Features:

ROSCOE GILES NAMED ONE OF MOST IMPORTANT BLACKS IN RESEARCH

Roscoe C. Giles, deputy director of Boston University's Center for Computational Science, a professor of computer and electrical engineering in the university's College of Engineering [and co-chair of EOT-PACI as well as SC02 General chair], has been named one of the "50 Most Important Blacks in Research Science" in 2004. The award from the Maryland-based publishing company, Career Communications Group, Inc. (CCG), will be conferred during the Emerald Honors Conference for Research Science, in Nashville, Tenn., September 17 ­ 18.

With its "50 Most Important Blacks in Research Science" awards and event, CCG aims to recognize the accomplishments of people of color to science in the U.S., to promote their greater representation among science professionals, and to provide young people of color with role models in science and research.

For almost two decades, the Black Engineer of the Year Awards Conference has attracted top professionals and students from every part of the nation and every field of science, engineering, and technology. The upcoming conference will be held February 17-19, 2005 in Baltimore, MD.

Since 1987, the conference has served as an invaluable tool to recognize outstanding achievement of African-Americans in companies across America.

Giles' area of research is computational science. His projects focus on the use of high-performance parallel computers to solve problems in physics and materials science and on the development of algorithms for large-scale micromagnetic modeling and molecular dynamic simulation.

In addition to his research, Giles works to bring computing to people and people to computing through his involvement as a founder and the executive director of the Institute for African-American ECulture (http://www.iaaec.org). This NSF-funded institute addresses cultural issues of the "digital divide," the gap in access to information technology experienced by members of minority and poor communities in the U.S. The Institute attempts to help close this gap by working to understand and develop environments that foster the creation, development, deployment, and ownership of information technologies by diverse communities.

Giles' efforts to change how computers are used and by whom also includes his role as team leader in the National Science Foundation's Education, Outreach, and Training Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (EOT-PACI) group (http://www.eot.org). This effort builds on the national investment in cyber infrastructure to help people, especially educators and students, better learn to use advanced computing systems to model, understand, and solve problems.

A theoretical physicist, Giles earned his doctorate from Stanford University in 1975, an accomplishment that had historical significance because Giles was the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. in this field from the California- based institution. He earned his bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Chicago in 1970.

Americans are falling behind other nations in the production of scientists and engineers. Women and minorities, whose burgeoning college enrollments could stem the gap, are still far behind other Americans. Of 708,200 scientists reported in an NSF survey, women make up less than a third. Blacks and Hispanics, America’s largest minority groups, together provide only 43,000 professionals. Native Americans add only 2,200. Asian scientists' 74,000- strong presence may seem anomalously large, until compared with the total of 12 million Asians in the U.S.