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Professor David
Francis continues to garner major funding for his work
on literacy and cognitive development. |
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UH
was selected to
house a national center for research on bilingual education,
which is co-directed by Professor Yolanda
Padron. |
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Our
new Texas Learning and
Computation Center (TLC2) will serve as an infrastructure
for programs that require high-performance computing. |
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Under
the direction of
Lennart Johnsson, a Hugh Roy and
Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor, TLC2 has already
given rise to a number of major research projects. |
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UH
students Sandrine Gautier (left)
and Mickael Voyes (right) work
in one of the TLC2 interactive distance-learning classrooms.
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Distinguished
University Professor of Chemistry Anthony
Haymet and his
team of researchers at TLC2 are studying air quality in Houston. |
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Professor Franciss work on bilingual elementary
education has blossomed because of a synergy created among interdependent
researchers and between these researchers and the local community.
As one of the most ethnically diverse metropolitan centers in the
country, Houston is ideal for research on bilingual education. So
much so, in fact, that UH was selected, along with the University
of California at Santa Cruz, to house a national center for research
on this issue.
Co-directed by Professor Yolanda Padron in our College
of Education, the Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and
Excellence (CREDE) is a multi-university consortium that helps diverse
student
populations achieve academic excellence. More than ninety teachers,
scholars, researchers, and administrators from around the nation
will use the center to exchange ideas and then present their findings
to government policymakers. This past year, the U. S. Department
of Educations Office of Educational Research and Improvement
renewed CREDEs initial grant with a $2 million extension for
the next two years.
Leaders at UH do not work in isolation, but develop
intellectual partnerships that take their work to a higher level.
There is no better symbol of this than our Texas Learning and Computation
Center (TLC2). Dedicated to the development of technology-based
tools for research and instruction, TLC2 serves the many programs
on campus that require high-performance computing facilities. Completed
this past year, the TLC2 complex, located in Philip Guthrie Hoffman
Hall, includes computational research laboratories, a visualization
research suite with virtual reality equipment, a conference room
with interactive displays, and two interactive distance-learning
classrooms.
Current projects concern computer modeling of complex
molecules, advanced computer applications development, parallel
computer processing, scalable scientific software libraries, numerical
simulation of blood flow, and air quality modeling and simulation.
Many of these projects are already bearing fruit. In November, a
$3.5 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency was
awarded to a team
of researchers at TLC2 to study air quality in Houston. Members
of this
multidisciplinary team are Distinguished University Professor of
Chemistry Anthony Haymet, Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished
Professor of Engineering Neal Amundson, Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz
Cullen Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Roland Glowinski,
M.D. Anderson Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Yuri Kuznetsov,
Professor Daewon Byun, and Assistant Professor Jiwen He. This grant
supplements $2 million received in 2000.
Under the guidance of Lennart Johnsson, a Hugh Roy
and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of Computer Science
and the director of TLC2, UH became a founding member of the Los
Alamos Computer Science Institute (LACSI). Funded by the Accelerated
Strategic Computing Initiative, the Department of Energy, and the
National Science Foundation, LACSI ensures that the best software
and mathematical techniques are used in practice. Students are trained
in these new technologies, and new advances are given the necessary
attention and resources.
This past year, B. Montgomery Pettitt, a Hugh Roy
and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and
the director of the Institute for Molecular Design (IMD), which
is also part of TLC2, received $1 million from the W. M. Keck Foundation
to purchase an 800 MHz nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) machine,
the largest and the first of its kind in Texas. IMD combines high-performance
computing with theoretical chemistry to produce computer-aided molecular
design and biomedical research, and its scientists have access to
most of the largest non-secured supercomputing resources in the
nation. The new NMR machine will expedite the study of larger molecular
samples at higher resolutions.
Through the IMD, UH is one of the founding members
of the Gulf Coast Consortium (GCC), established to promote collaboration
among its member institutions: UH, Baylor College of Medicine, UT-Houston
Health Science Center, UT Medical Branch at Galveston, UT M.D. Anderson
Cancer Center, and Rice University. The GCC is supported in part
by a $3.5 million grant from the Keck Foundation. Over the past
ten years, the GCC has received NIH training grants for graduate
students and postdoctoral fellows studying and working in the biomedical
field.
Within the last two years, UH research has given rise
to five spin-off companies, which have attracted more than $55 million
from venture capitalists. Our partnership with institutions in the
Texas Medical Center has enhanced biomedical research efforts for
all parties. The oil and gas industry has benefited by research
at UH also: Arthur Weglein, the Margaret S. and Robert E. Sheriff
Faculty Endowed Chair in Applied Seismology, leads a consortium
of major industrial partners concerned with oil and gas exploration,
and our Allied Geophysical Laboratory continues its work in seismic
data imaging with oil and gas companies, furthering its research
with a major grant from the U. S. Department of Energy.
Whether their work is enhanced by a synergy among
colleagues in biology, or among interdependent researchers working
on educational issues, or among virtual partners in our high-tech
research center, the outstanding leaders at the University of Houston
are those who have increased the power of their ideas with a collaborative
spirit.
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