Professor Rajarshi Roy of the University of Maryland, with Co-PIs Kenneth Showalter of the University of West Virginia and Harry Swinney of the University of Texas ? Austin, will conduct an Advanced Studies Institute on ?Hands-on Research in Complex Systems? at the University of Buea, Buea Cameroon, for two weeks in July-August 2010.
Intellectual Merit: The ten faculty will be eminent scientists from the U.S. who have conducted frontier research using tabletop instrumentation and who have published their results in journals such as Nature, Science, and Physical Review Letters along with their partners from Cameroon and other African countries. They will be assisted by ten U.S. advanced graduate students and postdoctoral associates. The unique focus of the ASI will be on hands-on laboratory experiments using inexpensive instrumentation leading to frontier scientific advances in understanding complex systems. The laboratory sessions will be complemented by associated mathematical modeling using the software Scilab (which is similar to Matlab), which is available for download, free of charge. The primary goal of the ASI is to develop collaborations for scientific research with African nations. The ASI participants will be advanced graduate students and young scientists and engineers from developing countries in Africa (and a few participants from developing countries elsewhere). The U.S. faculty will benefit by making lasting contacts with scientists from developing countries. The ASI is sponsored partly by the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy; ICTP will provide travel funding for participants from developing nations and administrative support for advertising the school and selecting the participants. The ASI will be co-sponsored by the Ministry of Higher Education of Cameroon, and will be held at the University of Buea which will provide laboratories and lecture rooms for Hands-On Research sessions as well as lodging and meals for all participants from Africa and participating countries.
Broader Impact: Participants from the U.S. and developing countries will work closely together conducting experiments and developing mathematical models. The senior faculty and their assistants (whose participation will be made possible by the support of this grant) will lead the hands-on sessions that are the centerpiece of the ASI. These interactions will naturally lead to long term collaborations and exchanges of personnel. The junior faculty (U.S. graduate students and postdoctoral associates) will benefit not only from the interactions with peers who will become leaders in science and technology in developing nations, but also the school will provide the junior faculty with a unique opportunity to hone their own teaching and leadership skills in a unique multi-cultural environment. The senior faculty will present lectures and tutorials on the experiments and numerical modeling. Table-top experiments are particularly well suited for scientific research in developing countries where resources are limited. The interactive sessions will provide a learning experience for faculty as well as the participants, as we all work together to observe phenomena, explore concepts, and raise questions that warrant further study. Our experience as directors of a Hands-On Research on Complex Systems meeting, held in India in January 2008, was that many participants have reported that their participation was a life-changing experience. Building on our experience in India and responding to the suggestions and criticisms of the participants there, we expect that the Hands-On Research on Complex Systems ASI in Cameroon to have lasting impact on the scientific careers of the faculty as well as the school participants.
