November 2009

The FIU School of Computing and Information Sciences, with partners FAU and UNCC, is pleased to announce an exciting international research and career development opportunity for students from FIU, FAU, UNCC, UM, and UPRM. PIRE is looking for highly qualified undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students in Science and Engineering disciplines who are interested in:

• Working on critical real-world applications that use or extend cyberinfrastructure as part of an international R & D team
• Experiencing unique technology research and development at top academic and industry laboratories around the world
• Gaining experience in international collaboration and the global economy, which will expand your career opportunities.

The PIRE program includes:

• Collaboration-driven trips (6 weeks to full semesters in length) to research sites in Argentina, Brazil, China, France, India, Italy, Mexico, and Spain
• PIRE Fellowships, up to $10,000 per semester, which will be awarded to superbly-qualified PhD students
• Monetary awards for winners of its annual poster session
• Cutting-edge research co-supervised by SCIS faculty and international research partners: Cyberinfrastructure Enablement, Cluster/Grid and Supercomputing, Hurricane Mitigation, Bioinformatics, and Health Informatics.

Applications will be accepted until January 29th, 2010, but students will be selected as applications are received.

February 2009

PIRE Program Students met at FIU's Biscayne Bay Campus for their first session of Language and Cultural Training. PIRE PI Yi Deng welcomed this second cadre of students and Liza Carbajo, Director of FIU's Office of Education Abroad, provided an introduction to the Language and Cultural Training students will be receiving. Dr. Aixa Perez-Prado led a workshop on Cross-Cultural Communication and Interaction. Students will be meeting periodically through March and April to receive instruction about the language, culture, and business practices of the countries they will visit: India, France, Brazil, China, Spain and Mexico.

Visit the PIRE training page for additional information about these activities.

PIRE Co-PI Dr. Masoud Sadjadi works with Nathanael (Nate) Van Vorst and Michael Armella at the Cross-Cultural Communication and Interaction Workshop.

PIRE Participant Seijiro Ikeda enjoys the interactive learning process at the Cross-Cultural Communication and Interaction Workshop.

February 2009

The 2009 FIU-FAU PIRE Executive committee, led by Dr. Yi Deng, completed the selection of the second cadre of PIRE students. There were 54 applicants received for the 2009 selection from both FIU and FAU from which 24 students were selected. The selected students will travel to China, Brazil, France, Spain, Mexico and India to conduct research with our collaborative partners.

2009-2010 PIRE Participants, faculty and staff

October 2008

The School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University and Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Florida Atlantic University are recruiting new students to participate in an exciting international research and career development opportunity. We are actively looking for highly-qualified undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral students in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Information Technology. Collaboration-driven trips to international research sites in Mexico, Argentina, Spain, China, India, France, and Germany for 6-10 week trips during Summer 2009 and semester-long trips in Fall 2009 and Spring 2010 semesters will be supported. Graduate Assistants will retain their existing assistantship support during their trips. In addition, PIRE Fellowships, up to $10,000, will be awarded to superbly-qualified PhD students.

To apply to PIRE click here
Note: Applications are accepted from Oct. 15 to Nov. 14, 2008.

The Sixth Latin American Grid (LA Grid) Summit, hosted October 30-31, 2008 by Florida Atlantic University, gathered together representatives from LA Grid's fourteen industry and academic partners and featured the work of the 2007-2008 NSF Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE) participants. Students from FIU and FAU presented posters showcasing their summer 2008 international research experiences. Kasturi Chatterjee received a First Place Award for her poster, "Using Graph Similarity for Social Network Analysis." Ricardo Koller was recognized with a Second Place Award for his poster, "APOS: An application Level Power Oracle for Virtualized Servers." More...	Students and researchers come together at the Sixth LA Grid Summit.
In addition to the poster session, six students were selected to make detailed presentations of their research and international experiences to the LA Grid Board of Governors and community researchers. To conclude the general meeting, PIRE students, their faculty advisers, and collaborators participated in a panel session that explored ways that participating institutions, faculty and students can successfully create and sustain international research collaborations. Throughout the sessions students remarked on how the PIRE program provided participants with growth opportunities they had not encountered in their previous academic or professional careers.
Juan Caraballo, IBM Research LA Grid Prog Dir; Yi Deng, Dean FIU SCIS; Rick Qualman, IBM VP, Florida Senior State Executive.	Alex Kotlarchyk, FAU PhD Student; S. Masoud Sadjadi, Professor FIU SCIS.

May 2008

Eighteen PIRE participants are performing hands-on research in cyberinfrastructure enablement at our partner institutions in the Summer of 2008. Nine FIU students and nine FAU students are engaged in collaborations with Tsinghua University and IBM's China Research Laboratory in Beijing, IBM's India Research Laboratory in New Delhi, the University Nacional de La Plata in Argentina, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center and Universitat Politènica de Catalunya in Spain, and the Universidad de Guadalajara in Mexico. Full details of their collaborators and research projects can be found at the Students link above. Follow along with details of their trips and their research at the Blogs link above.

February 2008

The 2008-2009 PIRE participants met on Feb. 2nd, 2008 for the first session of the FIU/FAU PIRE Cultural and Language Training Program. Dr. Yi Deng, the PIRE Principal Investigator, welcomed the students and explained the research aspects of the program. Wendy Lo, of FIU's Institute for Asian Studies, provided an overview of the Cultural and Language training program and introduced the instructors who will lead a series of sessions that will provide the PIRE participants who will travel to Argentina, China, India, Mexico, and Spain during 2008-2009 with an overview of the culture, customs, and language of their destination. Students received in-depth travel instructions from Liza Carbajo, Director of FIU Office of Education Abroad, on topics including safety, financial arrangements & budgeting, and travel documents. Pictured below are attending FIU/FAU PIs, instructors, staff coordinators, and the PIRE participants.

January 2008

The PIRE Executive Committee, led by Dr. Yi Deng, completed the selection of the 2008-2009 PIRE student researchers. We received 68 competitive applications at FIU and FAU, among which we could only select 27 applications for PIRE in 2008-2009. We encourage you to visit our website for updates concerning our research activities and for the next round of student participation calls.

December 2007

• Dr. S. Masoud Sadjadi, Guest Lecture, From LA Grid to PIRE: Building an Ecosystem for Collaborative Computing Research and Education, 12/20/07, 11:00, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
• Dr. Yi Deng, Guest Lecture, Building Ecosystems for Collaborative Computing Research and Education, 12/20/07, 3:30PM, 3-125 FIT Building, Research Institute of Information Technology (RIIT), Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
• Dr. S. Masoud Sadjadi, Guest Lecture, Projects to Support On-Demand Multi-Scale Weather Modeling, 12/21/07, 11:00, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

• FIU/FAU NSF PIRE Language and Cultural Training Schedule
• PIRE Participants Needed

• FIU Announces PIRE Award | PDF Version
• South Florida Business Journal article on PIRE | PDF Version
• Beacon article on PIRE | PDF Version
• FAU Press Release on PIRE | PDF Version
• Boca Raton News article on Pire | PDF Version