A liberal arts college might not be the first place you would expect to find undergraduates dedicated to scientific research. Hamilton College chemistry professor George Shields says "The quality of student learning in such a highly attentive atmosphere is one of the reasons why a disproportionate number of Ph.D. chemists receive their baccalaureate training at small liberal arts colleges like Hamilton."
In the State of the Union Address President Bush announced the American Competitiveness Initiative "to give our nation's children a firm grounding in math and science." Proposed funding for the initiative will support the work in "promising areas such as nanotechnology, supercomputing and alternative energy sources," said Bush.
With five supercomputers Hamilton College is now and will continue to be a leader in computing power among undergraduate institutions. The capabilities of these computers exceed the resources typically available to chemistry investigators at undergraduate institutions.
The newly remodeled $56 million Science Center houses three SGI Altix Servers purchased in 2004 and 2005, and the latest addition has 32 processors, 32 gigabytes of memory and nearly a terabyte of disk space. In addition, the college maintains the shared resources of the Molecular Education and Research Consortium in Undergraduate Conceptual Chemistry, or MERCURY, assembled by Shields, including an SGI Origin 300 with 32 processors and 32 gigabytes of memory and a Linux cluster, which uses low-cost hardware and distributed computing technology to obtain supercomputer performance. Five Origin 200s and a 64 processor Origin 2000 round out the computing infrastructure at Hamilton.
The undergraduate research projects in computational chemistry utilize the supercomputers to address significant problems in environmental, materials, physical and biological chemistry. These simulations in quantum chemistry and molecular dynamics further understanding of biochemical and geochemical processes. Many of these quantum chemical calculations are only possible because of the architecture of these servers.
Hamilton junior and Goldwater scholar Mary Beth Day has co-authored two papers on atmospheric chemistry in the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry and the Journal of Physical Chemistry A.
Shields says he finds that students are naturally drawn to these computer-based projects and become involved in research early in their undergraduate careers, often as first-year students or even pre-matriculated students.
The faculty involved in the MERCURY consortium have mentored more than 250 undergraduates, of whom one-third to one-half have enrolled in graduate school. A disproportionate number of these students have been women and minorities.
In the five years since the consortium was first established, the collective publication rate of its members has almost doubled, the number of external grant awards has more than tripled, and together they have raised more than four million dollars to support computational chemistry research involving undergraduate students.
Note: The MERCURY Consortium annually organizes a national meeting focusing on undergraduate computational chemistry. If you are interested in attending the next conference, to be held at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY, from July 26 - July 28, 2006, or would like to speak with Hamilton undergraduate researchers, please contact Esena Jackson at (315) 859-4681 or ejackson@hamilton.edu
In the State of the Union Address President Bush announced the American Competitiveness Initiative "to give our nation's children a firm grounding in math and science." Proposed funding for the initiative will support the work in "promising areas such as nanotechnology, supercomputing and alternative energy sources," said Bush.
With five supercomputers Hamilton College is now and will continue to be a leader in computing power among undergraduate institutions. The capabilities of these computers exceed the resources typically available to chemistry investigators at undergraduate institutions.
The newly remodeled $56 million Science Center houses three SGI Altix Servers purchased in 2004 and 2005, and the latest addition has 32 processors, 32 gigabytes of memory and nearly a terabyte of disk space. In addition, the college maintains the shared resources of the Molecular Education and Research Consortium in Undergraduate Conceptual Chemistry, or MERCURY, assembled by Shields, including an SGI Origin 300 with 32 processors and 32 gigabytes of memory and a Linux cluster, which uses low-cost hardware and distributed computing technology to obtain supercomputer performance. Five Origin 200s and a 64 processor Origin 2000 round out the computing infrastructure at Hamilton.
The undergraduate research projects in computational chemistry utilize the supercomputers to address significant problems in environmental, materials, physical and biological chemistry. These simulations in quantum chemistry and molecular dynamics further understanding of biochemical and geochemical processes. Many of these quantum chemical calculations are only possible because of the architecture of these servers.
Hamilton junior and Goldwater scholar Mary Beth Day has co-authored two papers on atmospheric chemistry in the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry and the Journal of Physical Chemistry A.
Shields says he finds that students are naturally drawn to these computer-based projects and become involved in research early in their undergraduate careers, often as first-year students or even pre-matriculated students.
The faculty involved in the MERCURY consortium have mentored more than 250 undergraduates, of whom one-third to one-half have enrolled in graduate school. A disproportionate number of these students have been women and minorities.
In the five years since the consortium was first established, the collective publication rate of its members has almost doubled, the number of external grant awards has more than tripled, and together they have raised more than four million dollars to support computational chemistry research involving undergraduate students.
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Note: The MERCURY Consortium annually organizes a national meeting focusing on undergraduate computational chemistry. If you are interested in attending the next conference, to be held at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY, from July 26 - July 28, 2006, or would like to speak with Hamilton undergraduate researchers, please contact Esena Jackson at (315) 859-4681 or ejackson@hamilton.edu
