International Student Engagement

Message Lab has maintained a high level of international student engagement on its research projects over a lengthy period, with a wide range of students being involved, the most notable being five years of eScience research project visits from UCSD undergraduate students 2004-2008 under PRIME. The students have worked for nine weeks within Message lab but also collaborated with other Monash units, regularly reported back to UCSD, attended Monash Open Day in August and given an end of visit Seminar. Feedback on the program from participant students is very positive in terms of learning, cultural exchange and career development.

Message Lab Director's talk on US-Aust eSci Collab

PRIME is the Pacific Rim Undergraduate Experience and has led the way for international undergraduate research exchanges and given PRAGMA a sharp focus on student research education. PRAGMA is the Pacific Rim Applications and Grid Middleware Assembly. Monash is a very active member and Prof David Abramson the Monash representative at most meetings.

PRIME has spawned the Monash student equivalent MURPA which is the Monash Undergraduate Research Projects Abroad. It started in 2008 by visits to UCSD and is funded by a number of Monash departments and centres and administered by Faculty of IT. Other student and staff research exchanges have involved University of Linz, Oxford University, Cranfield, Brazil Supercomputer Centre. A number of these occurred in 2005-2006 under the Global eScience Grant awarded to University of Queensland and its partner universities under an International Science Linkages(DEST) grant.

PRIME and Global eScience have had strong spin-offs via continued collaborative research, (Nimrod in the main), long after the specific visit and reflected in a series of successful grid experiments, scientific discovery and papers. It is expected that MURPA will follow this pattern as students move into Honours and beyond.