REU Site: Research in Home and Consumer Networking Technologies

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This site provides undergraduate students with the opportunity to engage in research involving interesting and challenging technical issues in the emerging field of home and consumer networking, promotes the professional development of participating undergraduates, and encourages them to consider pursuing advanced degrees and careers in science and engineering. Home and consumer networking is expected to be a significant market in the near future. There are, however, many challenges in this emerging field. These include quality of multimedia services, network and device heterogeneity, mobility, device intelligence, content and rights management, security and privacy, user experience/knowledge, and new services such as eldercare.Intellectual Merit: The students participate in the PIs? on-going funded research, investigate the above mentioned challenging issues, and provide viable solutions and insight. This research activity is expected to lead to a better understanding of the technical and performance issues and tradeoffs in home and consumer networking, and thus facilitate the rapid deployment of advanced home and consumer networking services and applications that are of significance to our nation?s economy and our quality of life. Ten students engage in a 10-week summer school every year for three years at the University of Missouri ? Columbia (MU). They are encouraged to continue participate in the projects after the summer program. The summer school includes a 2-week short course, followed by approximately 8-weeks of group research on selected projects that are carefully designed and well aligned with the PIs? on-going research. The students also engage in weekly seminars and weekly informal lunch meetings with faculty, weekly individual student-faculty meetings and a meeting on graduate school preparation, interim progress reports and final presentations. The students have many opportunities to present their research results at various venues at the campus, state, national, and international levels.Broader Impacts: This is a unique opportunity for the undergraduate students recruited mostly from institutions in the State of Missouri to experience training and research in the interdisciplinary areas of home and consumer networking. By bootstrapping through an already established network of recruiting forces in institutions across the State of Missouri, the site especially welcomes applications from women engineers, underrepresented minorities and students from colleges that have limited research opportunities. The project is of great interest to undergraduate students due to its close interaction with our daily life. It exposes them to exciting state-of-the-art home and consumer networking technologies allows them to gain insight on the culture of graduate school by closely working with graduate students and faculty mentors. Ultimately this builds the desire, confidence and skills necessary to pursue advanced degrees in science and engineering. The research projects are sufficiently sophisticated that this summer experience will enable and encourage the students to publish and present the results in technical conferences in the specific research areas. The project is professionally evaluated by an external assessment specialist. The outcomes of this assessment are expected to contribute to educational research on effective structures for involving undergraduates in research. The outcomes of this project will form an integral part of our educational agenda by contributing to the content of courses in networking and security.