REU Site: Research Experience for Undergraduates in Immersive 3D Visualization

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This Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site award funds a new site to enable ten undergraduate students each year to undertake Immersive 3D Visualization research projects at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY). The intended impact is to use the creative potential of Immersive 3D technology to attract and broaden participation of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM and computing fields. To achieve this, this REU site will: (i) involve 10 students per summer directly in Immersive 3D visualization with mentored research projects conducted in collaboration with other subfields, (ii) provide training in tools and technologies that are common in these research areas, (iii) inspire participating students to consider STEM as a career path and pursue STEM careers at the graduate level, and (iv) specifically target participation of women and underrepresented groups. The investigator will identify research collaborators with immersive visualization needs and assign each student to a REU team. Each REU team will consist of a research mentor and a REU student. The mentoring team includes members not just from CS but also from diverse backgrounds including film and media, journalism and biological sciences. This funding supports Hunter College and CUNY in its mission to continue to provide higher education to a largely disadvantaged population. In labs and businesses around the world, immersive visualization and virtual/augmented/mixed reality (VR/AR/MR) is playing a key role in the storytelling, data discovery and analysis process. Representing data in immersive environments allows shared understanding of the data and enables collaboration among multi-disciplinary researchers. Therefore, the intellectual merit of this REU site is to advance knowledge by supporting a research agenda that aims to investigate human interaction during the visualization and research storytelling process. This REU site will implement a research program designed to increase the number and diversity of students in STEM careers. Students will gain hands-on experience doing creative VR/AR/MR projects. Students will participate in mentored research projects in data driven research areas, including scientific visualization and visual analytics. Some of the planned research projects include: VR for aiding students with learning disabilities, MicroRNA (Ribonucleic Acid) as a regulator for cell lineage plasticity, immersive remote telepresence, indoor robot navigation along with 3D object identification, sonifying the microbiome, and VR for improving inter-personal skills in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) students. These inter-disciplinary and collaborative research projects will contribute to the national talent pool of students with highly sought transferable skills in immersive visualization research.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.