ACADEMIA

The future talent of Western New York's emerging biotech industry will try their hand on UB's supercomputers today as part of an annual program that encourages local high school students to develop skills and interest in the sciences.

After spending the morning at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, the 10 high school students will use the UB supercomputers to design the "best" treatment plan for a hypothetical cancer tumor.

When and Where: 2 p.m., Friday, July 3, 2009, in UB's Center for Computation Research, located on the first floor of UB's New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences (http://www.bioinformatics.buffalo.edu), 701 Ellicott St., Buffalo.

The day's activities are part of UB's "Eric Pitman Annual Summer Workshop in Computational Science," being held June 29 through July 10. (http://www.ccr.buffalo.edu/display/WEB/Summer+Workshop) The workshop is held in honor of Eric Pitman, who was a freshman at St. Joseph's Collegiate Institute when he passed away in 2007 after a brief illness.

"This year the student projects will involve working with Roswell Park's radiation physics group to build a database and Web tools to identify patients, diseases and treatments associated with the radiation treatment facilities," said Bruce Pitman, Eric's father and UB associate dean for research and sponsored programs.

"It is the first time we have organized the workshop in cooperation with Roswell Park, so the topic is new to us, and the partnership with Roswell is new and interesting."

The participating students are from Canisius, City Honors, Orchard Park, Clarence, Buffalo Seminary, Nichols, Nardin Academy, Williamsville East and North Collins high schools.

UB's Center Computational Research is one of the nation's leading academic supercomputing sites.