Designing open-cloud databases in Scotland


This article is part of our Summer Sojourns 2012 series highlighting summer adventures of FIU students.

Doctoral candidate Mario Consuegra spent the summer in Scotland. One of two FIU students to be awarded a prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship grant in 2012, the Cuban-born Consuegra was at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, participating in the Open Science Data Cloud (OSDC) Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE) Project.

Under the leadership of Malcolm Atkinson and his team, Consuegra worked on designing an open-cloud database storing large numbers of protein substructures with the aim of one day producing a protein structure matching tool.

The son of two high school teachers, Consuegra graduated from FIU in 2010 with a degree in computer science. He feels that a doctoral degree in computer science will give him “the opportunity to be a scientist, an innovator, a motivator, and a role model for the next generation in my community.” He says he intends to use his NSF fellowship to “be an active participant in the fundamental research and exciting innovations that will herald the next generation in computing, and also to be a teacher that can convey the same sense of excitement to later generations of students.”

When asked to name his favorite thing about the trip, Consuegra didn’t hesitate. “It was my first time in Europe,” he said. “I enjoyed the summer weather in Edinburgh, the beautiful architecture of the city, and its very nice people. It was great to meet with the scientists and students of the University of Edinburgh and exchange ideas.”

The trip was funded by the National Science Foundation for the PIRE project.

Check out the other adventures highlighted in this series:

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