| Introduction and plans |
PLANS FOR THE YEAR 2007
Third Meeting (Planning and Evaluation)
A third meeting between the PI’s from the participating institution is scheduled for December where the year one goal and objectives will be reviewed. This self evaluation will help provide a benchmark for the two institutions for their planning for the subsequent years of the project. Specifically the following is being envisioned:
• The courses offered in the fall will be reviewed. The sample assignments and home works, midterm and final exams, and projects will be reviewed in consultation with the GIK faculty. This would help identify and ascertain the level of students in the program. It will also provide a feed back mechanism wherein the adjustments to the program will be brought in place.
• The performance of the PhD candidates will be evaluated and checked against the expected level of performance from them.
• The codes developed by PhD students in the USA will be installed on the Beowulf PC cluster and used to help train the Pakistani students.
• The new applicants in the graduate MS program will be reviewed.
Summer courses 2007:
• Professor Masud of UIUC will offer a short course on Nonlinear Finite Element Methods. This course will be intended for advanced students as well as practitioners from industry. Sister academic institutions will be encouraged to send their faculty to attend the course. This course will involve 20 hours of class participation and will provide a hands-on exposure to nonlinear finite element method and problem solving.
• Professor Khokhar and his graduate students (UIC) will offer a short condensed course on high performance computing and advanced data structures. The course will be intended for students, researchers, and practitioners working on large scale simulations problems.
Graduate Student advising:
Graduate student advising will be continued. Professor Masud is serving as external principal advisor to two PhD students, and Professor Khokhar is the external principal advisor for one PhD student. The budgeted 4th PhD student will be selected after interviews with the potential applicants.
Self Evaluation of Courses:
The contents of the courses and the quality and performance of the graduate students will be evaluated on a continuous basis.
Visit of Pakistani Faculty to UIUC and UIC:
Faculty from Pakistan will visit UIUC/UIC in the summer of 2007. This will provide them with an increased exposure to a research intensive work environment. They will also get an exposure to the cutting edge research going on in the research groups of Professors Masud and Khokhar at UIUC and UIC respectively.
Mid-Term Review Meeting:
A mid-term review meeting will be scheduled towards the end of summer (2007) to evaluate the midterm outcomes of the project.
