2012 - Krell Institute

NOT YOUR USUAL SU
practicum profiles
LAB PRACTICUMS BRING FELLOWS PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL BENEFITS
Left to right:
Brian Lockwood, Hayes
Stripling IV, Anubhav Jain
and Eric Chi
IN THE CLASSIC CARICATURE of a summer internship, college students
slave away at “gofer” duties and other tedious tasks.
Not so for Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship recipients’
summer practicums. Fellows are dispatched to national laboratories and tasked with hard
problems – research subjects outside the bounds of the projects they carry out at their home
universities. They work with leaders in subject matters of national importance and often
employ some of the world’s most powerful computers. The experience exposes fellows to
the unique blend of resources and collaboration found at national laboratories.
The summer subject may be tangential to their doctoral project – like the materials
research Anubhav Jain pursued or the uncertainty quantification projects Brian Lockwood
and Hayes Stripling IV tackled. Or the summer may be a branch out into an interesting area
outside their usual realm, as with Eric Chi’s foray into tensor factorization. Either way, fellows
return to campus with new perspectives and tools, both professional and personal.
P4 DEIXIS 12 DOE CSGF ANNUAL