Frances L. Van Scoy - US grants

9871948 Calzonetti West Virginia EPSCoR Cooperative Agreement The West Virginia EPSCoR Cooperative Agreement with the National Science Foundation's EPSCoR Program will provide funding and support for West Virginia to build academic strength in two areas of importance to the state and nation: (1) high performance computing, communications, and software; and (2) identification technologies. These areas were recommended by the West Virginia EPSCoR Committee and represent areas of special consideration by the West Virginia Science and Technology Advisory Council. The high performance computing, communications, and software initiative involves a statewide computer science initiative to strengthen computer science instruction throughout West Virginia, a computing technology initiative to provide the latest computing technology for research applications, a scientific computing initiative to develop more high performance computing applications in science and engineering in West Virginia, and a business and industry initiative to improve the use of high performance computing and communications technology by West Virginia businesses. The identification technologies thrust builds upon recent EPSCoR and state investments at Marshall University by providing new core facilities in the College of Science to encourage collaborative research and research training with faculty members in the School of Medicine. At West Virginia University, investments in identification technologies research infrastructure will provide necessary expertise in mathematics, computer science, and electrical engineering for the university to build a program in these disciplines. West Virginia EPSCoR, housed within the Governor's Office of Technology, builds academic capability which is related to the state plan for science and technology and relates to other statewide development initiatives. Through this award, West Virginia will develop academic strength in these two R&D areas which will provide a foundation for future

This award is made under the high performance connections portion of NCRI's "Connections to the Internet" announcement, NSF 96-64. It provides partial support for two years for a DS-3 connection to the vBNS. Applications include projects in computational science, health sciences, computing systems research, computer supported cooperative work, distance education research and operating system and network protocol research. Collaborating institutions include University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, Auburn, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tulane, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of California at Davis, Harvard, Utah State, Georgia State, Iowa, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

EIA-0097688
Van Scoy, Van L
Baker, David V
West Virginia University Research Corporation

REU Sites: Virtual Environments REU Site

The focus of this NSF-REU program to be hosted at West Virginia University is "virtual environments." The objectives of the program are (1) to give undergraduate students practical skills in advanced visualization techniques where "visualization" has the extended meaning of "presentation of information to the ears, or the fingers, or even the nose"; (2) to give undergraduate students practical experience in multidisciplinary research applying virtual environments (VE) technology to problems in physical science, health science, and social science; (3) to help undergraduates discover the excitement of a career in research; and (4) to provide a cross cultural experience, by bringing together students primarily from the Appalachian region and from Puerto Rico and by giving some students the opportunity to work in an academic research lab in Japan.

Our recruiting goal is to have 3 students from the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, 6 students from four year colleges in West Virginia and the Appalachian region, and 3 students from WVU each summer. These students are expected to come from a variety of majors, including biology, computer science, geography, and physics and will be divided into teams to work with faculty and graduate student researchers on problems in computer science, geographic information systems, materials science, and pharmacy. Each week except for the first and last week of the summer program, students will work on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays with researchers on specific disciplinary research projects. On Tuesdays and Thursdays they will attend half day training sessions on specific VE technologies and tools, work in the VE Lab, and participate in a weekly research seminar involving all participants, undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty.

After each summer program in 2001, 2002, and 2003, three students will be selected from that year's participants to work in the Virtual Systems Laboratory at Gifu University in Japan during the following summer. The program will provide Japanese language and culture training for these selected participants during spring before their summer experience in Japan.

West Virginia University is teaming with Step-Up for Women to prepare a full proposal. The objective of the proposed project to be implemented beginning in fall 2003 is to increase the number of women entering and remaining in the computer science major at West Virginia University. The research question to be addressed is whether an adaptation of the approaches used by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher at Carnegie Mellon University [Margolis, 2002] and by Jane Zimmer Daniels, formerly at Purdue University and now at The Henry Luce Foundation, are applicable at a university in a rural state with modest admissions requirements. Central to the work is a two semester course sequence which will be discovery-based with a real-world orientation. The results of this work should be transferable to colleges and universities in similar states seeking to increase all students and particularly female students in computer science.

West Virginia has developed a strong academic base on which to support larger scale competitive programs and technology transfer in the areas of Identification Science and Technology (Id S&T) and High Performance Computing (HPC) and deems them important to the future economic development for the state. This project builds infrastructure at West Virginia University and Marshall University to strengthen physical and intellectual capability in these scientific areas.

Identification Science and Technology is based on the growing synergy between molecular science and engineering applications. It reflects the multidisciplinary research in areas defined by the interfaces of molecular/life sciences, micro/nano science and information science and technology. Research in the molecular/life sciences will develop scientific understanding of life signatures at the most fundamental level by focusing on biochemical complexity and the hierarchy of organization. Research in the micro/nano sciences and engineering will focus on design and use of new devices to acquire biometric information. Research in information science and engineering will develop data analysis and interpretation of large volumes of spacial and temporal biometric information.

The High Performance Computing research area will enhance the infrastructure for computational science and human/computer interfaces that support the numerical and data analysis necessary to complement the physical research. The HPC effort will: 1) link the EPSCoR HPC plan to the broader academic research computing and information science and engineering infrastructure plan; 2) find new ways to assist users interacting with computers and assist researchers in various disciples; and 3) provide a resource for student research and education at various levels including high school. The HPC effort includes use of an established Virtual Environment Laboratory for a variety of innovative research and educational activities.

In addition to work in the research areas, the project will integrate the NSF EPSCoR activities with on-going educational and outreach initiatives in the state, create new initiatives, and increase the participation of underrepresented groups in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology.

Institution: West Virginia University
Proposal Number: 0353806
PI: Frances L. Van Scoy
Title: REU Site: Virtual Environments REU Site

This project establishes an REU site focusing on virtual environments and multisensory computing. It will build on a prior REU Site award to establish undergraduate research internships in on-going research projects at West Virginia University. The interns will also participate in semi-weekly classes on virtual technology at the Virtual Environments Lab (VEL). Projects will include research in functional brain imaging; computational materials science; integration of geographical information systems (GIS) with virtual reality; and applications of advanced visualization technology in biometrics. The interns will work in teams of mentors, graduate students, other undergraduates, and sometimes high school students.

The project will support 11 students per year for a 10-week research internship. The PI will continue to recruit interns from Puerto Rico as she has in the past. The program will also emphasize student presentations and publication.

An Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers (I/UCRC) planning meeting has been awarded to determine the feasibility of the University of West Virginia with the Georgia Institute of Technology of establishing a new I/UCRC for Vision Enhancement Technology. West Virginia University brings a core team of researchers in this field, a close working relationship with state agencies, a model virtual environments laboratory, and clinical research and outreach facilities. The Georgia Institute of Technology has engineering faculty with expertise in electrical engineering, rehabilitation engineering, industrial design, optics, computer science and other disciplines that will bring their resources together to focus on the needs of the low vision and blind populations.