Many young children are curious about computers and electronics, but at the age of seven, most don't transfer that curiosity into writing their own computer programs.
The computer programming career of LSU sophomore Alex Nagelberg launched in elementary school when his dad brought home one of the first laptop computer models. The computer had a BASIC interpreter, and at the age of seven, Alex was already writing his first simple question and response computer programs.
In high school, Alex started working on a more complex project: he built a grid computing environment in his bedroom. He managed to collect eight old "throw away" computers, then wrote a program that connected the computers in such a way that each could do a percentage of a complex task to speed up the computing time.
When he was still a senior at McKinley High School, Alex had a friend who worked at LSU's Center for Computation and Technology. When his friend mentioned the projects Alex had been working on, people at CCT were immediately interested and soon offered Alex a job. "We're always looking for bright and innovative kids," said Gabrielle Allen, assistant director for computing applications. "Alex is exactly the kind of student we want."
CCT offers a perfect environment for a student like Alex to pursue an interest such as computer programming. At the Center students have the opportunity to work side-by-side with world-renowned experts in various fields of research and technology. One project Alex has worked on is Cactus, a large-scale collaborative high performance computing program that links scientists around the world. He wrote a Cactus "thorn" module that takes data produced by simulations and makes an MPEG movie out of it so that researchers can see the data visually.
However, even though Alex had tons of potential and was excelling at CCT, he still had a tough time adjusting to other aspects of college life when he began LSU in the fall of 2004. Alex struggled his first year and ended up dropping his classes. "I felt like after 13 years of school, I just needed a break," he said. "I needed some time to get my head straight and figure out what I wanted."
But Allen and CCT Director Ed Seidel didn't give up on Alex. They let him keep his job and took Alex out to dinner to encourage him to continue with school. It took Alex a semester of "vegging out" to realize that he needed to go back to college. Alex decided to give LSU second try in the fall of 2005, majoring in computer science and continuing his work at CCT.
His experience at CCT and the faculty and mentors he has met there gave Alex the motivation he needed to get back on track. "The people here have been great. We have some of the most intelligent people from all over the world. That huge knowledge base, combined with the incredible resources available here, are not common," he said.
And Alex is just one of many undergraduate research students taking advantage of the resources and opportunities CCT offers. For example, eight other students recently represented CCT at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research that yearly attracts students from over 300 colleges and universities across the United States. The students were invited to the University of North Carolina at Asheville to present individual research projects they had worked on at CCT.
"This was a great opportunity for our students," said Kathy Traxler, former coordinator for educational programs at CCT. "It brought them notice of faculty at other colleges who can recruit them for graduate school, and it acted as preparation for other presentations among respected authorities in their fields."
The unique experiences research students get at CCT can lead to even greater opportunities that might be out of reach for most undergraduate students. For example, Argonne National Laboratory, one of the U.S. Department of Energy's largest research centers located in DuPage County, Ill., has offered Alex a summer internship. There he'll be working with experts in the field of computer science on ZeptoOS, a research project studying operating systems for petascale architectures.
Alex attributes this opportunity to the encouragement of CCT faculty. "(Allen) really pushed for me to apply for this, and we're both excited about it," he said. Alex said he is really looking forward to traveling, meeting people from all over the world, and getting experience in more complex computer programming at one of the premiere research laboratories in the world.
> Gina Palermo - gpaler1@cct.lsu.edu
> Center for Computation and Technology
Publish Date:
05-15-2006
