POTSDAM – Clarkson University has recently been awarded a National Science Foundation grant to renew its highly successful Research Experiences for Undergraduate (REU) Site entitled “High Performance Computing with Engineering Applications” for another three years (2023-2026).

The grant will allow the REU site to continue to fund ten REU students per summer for ten weeks, in 2023, 2024, and 2025.

These REU students will closely work with experienced faculty mentors to investigate novel HPC solutions for a variety of engineering problems, which are critical to national security, scientific discovery, and technological innovation. This research training provides the students with valuable technical and analytical skills for pursuing graduate study and industry work.

The quality of this training is further enhanced by additional professional development activities, including an HPC crash course, field trips, invited speakers, weekly group research meetings, and a mentor training workshop for faculty advisors. There are targeted efforts to recruit students underrepresented in HPC careers or who might otherwise be unable to participate in academic research. Professors Yu Liu and Daqing Hou of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department will co-lead the REU site.

The last edition of this REU site (2019-2023) hosted 32 undergraduate participants from 24 universities and 11 states. A significant portion of the participants were underrepresented minorities, females, or from institutions with limited research opportunities. Multiple alumni have attended graduate schools. Despite the sudden disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, this REU site has produced 9 peer-reviewed publications, two of which were published by the PIs in the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) annual conferences focusing on the best practices and lessons learned from operating this REU site.

The PIs would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge our dedicated faculty mentors and their graduate students, the administrative support from the Coulter School of Engineering and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Clarkson Housing, Clarkson Honors Program, Clarkson HR & Payroll, IBM, the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), and our guest speakers from Clemson University, Syracuse University, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and CNL.

The Clarkson HPC REU site is accepting applications now (deadline: February 1, 2023). More details about applying to this REU site can be found at: http://reu-hpc.clarkson.edu