REU Site: Undergraduate Research Experiences in Machine Learning, Analytics, and Augmented Reality for Smart and Connected Health

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This project aims to facilitate the inclusion of undergraduates in research targeting the emerging areas of smart and connected health and computer engineering. Undergraduate students will design and develop concepts and applications that integrate artificial intelligence (AI) and data-driven techniques to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare. The REU site provides a unique opportunity for undergraduates to engage with a diverse research program that includes working with persons with disabilities such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and multiple sclerosis (MS) and planning for smart city fire-related responses. Some of the research projects address the behavior and hygiene of children with ASD using new engineering data and cyber visual techniques. Integrating technology such as biosensors, virtual reality, and machine learning are crucial for developing reliable and sensitive assessment tools for people with MS and increasing confidence in the results. Smart city firefighting provides a unique learning experience for undergraduates in monitoring temperatures while developing autonomous data collection methods to highlight areas of concern for safety officials. Moreover, many research topics are not covered under traditional undergraduate curricula and will help prepare a new generation of professionals.This REU site seeks to expose undergraduate students to research in the emerging fields of smart and connected communities and smart and connected health. The undergraduate students will design and develop concepts, systems, and applications that target smart-health and smart-community engineering problems. The intellectual theme of this project ranges from designing an ecological assessment to applying machine learning (ML), data analytics, and augmented reality (AR) as new paradigms to analyze and discover new aspects of health-related applications. Each summer, the REU site will provide a diverse group of undergraduate students, many from underrepresented groups, opportunities to directly participate in research activities to develop disciplinary knowledge, research abilities, and team skills. The focus of the REU site is to enable students to perform research in three main areas: 1) intelligent emotion recognition and cyber training for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD); 2) cognitive and body posture control for persons with disabilities; and 3) smart-city fire response. The REU research projects will advance the state of the art in ecological assessment utilizing ML computational models, AR visualization, and data analysis and will be performed by the undergraduate students to serve their communities. Eight weeks of in-depth summer research will increase undergraduate students’ retention, improve their career perspectives, engage them to participate in the next frontier of data-driven research, and motivate them to enter graduate STEM-Health programs.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.