Funding, Research, and Workshop Opportunities for Faculty Researchers

Updated December 27, 2007

See also:

• For undergraduate students: Research Experience for Undergraduates
• For graduate students: Fellowships, Travel Support

Funding support for cross-disciplinary research

The MCC has limited funding available to initiate new, cross-disciplinary research and code/algorithm development, particular those requiring applied math and computer science advances with the physical sciences, for simulation of solid, soft matter, a nd biological systems. Researchers at the University of Illinois are eligible for this funding.

The objectives of MCC are: "To analyze, understand, and predict the properties of important materials systems with the goal of contributing new science and bridging the gap between theory and experiment through the development of forefront algorithms and extensible, user-friendly, open-source code, the training of creative, diverse group of young scientists and a significant outreach program to disseminate knowledge."

Proposals into new, forefront cross-disciplinary areas, especially those that leverage on-going efforts and investigators within the center, will be given full consideration. Support within an MCC collaboration is the cost-sharing of research assistan ts only, at no more than 1/2 support (for example, MCC would support 25% RA per semester).

Recent examples of funded work within the center include:

Open-source code development for materials simulations (the Software Archive and active projects)

• QMCpack development
• Rejection-free geometric cluster algorithm for complex fluids.

Seeding joint research between two or more departments:

• D.D. Johnson (MSE), T. Martinez (Chemistry) and D. Goldberg (IESE)
  "Excited-State Chemistry and Multi-timescale Simulations via Evolutionary Algorithms"
• D. Ceperley (Physics), E. de Sturler (CS), and J. Kim (NCSA)
  "Quantum Monte Carlo Calculations for Deep Earth Materials" which led to new, separate funding for a larger-scale project.

Submit a proposal for funding (login required), or contact Amy Young (proposals@mcc.uiuc.edu) for more details.

Proposals are due:

• June 1st for decisions on the following Fall
• April 1st for decisions on Summer
• November 1st for Spring

Funding support for workshops and conferences

The MCC will consider partial support for well-organized and relevant computational materials science workshops either:

• held on the UIUC campus, as part of our NSF/MCC "Workshop Program", or
• as part of our joint CECAM/Psi-K/MCC-organized, focused workshops. For these workshops, the Travel Award Program offers partial travel support to students, postdocs, and faculty from US educational institutions.

Examples of workshops and conferences that receive MCC funding are Understanding Complex Systems and Recent Developments in Electronic Structure. The overview of MCC Summer Schools & Workshops includes information about submitting proposals for funding support.

Travel Support to Workshops and Conferences

The MCC Travel Award Program helps U.S.-based faculty and students to attend European conferences and workshops.