9526127 Hess The National Center for computational Electronics, founded in 1988 at the University of Illinois and later expanded in 1992 to include a second site at Stanford University, has played a role in advancing on a national level various aspects of research and education in computational electronics. Over 60 groups from academic institution s and industry are affiliated to the center. NCCE has provided services to the scientific community, and has pursed cooperative projects on interdisciplinary research, involving academic and industrial groups, and national laboratories. This is a continuation of the funding provided by the National Science Foundation to partially support the operation of the NCCE site at the Beckman Institute of the University of Illinois. The proposed activities encompass several areas, from research to education and services. The focus of research will be in the formation of collaborative groups working on key research problem in computational electronics. Major challenges exist in the areas of deep submicron silicon device simulation, optoelectronics device simulation, as well as quantum transport in nanostructures. The role of NCCE is to create conditions for improved communications and technology transfer between the various components involved with semiconductor research and development. Different goals and uncorrelated efforts have created wide gaps and a lack of standardization. By creating wide interdisciplinary collaborative groups, which involve the broad expertise necessary for problems that go well beyond the capabilities of single investigators or even single institutions, NCCE intends to create an environment where the proposed collaborative themes will be developed in a more efficient way, while the models and the computer software will evolve in a consistent and standardized fashion. NCCE is now organizing two major working groups on full band structure Monte Carlo simulation for silicon devices and on semiconductor laser simulation. Sever al other groups are involved in simulation of quantum nanostructures, numerical approaches for hydrodynamic simulation models, and interactive environments based on the World Wide Web for research and education activities. NCCE has gained over the last two years considerable experience in the development of interactive distributed MOSAIC environments for computation/visualization in research and education, and taken advantage of the WWW for technology transfer to industry. This activity will be expanded in close collaboration with the other NCCE groups and with the the natonal Center for Supercomputing Applications, to improve access to information on the WWW for NCCe affiliates, realize environments for remote distributed collaboration, improve mechanisms of technology transfer, and generate new educational materials for computational electronics. NCCE will continue to provide a wide range of services tot the computational electronics community. These services include a Visitor's program at the Beckman Institute which has been instrumental in fostering collaborative interactions, a newsletter which will be expanded in scope to take advantage of the distributed WWW capabilities to create an electronic information system, release of software for large scale simulation and education, and the organization of the International Workshop on Computational Electronics.
