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Intel Academic Microgrants for Parallelism in the Classroom, Round Two, closes May 4, 2011. Apply here
First off – No, that’s not me in the video, but rather my colleague, Jennifer Teal, from the Academic Community. Just so there is no confusion!
Next – Congratulations to the recipients of the first Intel Academic Microgrants for Parallelism in the Classroom — Dr. David Valentine, Slippery Rock University, USA; Dr. Bernd Burgstaller, Yonsei University, South Korea and Dr. Jose Luis Guisado, University of Seville, Spain!
We’ll be posting the full content soon, but till then I’d like to invite folks to take a sneak peak their entires here. We’ll be talking with Dr. Valentine on Teach parallel May 4th 10:00 AM PDT. Plan on attending live if you can.
I can tell you that we had some very strong entries and making the decison as to whom to award the first set of grants was challenging in the extreme. I had the privilege of being one of the judges along with colleagues Jeff Gallagher and Dr. Michael Pearce. We met under the leadership of the inimitable Dr. Clay Breshears, and reviewed the thirty or so entries that we had received by the closing of the first round on April 4.
Our judging was point based, as per the categories laid out in our Terms and Conditions including – Does it meet an immediate need or close a critical gap? Does it bring a novel or creative approach to education? Does does it take advantage of Intel tools, supported libraies, teaching platforms and the like?
The hard part, as you might expect, was that we had quite a few entries that could have won. Discussion was at times heated. Luckily, none of us were face to face so no blows were exchanged.
The good news is that this is only the first round of the grants. We will keep the award process rolling through June and all entires will be added to the next round, which closes May 4th. For those of you whose entries did not win, if you think your entry was as complete as it could be -fine. It is in contention. As a judge, I can say though that some entries could have used just a bit more focus. One criterion that is very important to complete is to describe how you plan on using the grant to bring your content into the classroom. Some entries described what sounded like great ideas, but, implementation plans were left blank or vague.
If the initial grant program is successful, and it is looking that way, then we’ll strongly consider keeping the program running, perhaps with different focus areas for the grants. As usual, your input is very important. Do you have ideas for good grant targets? One area I am considering is a set of grants to port specific parallel patterns for the undergraduate classroom, another idea might be to target certain algorithms, now often taught in paralel which could be rather easily taught in parralel.
What is your idea?
