EIA0139576 : Summer Undergraduate Research ProgramDepartment of Computer Science

Washington University in St. LouisInvestigators: Robert Pless and Cindy Grimm

Students from:• Truman State• Carnegie Mellon• Southern Illinois at Edwardsville, • Berkeley, • Pomona, • Stanford• Washington University in St. Louis

Faculty Mentors all from Washington University,

• Department of Computer Science.• Media and Machines Laboratory• Computational Science Laboratory• Mobilab• Applied Research Lab (Networking)

• Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

Program Focus:

Integration of students into ongoing research projects. Daily interaction with faculty mentor and/or student mentor.

Student applications were required to include specific faculty member / project interest.

10 Week Program: The Plan

June 1-3 Arrival: Introduction to the department, faculty mentor, student mentor.

June 4-7 Training: Several hours each day involved in group instruction in research programming tools, hardware tools, and methods. Remainder of each day settling in, meeting with faculty mentor and student mentor to define project more exactly.

July 1: Informal poster session where students share their research projects.

August 9: Mini-Symposium: Students give formal presentation of results from the summer.

10 Week Program: The Reality

June 1-8 Distributed Arrival: Introduction to the department, faculty mentor, student mentor

June 10-12 Training: Voluntary short courses offered in:

(1) Applied linear algebra, (2) Programming as part of a large group project, and (3) robot sensors, camera calibration, and open-GL programming.(mixed attendance, reported as valuable for several students)

June28-July1: Group lunches, groups of four or five students

August 6-9: Distributed Culminating Talks: All students presented results in group meetings related to their projects.

Project:

Quest Satellite

Five students worked on QUEST, a joint U.S. and Japanese micro-satellite designed and created entirely by students. Specific work on (1) Parallel computer architectures for space, and (2) Omnidirectional vision system and processing

Project Lewis: The WeddingPhotographer

Three students worked on the Wedding Photographer, an autonomous robot that takes artistic pictures, presented at Emerging Technologies session of SIGGRAPH 2002. REU students implemented an improved color based face detection, and integration of laser range finding and video camera data. Press coverage: CNN, BBC, Wired, slashdot, Nelly

ProjectWugle

Two REU students worked on WUGLE, an online JAVA based tool for interactive creation and manipulation of logic formulas.

ProjectWugle 2

“One step theorem prover: When a student selects a particular connective, relevant logical equivalence rules are highlighted. When selected, these rules automatically transform the logical expression. Tool used in discrete math class in Fall of 2002, and is being instrumented to record student performance statistics.

Lessons

1) Integrating students into ongoing projects very good --- Faculty mentors are interested and dedicated to these projects already.

2) Advertising takes time – would be very beneficial to have the awards announced in December.

3) Faculty tend to view an announcement of the awarding of an REU sites grant as “great, I don’t have to look for another source of funding for this (local) undergraduate anymore”.

Future Changes

• Marketing Lessons:• Be explicit about goals

• Focus on students that may not otherwise have research opportunities.

• Know your target audience• Students either from midwest or already affiliated

with research projects• Concentrate on non-research schools in midwest

and students with ties to St. Louis.• Know your strengths / weaknesses

• Faculty dedicated to ongoing projects and strong mentoring

• More explicit social planning. Exploit faculty mentoring with individual projects does not preclude joint outside activities --- introduce students to both research and community of scholars.