CS4HS workshop findings to be presented at conference
While most kids have been using computers their whole lives, they generally don’t get the opportunity to learn exactly how they work until college. Wake Forest computer scientists teamed up with Google over the last two summers to develop a comprehensive approach to reversing this trend.
Sam Cho
Samuel Cho, assistant professor of computer science and physics, led the project. He and computer science professor Paúl Pauca hosted two Google-sponsored CS4HS summer workshops in which Wake Forest computer science students trained middle and high school teachers how to write simple computer and Android based programs. They also worked with the teachers on ways to integrate computational thinking exercises into their curriculum.
Paúl Pauca
Cho and Paúca sent follow-up surveys to the teachers who participated in the workshops and found the workshops were effective. They helped teachers integrate computational thinking into the classroom and improved teachers’ abilities to mentor young students interested in learning computer skills before attending college.
Cho and Pauca, along with Winston-Salem State University Professor of Education Denise Johnson and Hanes Magnet School Spanish teacher Yu’Vonne James, compiled results from the workshops and surveys. Cho and Pauca will present these findings at the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education’s 25th International Conference, March 17-21, in Jacksonville, Fla.
Categories: Faculty News
External support for WFU research remains strong
The following letter is adapted from director of Research and Sponsored Programs Lori Messer’s introduction to the October issue of Research News:
Reynolda Campus research had an excellent year. For fiscal year 2013, total external support for projects exceeded $9.8 million, the second-highest amount in campus history, and that was not including five fellowships for scholarship in the arts, humanities and social sciences. The total is even more remarkable when you consider that $8.4 million, about 86 percent, comes from federal sources limited by sequestration budget cuts.
FY13 saw 22 departments and centers receive sponsored research funding, and nearly all increased its total over FY12. Health and exercise science received the most, with physics running a close second.
Faculty and staff in 32 departments and centers submitted 152 external proposals, requesting more than $38 million. Chemistry submitted the most proposals and requested the most funding.
We would like to recognize two of our former CRADLE program participants, Oana Jurchescu and Timo Thonhauser, both in physics, who received prestigious CAREER awards from the National Science Foundation. WFU has received five such awards, with Patricia Dos Santos and Rebecca Alexander in chemistry and Dave Anderson in biology already gaining that distinction.
CRADLE (Creative Research Activities Development and Enrichment) is a two-year program that helps Wake Foresters develop competitive external funding proposals.
The NSF CAREER Award is a $400,000 award given to the nation’s top junior faculty members and is meant to support their research, encourage excellent teaching, mentorship and community outreach.
Another graduate of the CRADLE program, assistant professor of chemistry Lindsay Comstock-Ferguson, received her first independent federal funding. The following faculty and staff also received their first individual external grants at WFU:
Categories: Faculty News
Proposals funded: Cho, Williams, Muday, Raynor
Congratulations to Samuel Cho, assistant professor of physics and computer science, whose proposal entitled “Extrapolating the Concept of Protein Corona for Understanding Nanoparticles at Large” has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Clemson University (WFU funding agency).
Congratulations to Richard Williams, Reynolds professor of physics, whose proposal entitled “Quantifying recombination dynamics in Srl2:Eu2+ with material variations: mechanisms and scintillator optimization” has been funded by the US Department of Energy and the Fisk University (WFU funding agency).
Congratulations to Sarah Raynor, associate professor of mathematics, whose proposal entitled “Asymptotic Behavior of Solutions to Nonlinear Dispersive Equations” has been funded by the Simons Foundation.
Congratulations to Gloria Muday, professor of biology, whose proposal entitled “Teaching genetics with tomatoes” has been funded by the American Society of Plant Biologists.
Categories: Faculty News
Cho's research highlighted in journal
A recent paper by Prof. Sam Cho and his collaborators at University of Maryland and Zhejiang University (China) was highlighted by the Journal of the American Chemical Society. In their study, they performed a novel ion-concentration coarse-grained MD simulation of the human telomerase RNA pseudoknot.
Normal cells shorten DNA after every replication cycle so that a cell knows when to die and cease replication. The telomerase enzyme that is found in cancerous cells, however, adds telomeres to the ends of DNA so that the cell avoids death. As a result, the DNA becomes unstable after too many replications, resulting in tumors that lead to cancer. Due to its importance, the discovery of the telomerase enzyme was the focus of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Prof. Cho and his coworkers focused on the RNA pseudoknot portion of the telomerase enzyme that is known to be critical for enzyme activity. Their study provided a key molecular-resolution support for the hypothesis that there are hidden states in the RNA folding process that were suggested in previous experiments. The generality of their results indicates similar folding mechanisms for other RNA molecules.
Categories: Faculty News
WFU named CUDA Teaching Center
Wake Forest has been named a CUDA Teaching Center by NVIDIA Corporation. Dr. Sam Cho, assistant professor in computer science and physics, will coordinate the Teaching Center activities, which include teaching, research, and training. The department was awarded 50 GTX 480 GPU cards valued at $20,000 for classroom and research use by Cho.
Categories: Faculty News
