11 July 2005
Five science undergraduate students from the US are spending their summer holiday exploring the use of IT in scientific research as part of an international collaboration with Monash.
Ms Laura Berstis, Mr James Hwang, Ms Dorothy Dederko, Mr Jordan Nevo and Ms Dafna Bitton, all from the University of California, San Diego, are spending nine weeks in the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Monash.
The students' projects build on work being done by the Pacific Rim Applications and Grid Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA) -- an international collaboration of institutions working to develop grid-enabled computer applications.
They include imitating cardiac cells with the ultimate aim of simulating a pace maker for use in science experiments, looking at how drugs dock with proteins and the effect this may have on disease, and developing software to help determine gene and protein function.
The students' supervisor Professor David Abramson said the program also encouraged collaboration internationally and between sciences.
"These are areas that people at UCSD and Monash have been working with for a while, but PRAGMA provides a wonderful opportunity for them to collaborate, using IT as the glue," he said. "This project takes the collaboration a step further by introducing bright, young people to this field of research, while getting them to work on these complex problems."
The students are using software called Nimrod/G, which has been developed at Monash as part of the CRC for Enterprise Distributed Systems. Nimrod/G enables scientists to use computers to undertake large-scale simulations instead of experimenting in wet laboratories. This means they can explore many more options, and the software can be applied to a range of different areas.
Ms Dederko said she and most of her fellow students were learning how to use the Nimrod/G software for the first time.
"A lot of us come from biology where we work in wet labs, so this is enabling us to work in a completely different field," she said.
The students are part of a pilot program at the University of California called Pacific Rim Undergraduate Experiences (PRIME), which was launched last year and provides an international experience for students working in areas related to global cyberinfrastructure.
For more information contact or to arrange interviews contact Ms Diane Squires on 9905 9315 or 0417 603 400. Photographs of the students are available.
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