SU profs earn 5th-year grant funding for computational research

Dr. Diola Bagayoko, the Southern University System Distinguished Professor of Physics, and several Baton Rouge campus colleagues, have received a $358,725 one-year grant to continue work on a project that began in 2010.

This grant is a part of a statewide project known at the "Louisiana Alliance for Simulation-Guided Materials Applications (LA-SIGMA). Louisiana State University is the project's lead institution.

LA-SiGMA is funded for five years by the National Science Foundation and the Louisiana Board of Regents. The total allocated to Southern has now totaled $1.8 million.

This project builds statewide interdisciplinary research collaborations involving computational scientists, applied mathematicians, and computer scientists and engineers.  The theoretical and experimental components of the project complement each other to make transformative progress in materials science and engineering, while significantly contributing to education and science and technology work force development.

This year's award includes $90,000 for graduate research assistantships at SUBR bringing the total expenditures on graduate assistantships at SUBR from 2010 to present to over $440,000.

Other Alliance schools involved are LSU, Grambling State University, Louisiana Tech University, the University of New Orleans, Tulane University, and Xavier University.

Dr. Bagayoko serves as the Principal Investigator and Project Director for the SUBR LA-SiGMA research group.  His co-investigators are Dr. Guang Lin Zhao and Dr. Lawrence Henry, professors of Physics, and Dr. Guoqiang Li and Dr. Amitava Jana, professors of Mechanical Engineering.

Dr. Shizhong Yang is an assistant professor in Computer Science who is collaborating with the investigators.

For more details, please contact Dr. Diola Bagayoko at (225) 771-2730 or visit its website at http://lasigma.loni.org/.