This project renews an exemplary existing Research Experience for Undergraduates site focused on the areas of networking and communications. The project engages students in a wide range of projects in wireless networking lead by a team of faculty mentors. 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 to generate independent results, and to sustain this effort after returning to their parent institutions. A nationwide recruitment process is used to select cohorts of undergraduate students to participate in a nine-week summer research program at the host institution. Particular emphasis is placed on recruitment of students from under-represented populations. The project includes technical seminars and workshops, student presentations, and field trips and other professional development opportunities.
Intellectual Merit: The intellectual merit of this project lies in strong research basis and the expertise of the faculty. The projects are in current research areas that are of interest to the community at large and that have clear practical applications. The research projects are created as a focused plan to guide the students from a passive learning state to the state of being active self-sustaining researchers.
Broader Impact: The broader impacts of the project include providing a quality research experience to undergraduate students, particularly students from underrepresented groups. The participating faculty members are committed to including under-represented minority students in their research. Thus this project has the potential to produce new computer science graduate students and faculty members and to advance discovery and understanding while promoting learning.
The EURECA (Exntensible Undergraduate Research Experience in Communications and Applications) program is in its eight year at The University of Texas at Austin. Housed within the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department (ECE) at UT, the program attracts students from diverse backgrounds to the disciplines of communications, networks, robotics and security. Over the years, over eighty students and twelve faculty mentors have participated in this program. Students gain hands-on experience with graduate level research, working in most cases with graduate students and postdoctoral associates in addition to the faculty mentors. This enables them to understand not just research, but the lifestyle and culture more closely. We also emphasize that the program is extensible, and we sustain the relationship past the summer program. Many of the projects result in publications, some at top IEEE/ACM venues. Our students come from a variety of backgrounds, typically without access to the research facilities and/or opportunities that are available at UT Austin. We work to create excitement among them towards research, education and overall deeper involvement in graduate study. Our program is currently hosting 8 students from different parts of the nation at The University of Texas, Austin. These students are working on diverse projects, including security for virtual machines, mining big data and distributed image compression.
