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SDSC Launches Computational Research Program for High School Students

Summer Internships to Pair Students with SDSC Mentors

Published 06/28/2010
The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, is launching a new volunteer internship program for high school students this summer to assist them in gaining experience in a particular area of computational research.

The program, called Research Experience for High School Students (REHS), will pair 22 students with SDSC mentors. The internships start Tuesday, July 6, and will run for six weeks. All students are volunteers and will be working 20 to 25 hours per week. At the end of the program, there will be a poster session in the 2nd floor lobby area of SDSC's East Building, on August 12 from 2:00 pm to 4:00pm. SDSC and UC San Diego staffs are invited to attend.

"This is a wonderful opportunity for students to gain valuable research experience in the subject areas that interest them, such as computational chemistry or biology," said Ange Mason, Education Program Manager at SDSC. "Students will be working on projects spanning the range from data mining to supercomputer-based workflows to scientific visualization - projects that we hope will guide them into computational careers as they enter college."



REHS project descriptions include:

  • Creating a mechanism and software for processing large biomedical images on a new SDSC supercomputer
  • Learning about data mining techniques
  • Developing an interactive process to monitor energy consumption across the UC San Diego campus
  • Learning about 3D modeling and animation using Maya software, 3D Studio Max and AutoCAD
  • Contributing to the design and development of a new web site for the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA), a group within SDSC dedicated to Internet research
  • Assisting staff in developing documents to support an SDSC project on Medicaid fraud detection
  • Developing software to couple the AMBER (Assisted Model Building with Energy Refinement) molecular dynamics software to the ADF (Amsterdam Density Functional) package, supporting research into the reaction paths of condensed phase enzymes and providing benefits across multiple fields including drug design, protein engineering, and biofuel research.

Full details of the REHS projects can be found on the SDSC Education website.

About SDSC
As an organized research unit of UC San Diego, SDSC is a national leader in creating and providing cyberinfrastructure for data-intensive research. Cyberinfrastructure refers to an accessible and integrated network of computer-based resources and expertise, focused on accelerating scientific inquiry and discovery. SDSC plans to build the high-performance computing community's first flash memory-based supercomputer system named Gordon, to enter operation in 2011. SDSC is a founding member of TeraGrid, the nation's largest open-access scientific discovery infrastructure.

Comments:
Ange Mason, SDSC Education and Outreach
858 534-5064 or amason@ucsd.edu

Media Contacts:
Jan Zverina, SDSC Communications
858 534-5111 or jzverina@sdsc.edu

Warren R. Froelich, SDSC Communications
858 822-3622 or froelich@sdsc.edu

Related Links

San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC)
SDSC TeacherTech Program