Overview of Fisk University

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Overview of Fisk University

• N. Horace Mann IIIProfessorDepartment of
  Mathematics andComputer ScienceFisk University

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Description and Demographics

• Small, historically-black institution founded in
  1866
• Academic emphasis in liberal arts and science
• Approximately 850 students from more than 40
  states (70 female)
• Forty (40) percent are science majors

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History of Achievements

• First HBCU to be awarded university status
• First HBCU to gain accreditation by the Southern
  Association of Colleges and Schools (1930)
• First HBCU to charter a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa
  (1952)
• In proportion to enrollment, more Fisk graduates
  earn PhDs than any other school
• One-in-six of all African-American physicians is
  a Fisk graduate

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Science Academic Programs (1)

• Division of Natural Science and Mathematics
• Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics and
  Computer Science
• Dual degree in engineering through Vanderbilt
  University and Howard University
• Cross-enrollment with Vanderbilt in all areas
  including engineering
• Internationally-renown NASA Center for Photonic
  Materials

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Science Academic Programs (2)

• Strong support for biology from the Howard Hughes
  Institute
• Several funded research and education projects
  for Computer Science from NSF, NIGMS, and the DOE

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Medical Informatics/Biocomputing
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Student Example 1

• Physics graduate student earning a second BS in
  Computer Science
• Teamed with a Meharry microbiologist whose work
  is related to the Genome Project
• Student uses the physical concept of entropy to
  quantify the information content of strands of
  DNA
• Student is taking a sequential program that
  performs this calculation and is parallelizing
  it

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Potential Benefits ofMSI Availability

• Graduate students at Fisk may receive distance
  learning courseware from the MSI project
• Participate in the Summer Institute to be offered
  at Purdue
• Resources of the MSI may be integrated into
  upper-level undergraduate courses to introduce
  students to state-of-the art concepts of
  computational science

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Student Example 2

• Senior undergraduate student earning a BS degree
  in Computer Science
• Teamed with a Meharry microbiologist whose work
  is related to the Genome Project
• Student is configuring a data warehouse for mass
  storage of DNA sequences and developing a pattern
  recognition module that will identify sequences
  of interest
• Must apply database technology, software
  engineering, along with implementing pattern
  recognition algorithms

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Potential Benefits of MSI Availability

• Resources from the MSI may be integrated into
  upper-level undergraduate courses to introduce
  students to advanced networking and data storage
  technology
• Graduate students and faculty involved with the
  MSI may help in developing learning courseware
  for computer science courses and serve as TAs
• Increase Fisk computer science students
  likelihood of pursuing graduate degrees in
  computational science

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Possible Long-term Benefits to Fisk Due to the
MSI (1)

• Increased access to resources of Carnegie
  Research I class institution(s)
• Development of an MSI node at Fisk and attachment
  to regional grid
• Better preparation and increased likelihood for
  success at major research institutions on the
  graduate level
• More potential to develop funded research and
  education projects at a small, teaching-oriented
  university

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Possible Long-term Benefits to Fisk Due to the
MSI (2)

• Supports solicitation of funding from the
  National Library of Medicine Office of High
  Performance Computing and Communications program
  in Biomedical Applications of the Next Generation
  Internet (RFP NLM 99-106/RMC)
• Supports solicitation of funding from the
  National Science Foundation Minority Institution
  Infrastructure of the CISE directorate

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Closing Remarks