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NSF AWARDS $500,000 TO LSU COMPUTER SCIENTIST

LSU assistant professor of computer science and CAREER award winner, Bijaya B. Karki, was recently funded by the National Science Foundation to further develop his computer animated research on the Earth's mantle.

The 35 year old Nepal native has been researching the area between our planet's crust and core. Rather than split and fracture, he believes the mantle to be of a more aqueous nature. The fluctuations subsequently affect developments on Earth, including sea levels, volcanoes and plate movement.

Working at the atomic level and not knowing much for sure, Karki must work on assumption. For assistance, Karki uses high-level modeling in an attempt to identify the materials in the mantle and the activities that occur there.

Karki, who received his doctorate degree in computational physics from Scotland's University of Edinburgh, has published multiple papers on scientific computing and visualization techniques since his joining LSU last year. He also holds an honors diploma from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy.

Previous work includes time as a research scholar at the University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute for Digital Simulation and Advanced Computation.

Despite his personal achievements, Karki must team with various members from across the geophysical departmental board to accomplish such difficult theoretical work.

But Karki, who considers himself more of a computer scientist than a geologist, is needed to write the high level algorithms that LSU's supercomputers (Super Mike and the Superhelix Linux clusters) use.

The $500,000 NSF award, which will be distributed over five years, is the most prestigious for a junior faculty member and increases his possibility of earning a tenured faculty position in the future.