Communications of the ACM
Center Stresses Need For Integrated Science, Computer Education
Patricia J. Teller
Photo courtesy of the University of Texas at El Paso
At the University of Texas at Austin's recent 10th anniversary celebration of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), scientists and industry leaders discussed the problems industry faces, and some participants said educating students is probably the biggest.
The experts said the industry will experience greater progress by integrating science and computer education. University of Texas at El Paso professor Pat Teller said students should be taught how to create the type of computer structures that will help researchers working with multiple processors. Many computer science departments offer an elective in parallel and distributed computing, "but really what has to be done is that parallelism has to be taught, in my opinion, from the get-go in the computer science program," Teller said.
Meanwhile, TACC undergraduate research assistant Taylor Ratliff agreed that educating students is the biggest problem the center faces. "And that's the case in a lot of fields," Ratliff said. "The methods haven't reflected the changes in our society." TACC plans to expand support for all scientific research, but it will focus on computational medical, energy, and environmental research projects, according to director Jay Boisseau.
From Daily Texan
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