UMSA project description:

Undergraduate Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis (UMSA) is an upper-level undergraduate course designed to introduce research into the undergraduate curriculum. UMSA is interdisciplinary by nature, enlisting faculty from such disciplines as applied science, computer science, mathematics, and physics. Each participating faculty member presents topics that involve modeling, simulating, and/or analyzing systems from his or her area of research. Students are therefore exposed to different approaches to, and applications of, simulation by scientists from various disciplines. Under the guidance of a faculty member, each student must select a topic of interest, read associated literature, conduct research, and, when appropriate, seek publication of the results. UMSA was developed and offered during the spring semesters of 1998, 2000, and 2002 at the College of William and Mary under the sponsorship of NSF award CDA-9712718.

Catalog course description:

Title:   UMSA Research Seminar, 3 credits.
Prerequisites:  

Junior or senior status, an initial programming course, some background in modeling (e.g., discrete-event simulation, scientific computation) and permission of instructor.

Description:   UMSA is a research-oriented course taught jointly by several faculty in the departments of computer science, physics, applied science, and mathematics. Students investigate in detail an interdisciplinary computational science research topic and also study related research papers from the literature. Each student will be mentored in their research by a participating faculty member.

Course Structure:

UMSA consists of two 1.5-hour class meetings per week. Typically, one of the two class meetings per week is devoted to a faculty lecture and is accompanied by a homework assignment. The second class meeting is reserved for student presentations of faculty suggested readings. Each student is required to

A student presentation should last about 40-50 minutes. Following the presentation, the lead discussant and the three other discussants will discuss the paper. All students are welcome to participate in the discussion.

Required Coursework:

Each student is expected to

Interested students are invited to continue research on their chosen topic during the summer and, when appropriate, seek publication of the results in a journal or conference proceedings.