Smart Cities are no longer a futuristic dream of science fiction writers but they are emerging as a reality in research labs, industry, and, increasingly, in everyday life. This REU Site project aims to educate and inspire undergraduate researchers to address the challenges of building intelligent, safe, and secure Smart Cities with a focus on mobility. The project will have broad impacts on both the participants and society by advancing research in this area and by expanding and strengthening the STEM pipeline by recruiting students from a diverse range of backgrounds. This project’s main goals are two-fold: to accelerate advances in Smart Cities and to point students toward research problems that are not only interesting but also critical to society as guided by their faculty mentors at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. These overarching goals are also synergistic with the Nevada-South Smart Community Vision with its stated goals of increasing public sector efficiency, facilitating economic growth, and improving citizen quality of life through mobility/transportation, livable communities, energy efficiency, and public safety. Through the project’s research and co-curricular activities, we aim not only to train undergraduate researchers in specific skills but also to broaden their world view and inspire them to engage in research that will solve the most challenging and critical problems facing us as a discipline and as a global community.
The main objectives of the project are (1) to engage 30 undergraduates in hands-on projects that (2) advance research in Smart Cities (including subareas of embedded systems, machine learning, control, communications, power management, cybersecurity, and computer vision) and that (3) lead to peer-reviewed publications while also (4) providing participants with co-curricular training that will not only support their long-term academic or industry careers but also (5) inspires them to be leaders in the field. At the same time these efforts will strengthen the research infrastructure in the electrical and computer engineering and computer science departments at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to bolster their long-term ability to support and mentor undergraduate researchers. The main focus of the project, Smart Mobility, encompasses several key research areas including ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems), CAVs (connected autonomous vehicles), and V2X (Vehicle-to-Everything) communication. These areas are crucial for increasing quality of life, reducing delays, increasing quality of service for road users, securing critical infrastructure, and providing safer roadways and more informed decision-making based on data. Projects include automatic detection of accidents, communication of traffic signal status, smart parking optimizations, infrastructure-based vehicle control, development of a compact LiDAR system, energy storage for green mobility, novel designs of V2X transceivers, and automatic threat detection. The 30 student participants will gain hands-on experience in challenging, timely, and engaging projects that will advance research in Smart Cities and, in conjunction with co-curricular training, will provide them with tools to become leaders in the field.
This site is supported by the Department of Defense in partnership with the NSF REU program.
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.
