2008 Woodie Awards
PUC Coding Challenge sparks interest in computational science
By: Kalyn Nelson
Issue date: 2/19/07 Section: News
- Page 1 of 1
A new way to stimulate interest in computational science is being created in a competition on campus called the PUC Coding Challenge. PUC is part of a three member project - the Northwest Indiana Computational Grid - a federally funded project to increase grid computing in Northwest Indiana in conjunction with Purdue University in West Lafayette and Notre Dame.
PUC hopes to jump-start their computational science research with the funding the project will . With the addition of the Center for the Computational Science, faculty members work on computational problems in a variety of disciplines and supporting their work through grant writing. Shawn Slavin, associate professor of physics and astronomy and director of the center for computational science, asked Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs Nabil Ibrahim to sponsor a local undergraduate coding competition. Any interested student can compete in this challenge and the students get to pick their own team member.
"This gives students a taste of solving real world problems in the area of computational science," said Slavin.
In the coding challenge, students have the ability to compete with other teams of students by solving a real world computational project.
This year's coding challenge problem is traffic modeling. The problem will be presented at an initial workshop in two weeks. Teams of one or two students can sign up and register for this challenge at the workshop.
The students will spend a month designing and writing computer codes for their traffic modeling problem. Students will need to have some basic knowledge of computer programming language such as Java, FORTRAN and C++ and provide coding to solve the problems and presenting the results so the audience members can understand what the students have created.
When the students are finished with their project they will be evaluated by a small team of judges at the Student Research Day at PUC on March 23. There will be a prize incentive of $500, $300 and $100 for the top three finishers of this competition.
Slavin said if the students are having problems with this project he will be an assistant for the technical issues.
"The only priority of this competition is that one of the team members knows how to program this computational project," said Slavin.
PUC hopes to jump-start their computational science research with the funding the project will . With the addition of the Center for the Computational Science, faculty members work on computational problems in a variety of disciplines and supporting their work through grant writing. Shawn Slavin, associate professor of physics and astronomy and director of the center for computational science, asked Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs Nabil Ibrahim to sponsor a local undergraduate coding competition. Any interested student can compete in this challenge and the students get to pick their own team member.
"This gives students a taste of solving real world problems in the area of computational science," said Slavin.
In the coding challenge, students have the ability to compete with other teams of students by solving a real world computational project.
This year's coding challenge problem is traffic modeling. The problem will be presented at an initial workshop in two weeks. Teams of one or two students can sign up and register for this challenge at the workshop.
The students will spend a month designing and writing computer codes for their traffic modeling problem. Students will need to have some basic knowledge of computer programming language such as Java, FORTRAN and C++ and provide coding to solve the problems and presenting the results so the audience members can understand what the students have created.
When the students are finished with their project they will be evaluated by a small team of judges at the Student Research Day at PUC on March 23. There will be a prize incentive of $500, $300 and $100 for the top three finishers of this competition.
Slavin said if the students are having problems with this project he will be an assistant for the technical issues.
"The only priority of this competition is that one of the team members knows how to program this computational project," said Slavin.
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