The Shodor Computational Science Institute

B. Project Description

B5. Biographical Sketches

B5.1 Dr. Robert M. Panoff is founder and Executive Director of The Shodor Education Foundation, Inc., a non-profit education and research corporation dedicated to reform and improvement of mathematics and science education by appropriate incorporation of computational and communication technologies. He continues to serve as consultant for the education program at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

As principal investigator on several NSF grants that seek to explore the interaction of high performance computing technologies and education, he worked to develop a series of interactive simulations which combine supercomputing resources and desktop computers. Besides developing and teaching a new courses in Information Technologies, Dr. Panoff continues an active research program in computational condensed matter physics while defining and implementing educational initiatives at the Shodor Foundation. His research specialties are stochastic optimization, quantum simulations of strongly-correlated systems, and computational science education.

At Kansas State University and Clemson University from 1986-1990, he developed a fully interdisciplinary computational science and engineering course. He served as director of the Carolinas Institute in Computational Science, an NSF-funded initiative in Undergraduate Faculty Enhancement, 1991-1993. His work has won several major science and education awards, including the 1990 Cray Gigaflop Performance Award in Supercomputing, the 1994 and 1995 Undergraduate Computational Science Education Awards from the U.S. Department of Energy, and a 1995 Achievement Award from the Chicago Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication. In 1993-1994, his interactive simulations were used as the basis of an international science collaboration demonstrating network technologies involving four of the schools from the Department of Defense Dependent Schools, for which he received a letter of commendation from the Department of Defense. In recognition of Dr. Panoff's efforts in undergraduate faculty enhancement and curriculum development, the Shodor Foundation was named in 1996 as a Foundation Partner of the National Science Foundation for the revitalization of undergraduate education.

Dr. Panoff has been a consultant at several national laboratories and is a frequent presenter at NSF- sponsored workshops on visualization, supercomputing, and networking. He has served on the advisory panel for Applications of Advanced Technology program at NSF. Dr. Panoff received his B.S. in physics from the University of Notre Dame and his M.A. and Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Washington University in St. Louis, undertaking both pre- and postdoctoral work at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University.

The following publications directly relate to this proposal:

"Visualization of the local contribution to the nodal surface of a many-fermion wave function, " A. C. Calder, M. R. Curry, R. M. Panoff, and Y. J. Wong, Phys. Rev. E53, 5451 (1996)

"The Four A's of Computational Science Education: Application, Algorithm. Architecture, and Active Learning," R. M. Panoff, IEEE Computational Science & Engineering, Vol. 2, No. 4, 6 (1995).

"Experiences in Building the Computational Science Program at Clemson,'' D. E. Stevenson and R. M. Panoff, IEEE Proceedings of Supercomputing '90, 366, 1990.

"UNIX for Super Computing?'' UNIX Review, Vol. 8, 54 (1990).

The following publications are representative of Dr. Panoff's research work:

"Fermion Monte Carlo Algorithms for Quantum Fluids,'' R. M. Panoff, in Recent Progress in Many-Body Theories, Vol. 2, ed. by Y. Avishai, (Plenum, New York, 1990).

"Elementary Excitations of Spin-Aligned Deuterium,'' R. Dave, J. W. Clark, and R. M. Panoff, Phys. Rev. B41, 757 (1990).

"Fermion Monte Carlo Algorithms and Liquid 3He," R. M. Panoff and J. Carlson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 62 1130 (1989).

"Momentum Distributions in Quantum Liquids from Green's Function Monte Carlo Calculations," R. M. Panoff and P. A. Whitlock, Momentum Distributions, ed. by R. Silver, (Plenum, New York, 1989).

"Ground-state Phases of Polarized Deuterium Species," R. M. Panoff and J. W. Clark, Phys. Rev. B36, 5527 (1987).

Dr. Panoff has supervised the following Master's theses during the past five years: at Clemson University: Marc R. Curry, Brent M. Han, and Alan C. Calder. He has also directed the undergraduate research of more than a dozen undergraduate and high school students at Clemson, the University of Illinois, and the Shodor Foundation.

Dr. Panoff received his doctorate under Prof. John W. Clark at Washington University in St. Louis. His post-doctoral work was under Dr. Malvin H. Kalos at NYU. During the last four years he has continued to work with Drs. Michael A. Lee, Joseph A. Carlson, Kevin E. Schmidt, and Paula A. Whitlock on problems in condensed matter physics. He has worked with Dr. Nora Sabelli while she was at NCSA until 1992. Through the Shodor Foundation, Dr. Panoff continues his work with Dr. Daniel D. Warner and Dr. D. E. Stevenson of Clemson University, and Dr. Holly P. Hirst of Appalachian State University on developing curricula and materials in computational science education. As part of a DARPA funded project, he works with Dr. Mark Pullen of George Mason University.

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