REU Site: Research Experiences in Information Centric Engineering for Emerging Process Domains

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Through this REU Site’s proposed research activities, the participants will be exposed to cutting-edge research activities in exciting Virtual Reality and related areas and contribute to the nation’s global leadership in these key areas of economic and scientific importance. Through these valuable research experiences, a new generation of engineers and scientists will be encouraged to refine and hone their research skills while fostering their interest in research oriented careers and graduate programs in various areas of science, engineering and medicine. Depending on the interests of the undergraduate participants, a specific process domain will be identified for their research activities. These include manufacturing, medicine/health care and deep space exploration (including the Moon Mission). Some of them will be exposed to becoming skilled at creating Virtual/Mixed Reality environments to help train surgeons and other health care professionals in surgery and other medical procedures. Others will gain experience building simulators to help new nurses and first responders be trained effectively while responding to the current covid-19 pandemic. Students interested in NASA’s Moon Mission and the Nation’s leadership in the colonization of space can interact with NASA engineers and mentors in designing simulators to help train astronauts as well as design habitats on the Moon for the astronauts to live and work. This project will provide opportunities for Women, under-represented minorities (including physically disabled students) and others to information technology and cyber oriented research areas and help prepare them to become leaders in these emerging areas of importance.The overall goal of this REU Site is to provide meaningful research experiences to a new generation of engineers and scientists in emerging process domains with an emphasis on Information Centric Engineering (ICE) techniques including design of 3D Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality based simulation approaches and cyber-physical environments. Such research experiences provided to undergraduate students seek to encourage them towards graduate programs and research careers in these leading-edge research areas. The REU participants will explore Next Generation Information Centric approaches and frameworks in manufacturing, medical and space systems. The research activities in manufacturing domains hold significant potential for industrial applications including fabrication of miniature surveillance devices, and micro robotic devices for health monitoring. In the context of medicine and healthcare, the adoption of VR based training approaches will contribute to better trained medical professionals. Exposing students to the design of VR based simulators to help covid-19 first responders be trained effectively provides a practical insightful experience on applying engineering approaches to healthcare domains. The Artemis Moon Mission will be a milestone for NASA heralding another new era in the colonization of space. Working on related simulation research will excite and expose the next generation of students to ICE research involving NASA space mission contexts. The planned K-12 Soaring Eagle outreach activities will provide opportunities for REU students to serve as STEM ambassadors and mentors to K-12 students; the long-term impact is to foster a research culture among minority and other students in these cyber oriented research areas and help prepare them to become leaders in these emerging areas of importance.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.