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Education and Training: Preparing the New Workforce

O-H-I-O in a laboratory

OSC has earned a national reputation for exceptional training and education programs.

“We’ve created a pipeline to build, and sustain, a computational science workforce,” said Pankaj Shah, executive director, OSC and OARnet. “Our programs include undergraduate education and in-career certification programs, supplemented by outreach to high school and middle school age students, internships and user training.

Ralph Regula School of Computational Science

The center’s virtual Ralph Regula School of Computational Science coordinates computational science education, which is the use of computer modeling and simulation to solve complex business, technical and academic research problems. Students may take part in the computational science minor or associate degree program offered at eight Ohio colleges and universities; the stackable workforce certification program provides workers with an opportunity to learn computer modeling and the underlying mathematics and computer programming skills.

Student Internships

More than 30 undergraduate and graduate students gain real-world experience through a variety of internships at OSC and its partner organizations in the Ohio Technology Consortium.

A new program, to be funded by BP, creates an opportunity for a student to work in OSC’s HPC systems group and with the BP HPC team in Houston. Additionally, this past summer, OSC hosted two research interns funded by the National Science Foundation, and 11 summer interns, in areas ranging from HPC training to business analysis, sponsored by the Ohio Board of Regents.

Summer Programs

To encourage interest in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields, OSC has offered summer programs for nearly 25 years. Each year, Ohio’s brightest freshman, sophomore and juniors participate in OSC’s Summer Institute, a two-week summer camp where participants experience high performance computing and network firsthand. Likewise, the Young Women’s Summer Institute helps middle-school girls develop an interest in computer, math, science and engineering.

User Training

OSC’s faculty and student researchers can take advantage of ongoing training for scientific computing workshops, one-on-one vendors and web-based portals, taught by the center’s instructors or in collaboration with the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE).