GAMING

Lamar University computer science professor Jane Liu has been awarded a $400,000 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development award, university officials said.

Liu is an assistant professor of computer science with research interests in computer architecture with an emphasis on high- performance, low-power and cost-effective memory system design for chip multiprocessing, embedded systems and system-on-chip.

"We are all so proud of Dr. Liu, who is the first Lamar University faculty member ever to receive this major award from the National Science Foundation," said Steven Doblin, provost and vice president for academic affairs. "She exemplifies the type of teacher-scholar we try to attract in every faculty search; someone who is an outstanding instructor as well as a successful researcher who involves undergraduates and graduate students in her work.

"Her receipt of a NSF CAREER award is not only national recognition of her accomplishments and potential as a computer scientist and as a faculty member, but also adds significant prestige to being a member of Lamar University's community of scholars.  Of course, it is our students who are the ultimate beneficiaries of Dr. Liu's commitment, hard work and talent."

A member of Lamar's computer science faculty since 2004, Liu holds a master's of science and the Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.  She holds a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunication, Beijing, China.

"The National Science Foundation only makes this award to people they think will go on to make a significant mark in their respective fields," said Stuart Wright, director of research in Lamar's Office of Research and Sponsored Programs. "It is a very prestigious award."

The career development program offers the foundation's most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. Such activities build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research.

Liu's research proposes to improve the speed and energy efficiency of computers that use multi-core systems.  There is enormous demand for these multi-core systems in high-performance and data-intensive applications.  Her program will stimulate the research interest of promising undergraduates who are economically challenged and underrepresented, to motivate and equip them to pursue advanced degrees, and to fortify computing education in K-12 schools that serve mostly minority or low-income students.

Liu's research will analyze the redundancy and pattern in the information exchanged between the processor and memory system to evaluate the potential of compression in improving performance, while reducing power consumption and the cost of interconnects.  One goal is to create novel information-pattern-aware compression techniques to significantly improve interconnect bandwidth and alleviate the ever- worsening energy bottleneck. She also plans a comprehensive evaluation of design tradeoffs between performance, power and cost using experimental simulations to refine and optimize the compression models for a broad range of applications including high-performance computing, data-intensive applications and handheld devices.

Liu's education strategies include introducing freshmen to research through a freshman seminar course, engaging undergraduates in her research activities, and incorporating research agendas into both undergraduate and graduate lectures and course projects.  She will also partner with existing activities at Lamar -- including the McNair Scholars, INSPIRED, STAIRSTEP, and WIRED programs -- to help participants bridge to advanced studies, such as three one-day INSPIRED middle school summer computing academies in spring 2010 and one five-day INSPIRED summer computing academy in summer 2010.  All these academies will be supported by INSPIRED and there is no charge for participants.

Liu also plans a summer computing institute with professional development workshops for teachers in next five years. The first workshop will be held in summer 2010. Each Teacher Summer Computing workshop will be a five-day workshop for computer science, science and math teachers from school districts in the areas surrounding Beaumont, especially districts with majority minority and economically challenged students.

Each year the workshops will have a different focus and teachers will be encouraged to supplement their courses using hands-on activities related to each year’s area of focus.  The areas of interest include computer systems, robotics, computer animation, programming languages, the Internet and more.

Each teacher will be supported with $300 ($60/day) to participate in one workshop. For information on partnerships and applications, contact Liu at jliu@my.lamar.edu.

Liu received the Lamar University Merit Award in 2008.