BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

ROBERT M. PANOFF – Founder and Executive Director of The Shodor Education Foundation

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

THE SHODOR EDUCATION FOUNDATION, INC.
Durham, North Carolina

Founder and Executive Director of a non-profit education and research corporation dedicated to reform and improvement of mathematics and science education by appropriate incorporation of computational and communication technologies. Shodor is a funded partner with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the National Computational Science Alliance.

As principal investigator on several NSF grants to explore the interaction of high performance computing technologies and education, worked to develop a series of interactive simulations that combine supercomputing resources and desktop computers. Besides developing and teaching new courses in Information Technologies, continues an active research program in computational condensed matter physics while defining and implementing educational initiatives at the Shodor Foundation. His research specialties are stochastic optimization, quantum simulations of strongly correlated systems, and computational science education.

At Kansas State University and Clemson University from 1986-1990, developed a fully interdisciplinary computational science and engineering course. Served as director of the Carolinas Institute in Computational Science, an NSF-funded initiative in Undergraduate Faculty Enhancement, 1991-1993. Has won several major science and education awards, including the 1990 Cray Gigaflop Performance Award in Supercomputing, the 1994 and 1995 Undergraduate Computational Science Education Awards from the U.S. Department of Energy, and a 1995 Achievement Award from the Chicago Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication. In 1993-1994, his interactive simulations were used as the basis of an international science collaboration demonstrating network technologies involving four of the schools from the Department of Defense Dependent Schools (received a letter of commendation from the Department of Defense). In recognition of Dr. Panoff's efforts in undergraduate faculty enhancement and curriculum development, the Shodor Foundation was named in 1996 as a Foundation Partner of the National Science Foundation for the revitalization of undergraduate education.

Served as a consultant at several national laboratories. Frequently presents at NSF- sponsored workshops on visualization, supercomputing, and networking. Served on the advisory panel for Applications of Advanced Technology program at NSF.

EDUCATION:

B.S. Physics, University of Notre Dame
M.A. Theoretical Physics, Washington University, St. Louis
Ph.D. Theoretical Physics, Washington University, St. Louis, 1985

RELATED PUBLICATIONS:

"Visualization of the local contribution to the nodal surface of a many-fermion wave function," A. C. Calder, M. R. Curry, R. M. Panoff, and Y. J. Wong, Phys. Rev. E53, 5451 (1996).

"The Four A's of Computational Science Education: Application, Algorithm. Architecture, and Active Learning," R. M. Panoff, IEEE Computational Science & Engineering, Vol. 2, No. 4, 6 (1995).

"Experiences in Building the Computational Science Program at Clemson," D. E. Stevenson and R. M. Panoff, IEEE Proceedings of Supercomputing '90, 366, 1990.

"UNIX for Super Computing?" UNIX Review, Vol. 8, 54 (1990).

OTHER SIGNIFICANT PUBLICATIONS:

"Fermion Monte Carlo Algorithms for Quantum Fluids," R. M. Panoff, in Recent Progress in Many-Body Theories, Vol. 2, ed. by Y. Avishai, (Plenum, New York, 1990).

"Elementary Excitations of Spin-Aligned Deuterium," R. Dave, J. W. Clark, and R. M. Panoff, Phys. Rev. B41, 757 (1990).

"Fermion Monte Carlo Algorithms and Liquid ³He," R. M. Panoff and J. Carlson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 62 1130 (1989).

"Momentum Distributions in Quantum Liquids from Green's Function Monte Carlo Calculations," R. M. Panoff and P. A. Whitlock, Momentum Distributions, ed. by R. Silver, (Plenum, New York, 1989).

"Ground-state Phases of Polarized Deuterium Species," R. M. Panoff and J. W. Clark, Phys. Rev. B36, 5527 (1987).

Questions? Send e-mail to cal@ucar.edu
Broken links? Send e-mail to dpetter@ucar.edu

LAST UPDATED: 03/30/2000