This project has been created with the aim of delivering the state-of-the-art research facilities in networking and communications the University of Texas at Austin to the vast underserved undergraduate population in the State of Texas. Students from seven distinct universities with programs in Engineering and Computer Science that form part the University of Texas System Arlington, Austin, Brownsville, Dallas, El Paso, Pan American and San Antonio will be actively recruited to participate in the EURECA endeavor. The program has been designed to ensure a significant participation of minorities and of disadvantaged communities in it. Minorities form more than 40% of the undergraduate population in the UT System, with UT Austin alone graduating the second largest number of minorities in the entire nation. In addition, UT Brownsville, El Paso, Pan American and San Antonio are minority institutions. Special partnerships have been formed between the seven universities to ensure the success of this program in reaching out and advertising, selecting worthy candidates and finally, in the follow-up process. Most importantly, our partnerships with other members of the UT System offer the knowledge and facilities possessed by UT Austins faculty to underserved students from institutions with limited resources and/or without graduate programs.
The Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG) with thirteen professors and over five labs Network Engineering Lab, MIMO Communications Lab, Wireless Networking and RF Propagation Lab, Embedded Signal Processing Lab, Image and Video Engineering Lab and the new Optical Communications Lab forms the foundation for this project. All of the WNCG faculty members are part of the EURECA team, and will supervise undergraduate research as part of EURECA, while the WNCG staff will provide full logistical and administrative support for the endeavor. The EURECA team also includes educational research specialists to facilitate and improve this research interaction, a researcher from industry and one faculty member per University for all the other participating Universities.
The undergraduate research projects have been designed to provide participants with a gamut of options, with subgroups of faculty from WNCG spearheading each effort. Participants will be urged to interact with all of UT Austins EURECA members to identify their true calling in research, and will subsequently be assigned to a mentor that will guide them through their stay in Austin. A key component of every research project is its extensibility providing students with the capacity to build on knowledge provided to them by their mentor and the PI to generate independent results, and to sustain this effort after returning to their parent institutions. The pre-existing relationships between faculty in the UT System and the new partnerships formed will prove to be an invaluable resource that secures such an extensible research experience. In addition, the PI will deliver bi-weekly lectures to enhance the participants writing and oral presentation skills, and organize a mini-symposium to culminate the summer program.
The EURECA teams objective is to generate sustained research interest among undergraduates so that they become tomorrows leaders in industry and academia. This project has thus been meticulously designed to meet this goal.
Intellectual Merit UT Austin is one of the premier research institutions in the nation, and the faculty members constituting the EURECA team have extensive experience both performing and conducting research. Many faculty members in this team also have considerable experience working with undergraduates from across institutions. The research projects in the EURECA endeavor have been created as a focused plan to guide the student from a passive learning state to the state of being an active self-sustaining researcher.
Broader Impact Beyond impacting on the minority and underprivileged communities in Texas, and hence that of the entire nation, EURECAs research tasks also enhance the lives of the surrounding community. Projects such as one providing wireless access to impoverished sections of the local community proves to be an invaluable and satisfying experience to the undergraduate student, while inspiring youth in the community, specially women and other underrepresented groups, towards higher education in engineering.
