CIS’ Aiken heading to Peru with Fulbright program

Aiken

Computer and information sciences professor Robert M. Aiken will be traveling to Peru at the conclusion of the spring semester to work at the University of San Martin de Porres’ School of Information Technology in Lima for six weeks through the Fulbright Senior Specialists Program.

While a normal Fulbright project would span anywhere from a semester to up to a year in length, the Fulbright Senior Specialists Program is designed to provide short-term academic opportunities — typically two to six weeks — for U.S. faculty and professionals. Shorter grant lengths give specialists greater flexibility to pursue grants that work best with their current academic or professional commitments.

Aiken, who served as a Fulbright Professor in Morocco in 1982–83 and a Fulbright Scholar in Malaysia in 1997, applied to participate in the senior specialists program shortly after it began in 2001.

“Basically, they want to strengthen their undergraduate program as well as their master’s-level curriculum,” he said about his assignment at the university in Lima. “They also want to try and tie the research they’re doing to some of the local industrial activity.”

Aiken will also be looking to use some of his international experience from his work on United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization projects and activities with the International Federation for Information Processing, where he is a past president, to help the university with outreach to other programs and universities.

“One of the added values I think I can bring to them is to try and connect them with colleagues in other countries,” he said.

Aiken said he is looking forward to both the personal as well as professional opportunities and challenges. “Experiencing different cultures, cuisine and local events all contribute to making such projects memorable.”

- By Preston M. Moretz