Submitted by Earlham College and Stanford University
Dr. Amy Mulnix and Dr. H.C. Heller
November 5, 2002
Earlham College and Stanford University propose to develop the computational research capabilities of undergraduate faculty and students through a series of workshops and a pilot joint research project. Both the workshops and the joint research project would be designed to serve as models for other HHMI grant recepients.
These efforts would work to infuse undergraduate science environments with computational methods; which ultimately leads to a larger number of graduate school students in the natural sciences who are prepared to utilize these important new research tools and techniques.
Computational methods are increasingly important in the natural sciences. Small liberal arts colleges such as Earlham supply an inordinate number of graduate students in the natural sciences. Most undergraduate environments have no facilities or expertise to prepare students for this type of research.
This section is a bit light.
Transforming our natural science curricula to more widely incorporate educational technology is one goal of Earlham's current HHMI grant. Funds in both the Faculty Development and Curricular Revision categories are going towards this end. Another goal has been to support the participation of undergraduates in summer research.
For the past two summers, Charles Peck, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, has been working with Earlham students on a collaborative project investigating protein folding with Dr. Vijay Pande, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. Pande's group, Folding @ Home, uses computational techniques and large scale distributed computing to accomplish much of their work. This colloboration will be extended during the summer of 2003 when Peck and two students will spend 10 weeks at Stanford (supported by current HHMI funds) working directly with Pande's group. This research forms the basis of our work to extend computational methods into undergraduate science education.
In January of 2003 we will use current HHMI funds to support a protein workshop for xx Earlham faculty from Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, and Physics. Topics covered will include basics of protein structure and function, molecular dynamics software, computational protein folding, and thermodynamics. In addition to our on-campus expertise in these areas, xx from Dr. Pande's laboratory and a visiting instructor (Dr. xx from Dr. Joe Falke's laboratory at U of Colorado) will present at the workshop.
Members of Earlham's Biology, Chemistry and Computer Science Department are now at a unique point to take advantage of our connections with Dr. Pande's laboratory to further enhance student research opportunities, as well as promote faculty development and curricular reform. We are now ready to aggressively incorporate computational methods into a variety of biology and chemistry courses and to build modest computationally-based research programs. These efforts would serve as model for other undergraduate HHMI grant recepients.
We propose extending this nascent collaboration between Earlham and Stanford in the following ways:
Workshop(s) during the academic year 03-04 in which Pande's students/Charlie come here again to help with ongoing work with students.
??Extend training/collaboration/assocaiton wth Pande lab to other members of Earlham's science faculty as professional development in molecular modeling and molecular interactions. Facutly to visit Pande's lab in summer 04-05 for one week each.
??Could this be a larger workshop at Stanford where a number of faculty would run 1-day things for faculty from a group of small liberal arts colleges for training. This is an issue for Heller and Pande.
??Perhaps a molec modeling workshop only with Pande's group or a workshop with other areas. Application of faculty for workshop. Advertizing, etc. Faculty coming to this workhop would be from small liberal arts schools and we may want to extend this to students (faculty-student pair in the summer 04-05).
Computing facilities at Earlham for production F@H work and computational MD education.
Other ideas? This section obviously needs work once we have some feedback from Vijay and possibly Dr. H.C. Heller.
Workshops
Summer 2003
Summer 2004
Faculty Professional Development
Stipend, travel, housing.
Computational Cluster
Used for both faculty and student education and F@H production work.
Housed and maintained by Earlham.
Earlham and schools like it supply an inordinately large number of graduate students in the natural sciences (particularly biology and chemistry). Kennedy's quote.
$50,000 budget (is that number really fixed?)
Vijay needs to stay focused on his goals, and he needs cycles. Is it fair to say that increasing the number of people versed in computational techniques ultimately serves an important goal for him?
Better job of differentiating between what we are already committed to with current HHMI funds (short January workshop, CP and two students to Stanford summer 2003) from the new initiatives (longer summer workshop series, wider EC faculty involvement, hardware for EC to contribute cycles to F@H, etc.).
This looks awfully stilted towards Earlham.
Letter of support from Stanford signed by both Vijay and Dr. H.C. Heller.
Is a cluster devoted to production F@H work and computational MD education a good intersection of Vijay's need for cycles and Earlham's need for facilities to teach people about computational MD?
What are the length requirements for the pre-prosposal? The proposal? Any other guidelines for content or structure?