Multi-Disciplinary High Performance Computing and STEM Education

Abstract

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year (FY) 2016, under authority of 10 U.S.C. ¤ 2362 and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OASD(R&E)), allocated $28 million to assist Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority-Serving Institutions (HBCU/MI) with equipment and instrumentation enhancements to improve their research and education capabilities in scientific disciplines important to the defense mission. The program aims enhance the capacity of HBCU/MI to participate broadly in defense research programs and activities and to increase the number of graduates, including underrepresented minorities, in fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This multidisciplinary proposal requests funds to bring high performance computing (HPC) resources available to the entire STEM research and education community at Florida International University (FIU). The current modest HPC resources at FIU have been stretched to the limit. Consequently, the research community at FIU is severely disadvantaged when seeking new external funding. Although limited access is provided to the HPC resources managed by a statewide alliance of which FIU is a member, the resulting access is not conducive to training students and allowing for learning through experimentation on their own. It also does not allow FIU to develop outreach programs to attract local high school students to STEM careers. The proposed funding will take FIUÕs research and training to the next level, thus benefiting a cadre of budding future professionals who will constitute the highly employable diverse workforce and researchers of tomorrow. Given the size of the student body (55,000) and the large percentage of underrepresented minorities (75 % of the total student body), the impact of the enhanced HPC resources will be enormous. This proposal will also show how we can attract and train our students and high school students for an education that is better aligned with the mission of the Department of Defense (DoD) and its various agencies.

Document Details

Document Type
DoD Grant Award
Publication Date
Jan 12, 2017
Source ID
W911NF1610494

Entities

People

  • Giri Narasimhan

Organizations

  • Army Contracting Command
  • Florida International University
  • Office of the Secretary of Defense

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Education

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Research Science/Academic Research
  • STEM Education