The Pacific Rim Experiences for Undergraduates: e-Science Reports

Date 14/08/2007,

Location: Clayton

Presenters: Five UCSD student visitors (PRIME Program)

Abstract: Overview of the PRIME Program PRIME: Pacific Rim Experiences for Undergraduates Over the past four years, the PRIME program has sent students from the University of California, San Diego to Pacific Rim countries such as Japan, Taiwan, China, and Australia to participate in an intensive nine week summer research program.Each of these host countries are part of the Pacific Rim Applications and Grid Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA), a group of leading research organizations around the Pacific Rim collaborating on advancing grid technology applications.During the stay, students not only have the opportunity to perform international collaborative research while living in a foreign country, but also get an unforgettable cultural experience.Overall, PRIME prepares undergraduate students for the global research and industrial workplace by taking advantage of the revolution in science and engineering through cyberinfrastructure.This program has continued with the support from National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Office of International Science and Engineering, the Office of Cyberinfrastructure, the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems, and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (http://www.calit2.net/) This year five students have been hosted by the Monash e-Science and Grid Engineering Lab (MESSAGE Lab) in the Faculty of Information Technology.

Speaker biographies: Student Info Saleh Amirriazi and Stephany Chang, both working with Dr. Anushka Michailova, will obtain data from the Cardiac Mechanics Research Group (CMRG) in the UCSD Bioengineering Department, and examine excitation-contraction coupling in the heart using a computational cardiac model.Saleh is improving the metabolic aspects of the model, and Stephany is working to integrate transmural heterogeneity across the different sub layers in the heart. Heather Griffith is working with Dr. Roy Kerckoffs, a postdoctoral researcher of CMRG, on improving the current computational heart model to help develop improved pacing protocols in cardiac resynchronization therapy, which has a 70% success rate for heart failure patients who experience a conduction disturbance. Elisabeth Kain is working jointly with David Abramson and Amanda Lynch, to enable Nimrod to interoperate on different grids in addition to the PRAGMA test bed. Ultimately she plans to prepare and use the improved Nimrod to run future climate studies for the Regional Climate Group at Monash. Michelle Di Fiore is using quantum mechanical and classical electrostatic techniques using two computational chemistry programs, GAMESS and APBS, respectively, for the study of small molecule structure and properties. Michelle is working with Professor Kim Baldridge, who holds an honorary appointment at UCSD, but works the University of Zurich.