Draft:Institute for Computing in Research

Overview and motivations
The Institute for Computing in Research is a consortium of scholars, students, and educators, whose purpose is to explore the possibility of younger students (high school age) carrying out research in academic and technical areas.

The Institute is modeled as a pipeline of educational activities leading to the final phase, a internship program in which students work for a month of the summer, mentored by established scholars or technologists in their field of interest.

The internship program is modeled after the Los Alamos National Laboratory student internship program, focused almost entirely on research, and with little or no curated material. Students work full time on research with their mentors, learning skills on the side as needed. The Institute also hosts weekly guest lectures by high-profile researchers, scholars, and technologists.

Student pipeline
The pipeline consists of the following steps, which are all free of cost, and the final of which pays the students:


 * any time from 6th grade up :  workshops - a 10-hour workshop that teaches to program in python, on Linux, with emphasis on the command line and using a programming editor.
 * after the workshops : drop-in fortnightly, in which students write small programs in a wide range of research-related areas, from visualization to mathematics to science to digital humanities and more.
 * research skills academy : a 3-week summer program aimed at immersing students into the variety of techniques that the Institute considers important for a young researcher.
 * math and science working groups : working groups of students who want to go beyond what is taught in their schools, including Taylor series, Fourier series, numerical solutions to differential equations, and physics with calculus.
 * after tenth, 11th, or 12th grade : paid summer internship - a 4-week summer program in which students are paid to work full time on a single research project.

The pipeline materials are taught from free/open-source/open-access web books written by by co-founder Mark Galassi with significant contributions from current and former students in the pipeline.

History
The Institute for Computing in Research was created in Santa Fe in 2019, following a series of conversations between the four co-founders. The initial aim was to address a shortcoming in many research opportunities for high school students, which the co-founders perceived as mostly available to students from connected families. The pilot program hired five high school students form Santa Fe and was run by director Rhonda Crespo.

In 2020 the Institute became a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy, picking up 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsorship from Software Freedom Conservancy.

In 2021 the Institute opened a pilot program in Portland, Oregon. The Portland chapter is directed by Maria de Hoyos.

In 2022 the Institute added a branch in Austin, Texas, and now operates in three cities. The Austin chapter is directed by Mark Emry.

In 2023 the Institute will open an internship program in Socorro, New Mexico.