High-School Students Join UB Supercomputer Program

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Although they won't be making movies, a select group of local high-school students attending a summer program at the University at Buffalo Center for Computational Research will be doing their homework on an SGI, Inc. Origin2000 Server, similar to the one used in the creation of "Toy Story" and "Antz."

Such supercomputers are featured at national supercomputing centers, like CCR, where they are used to solve a myriad of problems in the hard sciences.

"The purpose of the program is to provide local students with an opportunity to significantly enhance their education by interacting with some of UB's world-class scientists and by utilizing the extraordinary resources that our center provides," said Russ Miller, Ph.D., CCR director and UB professor of computer science.

Established in January, CCR is one of the nation's top-10 academic supercomputing centers.

The two-week program will teach students about computational science, an emerging discipline that unites mathematics and computer science with disciplinary research in such fields as chemistry, physics and biology. In particular, the students will focus on using high-end computers, coupled to visualization systems, to solve problems in chemistry.

"The students will develop an understanding of what's behind the big computers and why you need them," said Bruce Pitman, Ph.D., UB professor of mathematics and director of the summer program. "They are going to find out that, all of a sudden, the big questions in science don't work on a little PC."

The students will learn to work with a molecular-simulation program developed for chemical-engineering students by David Kofke, Ph.D., UB professor of chemical engineering, and his colleagues at other institutions.

By the end of the session, the students, who will give presentations on what they have learned, will know how to run molecular simulations on supercomputers, how to implement sorting algorithms in the scientific computing language, FORTRAN, and how to prepare computer programs to run on supercomputers. Such skills are known by a relatively small number of professionals who deal with sophisticated scientific applications.

"This program will give some of these bright students a jumpstart on what real-life computing is about," said Greg Hylkema, physics teacher at Orchard Park High School, who has two of his students in the UB program. "They will be getting experience solving problems that they will some day be working on in the field. And I think the chance to work on some of the top supercomputers in the country is exciting."

"These are exceptional students," said Pitman, who jokingly added, "I'm glad I'm not competing against them."

The students participating in the program are Jessica Carroll of Williamsville, Jacqueline Krajewski of Amherst, Daniel Licata of Amherst, Daniel McSkimming of West Seneca, Lauren Parmington of Buffalo, Matt Piotrowski of Blasdell, John Shtarker of Williamsville and Elizabeth Tang of East Amherst.

In addition to Pitman and Kofke, the program's instructors are Tom Furlani, Ph.D., associate director of CCR; Harry King, Ph.D., UB professor of chemistry; Jiali Gao, Ph.D., UB professor of chemistry, and Matt Jones, Ph.D., CCR staff scientist.

Since there currently is no dedicated funding source for the summer program, Miller explained that the center is pursuing funding opportunities so that it can continue to offer courses and workshops to middle- and high-school students, as well as programs for high-school, middle-school and elementary-school teachers.

The CCR Web site is located at http://www.ccr.buffalo.edu.