education and Commercialization Center facilitates solutions for emerging information technologies, develops and facilitates innovative educational technologies, and advances technology development toward commercialization using its technology and services for our partners: business, educators and government. TRECC is located at the DuPage Airport Flight Center in West Chicago, Illinois. For more information, see http://www.trecc.org/.
