University of Arkansas Shares in Grant For Computer Research
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark.
The University of Arkansas was awarded a grant with the University of Oklahoma to create a research center devoted to studying materials that can make computers run faster. The $4.5 million grant comes as part of a push by the federal government to fuel such research.
The National Science Foundation this year funded three other Materials Research in Science and Engineering Centers located at the California Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Virginia.
The $4.5 million from the foundation will be matched at 50 percent by the states, with Oklahoma and Arkansas together contributing $2.25 million. The grant money will be distributed over five years.
University of Arkansas Chancellor Dr. John A. White says the grant represents a big step in the school’s quest to expand as a research institution. White notes that while he was dean of engineering at Georgia Tech, he and his colleagues tried repeatedly to land such a research center. “We were never successful,” he says.
Research at the center will focus on the tiniest of materials —nanostructures — that can be developed and employed in creating computer electronics. The centers are to be accessible via the Internet to students striving to enter the sciences.
Students in the most remote areas of the state will be able to be a part of the technological innovations developed at the center.
“The use of the Internet to bring leading-edge science into our rural classrooms, combined with the center’s nanostructure research attracting the attention of high technology companies, will help move Arkansas another large step forward into being a full player in the new technology-based economy,” says Greg Salamo, a UA physics professor who will direct Arkansas’ portion of the center.
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