Parallel computing is becoming increasingly important to scientific advancement and economic development. For parallel computation to succeed we need to build machines that deliver high performance on real-world applications. This project attempts to measure application performance on networks of workstations and to implement applications to tolerate the high latencies in such networks. The initial applications under study come from computational biology and from geographic information systems. The integration of software, architectural, and applications topics will be emphasized both in research and in courses developed in this project.