This project is a domestic and international REU program run by DIMACS, the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, headquartered at Rutgers University, and cosponsored by DIMATIA, the Center for Discrete Mathematics, Theoretical Informatics, and Applications, at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. Students will be recruited from across the U.S. and the Czech Republic. The domestic program will continue to develop an academic-industrial and interdisciplinary co-mentoring program previously introduced as a pilot and will leverage REU funds from the Department of Homeland Security through a new Center of Excellence based at DIMACS. The international program will host Czech students and send U.S. students to Prague. The goal of this REU program is to provide participants with an exciting research experience that will help them decide on future educational and career paths. All students, including those only in the domestic program, will get a taste of the international scientific enterprise through joint programs and social events involving the Czech students and lectures on Czech research and culture.
Intellectual Merit: The program will focus on common strengths of DIMACS and DIMATIA, particularly in topics of theoretical computer science and discrete mathematics such as graph theory, computational geometry, logic and complexity theory, and combinatorial optimization. The program will also leverage DIMACS position as an interdisciplinary center to offer projects whose applications cross disciplines and illustrate the power of computational thinking in many settings, such as computational bioinformatics, health data privacy, epidemiological modeling, economic aspects of e-commerce, and information management in massive data sets. This perspective will be reinforced by exposing students to current industrial research on network analysis, sensor location, and Internet auctions, and to homeland security applications through interaction with DIMACS Department of Homeland Security REU program.
Broader Impacts: The program will provide an incomparable scientific and cross-cultural experience to 15 outstanding undergraduates per year. In addition to leading to scientific papers and talks, there will be networking among students - domestic and foreign - that will last far into the future. There will also be new collaborations with mentors and graduate student coordinators. The program aims to influence the choices about further education and future careers of the students involved, and give them the confidence to pursue these choices. The program will increase the number of interactions between DIMACS and DIMATIA and their widespread scientific collaborators throughout the U.S. and the Czech Republic, and aims to have a "trickle down" effect that extends beyond the specific students supported. The program also aims to raise the awareness of a larger scientific community to the importance of and opportunities in international collaboration and cross-fertilization. This international collaborative model will be publicized to colleagues at other institutions.
The DIMACS Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) program prepares students to become the next generation of computer scientists and mathematical scientists, the most successful of whom have the capacity to look beyond the confines of computer science (CS) or the mathematical sciences (MS) for inspiration. Our program nurtures this capacity by exposing REU students to a broad range of CS topics, applied in contexts that range from bioinformatics to big data. A particular emphasis of our program is crossing boundaries—between disciplines, between academia and industry, and between nations—to solve problems. Research experiences for undergraduates inform their future education and career choices and give them the confidence and grounding to pursue and succeed in these choices. Our program enriches students by exposing them to the varied perspectives offered by different cultures, different fields, by theory and application, and by industry and academia. DIMACS is a well-established research center with many scientific activities (seminars, workshops, etc.), open to REU students, and with long-standing relationships with industrial partners. Each year of the program, students visit DIMACS industry partners to gain a broadened view of career possibilities. The intellectual merit of the DIMACS REU program stems from the research projects introduced to students by their mentors. Students were invited to participate in other activities at DIMACS, which included workshops, seminars, and research meetings that are part of the broader intellectual life at DIMACS. We had 127 US undergraduate students in our REU program between 2010 and 2013. Since 2010, project research has led to at least 17 publications co-authored by students and their mentors and at least 33 presentations at regional, national, and international conferences. Students were mentored on research topics as varied as network science and security, game theory and machine learning, algorithmic applications in biology and medicine, and discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science. Some research projects were co-mentored by researchers associated with DIMACS industry partners. One example was a project in which co-mentors James Abello (DIMACS) and Dr. Yifan Hu (AT&T Labs Research) worked with Michael Poplavski (REU12, University of Central Florida) to determine how clustering was used to influence graph layout. They proposed three new methods to deal with fragmentation when drawing a graph aesthetically: placing a dummy node in the graph and adding appropriate edges, using modified well-defined attractive and repulsive forces in the graph, and a hybrid of the first two methods. The efficiency of the methods was then compared by measuring how well the drawings conveyed clustering relationships between items. For most student participants in our program, this was their first introduction to a research environment in which they worked on open-ended problems that did not have a clear pathway to a predetermined solution. Most of our participants have gone on to, or are planning on going on to, graduate school. Many of them cited their DIMACS REU experience as a determining factor in their decision and in their later success. An evaluation by the Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP) that surveyed the computer science majors and minors in our 2012 program showed that, as compared to computer science majors and minors in other REU programs, DIMACS participants reported greater impact of the REU on their knowledge about graduate school and plans to attend graduate school. Nine of our participants have reported receiving an external graduate fellowship, seven of which were NSF Graduate Research Fellowships. Our program included a broad community of students and researchers. There were ongoing collaborations with other REU programs at Rutgers in addition to other REU programs in the region.
