Recruitment for the College’s first faculty cluster begins this week, as a committee led by engineering professor Laura Ray launches the search for the Thomas Kurtz chair in computational science. In addition to the Kurtz chair, search committees will select two other professors to join the cluster this year.
The first computational science classes will be offered next fall, Provost Carolyn Dever said.
Under the cluster initiative, announced by College President Phil Hanlon last fall, the College will hire groups of professors from different academic disciplines who are interested in similar research areas.
By recruiting new professors from outside the College, Dever said, clusters augment Dartmouth’s research networks.
The provost’s office plans to start recruiting faculty for several clusters this year, Dever wrote in an email. Currently, the provost’s office and academic deans are working with faculty members to revise proposals for future clusters.
Of the 29 responses the provost’s office received in its first call for proposals, four have been selected for revision, Dever said.
Over time, the office plans to add ten clusters in total, she wrote.
In their proposals, professors were allowed to request up to three new faculty positions and a budget of up to $100,000 in non-salary funding per year, including materials, funding for workshops and other programming, graduate student stipends and post-doctoral fellowships.
Half of an anonymous $100 million donation received last spring — the largest single gift in the College’s history — endows the cluster initiative. The gift includes a matching stipulation, intended to ensure financial stability, that requires the College to raise $2 from additional donors for every $1 taken from the endowment.
In the spring, former Board of Trustees chair William Neukom ’64 donated $10 million to create the computational sciences cluster. Drawing on Neukom’s gift and $5 million in matching funds, the cluster will comprise three new professorships, a postdoctoral fellowship and increased opportunities for undergraduate students to research and study.
Kurtz, for whom the chaired full professorship is named, co-invented the programming language BASIC with former College President John Kemeny 50 years ago.
The cluster will integrate and extend computational work that is currently happening at the College, Neukom Institute for Computational Sciences director Dan Rockmore said in a May interview.
Interdisciplinary in nature, computational science focuses on data analysis across various academic fields, ranging from physics to anthropology, and uses mathematical models to solve scientific problems.
“It will bring together ideas and people from different departments who are engaged in this work,” Rockmore said.
The cluster’s research will extend computational ideas beyond the hard sciences and into other disciplines, he said.
Math professor Alex Barnett, who taught a spring class on computational and experimental mathematics, said in a May interview that computational science can be applied to tasks in almost any field, like designing molecules in chemistry, analyzing massive data sets in the social sciences and digitally reconstructing ancient objects.
Rockmore said that the additional professorships could go to faculty in a wide range of departments, not just the computer science department.
“Rather than supporting specific departments directly, we’re trying to support interdisciplinary new areas, which might turn into new departments,” Barnett said. “That’s what makes it exciting.”
Barnett attributed the growing popularity of computational science to the rise of “big data,” greater availability of information and increasing analysis of data sets too large to be processed on individual computers. More and more data is being created across different scientific disciplines, he said, creating more to process.
“We have more data to analyze than we’ve ever had before,” he said.
Major companies like Google and Facebook, Barnett said, regularly use computational science to program the algorithms that drive their services.
Barnett said he believes the College’s investment in the growing field is a smart move. He added, however, that “big data” technology may be used in harmful ways.
“Some of it is good, and some of it is evil,” he said. “If you do the wrong thing, you could have a surveillance society.”
Computational science has ramifications for social sciences and the humanities as well, Barnett said, adding that he and others are concerned that “big data” could diminish qualitative humanities pursuits.
Jaki Kimball ’16, who is majoring in computer science modified with digital arts, said in May that while she may not participate in the new cluster’s offerings, she believes computational science and its interdisciplinary applications are important, especially in computer science.
“You shouldn’t be studying in a vacuum,” she said.
Thinking in an interdisciplinary way, she said, offers helpful applications for the real world.
Malika Khurana ’15, an engineering major and studio art minor, said in May that she appreciates opportunities for interdisciplinary learning.
“I have made a lot of connections between humanities and comp sci and engineering,” she said. “I like that Dartmouth is a liberal arts school, but you can still do engineering.”
A previous donation from Neukom funded the creation of the Neukom Institute, which supports Dartmouth faculty and students who use computation for their research, in 2004.
Neukom is the founder and CEO of the World Justice Project. He served as the Microsoft Corporation’s lead lawyer for over 20 years and chaired the College’s Board of Trustees from 2004 to 2007.
A version of this article was first published on May 2, 2014.
