REU SITE: Research Experiences in Information Centric Engineering (ICE)

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NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY:Information Technology (IT) practices continue to revolutionize engineering practices worldwide. This REU project seeks to provide research experiences to undergraduate students to encourage them towards research careers in IT oriented approaches in engineering. This emerging field of Information Centric Engineering holds tremendous potential for numerous industrial applications. As these practices become more commonplace, there will be a greater need to expose and encourage students in our nation to pursue graduate careers in these areas of importance. Undergraduate engineering and science students should be prepared for the IT oriented 21st century by being involved in such Information centric research activities. The participating students will be recruited from a pool of applicants nationwide with an emphasis on recruiting students with physical challenges as well as minority students including African American, Hispanic, Native American and Women students. We plan to work with various minority engineering organizations and universities to identify a diverse pool of student applicants. Students will also be provided opportunities to interact with industry partners in the fields of micro assembly and medical surgery. As part of project activities, seminars will be offered to participants outlining graduate programs and careers including preparing for exams to enter graduate school. The outcomes of this innovative project will be highlighted through special panel and paper sessions organized at national engineering conferences. This project is funded by the NSF Division of Engineering Education and Centers.TECHNICAL SUMMARY:The overall goal of this Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site project is to provide meaningful research experiences in Information Centric Engineering and Digital Manufacturing in emerging process domains to a new generation of engineers and scientists. These research experiences provided to undergraduate students will encourage them towards graduate programs and research careers in these leading edge research areas. Research activities in this project including design of Digital Manufacturing approaches (including Virtual Reality based environments to study micro gripping and assembly in the domain of Micro devices assembly) as well as design of Virtual Surgical environments to help train surgeons in surgical processes. As our REU initiative deals with IT and Digital Manufacturing themes, this emphasis is termed as "Information Centric Engineering" (ICE).