This award is to support a postdoctoral associate to work in experimental computer science. The associate, Terrence Finnegan, will be working with Professor Orville Vernon Burton in developing user interfaces to very large databases requiring both database access and statistical analyses. The user of the system is assumed to be a scholar unfamiliar with the use of high performance computers. The specific application will be the census database. In addition to developing the user interface, the research will also incorporate the information into a Geographic Information System. Visualization tools will also be developed that are appropriate for the use by history scholars. The development platforms will be computers owned by the National Center for Supercomputer Applications at the University of Illinois.
