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University Support |
The George Washington University has continued to provide us
with superb support, in many ways. The charter of the Center for
Nuclear Studies as a Center of Excellence at GW was renewed for
three more years, and its funding has been increased somewhat
enough to fund half of an Assoc. Res. Prof. for our Data Analysis
Center and to support about three visitors per year for one month
each. This past year we benefited from visits from two scientists
from the Ukraine in support of our polarimetry project and one
from Russia in support of our photofission studies.
We have just recovered the space at our Virginia Campus that we
lost during the expansion of the GW facilities there to
accommodate additional funded research projects. This is the site
of the DAC, built around our computational facilities there, which
includes a mini-silo for data storage provided by the University’s
Crash Analysis Center.
A Physics-Department cluster of ten high-level Linux PCs now
operates partly in support of our theoretical and simulations work.
The University has borne the cost of these machines, as well as
that of renovating the laboratory on the second floor of the
Physics Building at the main (Foggy Bottom) campus in which
they are situated.
It has been almost a year now since we have moved into our
newly renovated suite of seven offices and a spacious
conference area on the first floor of the Physics Building. This
suite also houses our local computer network and firewall,
including our recently expanded mini-farm for analyzing data,
purchased with grant funds, and provides a modern and
comfortable workplace for our Research Assistant Professor,
Postdoctoral Research Scientists, and graduate students. The
University has borne the entire cost of this renovation and move.
Also within the past year, the University has engaged the
services of Mr. Peter Kovac, a high-level computer specialist,
expressly to serve the needs of the Physics Department. This
full-time position was made possible by a special grant to us from
President Trachtenberg. Mr. Kovac has already played a major
role in our work, not only having supervised the move of our
computers to our new suite, but also serving as systems
administrator for all of our computational facilities. His services,
because they relieve our scientists of much of the
time-consuming burden of computer support, enable us to
analyze our data much more efficiently.
At both campuses, but especially at Foggy Bottom, we carry out
a variety of teaching activities, so that our students at both
graduate and undergraduate levels can become involved in
internationally recognized research at an early stage, thus
providing them with a hands-on learning experience that will
serve them well in their future careers. This summer, for example,
we are pleased to contribute to the professional education of ten
undergraduate students – five at GW (three from the U.S., one
from China, and one from Colombia); two, both from Canada, at
Jefferson Lab; and two GW students at Mainz. Their contributions
to our research effort are considerable, and we benefit greatly
from their assistance.
Finally, the University has for many years been very generous
with regard to cost-sharing of funds, including personnel costs,
tuition for students, equipment, travel, and indirect costs.
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