This award supports an REU site with the theme, "Health Monitoring of Critical Civil Infrastructure for Safety and Security", at Alabama A&M University (AAMU). Undergraduate students enrolled in engineering and technology programs in traditional African-American institutions (HBCUs) such as AAMU face major challenges arising from the rapid change of technology in the work environment. Because of limited exposure to research activities these engineering and technology students are not up-to date with today's technologies, and this presents serious handicaps in their careers compared to their peers at other research-oriented universities. In addition, while the number of African-American students is increasing relatively in undergraduate engineering and technology programs, there are few students (1%) who pursue graduate- level study, and this is mainly because these students are never exposed to research activities during their studies. To address the above issues, AAMU established a research center "Center for Transportation Infrastructure Safety and Security (TIS2)" with a main objective of providing hands-on research experiences for undergraduate students. The TIS2 is a multidisciplinary research center that undertakes research dealing with safety and security of critical civil infrastructure and transportation systems for homeland security. With support from the NSF, US Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Alabama Department of Transportation, an active research program was established to address critical research issues in the application of nanotechnology, microtechnology, and micro-optical technology in monitoring the health of civil infrastructure for safety and security. Therefore, the objective of the proposed REU site is to provide training activities through innovative research projects in health monitoring of civil infrastructure, especially for talented African-American students long deprived of research and hands-on engineering experience. Three students will be recruited from the host institution (AAMU), and seven students will be recruited from other institutions, mainly Tennessee State University, Jacksonville State University in Mississippi, Florida A&M University, Southern University in Louisiana, and Savanna State University in Georgia. The students will be recruited from relevant engineering programs (civil, electrical and mechanical engineering) and will be engaged in a ten-week multidisciplinary research program conducted at the TIS2 Center relating to health monitoring of critical civil infrastructure for safety and security and focusing on the use of nanotechnology-based devices such as NanoElectromechnical, MicroElectroMechanical, and MicroOpticalElectroMechanical Systems (NEMS, MEMS and MOEMS).
Each student will work on an individual project. Each project will be structured to challenge the student and to ensure the development of student-faculty interactions and student-student communication. In addition to providing research experience, the proposed program will seek to provide an integrated learning experience that will emphasize the formation of a strong sense of a multicultural community through social and cultural interactions. Additional enrichment and professional-development activities planned for the students include seminars and workshops. The students will be engaged in innovative and cutting-edge research projects related to monitoring of critical civil infrastructure health for safety and security. The students will take advantage of recent advancements in nanotechnology to develop a completely new class of devices for civil infrastructure. These novel sensors can be extremely cheap, wireless, and durable, and can greatly enhance the information available during the routine inspection of civil infrastructure. Due to their extremely low cost, the proposed nanotechnology-based sensors can be embedded or attached in the thousands and interrogated wirelessly with a minimum of time and effort. Such an approach enables better understanding of damage mechanisms in civil infrastructure and particularly of how certain key parameters affecting the durability of these structures progress. This information can be used to develop more efficient designs for future structures. This REU program enhances the technical and educational backgrounds of minority students by offering more collaborative research activities and improves the students' critical thinking, communication skills, research skills and ability to conduct unsupervised research work. The student participants are encouraged to publish the findings of their projects in journals, to present them at conferences, and to disseminate them at meetings to benefit the research community and industry.
