UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON SYSTEM
Grant: $308,288 - National Science Foundation - May. 28, 2009
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Award Description: Project Summary: The University of Houston-Downtown has been recognized as a Hispanic Serving Institution as well as a Minority Serving Institution by the U.S. Department of Education. The objective of the REU site is to provide talented undergraduate students genuine research experience and place them into the pipeline from college to graduate schools and scientific-based employment. We will recruit locally and nationally from undergraduate institutions where research opportunities are often limited, with emphasis on minority and women students. We will take 8 students each year and place them in on-going research to investigate problems related to algorithm design and analysis. The students will receive 10-week intensive training in the research areas as well as basic research skills including effective literature review, algorithm design and implementation, experiment setup, result analysis, technical writing, and presentation. Teamwork and collaboration will be emphasized and encouraged. Our mentor team consist of both faculty and industrial experts to provide students both academic and industry research experience and career opportunities. We will follow up with the REU students after they return to their home institutions to publish their research findings and evaluate the long-term effect of the REU program. The intellectual merit includes: The proposed projects represent innovative research on a level in which undergraduates would not normally participate, and their work will advance the state of knowledge in the field of algorithm design and analysis. CS curriculum will benefit from the adoption of class projects and class modules spawned from the REU research projects. Such an integration of undergraduate research with traditional teaching will result in more effective undergraduate education. The broader impacts are: Over the life of the grant, 24 students will engage in current research, and more CS students will benefit from the course modules and class projects spawned from the REU program. Consequently more research and advanced topics will be introduced into undergraduate education, which will positively impact undergraduate students to pursue graduate degrees and research careers in both academia and industry.
Project Description: This REU grant provides funds for summer research program at UHD for 8 undergraduate students from 2009 to 2011. We have successfully finished the first summer program from 6/8/09 to 8/16/09, so 33% of the project has been completed. 8 undergraduate students were recruited from 5 universiites in Houston, Arkansas, Boston and Puerto Rico (5 of them are minority students). These students have performed intense research activities on data mining, artifical intelligence, Mars image analysis, and high-performance computering under the supervision of 3 faculty mentors from UHD and 1 research scientist from NASA. 2 field trips were organized to Computer Science Department at the University of Houston and NASA Lunar and Planetary Institute respectively. Students have given mid-term and final presentations and turned in final reports. We also conducted exit surveys to improve our program in the next two years. 2 students are continuing working on their research projects in the regular academic year of 2009/2010. 2 students' work are ready for publications, and their research mentors are working with them on preparing publications for conferences and journals.
Jobs Summary: Faculty members working in the summer to provide supervision and mentoring. (Total jobs reported: 1)
Project Status: Less Than 50% Completed
This award's data was last updated on May. 28, 2009. Help expand these official descriptions using the wiki below.
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