data link Story: Alliance PACS Program Opening Doors: NCSA Hosts Five Summer Interns

Alliance PACS Program Opening Doors:
NCSA Hosts Five Summer Interns

NCSA SROP 1999 participants: Front row from left to right: Rebecca Melendez-Medina, Damaris Olagundoye, Mary Wesley, Barb Fossum (CIC), Tiquiena Varnado, and Kendall McDonald. Back row left to right: NCSA mentors Lisa Bievenue and Eric Jakobsson.

For most students, summer denotes relaxation and vacation. But six college students from minority serving institutions sacrificed sleep and considerable free time to take advantage of an opportunity to conduct intensive research in their chosen discipline at major research universities.

The Alliance Partners for Advanced Computational Services (PACS) took advantage of an existing and highly successful program -- the Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) developed and managed by the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) -- to include a greater number of participants. PACS teams contributed sufficient support to sponsor six women and minority students this summer on two CIC campuses. Designed to promote participation among minorities and women in the computational sciences, SROP provided access to high-performance computing resources and research opportunities available at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and Indiana University/Purdue University-Indianapolis (IUPUI). Five students worked with mentors at UIUC's National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and one worked at IUPUI.

The program is a "win - win" opportunity. The students gained invaluable research experience and mentoring that improves their chances of earning graduate degrees. Faculty and departments used the opportunity to get acquainted with and recruit intellectually talented and academically motivated minority students.

NCSA mentor Lisa Bievenue used the summer to focus on research and educational opportunities that her two students did not have at their home institutions. This exposure was an eye-opening experience. "Because of SROP, the interns I worked with have a better understanding of where many different doors could lead them after graduation," said Bievenue. "They may choose graduate school to prepare for careers they would not have otherwise known existed."

NCSA's Eric Jakobsson, who mentored two students, believed the program benefited his laboratory by giving staff there a new perspective and asking new questions about their work. "Our students, Damaris Olagundoye and Ticquena Varnado, wanted to use the NCSA Biology Workbench, to explore issues in cancer biology." noted Jakobsson. "It is a powerful tool for biology in general, but I am by no means a specialist in cancer biology, so it was a challenge to make this a meaningful experience. It was a real partnership … and a great experience for all of us."

SROP is designed to encourage women and minorities to pursue graduate-level education. The undergraduate participants, selected on a competitive basis from institutions throughout the US, work on a research project under the guidance of a mentor, attend academic and professional activities, write a scholarly research paper, and present at the annual conference that was held this year at Michigan State University. SROP is one of the many programs managed by the CIC, an academic consortium of the Big Ten Universities and the University of Chicago, with a forty- five year history of successful inter-institutional cooperative ventures.

Mary Wesley, a junior at Louisiana Tech University who worked with Bievenue at NCSA, was already planning on pursuing an MBA following her graduation next year with a degree in computer information systems. Her SROP experience gave her a chance to learn new software and to use a variety of systems not available at her home institution. "This program was very interesting opportunity and I recommend it to anyone who would like to participate. It helped me consider my graduate school options and made me think seriously about additional education beyond my masters," she noted.

The NCSA students and their mentors who participated in this year's program under PACS sponsorship include:

• Kendall McDonald, a junior computer engineering technology major at Prairie View A & M University, Prairie View, Texas, researched web page design incorporating urban planning as a way to educate and empower local residents. McDonald worked with Brian Orland in UIUC's Landscape Architecture department on the East St. Louis (IL) Action Research Project, developing a database of research information collected from that area.
• Rebecca Melendez Medina, a senior chemistry major at Universidad de Puerto Rico was given supercomputing cycles on NCSA's Origin2000 to work on her research with mentor Todd Martinez in the UIUC Department of Chemistry.
• Wesley, a junior computer information systems major at Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, LA., researched collaborative technologies and wrote a paper comparing two research and development projects on collaborative tool frameworks, NCSA Habanero and Tango Interactive.
• Varnado, a junior biology major at Xavier University of Louisiana who conducted research in cancer cell proliferation with Jakobsson of the Alliance Molecular Biology team at UIUC.
• Olagundoye, a junior biology major at Oakwood College, Huntsville, AL studied the role of estrogen levels and estrogen receptors in breast cancer. Jakobsson was also the mentor for this research. §

--Rhonda Baumgart and Barbara Fossum, CIC, and Ginny Hudak-David, NCSA