An Inter-Regional Grid-Enabled Center for Research & Educational Outreach at FIU

Florida International University (FIU), in collaboration with partners at Florida State University (FSU), the University of Florida (UF), and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), in cooperation with the National Science Foundation, are creating and operating an interregional Grid-enabled Center for High-Energy Physics Research and Educational Outreach (CHEPREO) at FIU, encompassing an integrated program of research, network infrastructure development, and education and outreach at one of the largest minority schools in the US.

CHEPREO will extend FIU's existing research activities at Jefferson National Laboratory to the long-term high-energy physics research program at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at CERN, create a robust outreach activity based on CMS research, develop an advanced networking and Grid computing infrastructure that will draw in new collaborators from South America, and enhance science and math education in South Florida for underserved minority students through pedagogic enhancements and teacher training led by a Physics Learning Center (PLC).

The interregional Grid-Enabled CHEPREO in a university with a large Hispanic population and with good connections to international universities in the Central and South America will expose undergraduate and graduate students at the university, plus teachers and students in the community, to high-energy physics research and careers in physics education. In addition, the CMS experiment data analysis opens the opportunities for new discoveries and new knowledge in high energy physics and the integration of Hispanic students in frontier research, and will allow them to be knowledge leaders compared to their peers.