The New Frontiers Initiative is committed to preparing the current and future workforce to address the computing and data analytics research and development challenges facing our nation’s intelligence community.
The workforce development activities are provided in direct response to the needs of our partners. We invite you to contact us at newfrontiers@illinois.edu to discuss your needs and interests.
The New Frontiers Initiative office coordinates the selection of individuals from among faculty, staff and researchers with the expertise to support the efforts. The activities may be conducted in a classified environment as requested by our partners.
Allocations of time on University high performance computing systems are available to support workforce development projects.
Workforce development efforts include:
Student Engagement
The New Frontiers Initiative has extensive experience engaging undergraduate and graduate students in computational science, data analytics, and geospatial intelligence internships and fellowships. We have developed two-week parallel programming institutes to prepare students for internships. We have documented an extensive set of lessons learned for preparing students for internships, fellowships, and careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Among the key lessons learned is the assignment of mentors (or Points of Contact) to work with students and researchers.
Diversity
We place a strong emphasis on engaging a diverse community of participants. This includes proactively recruiting:
- women, minorities and people with disabilities,
- participants from among all academic institutions including Minority Serving Institutions and institutions in EPSCoR jurisdictions,
- participants from business and industry, as well as
- researchers and scholars from all disciplines.
Consultations
We welcome you to contact us at newfrontiers@illinois.edu to discuss your technical and scientific needs and questions. These discussions may lead to the development of tailored training sessions, technology consultations, research consultations, or software development projects.
The University has personnel with wide ranges of expertise. Many of these areas have personnel with security clearances.