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In this column I want to describe an exciting new graduate program we are trying to develop at Northwestern University which is called "Computational Science and Engineering." The term Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) refers to those activities in science and engineering that exploit computing as their main tool. This new inter-disciplinary program will allow graduate students in various engineering and science departments (including electrical and computer engineering) to obtain their M.S. or Ph.D. degrees in their respective departments but with the CSE option (an extra certificate). This will involve taking a specific set of courses and doing research in this field.
This Cross-School Initiative was developed by Prof. Prith Banerjee of ECE, Prof. Mark Ratner of Chemistry, Prof. Alvin Bayliss of ESAM, Prof. Jorge Nocedal of ECE, and 11 other faculty members in the McCormick School of Engineering and the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences during the Winter 2000 quarter. Prof. Banerjee served as an Interim Director of the new program from May through September 2000 during which time the CSE Steering Committee met several times to develop various courses and research activities.
I am delighted to announce that Prof. Allen Taflove from the ECE department has been appointed to the position of Director of the new CSE program for the next five years. He will be working with various departments to develop the actual CSE courses and the CSE M.S. and Ph.D. programs, and will lead various CSE research proposals to outside funding agencies. Prof. Jennifer Schopf will develop a new course, CS 395 "Tools for Computational Science and Engineering," in Winter 2001. This course will be related to ECE 358, "Introduction to Parallel Computing," but will go far beyond ECE 358. During Fall 2001, Prof. David Chopp from ESAM is planning to offer a course on "Numerical Methods for Computational Science and Engineering." This course will be related to ECE 328 "Numerical Methods" but will again go far beyond ECE 328. Undergraduates are welcome to attend these courses as well. During 2000-2001, more CSE courses are planned. This program will also provide CSE research assistantships to several graduate students to pursue research in the field of CSE and will provide seed funding for new interdisciplinary research activities. More details of this program will be announced by Prof. Taflove soon.
-Prith Banerjee,
Chairman
An article about the GriPhyN project, for which Valerie Taylor is a participant for the area of performance analysis, appeared in the Circuits section of the New York Times on Thursday, Sept. 28. (Please see http://www.ece.nwu.edu/taylorarticle.html/ for the text of the article.) This project was awarded the largest ITR grant for a total of approximately 11M. Jennifer Schopf, in CS, is also a part of the project.
You can look at news from previous weeks in Old News .