NASA and RIACS are pleased to announce a new program to support
students to spend time during the summer at NASA Ames Research
Center working with NASA and RIACS scientists. The enclosed
announcement provides information on this program.

I would very much appreciate your assistance in making this
program known to the student community.

Thank you very much,

Barry M. Leiner
Director, RIACS

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       NASA Ames/RIACS 2000 Summer Student Research Program
(SSRP)

                    Call for Participation

NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) and the Research Institute for
Advanced Computer Science (RIACS) invite qualified applicants to
the newly formed Summer Student Research Program (SSRP). The
purpose of this program is to provide talented university
students in the Information Sciences the opportunity to team with
researchers at NASA Ames to address information technology
challenges of future NASA missions. ARC has been designated the
NASA enter of Excellence for Information Technology, and there
are numerous opportunities for students to gain experience and
expertise solving challenging problems at the forefront of
information technology and computer science. In particular, NASA
and RIACS scientists are actively engaged in research in the
areas of 

  * Automated Reasoning for Autonomous Systems,
  * Human-Centered Computing,
  * High Performance Computing and Networking, and
  * Applications of advanced information technology to NASA
missions.

Examples of technical topics being explored include 
  * Bayesian Learning
  * Constraint-based Planning and Scheduling
  * Intelligent Vehicle Health Monitoring and Diagnosis
  * Robotics
  * Bio-informatics
  * Automatic Software Engineering, including
    o Formal Verification of Software
    o Program Synthesis
  * Collaborative Information Systems
  * Knowledge Management
  * Automated Workplace Analysis
  * Parallel Processing, Distributed Computing, and Software
Tools

A more complete list and description of current RIACS research
areas can may be found on the RIACS web site
http://www.riacs.edu. Interested students are encouraged to study
the project descriptions carefully before they apply, since
applicants will be evaluated partly on the basis of whether they
can usefully contribute to an on-going research effort at ARC. 

To qualify, the applicant must: 
  * Be a full time undergraduate or graduate student at a U.S.
university
  * Have an academic background in some area related to
information technology

It is anticipated that approximately ten awards will be granted
under this year's SSRP. Those accepted to the program will spend
ten weeks in the summer of 2000 at Ames. The start and end dates
of this 10 week period is somewhat flexible, depending on the
student's university academic schedule. To pay for the cost of
housing, travel, and other expenses, the student will be awarded
a stipend of $15K. A NASA or RIACS researcher will be officially
assigned as mentor to each student, and it is expected that
student and mentor will together develop a research plan for the
time the student is at Ames. At the end of the ten weeks, the
student is expected to present a short summary of his or her
activities and accomplishments at a RIACS seminar. 

Toward the end of the summer, each student accepted into the
program will be eligible to apply for a RIACS student research
continuation grant. This grant of $10K will fund the student to
continue his or her summer research at their university when they
return in the fall. Competition for this grant will be limited to
students participating in the summer program. To qualify for the
continuation grant, students will submit proposals, which will be
evaluated and the awardee selected on the basis of both quality
of research, and relevance to NASA. 

--------------------------

Guidelines for application

To apply to this program, the qualified student must send: 
  1. A current C.V. or resume,
  2. Two letters of recommendation, including one from the
student's academic advisor, and
  3. A short letter describing research interests and expertise.

Electronic submissions via e-mail are required. Put "application
to summer student program" as subject heading. C.V. should appear
as attachment. Word, pdf, or postscript are the only acceptable
formats for the C.V. The body of the e-mail should contain the
short letter describing research interests and expertise (item 3
above). Any attachments should contain the student's name as part
of the file name, e.g. "jones-cv.doc". 

Applications that do not conform to these submission requirements
will be ignored. Send documents by e-mail to ssrp@riacs.edu. 

--------------------------

Milestones for 2000 RIACS/Ames Summer Student Research Program

  March 15: Applications to program due
  April 15:  Fellowship awards announced
  May - September: Period within which 10 week summer research
will be conducted
  August 1:  Proposals for continuation grant due
  August 15:  Continuation grant awarded

For further info on this program contact ssrp@riacs.edu.