The main thrust of the center is to pursue cutting-edge scientific research in interdisciplinary areas of sciences, thereby promoting the development of novel computational methodologies. Interdisciplinary is the key concept underlying the mission of the center, in research as well as in curriculum development.

Our primary research interest is not in those areas that fall within the boundaries of traditional scientific disciplines and departments, but rather in novel and largely unexplored fields, which naturally combine concepts, expertise and techniques from different scientific domains. In this sense, an important role of the center will be to foster collaboration among scientists in different departments,September 11, 2007 11:01 AMege of Engineering and the Department of Linguistics as valuable potential partners in this endeavor.

Our aim will be to build expertise in several areas by making excellence in research, and commitment to interdisciplinary work, the main criteria in the hiring of faculty participating in the Computational Science program, and therefore affiliated with the Center. We have identified the research areas described below as strategically important to our mission, in which we currently have expertise in the various departments within the College of Sciences and where we have an opportunity to establish a national presence. All of these areas are characterized by a prominent role played by computation, by the simultaneous relevance to a number of traditional scientific disciplines, and by the presence of excellent funding opportunities, not only with national agencies such as the National Science Foundation, but also with the private sector. In parentheses, we indicate the different areas of science that these fields encompass.

	Fluid Dynamics (Mechanical Engineering, Astrophysics, Nuclear and Plasma Physics, Mathematics, Physics, Biology, Geology)
	Materials Science (Chemistry, Physics, Engineering, Mathematics)
	Biophysics (Biology, Biochemistry, Chemistry, Physics)
	Nonlinear Dynamics, Chaos, Pattern Formation (Mathematics, Physics, Biology, Meteorology, Oceanography, Engineering)
	Environmental Science (Biology, Physics, Geology, Engineering)
	Scientific Databases and Data Mining (Computer Science, Biology, Geology)
	Bioinformatics (Computer Science, Biology, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry)
	Computational Algebra (Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering)
	Computing in Science (all departments)

Furthermore, we plan to promote the exploration of novel approaches, based on computation, to rapidly developing new fields outside the traditional domain of science, such as linguistics, or computational finance.