NCSA offering undergraduate software research opportunity

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is offering a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site for the summer of 2017. Undergrad students from across the country need to apply by March 20 to be considered for this hands-on research opportunity.

The REU project is called “INCLUSION” and it is a 10-week software-in-research opportunity for highly-motivated students of diverse backgrounds, including those from minority serving institutions (MSIs), such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) that will take place this and the next two summers.

INCLUSION stands for “Incubating a New Community of Leaders Using Software, Inclusion, Innovation, Interdisciplinary and OpeN-Science.”

The REU will offer 10 research projects each year. Each project will pair two students with two NCSA experts for 10 weeks during the summer, from June 5-August 11, 2017. Students will be offered the chance to develop their skills through real-world applications in open source software research. A $500/week stipend will be included, as will housing, food and travel allowances.

Some of the interdisciplinary, socially-impactful research projects include topics like understanding classroom learning, improving crop yield, designing new materials, simulating future nuclear reactors, and more.

“The laboratories where research happens have drastically changed from their traditional picture as rooms full of test tubes or microscopes; computers have taken center stage and research across all fields is becoming increasingly digital,” says Daniel S. Katz, INCLUSION PI. “Since this research is either carried out by software or supported by software, we want to ensure that undergraduate students have the opportunity to learn the software skills needed to work in research, as future graduate students or in industry.”

“NCSA is committed to fostering the diversification of the nation’s advanced digital workforce,” said Bill Gropp, NCSA’s acting director. “NCSA encourages students from all educational and geographic backgrounds to apply to this unique software-in-research opportunity,”

For more information, including this year’s 10 project abstracts and the formal application, please visit reu.ncsa.illinois.edu.

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