CSE Student Among First Recipients of SIGHPC/Intel Fellowship

Aug 1, 2016
Ph.D. student Michael Barrow

CSE Ph.D. student Michael Barrow (at right) will be recognized this November at Supercomputing (SC) 2016 as one of the first-ever 14 graduate students selected to receive an inaugural research fellowship funded by Intel in collaboration with the Special Interest Group on High Performance Computing (SIGHPC). The ACM SIGHPC/Intel Computational and Data Science Fellowship aims to increase the diversity of students pursuing graduate degrees in data science and computational science, including women and students from racial or ethnic backgrounds that have not traditionally participated in the computing field.

Barrow's research focuses on developing high-performance vision systems to aid surgeons during operations and to improve patient safety in minimally-invasive surgery. The SIGHPC/Intel Fellowship will provide Barrow with $15,000 a year, renewable up to five years, starting this August. He will also receive a complimentary membership in SIGHPC for the duration of his fellowship. The program will also cover his travel costs to attend SC 2016 in Salt Lake City. Barrow has an internship at the semiconductor design firm ARM in Texas this summer, and previously did a summer internship as a software engineer at Intel in South Carolina.

Students are nominated by their graduate advisors; in Barrow's case, CSE Prof. Ryan Kastner. The SIGHPC/Intel Fellowship is not Barrow's only award this year. He received one of three Engineering Leadership Fellowships in recognition of his interdisciplinary collaborations with the UC San Diego School of Medicine as well as with researchers in the Structural Engineering and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering departments. The leadership award also cited his work as a mentor to eight teams of undergraduate students as part of the NSF-funded Early Research Scholarship Program.

See the story on the Kastner Research Group website.
Learn more about the SIGHPC/Intel Fellowship program.