High performance computing (HPC) is a major initiative at Louisiana State University (LSU). Its multidisciplinary research programs focus on grand challenges in materials science, astronomy, microsystems design, and environmental studies. To advance this effort, we request five NSF Traineeships. Consortial arrangements have been made to recruit in-state and out-of-state students, especially minorities from Historically Black Institutions. Innovative training structures have been introduced to integrate HPC into graduate education and research. These include new cross-disciplinary curricula and a dual-degree program to allow Ph.D. students in the physical sciences to get a M.S. from Computer Science and vice versa. Unique opportunities are available for graduate trainees to interact with scientists at Oak Ridge and Argonne National Laboratories, Mobil and Ethyl Corporations, and in Europe and Japan. To establish the HPC effort a LSU, two excellent parallel computing laboratories have been set up with $2. million in infrastructure grants from the State of Louisiana. These laboratories feature an 8,192-node MasPar, a 64-cell iWarp, and 8-node iPSC/860, and an 8-processor Silicon Graphics. With the latest grant of $850,000, we plan to acquire a 56-node Intel Paragon.
