News Archive

2012 Team 2 Paper Published in SIURO
April 18, 2013
Team 2's paper entitled "Assessment of Statistical Methods for Water Quality Monitoring in Maryland's Tidal Waterways" was just published in SIAM Undergraduate Research Online (SIURO). We congratulate the authors Rosemary K. Le, Christopher V. Rackauckas, Anne S. Ross, and Nehemias Ulloa on this achievement!

HPCF Cluster tara #15 on Green Graph 500 List
April 02, 2013
The cluster tara in the UMBC High Performance Computing Facility has placed #15 on the (unofficial) Green Graph 500 List. This list ranks systems on the Graph 500 list by the efficiency of their energy consumption. In Summer 2012, a team of undergraduate students in the REU Site placed tara on the Graph 500 list, from which the ranking in the Green Graph 500 list is derived.

2011 Participant Koushiki Bose Awarded NSF Fellowship
March 30, 2013
Koushiki Bose, Brown University, was just awarded an NSF Fellowship for the project "Pattern Formation in Nature: Analysis and Prediction of Pattern Selection in Stochastic Reaction-diffusion Systems". This prestigious fellowship provides full support for three years of graduate education at any institution in the U.S. Using this full support for her graduate studies, Koushiki will go to the Operations Research and Financial Engineering Department at Princeton University.

2012 Participants Jordan Angel and Rosemary Le Present at CSE 2013
March 01, 2013
Two participants from the 2012 program presented their teams' work in full-length talks in the minisymposium Undergraduate Research in Computational Science and Engineering at the 2013 SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering, organized by SIAM VP for Education Peter R. Turner. Jordan Angel spoke on Team 1's topic "Graph 500 Performance on a Distributed-Memory Cluster", and Rosemary Le presented Team 2's work on "Water Quality Monitoring of Maryland's Tidal Waterways".

Client Dr. Brian Smith Presents Team 2's Poster a Second Time
October 12, 2012
2012 client Dr. Brian Smith from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources presented the team's poster at the Maryland Water Monitoring Council's Annual Conference. "The poster was very well received and a lot of people expressed interest in using the GUI for their work," he reported to us. We are very excited that the team's work is being appreciated!

HPCF Cluster tara Places 98th in November 2012 Graph 500 List
November 13, 2012

2012 Team 1 in the Summer 2012 HPC REU Site took on the research project to implement and run the Graph 500 benchmark to assess the performance of the HPCF cluster tara. This benchmark measures performance in accessing memory, as opposed to CPU performance which is emphasized in more traditional benchmarks for HPC. The submission was accepted, and tara ranked 98th on the November 2012 list. For details, see the technical report HPCF-2012-11 in our publications. The ranking was announced at the Supercomputing 2012 conference in Salt Lake City. Pictured are (left to right) the client David Mountain, mentor Dr. Matthias Gobbert, and students Jordan Angel, Nathan Wardrip, and Amy Flores, holding the official certificate for the ranking. Not able to join them at the conference were client Richard Murphy and student Justine Heritage. We acknowledge funding support for the student travel from the National Security Agency and the National Science Foundation.

2012 Participant Annie Ross Presents Poster at RMCWiC
November 02, 2012
2012 Participant Annie Ross has a poster presentation at the Rocky Mountain Celebration of Women in Computing (RMCWiC) in Ft. Collins, CO. The poster focuses on the graphical user interface (GUI) that the team produced in their project and how the GUI aids in the visualization of large data.

2012 Participant Jenny Louthan Gives Talk in Her Department
October 17, 2012
2012 participant Jenny Louthan presents the work of Team 3 on a university as dynamical system in a colloquium at her Department of Mathematical Sciences at Lewis & Clark College.

Client Dr. Brian Smith Presents Team 2's Poster
October 12, 2012
2012 client Dr. Brian Smith from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources presented his team's poster at the Atlantic Estuarine Research Society's Fall Meeting. He reported to us after the meeting that "other monitoring agencies from the mid-Atlantic express interest in using" the tool developed by the team for their data. This is extremely exciting news of the real impact of our work on monitoring the Chesapeake Bay!

2012 participant Chris Rackauckas Presents at SUMS
September 29, 2012
Chris Rackauckas was able to travel to the Shenandoah Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics (SUMS) Conference at James Madison University to present his team's poster on monitoring water quality in the Chesapeake Bay. The poster won the award for best Statistics poster!

2012 Participant Justine Heritage Gives Talk in Her Department
September 25, 2012
2012 participant Justine Heritage presents the work of her team on the Graph 500 benchmark at her home department, the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Dickinson College, in the Math/CS chat lecture series.

2012 Participant Chris Rackauckas Gives Talk at Oberlin
September 13, 2012
2012 participant Chris Rackauckas presents the work of his team on statistical methods for monitoring water quality in the Chesapeake Bay to his home department at Oberlin College.

Two Teams Present Orally at SURF
August 08, 2012
All three 2012 teams present their results at the Summer Undergraduate Research Fest (SURF). We are excited that two of the clients, Dr. Michael Dillon and Dr. Brian Smith, are able to join us. Out of only six oral presentations at SURF, two of our teams are especially included, each given two participants the opportunity of the experience of an oral presentation in front of a packed room.

2011 RA April Albertine Awarded NSF Fellowship
July 26, 2012
April Albertine, UMBC graduate student in the Ph.D. program in Statistics and graduate RA in the 2011 REU Site program, was awarded an NSF Fellowship for the project "A Bayesian Approach to Modeling Publication Bias in Meta-Analysis" with advisor Dr. Bimal Sinha. She is continuing her graduate studies in our department.

2012 Program Starts with Welcome Meeting
June 17, 2012
The 2012 program starts with the traditional welcome meeting on the Sunday preceeding the formal start. This year includes 12 participants funded by the NSF and NSA, plus 5 students taking Math 447 as summer course. This year, we welcome the 2010 participant Terry Lebair as graduate assistant and peer mentor.

2011 Participant Randal McKissack Presents at Towson University
March 31, 2012
Randal McKissack Presents Team 4's research at the Undergraduate Mathematics Research Conference at Towson. He also graciously agreed to represent our REU Site program in a session where students share information on their research experience with other attendees.

2011 Participant Anita Thomas Presents at Infinite Possibilities Conference
March 30-31, 2012
Anita Thomas (Illinois Institute of Technology) returned to UMBC to present her team's research at the Infinite Possibilities Conference 2012, an annual series of conferences promoting underrepresented women in the mathematical sciences.

Two Former Participants Present at Brown University
March 10, 2012
2011 Participant Koushiki Bose and 2010 Participant Sidafa Conde were both invited to give oral presentations at the Brown University Symposium for Undergraduates in Mathematical Sciences, an annual symposium for students and faculty in the northeast area. Koushiki Bose (Brown) presents the research of Team 2 in 2011, while Sidafa Conde (U. Mass Dartmouth) reports on ongoing work with his research mentor at his institution.

2011 Participant Anita Thomas Presents at CAURS
March 03, 2012
Anita Thomas (Illinois Institute of Technology) presented Team 2's research in a poster session of the Chicago Area Undergraduate Research Symposium (CAURS), "one of the largest annual undergraduate research conferences in the country"!

Support for 12 Participants in 2012, 2013, and 2014 from NSF and NSA
February 06, 2012
We have just received preliminary notification that the program notification be able to support 12 participants each year in 2012, 2013, and 2014, to be funded jointly by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Security Agency (NSA). To accomodate this relative late notice on funding, we will continue to consider all applications that come in, also past the stated deadline.

2011 Participant Neil Obetz Presents at the EPaDel Sectional Meeting of the MAA
November 19, 2011
Neil Obetz presents Team 1's research in a poster session at the Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware section of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), held at Bryn Mawr College on November 19, 2011. The webpage of the conference is here.

2011 Participants Randal Mckissack and Richard Adjogah Present at James Edward West Symposium
October 8-9, 2011
Randal Mckissack and Richard Adjogah presented Team 4's research in a poster session at the James Edward West Symposium, held October 8-9, 2011 at Johns Hopkins University. The symposium celebrates his work with the CRFP (Cooperative Research Fellowship Program) at Bell Labs and also his 80th birthday. More details on the conference are here. Richard and Randal also gave a talk on the work in a meeting between UMBC administrators and NSA representatives on October 5, 2011. One has to appreciate how mature and calm they presented in front of two univeristy VPs and four department chairs, among others!

2011 Participant Anita Thomas Presents in Undergraduate Mathematics Symposium
October 1, 2011
Anita Thomas presented the work of Team 2 in an oral presentation of the Undergraduate Mathematics Symposium at the University of Illinois at Chicago on Saturday, October 1, 2011. All details of the event are here.

Dr. Nagaraj Neerchal Appointed Entrepreneurship Fellow
September 01, 2011
Dr. Nagaraj Neerchal was appointed Entrepreneurship Fellow for 2012 by the Alex Brown Center for Entrepreneurship, along with Dr. Amy Froide (History) and Dr. George Karabatis (IS). Entrepreneurship Fellows raise the profile of entrepreneurship on campus, for which Dr. Neerchal is a clear prototype with his engagement in CIRC.

Summer 2011 concludes with presentations at SURF
August 10, 2011
The four REU Site teams present their work on research posters at the Summer Undergraduate Research Fest (SURF) sponsored by the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences (CNMS). Several clients managed to make it to campus for the day to see this exciting even with over 90 posters in person. Additionally, Samantha Allen and Neil Obetz represented our program with one of only six oral presentations.

Client presentations start with peer mentor
June 23, 29, and 30, 2011
Seven clients from a wide variety of backgrounds and organizations presented projects for work by one of the REU teams. The Special Events page lists the names and titles. In fact, the presentations started with peer mentor Michael Curtis speaking on his project from 2010 and recommendations to the participants on project selection.

Program start with 13 participants
June 19, 2011
The Summer 2011 program started with 13 participants. We leveraged the NSF-funding for 8 participants to make the experience available to 3 students from UMBC's Meyerhoff Program funded by the NSA and 2 additional participants. The program is supported by 4 graduate students as TAs and RAs and Dr. Kofi Adragni as additional faculty mentor. We also have for the first time undergraduate help, Matthew Brewster for the webpage and Michael Curtis returning from 2010 as peer mentor.

Movie on 2010 program released
April 08, 2011
A short movie about the inaugural 2010 REU Site program is now available at YouTube at the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO38SdaPNdQ. It includes opening remarks by UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski, III and testimonials from participants Terry Lebair and Michael Curtis. We are grateful to DoIT New Media studio for putting this together for us.

Summer 2011 participants selected
March 28, 2011
The selection process for choosing the 8 NSF-funded participants for Summer 2011 was completed and the students accepted our offers. The REU staff is looking forward to another productive summer of collaborative research involving high performance computing.

2010 participant Christopher Raastad presents at conference
March 2, 2011
Christopher Raastad presented Team 2's REU research Computational Islet Simulations of Pancreatic Beta Cells at a minisymposium at the 2011 SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering in Reno, NV. Details on the minisymposium are available here. Also Sidafa Conde came to the conference to support Chris. At this conference, Dr. Gobbert also organized minisymposium MS137 Training Students in Skills for CS&E. The talks from this minisymposium are available here.

2010 participant Sidafa Conde presents at conference
January 9, 2011
Sidafa Conde presented a poster of Team 2's REU research Enabling physiologically representative simulations of pancreatic beta cells at the 2011 Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans, LA. The poster can be viewed here.

2010 participant Michael Curtis presents at conference
October 23, 2010
Michael Curtis presented a poster of Team 1's REU research Collaborative filtering in recommender systems at the Shenandoah Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics (SUMS) Conference at James Madison University. More information is available at the SUMS webpage.

2010 participant Teresa Lebair featured on college webpage
August 18, 2010
2010 participant Teresa Lebair and her participation in our REU Site are showcased on the webpage of her school, St. Vincent College. The article with photo of her team can be found here.

Summer 2010 program concludes
August 11, 2010
Summer 2010 program concludes with well-received poster presentations at the Summer Undergraduate Research Fest (SURF), a campus-wide poster session. One of the REU Site teams, represented by Teresa Lebair and Christopher Raastad, additionally gave an oral presentation on their project, as one of only four oral presentations in the plenary session of SURF. We were happy that two of the clients could attend the research fest and receive their project results in person.

Dr. Nagaraj K. Neerchal Elected Fellow of the ASA August 03, 2010 Dr. Nagaraj K. Neerchal, co-director of CIRC and the REU Site, was elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA). This honor recognizes the professional contributions of members of the ASA and is limited to one-third of one percent of the ASA membership. The photo shows him receiving the honor in a ceremony held during the Joint Statistical Meetings in Vancouver.

Summer 2010 REU Begins
June 20, 2010
The 2010 REU Site at UMBC has begun. The participants arrived on Saturday June 20, 2010 and were greeted with a welcome dinner with the staff. The program for the summer was discussed in detail, and a police officer spoke about campus safety.

Dr. Matthias Gobbert Wins University System Award for Mentoring April 16, 2010 Dr. Matthias Gobbert is the recipient of the 2010 University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Mentoring, in recognition of his success in using the Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Consulting, the UMBC High Performance Computing Facility, and other initiatives in leading many graduate students to their first publications. Dr. Gobbert was honored at the UMBC Faculty and Staff Awards Ceremony on April 07, and the award was formally given as part of the Board of Regents meeting on April 16. The photo shows (from left to right) Board of Regents Chair Clifford M. Kendall, UMBC Provost Elliot Hirshman, Dr. Gobbert, and University System Chancellor William Brit Kirwan at the Regents meeting.

Summer 2010 Participants Selected
April 05, 2010
The selection process for choosing the 8 NSF-funded participants for Summer 2010 was completed and the students accepted our offers. Unfortunately, there were many highly qualified candidates who we could not select. For students who will be still eligible next year (must be still undergraduate student during Fall 2011), we encourage you to apply again.

Over 100 Applications Received
February 26, 2010
We are very happy to report that we received over 100 applications for the 8 NSF-funded participant positions in the REU Site program! Unfortunately, there will be many highly qualified candidates who we cannot select. For students who will be still eligible next year (must be still undergraduate student during Fall 2011), we encourage you to apply again.

Application deadline: February 19, 2010
January 15, 2010
For full consideration, please ensure that we have receive all application material including letters of recommendation by February 19, 2010. Please make sure to fill out the online application form at the application page since it collects relevant data and allows us to be sure that we receive the letters of recommendation. Thank you for your cooperation.

New REU Site Webpage
November 19, 2009
The REU Site releases its redesigned webpage at www.umbc.edu/hpcreu. The page will feature all program details, a detailed schedule, information about the people involved, and more. The information will be assembled over the next month and then updated continuously until and throughout the program.