Shodor

Who should participate in the Undergraduate Petascale Education Program?

• Undergraduate faculty who would like to mentor an undergraduate student in a year-long internship in the sciences, engineering, or mathematics that involves teaching or researching the use of high-performance computing in studying problems in these fields.
• Undergraduate students interested in participating in a year-long science or engineering internship. Students must be enrolled as undergraduates through Spring 2012 at a U.S. degree-granting institution.

What is the Undergraduate Petascale Education Program?

Support is provided by the NSF-funded Blue Waters Project for sustained petascale computing to support year-long undergraduate internship experiences involving the application of high-performance computing to problems in the sciences, engineering, or mathematics. The program provides a student stipend totaling $5000, a two-week intensive high-performance computing workshop, and travel to the SC11 supercomputing conference in Seattle.

This program provides support for undergraduate internship activities at any accredited degree granting institution in the United States. The internships awarded through this program may be to students working with a faculty mentor on their home campus, or at another campus. Interested faculty need to create a position description, and can specify a particular student that the position is intended for, or may select a qualified applicant with Blue Waters support through our program.

How can I promote the Undergraduate Petascale Education Program?

A PowerPoint slide is available to let students know about the program. In addition, poster-sized and handout-sized flyers are available (in pdf format) to inform students and colleagues about this program.

Undergraduate Petascale Internship Slide
Undergraduate Petascale Internship Poster
Undergraduate Petascale Internship Flyer

When is the Undergraduate Petascale Education Program?

Student applications and intern position descriptions from faculty must be submitted by April 10, 2011. Be sure to click the 'Submit' button at the bottom of the web form to be entered into the UPEP system. Review and selection will be conducted in early April, with notifications being made by April 15.

A two-week workshop will be held May 29 through June 10 at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) facilities on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. Interns are expected to work full-time over the Summer, and as their schedule allows during the academic year. Work plans will need to be arranged by the student and faculty mentor and approved by the Blue Waters Undergraduate Petascale Education Program.

How do I apply for the Undergraduate Petascale Education Program?

• By clicking the button at the top or bottom of this page, faculty should create descriptions of undergraduate internship positions they have available, indicating either that the position is intended for a particular student applicant or that it is open to qualified applicants.
• By clicking the button at the top or bottom of this page, eligible undergraduate students should submit an application for consideration. There is an area on the form where students can identify a faculty member as a mentor. Students who have taken the initiative to arrange an internship with a faculty mentor are more likely to be selected for this program than students who have not.