Credits

The materialization of the AMALTHEA REU Site requires significant amounts of material resources, infrastructure and, foremost, human effort. Central to its operation are its financial sponsors and an ever growing list of supporters, contributors and volunteers that have supported our efforts in one way or another. This page is dedicated to all these behind-the-scene forces.

Sponsors

We would not have been able to offer the AMALTHEA experience, if it were not for the financial sponsorship we received from three, main organizations: NSF, FIT and UCF. Thanks to these sponsors the AMALTHEA program will have available a total operating budget of $389,451 for its 3-year duration, which includes $299,451 in NSF funds and $90,000 matching funds from the two host universities.

The primary sponsor of the AMALTHEA REU Site is the National Science Foundation (NSF). In particular, the effort is funded under NSF's Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program and grant IIS-REU-0647018 for $160,701 awarded to FIT (lead institution) and grant IIS-REU-0647120 for $138,750 awarded to UCF. The total financial support from NSF is $299,451 and is provided for 3 years starting in March 2007. According to their website, NSF is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 "...to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense...". Please visit http://www.nsf.gov/about/ for more information regarding NSF.

A secondary sponsor of the summer research experience is the lead institute of this effort, namely the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) in Melbourne, Florida. Financial support has been primarily obtained through the Office of the Provost. In more detail, the Provost and Executive Vice President of Florida Tech, Prof. Dwayne McCay, has generously provided the program with matching funds to be used for the support of graduate students aiding the project and for making participant stipends more competitive. FIT or, Florida Tech, as it is affectionately called, is the only independent university in Florida's southeast and was founded in 1958 to train professionals working in the space program at what is now the Kennedy Space Center. Please visit http://www.fit.edu/about/ for more information regarding FIT.

A final, valuable sponsor of the AMALTHEA program is the university co-hosting the summer experience, the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando, Florida. Additional financial support is provided by UCF's Office of Research & Commercialization through the Associate Vice President for Research, Dr. Thomas O'Neal, to enhance participant stipends. Additionally, the School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science of UCF through its Director, Prof. Issa Batarseh, has generously provided additional funds for the support of graduate students helping in the project. UCF was originally named Florida Technological University, when it was established in 1963 as part of the state university system. Now, UCF has become the 6th largest university in the nation in terms of enrollment. Please visit http://www.ucf.edu/aboutucf/ for more information regarding UCF.

Acknowledgments

Apart from the people affiliated to our sponsors, our Advisory Board members and our Affiliate Faculty, which are mentioned elsewhere, the program PIs are indebted to the following individuals and organizations for their time, effort, resources, skills and creativity that they have generously poured into various aspects of the program:

Prof. Matt A. Wood, Physics & Space Sciences at FIT, Dr. Niels da Vitoria Lobo, Associate Professor, School of EE & CS at UCF and Prof. Zhihua Qu, School of EE & CS at UCF, all three of them directing other REU Sites, for their valuable advise they provided us in Spring 2007, when we were taking the first steps to organize our own REU Site program.

Stephen Toth and Brandon Dunnick from UCF Marketing for designing and creating the promotional material (flyers, posters and pull-up displays) of the Program's 2007 recruiting campaign.

Matthew Velie, former CS senior at UCF, who did the web programming and some web design in Spring 2007 for the program's official web site.

Suhtling Wong-Vienneau and Andrea "Andi" McNamara from UCF Marketing for designing and creating the promotional material (flyers, posters and pull-up displays) of the Program's 2008 recruiting campaign.

The countless, unknown (to us) administrators, administrative assistants and faculty, whether at the host universities or at institutions around the nation that have so kindly promoted the AMALTHEA program to hundreds of their undergraduate students. We owe a huge part of the program's success to you!