OUTREACH
Objective: To enhance the interest of middle and high school students, especially minorities and women, in the computational sciences with focus on biological modeling. We introduce all main elements involved in a computer simulation of a biological process (data collection and analysis, mathematical formulation and different modes of visualization.) In particular, in this project we present tutorials on physiology and how computer simulations of processes in the human body can provide valuable answers to important health issues. We discuss the relation to the students's daily experience, for example how the human body is able to stop bleeding and how it is related to platelet aggregation - a phenomenon we study in the current NSF/IMAG grant.
Presentation of slideshow on computational science and visualizations in 3D immersive environments by an undergraduate student, Elizabeth Day, who is also an UTRA fellow working in Karniadakis's group. Do you know what a CAVE is?
Target Groups: Participants are from Providence public inner-city schools (e.g., Hope High School, Nathan Bishop Middle School, etc.) and local girl-scout groups (age 6 to 15). Participation is also encouraged within other Brown-sponsored programs, thus leveraging existing resources. For example, we have been working with Spark, a program aimed to identify excellent 7th and 8th grade students, and also with Artemis, a program designed to engage young women from the Providence area in computer and computational sciences. A more detailed description of a typical student make-up is provided here.
Program and Activities: Faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students (UTRA recipents, and WISE members) are involved in the activities of our outreach program. They include slideshow presentations, tour of supercomputing and visualization resources, and interactive participation in a 3D immersive visualization (CAVE), see example here.
Feeback: In order to evaluate our outreach program and adapt it to the needs and aspirations of the students we distribute surveys and collect feedback. Typical questions include disclosing their academic preferences, particularly in mathematics and computer science, and their future career/education goals. A typical report that reflects the feedback of a group of high school and Spark students completed recently can be found here.
Research by Undergraduates: Undergradtuate students take part of our research activities in various computational science projects. Click here for a research report by Elizabeth Day - an UTRA student - who studied how bats fly!
Research by High School Students: Upper class high-school students can also take part in our research activities. Click here for a research report by Stefan Triantafyllou - a junior in Boston University Academy - who reconstructed the main arteries of the human body from medical images!