The Department of Physics of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) proposes a Graduate Research Traineeship (GRT) Program in "Integrating High Performance Computing into Research on the Physics of Complex Materials" (henceforth ICPCM). The program will train five graduate students to the Ph.D. level in physics and will prepare them for careers in industry, research laboratories, and teaching in colleges and universities. The fields represented in ICPCM -advanced computation, materials science, and complex systems - are all critical and emerging areas of science, engineering, and technology. Further, ICPCM is a natural area in which to train students, for the combination of skills required to master this area provides excellent preparation for a variety of later careers. The UIUC provides an ideal environment for such a ICPCM program, for it combines internationally recognized research strengths across the whole range of materials with equally distinguished strengths in computation and computational physics. The ensuing proposal details the scientific focus of the proposal, describes the commitment of the Physics Department to provide additional courses, supplemental training, and new workstation and laboratory space, and outlines plans for summer school and other activities, including providing advanced training for students and faculty at historically minority institutions to facilitate the transition to graduate programs for talented minority students.
