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The South Carolina Computational Chemistry Consortium (SC 4 ): A Collaboration to Enhance Research and Teaching in Computational Chemistry: Investigations of Theoretical Methods, Molecular Structures and Spectroscopy, and Reaction Mechanisms. November 12, 1998. 11/12/98 (cont.).
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The South Carolina Computational Chemistry Consortium (SC4):A Collaboration to Enhance Research and Teaching in Computational Chemistry:Investigations of Theoretical Methods, Molecular Structures and Spectroscopy, and Reaction Mechanisms
Fast forward… • In 14+ years, there have been 19 students who have worked in 20 different semesters on 33 (not completely) different projects • There have been 24 posters or talks at 14 consecutive ACS regional meetings
But what is missing? • Publications – still only 1 • Funding – FMU internal funding for travel; residual from other groups’ grants and state-designated funds for student summer salaries • Continuity – 10 of 30 semesters with no students doing research
Other issues • Ownership – either slow (PC) or remote (SDSC) computing resources • Isolation
So what to do? • Collaboration – using others… • as sources of expertise (you don’t know everything) • for accountability (pushing you to get things done) • for encouragement (there are lots of problems in common) • to share ideas (what works and what doesn’t) • for leverage (greater impacts of grants - proposed and actual)
So let’s collaborate • NSF MRI grant April 2010 • “MRI: Acquisition of a High-Performance Computing Cluster for Undergraduate Teaching and Research in Computational Chemistry,” with Gordon Brown, Coker College • NSF MRI grant January 2011 • “MRI: Acquisition of Supercomputing Nodes to Support Undergraduate Research, Research Training, and Teaching in Computational Chemistry,” with G. Brown, H. Fan-Hagenstein (Claflin U.), and J. Goodwin (Coastal Carolina U.)
Collaborating, cont. • NSF REU grant September 2012 • “REU Site: The South Carolina Computational Chemistry Consortium (SC4): A Distributed REU Site for Computational Chemistry Investigations of Structures, Mechanisms, and Spectroscopy,” with G. Brown, H. Fan-Hagenstein, and J. Goodwin • pending
SC4 The South Carolina Computational Chemistry Consortium
Advantages • Existing relationships • FMU-CC-CU-CCU • USC-USCA-PC-NC • Existing projects, project descriptions • Even larger impact (numbers of students, wider dissemination) • Broader expertise • Sense of collegiality, not competition • Existing funding (?)
Advantages • Access to existing computational infrastructure (USC) • Funding of new local (campus) and common (USC) computing facilities • Broad impact on discipline of chemistry • theoretical methods • electronic structures • spectroscopy • reaction mechanisms
Conclusion • I hope to begin today some fruitful discussions with many of you about collaborating, combining ideas, and sharing research results and teaching suggestions, with the immediate goal being a GEAR:CI proposal “to establish…[SC4: The SC] Computational Chemistry Consortium that facilitates both research and teaching” and the ultimate goal to obtain major external funding for SC4.