The Computer Science Department at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), in collaboration with the departments of Biological Sciences, Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, and Psychology, offers an interdisciplinary REU summer program in applied intelligent systems. The program hosts eight students for a period of ten weeks during the summer. It emphasizes interdisciplinary research, where techniques developed in the area of artificial intelligence are applied to real-world problems in science and engineering. This will allow the students to gain a broader overview of science and engineering as a potential career than would be possible in more narrowly-defined research areas.
Each student will work on an individual interdisciplinary research project under the co-supervision of a faculty member from the computer science department and a faculty member from one of the collaborating departments. The unifying research theme will be the use of intelligent systems techniques, including machine learning, data mining, optimization, and image analysis, to solve relevant data analysis problems in science and engineering fields. Students will be able to choose from a large list of projects that includes automated analysis of astronomical images, seismic tomography using machine learning, and identifying foreign accents in speech, among many others.
To assist the development of each student's oral communication skills and broaden their views of science and engineering beyond their project, each student will informally present the progress of their research project to all other REU participants, including mentors, the REU Program Director, and to their fellow REU students at the REU weekly meeting. In addition to the weekly meetings, there is a seminar series with the main goals of improving students' research skills and increasing their understanding of potential career paths in computing-related fields. The program will conclude with a one-day symposium to highlight the achievements of the REU students.
