Gina Fisk of Advanced Computing (CCS-1) assists Matthew Roufberg of Aztec High School with a computer problem at the Cyber-Defenders Institute this week at San Juan Community College in Farmington. The institute is part of the Adventures in Supercomputing Challenge summer intstitute. Fisk is one of several Lab staff members participating in the two-week program. Photo by Valerie Steinhaus, Network Engineering (CCN-5)

Teachers, students participate in Lab-sponsored computer institutes

Twenty-five middle- and high-school teachers and 42 students from around New Mexico are at San Juan Community College in Farmington this week for a Summer Teacher Institute and a new Cyber-Defenders Institute sponsored by the Laboratory.

The Summer Teacher Institute is part of the annual New Mexico Adventures in Supercomputing Challenge. In addition, a new program for students called Cyber-Defenders also is under way at the college. The Lab's Department of Defense (DOD) Programs Office is funding this new program.

Both institutes continue through next week.

The objective of the Summer Teacher Institute is to give teachers better foundations in computational scientific research to help their students participating in the New Mexico Adventures in Supercomputing Challenge program in the 2003-2004 school year, said David Kratzer of High Performance Computing (CCN-7). He added that some of the 42 students have participated in previous New Mexico Adventures in Supercomputing challenges, while some students are new to the challenge.

Kratzer said as a sponsor of the Adventures in Supercomputing Challenge Challenge, Hewlett Packard is providing the participants with an Ipaq, hand-held computer.

Gina Fisk of Advanced Computing (CCS-1) is leading the Cyber-Defenders Institute. The objective of the institute is to educate students in cybersecurity and encourage their participation in the New Mexico Adventures in Supercomputing Challenge program and the College Cyber-Defenders program at the Laboratory, which Fisk also runs. "Our goal is to create a pipeline of cyber-security educational programs starting at the middle school level, through high school, college and graduate school to produce high-quality cyber-security professionals in the next 5 to 10 years. This year is just the beginning," said Fisk.

New Mexico Technet in Albuquerque is supplying 45 laptop computers for the CDI students to use during the institute. Students are attending classes in C++ programming, UNIX, and cyber-security, and also are working on a cyber-security research problem with a Lab instructor.

About the CDI, Amanda Reese of Mesa Alta Junior High said, "I have only been in the CDI for three days and I have already learned more about computers than I learned in the last year at school."

Added Candice Nelson, a student from Bloomfield High, "This is a very beneficial opportunity for the students of New Mexico and I am honored that I have the chance to participate."

Other Laboratory staff members participating in the Summer Teacher Institute include Robert Cunningham of CCN-7 and Eric Ovaska and Bill Robertson of Enterprise Support and Computer Education (IM-2). Gina Fisk and Eric Weigle of CCS-1, and Mike Fisk, Genevieve Bartlett and Valerie Steinhaus of Network Engineering (CCN-5) are instructors for the Cyber Defenders Institute.

For more information about the Summer Teacher Institute, go to http://www.challenge.nm.org/sti online.

For more information about the Cyber Defenders Institute, go to http://public.lanl.gov/cdi/ online.

For information about the New Mexico Adventures in Supercomputing Challenge, go to http://www.challenge.nm.org/ online.

-- Steve Sandoval

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