45 Participate in MCSR Fall Research Symposium

This past fall, MCSR and Visual Numerics, Inc. (VNI) were pleased to cosponsor a symposium for MCSR researchers on the Oxford campus of the University of Mississippi. This symposium was originally suggested by USM's Paige Phillips as a way for new faculty in Mississippi to see how others are making use of the center, and to network with fellow computational researchers in the state. Meanwhile, UM's Robert Holt had been suggesting a PV-WAVE training event for some time. We thought both were great ideas, and began planning last summer for a dual event September 6-7, which also coincided with a home Ole Miss football game against the Missouri Tigers.

A pre-symposium informational presentation that Thursday oriented attendees to the various VNI products currently available to the Mississippi higher educational community via MCSR's license agreement with VNI. This presentation was give by Tim Leite, Director of Educational Programs at VNI. Currently licensed tools include PV-WAVE and IMSL C and Fortran libraries. As more symposium participants arrived on campus towards noon, all had a chance to mingle while enjoying a McAlister's box lunch in The Grove, provided by VNI. After lunch, the symposium divided along two tracks: Research/Instructional, and Training.

In the Research/Instructional track, 14 presentations were made by members of the MCSR research community. 8 of these presentations highlighted the ongoing research projects in which MCSR systems have played an integral role, while the other 6 presentations described the use of MCSR in support of classroom instruction. Most of the Thursday afternoon presentations were in the former category, and featured speakers from Southern Miss, Mississippi State, and Ole Miss.

The Training Track consisted of a six-hour presentation of an MCSR-customized (i.e., condensed) version of the standard "PV-WAVE Introductory Class," which was taught by Don Boughey, Director of PV-Wave Engineering and Technical Support at VNI. Twenty students and faculty researchers attended this free training, leaving with customized course slides and exercises. (If you attended this training last fall but have not received your VNI certificate of completion, please e-mail your mailing address to one of the MCSR consultants at assist@mcsr.olemiss.edu, and we will drop yours in the mail.)

Early that Thursday evening, an informal poster session was held at the Downtown Grille, on the Oxford Square. Seven posters describing computational research conducted on MCSR systems were presented by students spanning four departments at The University of Southern Mississippi and The University of Mississippi. While no awards were given, Henrique Momm's poster was subsequently presented at the Mississippi Academy of Science Spring 2008 Meeting, where it won the Best Poster Award in the Division of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Statistics. Immediately following the poster session, a reception was held at the Downtown Grille for all seminar participants.

Friday morning, while the PV-Wave training was being concluded, the presentations track featured several of the instructors and professors from UM, USM, and DSU who had used MCSR servers in support of classroom instruction at Delta State and Ole Miss over the last year. This track culminated with a brainstorming session by MCSR researchers and staff members interested in finding common research themes that might drive future grant applications, and which eventually led to the an NSF Major Research Instrumentation grant application this past February. All guests were checked out of the Inn at Ole Miss before noon, to make way for the crowd arriving for the Saturday's football game, which the Tigers won 38-25, en route to an 11-2 season that culminated in a Cotton Bowl victory over Arkansas.

We appreciate that so many of our users were able to attend this symposium, and the generous support of our friends at VNI in co-sponsoring the event. Look for more like these in the future.

To view lists of presentations and a photo gallery of the event, please see the MCSR Symposium web page.