Pacific Rim Experiences for Undergraduates (PRIME) program

Perhaps the most novel summer program at UC San Diego is our Pacific Rim Experiences for Undergraduates (PRIME) program. Going into its fifth year, the program is funded by Calit2 and the National Science Foundation through a consortium called the Pacific Rim Applications and Grid Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA), which promotes links between cyberinfrastructure-related labs in the U.S. and various Pacific Rim countries.Roughly 10 students spend the summer at a host site in Australia, Japan, Taiwan or China, after learning some essential software, cultural or language during the spring quarter at UCSD.

The program is open to students from any discipline, but they must work on projects that are related to cyberinfrastructure and applications that run on grid computing and networking systems. Students last summer worked on a wide array of topics ranging from the search for candidate drugs to treat avian influenza, to new algorithms for large-scale visualization of scientific data. Peter Arzberger, Director, UCSD Life Science Initiative and a senior researcher at Calit2, is co-PI on the PRIME project and PI on PRAGMA, and can explain how the summer experience abroad equips students with the skills and international insight to do research in a global economy.
Media Contact: Doug Ramsey, 858-822-5825 dramsey@ucsd.edu