Fifteen undergraduate students from across the country arrived in Ithaca, N.Y., on June 2 to begin a summer of research at the Cornell Theory Center (CTC). The Supercomputing Program for Undergraduate Research (SPUR), in its seventh year, is offering students the opportunity to pursue a computational science research project at Cornell University. SPUR is funded by the National Science Foundation through its Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program.

Through a competitive process, these students were selected from colleges and universities across the nation to come to Cornell during the summer to work on a specific research project under the guidance of a Cornell faculty or staff member. CTC staff members are teaching the students how to use CTC's high-performance computing resources, and they are providing consulting assistance throughout the program.

"We're excited about working with these impressive students. In only nine weeks, they'll learn about high-performance computing -- including visualization and parallel processing -- make significant progress on their research projects, and give formal presentations on their work. And, if our past programs are an indicator, they'll discover that it can be fun too," said Robert Feldman, SPUR coordinator.

A number of previous SPUR participants have continued their research beyond the summer at CTC, and some have presented their results at professional meetings and submitted their findings to scholarly journals. This year's topics in physics include solar magnetoconvection, characterization of spatiotemporal chaos, and electrostatic properties of proteins. A chemistry student is investigating the generation mechanism for tsunamis, a mechanical engineering major is studying the performance of airfoils for transonic flight, and an applied math student is looking at mother-daughter mobility as a dynamic microsimulation model of American society.

A full list of the SPUR students, their universities, and their projects follows. More information about SPUR can be found at http://www.tc.cornell.edu/Edu/SPUR/ on the World Wide Web.

CTC is one of four high-performance computing and communications centers supported by the National Science Foundation. Activities of the center are also funded by New York State, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Center for Research Resources at the National Institutes of Health, IBM, and other members of CTC's Corporate Partnership Program.

SPUR PARTICIPANTS:

• Barry Byrd, Jr.
• Illinois Institute of Technology
• 3D Simulation of Field-Reversed Ion Rings
• John Chase
• SUNY College at Brockport
• Surface Evolution during Vapor Phase Deposition
• Kyal Dalrymple
• University of Colorado at Boulder
• Fractal Fourier Series
• Aaron Davis
• University of Oklahoma
• Application of Scalable Parallel Architectures to Computational Electromagnetics
• Adam Fass
• University at Buffalo, SUNY
• 3D Simulation of Field-Reversed Ion Rings
• Mark Grondona
• Humboldt State University
• An Investigation of the Generation Mechanism for Tsunamis
• Leigh-Ann Henderson
• University of South Alabama
• Multifaceted Modes of Coinage Metal Interactions with Acetylide
• Mead Jordan
• Hastings College
• Optimizing Performance of a Domain Decomposed Monte Carlo Algorithm
• Cynthia Rudin
• University at Buffalo, SUNY
• Dynamics of Solar Magnetoconvection
• Christian Santangelo
• Cornell University
• Characterization of Spatiotemporal Chaos
• Brigit Schroeder
• Institute of Technology, University of Minnesota
• Electrostatic Properties of Proteins
• Andrew Schultz
• University of Tulsa
• Micelle Formation in Surfactant Solutions
• Greta Soechting
• Virginia Tech
• Mother-Daughter Mobility: A Dynamic Microsimulation Model of American Society
• Peter Woolf
• Cornell University
• Surface Evolution during Vapor Phase Deposition
• Marie Yarisantos
• SUNY Stony Brook
• Performance of Airfoils for Transonic Flight