This project represents a continuation of a Research Experience for Undergraduates site in Computer Vision which has operated successfully at the University of Central Florida for the past eighteen years. Approximately one hundred and eighty undergraduate students from several institutions in Florida and outside Florida have participated in this program over the years. The research focus area is Computer Vision. The site will host 10 participants per year. Each year, students will participate in an 11-week duration full-time Summer program.
The key distinctive elements of this REU project are (1) to have a full summer experience planned for the participants, so that they have time to follow a substantial project through to completion, (2) to present each participant with several possible project topics, so that they can feel they have chosen a project which is most interesting to them, (3) to immerse the participants in the general > research environment essentially as if they were graduate students, by having them meet with their faculty > advisor once each week to discuss their project, participate in the weekly research group meetings, attend research presentations and meet with visiting researchers, and (4) to allow the separately-funded optional follow-through over the year by working with the students to write a technical report on their project, to prepare for the GREs and to apply to graduate programs. In past years, a large fraction of REU participants have been able to prepare a paper for submission to a refereed conference, have the paper accepted and then attend the conference to present the paper. Several past participants have even accomplished substantial enough research to also result in refereed journal publications. Many of past participants are now pursuing > graduate studies at various institutions, and some are now occupying faculty positions.
REU participants will be trained and exposed to critical issues in automatic video understanding, which involves object detection, tracking, activity and event recognition. Both theory and practice will be considered, i.e. both mathematical modeling and analysis of difficult vision problems and developing algorithms, and building real systems for demonstrating those solutions in real life situations.
This project will contribute to preparing a work force of young scientists in order to maintain America's strategic position of command in Science and Engineering. Participants will learn fundamentals of visual monitoring and surveillance. Through this project, undergraduates from predominantly undergraduate > institutions will be provided opportunities to spend a summer with a highly successful research group. The model for REU will be disseminated among other schools.
