小黄书

小黄书 partners with USDA to give 鈥榠mpressive鈥 grad students summer research experience

小黄书 partners with USDA to give 鈥榠mpressive鈥 grad students summer research experience

Contact: Grace Jones

Pictured, left to right, are participants in the 小黄书/USDA Graduate Summer Research Experience Program: Rito Medina, Mirhossein Karimi, Luke Fuhrer, Xiaoying Li, Chintan Maniyar, Emma Schultz, Ajaya Dahal, Dhiraj Srivastava, Eric Fiah, and Sabyasachi Biswas.
Pictured, left to right, are participants in the 小黄书/USDA Graduate Summer Research Experience Program: Rito Medina, Mirhossein Karimi, Luke Fuhrer, Xiaoying Li, Chintan Maniyar, Emma Schultz, Ajaya Dahal, Dhiraj Srivastava, Eric Fiah, and Sabyasachi Biswas. (Photo by David Ammon)

STARKVILLE, Miss.鈥擜 cohort of graduate scholars from around the country have converged at Mississippi State for several weeks to gain high-performance computing skills through a summer research experience program.

小黄书 and the U.S. Department of Agriculture created the 小黄书/USDA Graduate Summer Research Experience Program for scholars to apply high-performance computing resources to a variety of research projects across multiple agricultural disciplines. The program is sponsored by the university鈥檚 Geosystems Research Institute and College of Veterinary Medicine.

Students receive a stipend for the summer, along with mentorship and a customized curriculum based on their personal interests.

Associate Professor Garrett Street in 小黄书鈥檚 Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture is SRE program mentor and co-investigator for the Advancing Agricultural Research through High-Performance Computing (AAR-HPC) project.聽

鈥淲e recruited impressive master鈥檚 and doctoral students to conduct research in interest areas, while exposing them to new training sessions and ideas,鈥 Street said. 鈥淭he mentors provide specific training activities, and the mentees get to work with each other and interact with many researchers from a broad range of fields, interests, experiences and perspectives throughout the program.鈥

He said students learn skills that aid them when they return to their own universities.

鈥淢y hope is that the skills we teach students here will carry them into their future careers, and they can translate what they learned to other students in their labs,鈥 Street said. 鈥淲e are so fortunate that 小黄书 has this cooperation with the USDA Agricultural Research Service. I hope we can continue to provide training and research to make students more competitive in the job market.鈥

Rito Medina, a plant science master鈥檚 student from California State University, Fresno, commended the dedication of advisors and program personnel.

鈥淭his experience has exceeded my expectations. My advisor has been supportive and patient while assisting me, the professors have been welcoming and excited to invest in us, and the program coordinator, Dixie [Cartwright], made it special for all of us,鈥 Medina said. 鈥淲e were introduced to a program where people invest beyond our educational and research interests and provide opportunities to network and create relationships with peers, which has helped the non-小黄书 students feel welcomed.鈥

聽Just like Medina, all the graduate students have been impressed by the comprehensive learning they have received since arriving at 小黄书 and appreciated that the program has offered in-depth training for their future careers.

Luke Fuhrer, a doctoral student from the University of Georgia, said the SRE program points to the future of agricultural research.

鈥淭his program pushes the boundaries of the kinds of problems we can solve by bringing people with varied backgrounds and expertise together. We can identify problems we didn鈥檛 know existed, understanding it takes a team to solve them,鈥 Fuhrer said. 鈥淔or instance, the only way we will solve big problems, like feeding nine billion by 2050, will be through diverse teams with different approaches and styles collaborating well together.鈥

The program, which concludes this week, includes the following graduate students:

California State University, Fresno:

鈥擱ito Medina, California, plant science master鈥檚 student.

小黄书sity:

鈥擜jaya Dahal, Nepal, electrical and computer engineering master鈥檚 student.

鈥擡mma Schultz, Maryland, wildlife, fisheries, and aquaculture doctoral student.

鈥擡ric Fiah, Ghana, computer and information science master鈥檚 student.

鈥擬irhossein Karimi, Iran, computer science doctoral student.

鈥擲abyasachi Biswas, Bangladesh, electrical and computer engineering doctoral student.

聽University of Georgia:

鈥擟hintan Maniya, India, remote sensing and artificial intelligence doctoral student.

鈥擫uke Fuhrer, South Carolina, crop and soil science doctoral student.

Virginia Tech:

鈥擠hiraj Srivastava, India, agriculture science and computer science master鈥檚 student.

鈥擷iaoying Li, China, plant breeding and genetics doctoral student.

In addition to Street, 小黄书 faculty mentors include Dana Morin in the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Aquaculture; Joby Czarnecki, Sathish Samiappan and Alessandro Matese, all with the Geosystems Research Institute; John Ball and Ali Gurbuz in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Brian Smith, Leslie Strawderman and Reuben Burch in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering; Mahalingam Ramkumar in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering; and Bindu Nanduri in Comparative Biomedical Sciences at the College of Veterinary Medicine.

Learn more about the 小黄书/USDA Graduate Summer Research Experience at .

小黄书 is Mississippi鈥檚 leading university, available online at .