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Vermont Advanced Computer Center welcomes research planning grants

The Vermont Advanced Computing Center (VACC) was funded for planning by a NASA grant to Russ Tracy and Chris Allen. The planning process involved many faculty members and included a visit from an AAAS focus group. The resulting plan has been funded for implementation by a NASA grant to Dr. Fran Carr, Vice President for Research and Dean of Graduate Studies at UVM.

The mission of the VACC is to provide an environment at UVM that supports computer and computational science activities in research and education, including collaborations involving UVM researchers, other academic institutions, and public and private sector partners. The faculty and staff of the VACC will not only engage in their own research but may also provide consultation and collaboration to others on campus. Specific Aims for implementation of the VACC are:

1. Establish VACC infrastructure, including hardware (for example, for shared memory computing, distributed computing, storage, and visualization), software, personnel (including the Director, as well as faculty and staff positions), and space (offices, computing labs, and meeting rooms).
2. Establish research and education programs.

As part of Specific Aim 2, we invite applications for up to four $5,000 awards for the 2005-2006 academic year, each for planning the development of a VACC focal research area. A VACC research focus will include multiple faculty members and/or commercial scientists with active research programs as well as resources (such as hardware, software, services, or seed money) and activities that make the participants more productive. The primary outcome of the funded activities should be a plan; please note the distinction between "planning activities", which will be supported by these awards, and "research/educational activities", which will be described in the resulting plan. We encourage applicants to think about research foci that provide integrated solutions, for example, involving data collection, data management/integration, simulation/analysis, visualization, education, and technology transfer.  Faculty and staff may play a role in multiple applications. The resulting plans will play a central role in VACC strategic planning.

An application for planning the development of a research focus should be no more than five pages in length and include:

• Senior personnel, including at least one UVM faculty member (curriculum vitae should be appended to the five page application, faculty members from Vermont academic institutions or Vermont commercial scientists are encouraged to participate);
• A definition of the scope, including key background information as well as references to external funding sources and scientific literature;
• Descriptions of accomplishments of the investigators that are within the scope of the research focus (published reports or draft manuscripts may be appended to the five page application);
• Proposed planning activities, for example, invited speakers, consultants, retreats, lunches, office supplies, or preparation of an application for an external grant (the award may not include faculty salary);
• Potential VACC resources that would make the involved research groups more productive, for example, additional faculty expertise in simulation of atomically detailed systems, a class on liquid structure theory, an immersive visualization room, shared memory computing hardware, or a programmer with expertise in parallel programming.

The following factors will make applications more competitive:

• A strong record of productivity in the proposed area;
• A clearly defined and significant role for computing methodologies;
• Collaborations involving theoretical, computational, and experimental scientists;
• Relevance to IBM interests, for example, environmental modeling, proteomics or health informatics (see http://www.research.ibm.com)
• Relevance to NASA interests (see NASA interest and objectives at http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forresearchers/researchbizops/index.html; see particularly Earth Science Opportunities).

Applications should be sent by August 12, 2005, in PDF via email (or, if necessary, http://www.uvm.edu/filetransfer) to Zancy.Vonhooks@uvm.edu. Dr. Carr will appoint a committee to review applications. Questions should be directed to Jeffrey.Bond@uvm.edu or Sean.Wang@uvm.edu, with CC /to Zancy.Vonhooks@uvm.edu.

An information meeting was held on Wednesday, July 6 to answer questions about the VACC Request for Application (MS Word document).

Authors: Jeffrey Bond, Microbiology and Molecular Genetics
Sean Wang, Computer Science
Zancy VonHooks, Provost's Office

Last modified July 12 2005 04:19 PM