Collaborative Research: IRES Track I: Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Research in Spain on Smart Connected Systems (UIRiSCS)

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Undergraduate interdisciplinary research in Spain on Smart Connected Systems will support six US undergraduate students per year and provide them the opportunity to conduct mentored research at the University of Zaragoza (UZ) in Spain. In this three-year project, a total of eighteen students will be selected from Manhattan College (MC) and The City University of New York, College of Staten Island (CUNY/CSI). The overarching objective of this multicultural, interdisciplinary project is to provide the next generation of American engineers and scientists with a global perspective on collaboration, unique hands-on educational opportunities in the field of smart connected systems through international experiences thus enhancing future US global competitiveness, providing professional training and advancing and promoting science. To meet this objective, each year a six-student cohort will: 1) participate in a pre-travel training workshop with coordinated efforts from MC and CUNY/CSI; 2) spend 8 weeks in the summer working on the projects with professors from UZ; 3) engage in follow-up collaborative projects in areas of smart connected systems upon return to their home institutions. The core of the broader impacts is to increase the number of students who are under-represented in Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) and to participate in international research which is part of the evolving global economy. The effort will also leverage CSI’s Spanish-serving institution designation as well as CUNY’s unique status as the nation’s largest public university with a large under-represented minority student population to expose those students to the exciting undergraduate research opportunities that the involved institutions offer. With the development of increasingly sophisticated intelligence technologies, we are entering an era of a smart connected world with Smart Connected Systems (SCS), which allows intelligent decision-making using data sources from both physical objects and virtual components to optimized efficiency, comfort, safety, and security. The unifying research theme of SCS includes sub-topics in sensors, optical networks, hybrid wired-wireless networks, machine learning, nature language processing, computer vision, image processing, and cybersecurity. Sample technical innovations that students will conduct in Spain include: 1) Analysis of Plastic Optical Fiber prospects as backbone for Smart Home Area Networks; 2) Development of smart home customized applications using natural language processing and speech recognition. The proposed international collaboration will push the frontiers of knowledge and methodological approaches to build innovative, robust, and scalable smart connected systems and leverage on an over 10-year existing collaboration between UZ and the US institutions.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.