June 08, 2010 –
Nine ambitious undergraduate students have been selected from a pool of 28 applicants as 2010 SURF-IT scholars. The students will spend 10 weeks this summer working side-by-side with faculty mentors and honing their research skills in CALIT2-affiliated labs.
SURF-IT, the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Information Technology, is sponsored by CALIT2 and UCI’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP).
The program, which will kick off its sixth year June 22 at an orientation session, has already introduced 54 undergraduate students to the challenges and rewards of applied research.
This year’s Fellows:
- Ana Maria Sanchez, a psychology major, will work with education professor Rebecca Black to analyze the effects of online shared virtual environments on children’s learning and social development, as well as the role information technology plays in the process.
- Informatics student Steven Nguyen will collaborate with professor Yunan Chen to study the use of electronic medical records – information systems that create, gather, manage and store digital versions of patients’ paper charts – in hospital emergency rooms.
- Electrical engineering professor Hamid Jafarkhani will mentor Howard Huang. The two will continue development of an existing cooperative communication protocol on a software-defined radio platform. Cooperative communication significantly improves wireless network performance by relying on collaboration among network nodes; software-defined radios substitute some of the hardware used in typical radios with software components.
- Engineering undergraduate Jonathan Chu will team up with physics and astronomy professor David Kirkby to analyze residential energy-consumption patterns. Researchers will design a residential energy-monitoring and feedback system to help homeowners reduce their energy consumption.
- Student Spencer deBrosse will collaborate with informatics professor Gloria Mark to examine the human-computer interaction aspects of “fansubbing” teams. These teams are social media groups informally organized around translating television shows and films into different languages using subtitles. The researchers want to understand how these teams self-organize, sustain themselves and coordinate across global distances using IT, expecting the knowledge to lead to the creation of more effective distributed teams with improved IT support.
- Mechanical engineering student Marvin Chan will computer model microstructural designs for ceramic oxygen sensor material in the lab of professor Martha Mecartney. The goal is to develop new materials for fuel cells that can heat quickly without creating thermal shock.
- Business professor Shivendu Shivendu will mentor electrical engineering undergraduate David Shin as they analyze the impact of smart appliances on residential energy savings. The project involves conducting a household survey to capture the usage patterns for appliances and then estimating potential savings through use of smart appliances.
- Biomedical engineering professor Bill Tang will oversee Johnway Yih as they work on cell mechanic bioinformatics platforms. By quantifying mechanical behaviors in cells, researchers can extract relevant information about how these cells go through normal physiological changes or become infected. This project aims to develop the microfluidic platforms that allow this information extraction.
- Informatics professor Bill Tomlinson will guide computer science major Jason Lu in developing KarunaTree, a new online entertainment experience that will motivate children to increase their environmental understanding and give them tools to respond to global environmental challenges.The platform will combine the immersive qualities of multiplayer computer games with written storytelling, creating a kind of interactive storybook.
SURF-IT is designed to help students develop hands-on knowledge and skills that will help them in graduate school or careers. In addition to their 10 weeks of lab experience, they will attend weekly seminars that will enhance their understanding of telecommunications and information technology. At the end of the summer, they will individually present their research findings at a poster session and closing reception.
