Students work on research projects in their fields of interest across the spectrum of disciplines that make up computational science. The program includes workshops on high performance computing, and special lectures on such topics as parallel computing, graphics and scientific visualization, and numerical analysis.
Students arrive at their projects in a variety of ways.
Some students are already engaged in or planning a computational research project with a faculty member, and select a topic within that project. Others have an interest in a certain area, but have only just outlined a specific topic, and use the REU program to take the first steps. Still others simply have an idea of the field in which they would like to work. In all cases a dialog prior to the start of the program, and some intense meetings during the first few days on site, serve to define a focused, achievable project. REU students are emphatically not taken on to work as cheap programming labor, and proposed projects in that vein are discouraged.