PET Programs
Summer Interns
By Emma C. Grove and Marcus A. Liles
The Programming, Environment and Training (PET) Summer Internship Program was first developed in 1998, and continues to evolve every year. It is a residential 10-week internship program for undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics, engineering, and science, designed to encourage young Americans to consider computer science and engineering careers within the Department of Defense (DoD).
In this program, the students are paired with scientists and engineers at each of the four Major Shared Resource Centers (MSRC) to conduct real-life research projects in the computational sciences. One of the program's goals is to encourage participation from Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs).
This year, five students participated in the 10-week PET Summer Intern 2003 Program at the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) MSRC and one student participated at Picatinny Arsenal. Students were selected by a panel of ARL reviewers based on grade-point average, level and type of courses taken (i.e., more credit was provided for challenging courses), and recommendation letters from faculty.
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| PET interns and mentors during the summer of 2003. |
The program, coordinated by High Performance Technologies, Inc. for the PET program, began June 4 with one week of classes and ended Aug. 8 with each student giving a formal PowerPoint presentation of his/her work. During the internship, the interns and their mentors worked together to formulate and execute an Individualized Development Plan (IDP). The use of an IDP ensured that the interns were able to attain new skills and thus provided an overall valuable experience for the students.
Mark Ferraris, a graduate student from New Jersey Institute of Technology, majoring in computer engineering, was mentored by Jerry Clarke and Dr. Vincent Natoli. His undergraduate degree in computer engineering is from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. For his project, he investigated the hardware acceleration of a finite-difference time domain (FDTD) algorithm using FPGAs. The FDTD algorithm arises frequently in computational electromagnetics problems.
Ferraris said, "I would suggest this program to colleagues not just because of educational/professional opportunities, but because of the intimate relationship interns get with their mentors."
He plans to work in development of computer hardware or embedded systems after graduation.
Ryan Milligan, a junior from University of Virginia, majoring in computer science, computer engineering and electrical engineering, worked with his mentors, Jeanne Angelini and Dr. David Richie, on a project to explore design choices for the container class of a FDTD solver.
FDTD solvers are a common element in many DoD device- and circuit-simulation codes. Milligan felt that the project on which he worked was "exciting and challenging and I enjoyed it." Milligan would like to pursue a career as a software engineer after graduation from the University of Virginia.
Andrea Polk, a junior at Norfolk State University, majoring in computer science, had two mentors and two different projects. She worked with her mentor, Tom Kendall, on a project to do benchmark testing on new Linux clusters at the ARL MSRC. With her mentor Jennifer Moses, she redesigned the CDLT web pages. In addition to her projects, Andrea also enjoyed the tours of the facilities. After graduation, Andrea plans to attend graduate school in computational sciences.
Traci Strohecker, a sophomore at Cedar Crest College, majoring in chemistry, worked at Picatinny Arsenal with her mentor, Dr. Jeffrey Dyer, after attending a week of training at ARL. Her project involved the Armaments Server. The team with which she worked built a test federation consisting of several networked computers running various programs, where they examined the current Armament Server, and are working toward a second version.
Traci remarked, "I liked going to ARL and seeing all the neat things you have there." After graduation Traci plans to go to graduate school.
Marvin Watts, a graduate student at Clark Atlanta University (CAU), is majoring in system science. He also attended CAU for his undergraduate degree in mathematics. Dr. Jubaraj Sahu mentored Marvin with code performance comparisons between the Computation and Modeling Laboratory (CAML) compressible flow solver and some of the leading commercial compressible flow solver codes employed by ARL's Aerodynamics Research Team. Marvin commented that his favorite part of the program was "working with experienced professionals in my field of interest."
After he completes graduate school, he would like to do research work in numerical methods and high performance computing.
Timothy White, a graduate student in computer science from Jackson State University (JSU), returned for a second year in the program. He was mentored by Rick Angelini and Dr. Mark Zottola, and had two projects.
Angelini worked with Timothy on a visualization of non-axisymmetric projectiles. Zottola worked with Timothy on developing algorithms to aid in the study of protein structures. These algorithms include the development of code to determine the fractal dimension of a protein surface, creation of electrostatic potential maps for biomolecules and optimization protocols for determining the placement of ions about a biomolecule.
Tim's favorite part of the program was "having two mentors." After graduate school, Tim plans to find a position where he can utilize his education and related work experience, and eventually go on to get his Ph.D.
The interns received valuable professional guidance from their mentors, and in turn made important contributions to the intern program. Their professional PowerPoint presentations left no doubt that they successfully completed their project objectives. They were also very appreciative and excited to have been able to work at a world-class laboratory.