The National Center for Supercomputing Applications Blue Waters project, in collaboration with the National Computational Science Institute (NCSI) and national high performance computing (HPC) programs, has launched a coordinated effort to prepare current and future generations of students with the computational thinking skills, knowledge and commitment to advance scientific computing through the use of HPC resources and environments.
Petascale computing is more complex than previous computing paradigms. New approaches for teaching and learning are required, and no single educational institution has the expertise and experience needed to fully exploit this extraordinary capability.
As part of the Blue Waters efforts to motivate and train the next generation of supercomputing researchers, the program sponsors 20 undergraduate research interns each year to engage in petascale computing research and development projects. The program provides each student a stipend totaling $5,000, a two-week intensive high-performance computing workshop and an education allocation on the Blue Waters system. Select students will travel to the Blue Waters Symposium and present their projects and results.
Last year, OU had the honor of having a student chosen to participate in the program. This year, we have the distinction of having two OU petroleum engineering undergraduate students, Justus Brown and Gage Russell, chosen.