Two Undergraduate Students Selected for Blue Waters Internship Program

Photo Submitted

Alaina Edwards and John McGarigal have been selected for the Blue Waters Internship Program.

Two University of Arkansas undergraduate students — Alaina Edwards, a mathematics major, and John McGarigal, a mechanical engineering major — have been selected for the 2018-19 Blue Waters Student Internship Program to work on a project in high-performance computing initiated by the U of A Kaman Group in Computational Applied Mathematics.

"The goal of the project is to engage U of A undergraduate students in petascale computing research and development in the area of efficient use of high-performance computing resources for optimized computational fluid dynamics simulations," said Tulin Kaman, an assistant professor who holds the Lawrence Jesser Toll Jr. Chair in the Department of Mathematical Sciences.

The interns are attending the two-week intensive Petascale Institute at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign through June 1 to build up their expertise in high-performance computing.

After their training, the undergraduate student interns will work on the optimization of the numerical simulations of compressible flow problems, occurring among others in the fields of oceanography and astrophysics, and the development of parallelization strategies to use the high-performance computing resources efficiently.

About Blue Waters: Blue Waters is one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. It can complete more than 1 quadrillion calculations per second on a sustained basis and more than 13 times that at peak speed. The peak speed is almost 3 million times faster than the average laptop. Blue Waters is also the fastest supercomputer at a university anywhere in the world.

About the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences: The J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences is the largest and most academically diverse unit on campus with 19 departments and 43 academic programs and research centers. The college provides the core curriculum for all University of Arkansas students and is named for J. William Fulbright, former university president and longtime U.S. senator.

About the University of Arkansas: The University of Arkansas provides an internationally competitive education for undergraduate and graduate students in more than 200 academic programs. The university contributes new knowledge, economic development, basic and applied research, and creative activity while also providing service to academic and professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the University of Arkansas among only 2 percent of universities in America that have the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of Arkansas among its top American public research universities. Founded in 1871, the University of Arkansas comprises 10 colleges and schools and maintains a low student-to-faculty ratio that promotes personal attention and close mentoring.