IGERT: An Educational Framework for Innovation

Based on Wireless TechnologyPrincipal Investigator: A. Scottedward Hodel, Auburn University

WARNING: This .rtf file is a nearly (but not quite) complete translation of the .pdf file AuIGERT2005.pdf. Turn on “Track changes while editing” before making any changes. Then email back to Hodel by 10:00am Friday, Feb 4.

Thank you!

1 Project SummaryProject title IGERT: An Educational Framework for Innovation Based on Wireless TechnologyPrincipal Investigator A. S. HodelLead Institution Auburn University

Intellectual Merit Wireless technology is inherently integrative in the sense that the development of wireless and related technologies requires designers to interact with people outside of their personal areas of expertise. Further, because wireless technologies quickly become outdated, this field of study also requires multidisciplinary design teams to be capable of rapid innovation that takes into account constraints from all involved engineering disciplines, manufacturing and reliability issues, support infrastructure and business models. We observe that the traditional model for PhD education does not prepare graduates for this environment: a student’s research groups and advisory committee are typically limited to individuals working in a common field of study that is fairly narrow in scope.

We therefore propose the development of an interdisciplinary research and educational program based on wireless technology that (1) will modify mentoring and curriculum of PhD students to foster innovation skills in a multidisciplinary engineering environment and (2) will modify practice of research to give increased multidisciplinary opportunities. Research component The proposed research component will focus on

human-machine collaboration in which wireless is an enabling technology. This research will build upon several existing but uncoordinated research programs including wireless communications, radio-frequency electronics, software for human-machine interaction, packaging and reliability, batteries and fuel cells, and networks and network security. This multidisciplinary research group will establish synergistic collaborations among team members within Auburn University and with our external partners.

Educational component The proposed educational component will make use of the breadth requirement that is a part of all PhD programs among our participants. We shall develop a coordinated approach to ensure students have the capability to work and communicate with individuals outside of their area of expertise that are related to the wireless technology theme of the proposal. This

will be done via (1) an ongoing 1 credit hour seminar/workshop course series for all fellows and participating faculty and (2) additional new interdisciplinary service courses to be designed by a committee of faculty from all team members listed above. The seminar/workshop course discussed above also serves as a vehicle for regular communication among collaborating researchers.

Recruiting component Recruiting and outreach activities of supported faculty will build upon and work in collaboration with institution-wide programs for recruiting including middle- high-school events such as the BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology) robot competition, and the Office for Diversity and Multicultural Affairs.

Our Auburn University based team includes twenty faculty from five departments and five centers distributed between Auburn University’s Samuel Ginn College of Engineering and the College of Business. Supported faculty will coordinate to achieve our proposed objectives in education, research, and recruiting. Success of the program will be measured in terms of objective metrics in student recruiting and technology transfer. Assessment will also be performed by external industrial advisory boards for each department.

Broader impacts We will also partner with the Auburn University Office of Technology transfer, the recently established Auburn University Research Park, and other industrial partners in order to engender economic development in the state of Alabama and beyond.Key words Computer Sciences/Information Technology, Engineering,

Materials Sciences, Wireless Technology

3 Project description

3.1 List of Participants

P. Agrawal Elect. & Comp. Eng., Auburn Univ.

Wireless Networking

S. Biaz Comp. Sci./Soft. Eng., Auburn Univ.

Wireless Communications

K. H. Chang Comp. Sci./Soft. Eng., Auburn Univ.

CSCW & software visualization

F. Dai Elect. & Comp. Eng., Auburn Univ.

Analog, mixed signal cct design

T. S. Denney Elect. & Comp. Eng., Auburn Univ.

Image proc., comp. vision

J. E. Gilbert Comp. Sci./Soft. Eng., Auburn Univ.

Human centered computing

A. S. Hodel Elect. & Comp. Eng., Auburn Univ.

Computation, control, autonomous vehicles

R. Jaeger Elect. & Comp. Eng., Auburn Univ.

VLSI Devices

P. Lall Mechanical Eng., Auburn Univ.

Sensor integration & wireless packaging

A. S. Lim Comp. Sci./Soft. Eng., Auburn Univ.

Wireless networks & sensor & pervasive networking

X. Ma Elect. & Comp. Eng., Auburn Univ.

Wireless Communications

R. Ramadoss Elect. & Comp. Eng., Auburn Univ.

Antennas & MEMS

T. A. Roppel Elect. & Comp. Eng., Auburn Univ.

Neural nets, software radios & sensors

C. D. Seals Comp. & Soft. Eng., Auburn Univ.

End user programming & human computer inter-action

A. E. Smith Indust. Systems Eng. system optimizationP. M. Swamidass Thomas Walter Center

for Technology Management

Business & technology commercialization

B. Tatarchuk Chemical. Eng., Auburn Univ.

Batteries, fuel cells

J. K. Tugnait Elect. & Comp. Eng., Auburn Univ.

Wireless signal processing

S. M. Wentworth Elect. & Comp. Eng., Auburn Univ.

Microelectronics, passive wireless communication

C.-W. Wu Elect. & Comp. Eng., Auburn Univ.

Secure wireless communication

3.2 Vision, Goals, and Thematic BasisThe last decade has seen an explosion of interest and development in the field of wireless technology. In its most general definition, wireless technology requires an integration of numerous technologies including and going well beyond mere radio-frequency (RF) engineering. Further, the rapid pace of market development in wireless technology requires that industry be able to rapidly respond to the demands and competition of the marketplace. We observe that the traditional model for PhD education does not prepare graduates for this environment: a student’s research groups and advisory committee are typically limited to individuals working in a common field of study that is fairly narrow in scope. In the context of the IGERT program, the integrative property of wireless technology and research requires an administrative change in the way research is performed. That is, researchers who often work independently of one another must be brought together in order to foster synergistic, multi-disciplinary research programs that allow them each to build on one another’s strengths. The rapidly changing market associated with market technology requires a curricular change so that future researchers in wireless technology will be aware not only of the technology issues in their chosen areas of expertise, but will also be aware of how those technology issues fit into the larger context of wireless technology, including but not limited to power and power electronics, microelectronics, packaging and reliability, MEMS devices, networking and network security, support infrastructure for manufacturing and use of new products, manufacturability, business model concerns, and sustainability (environmental concerns).

The foci of this IGERT proposal are (1) to modify the mentoring and curriculum of PhD students in order to foster innovation skills, and (2) to modify the practice of research to give increased

multidisciplinary research opportunities. The research field of wireless technology acts as an integrating umbrella that unites diverse researchers into a cooperative unit. We believe that the IGERT program to be developed within this proposed effort can be exported to other institutions who wish to develop a unified multidisciplinary research program that builds upon their local strengths, not necessarily involving wireless technology. That is, we propose a model for research and graduate education in which wireless technology provides the vehicle by which desired research and educational goals may be met.

Why Wireless Technology? We select wireless technology as the unifying research theme in this proposal for three reasons: (1) existing program strengths at Auburn University, (2) the multidisciplinary nature of the technology, and (3) the requirement for rapid innovation. We discuss each of these reasons in more detail as follows. First, Auburn University has developed a strong wireless program in both undergraduate degrees and in graduate research. While Auburn’s undergraduate wireless program is formally based in two departments (the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, CSSE; and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, ECE), research efforts related to wireless technology include both CSSE and ECE and three additional departments (Chemical Engineering, Industrial and Systems Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering). Ongoing (uncoordinated) research efforts exist in these five departments and in four centers of excellence ( the Wireless Engineering Research and Education Center, WEREC; the Alabama Microelectronics Science and Technology Center, AMSTC; the Center for Advanced Vehicle Electronics, CAVE; and the Auburn Center for Microfibrous Materials Manufacturing, ACMMM) include portable/replenishable power supplies, physical packaging and reliability, microelectronics and power electronics, MEMS devices, local and reconfigurable networking, human-machine interfacing, network security, remotely piloted vehicles and (semi-)autonomous air and ground vehicles. These independent research units form a strong base from which to build a unified multidisciplinary experience for our graduate students and researchers. The second reason we select wireless technology as our research theme is similar: wireless technology is an inherently integrating research field, since development and deployment of any wireless technology requires a holistic treatment of all of the issues raised above if a system

is to be suitable and successful in practice. Finally, our third reason to select wireless technology is the additional requirements that commercial success in wireless technology requires rapid innovation. Consider the block diagram presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Integrated view of wireless technology in society

As enabling technologies and business models develop into new ideas, these wireless technologies lead to new products that spread into innumerable segments of society. In turn, as these products are used and integrated into life, new needs and demands for wireless technologies are recognized, leading to the development of new enabling technologies, often in integration with non-engineering fields of expertise. Whereas a design process only requires engineers to respond to a problem statement with a solution and the associated critical evaluation and analysis, innovation requires engineers to be aware of the larger context surrounding design possibilities, to anticipate market needs, and to work in a coordinated fashion with researchers of other fields to quickly

• identify technology gaps • to subsequently propose solutions to fill those gaps • evaluate these solutions in terms of practical requirements of all

related engineering, business and manufacturing concerns.

Because of these concerns, researchers need to be capable of working in an integrated group of individuals from multiple disciplines as well as with manufacturing, business, and public policy sectors in order to rapidly develop useful products with maximal useful product life and reduced negative impacts on society (environment, legal and societal developments, etc.).

3.3 Major Research EffortsWe discuss in this subsection the existing and planned research activities in wireless technology related to this IGERT proposal. For the research effort in this proposal, we focus our multi-disciplinary team on the emerging field of human-machine collaboration. The majority of current wireless communication applications are for man/man communication (cell phone networks) or machine/machine communication (e.g. IEEE 802.11x). We are now experiencing the development of truly human-like robots and other systems that assist Man in his environment (e.g. distributed sensor networks). Systems of the future will involve many humans interacting with networks of machines having various levels of self-autonomy (see IEEE IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (ROMAN) - entering its 14th year), and the interactions will take place over wireless technologies. The unique, time-varying and nonlinear nature of Man’s dynamics and his interaction with machines present special problems for wireless sensing, communication and control systems. The challenges include reliability, fault-tolerance, fault-recovery, resource allocation, portability, etc.

The discipline-specific research foci related to human-machine collaboration are as follows.

3.3.1 Wireless communications research

Advances in wireless research and development have to cope with formidable challenges that include variability in bandwidth, propagation channels, mobility, and quality of service constraints [3]. Modeling temporal channel variations and coping with time and frequency fading are important and challenging tasks in mobile wireless communications [1]. Channel modeling and use of multi-antenna designs to boost transmission rate and combat fading, will be studied. The tradeoff among transmission rate, performance, and complexity are also considered[15, 16, 14].

Additional research efforts focus on the design and/or adaptation of network protocols for heterogeneous (wired-wireless) environments. Specifically, network performance can dramatically be improved over heterogeneous environments if the network protocol is endowed with a genuine end-to-end technique to distinguish congestion losses from wireless losses. Currently, we are investigating a technique to“de-randomize" [2] congestion losses in order to distinguish with high accuracy congestion losses from wireless losses, and to build a congestion measure that opens the door to an efficient stable congestion control algorithm for high bandwidth delay networks.

Mobility management in wireless networks is another important topic of research. A comparison of mobility management schemes for 3G (third generation) wireless networks is given in [19].

3.3.2 Power

Any mobile wireless technology platform will require some local power source. Our chemical engineering department is actively investigating heterogeneous reactive systems: catalysts & catalysis; electrochemical systems & electrode materials; sorption and sorbent materials; battery, fuel cell and device electrodes; hybrid electrical and electrochemical power systems; on-demand fuel reforming/processing for fuel cell applications Portable power: battery technology, fuel cells; battery charging/decharging. This work is being performed in part at the Auburn Center for Microfibrous Materials Manufacturing. The center uses high speed, wet-lay paper-making processes to manufacture low cost, high performance, 3-D microfibrous materials and structures specifically designed for dramatically increasing physical rate phenomena [18].

3.3.3 Packaging

Miniaturization of micro-devices and increased emphasis on integration of sensors into systems for human-machine interaction necessitates the development of fine-pitch, ultra-reliable packaging technologies. Micro-device packaging will enable the physical manifestation of the sensor integration with wireless protocols. International Roadmap for Semiconductors [2004] indicates that package pin-counts in handheld applications are expected to increase to 180 – 800 in 2009 from 112 – 408 at present. Roadmap emphasizes mechanical design and reliability challenges with increased miniaturization, smaller length scales, packaging technology progression in structures including, stacked chips, embedded components, low-k dielectrics, lead-free solders, and

flexible organic substrates. Greater integration of electronics in smaller form factors requires a fundamental understanding of packaging material constitutive behavior and development of new materials which optimize reliability and minimize adverse side-effects [9]. Further, conventional packaging architectures are two-dimensional and limited in their maximization of packaging density. Development of three-dimensional architectures and innovative interconnects will enable greater sensor integration while making human-machine assistive technologies pervasive.

3.3.4 Microelectronics and Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC)

Silicon-Germanium (SiGe) technology [4] is the driving force behind the explosion in low-cost, lightweight, personal communication devices like digital wireless handsets, as well as other entertainment and information technology gadgets like digital set-top boxes, Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS), automobile collision avoidance systems, and personal digital assistants. SiGe extends the life of wireless phone batteries, and allows smaller and more durable communication devices. Products combining the capabilities of cellular phones, global positioning systems, and internet access in one package, are being designed using SiGe technology. SiGe has attracted increasing attention in RFIC designs due to its superior performance such as high speed, good linearity, low power consumption, low noise, high-Q for passive components and good on-chip isolation. Analog and digital IC designs remain as the hottest spots in the job market. The demand for experienced IC designers remains very strong. This project will provide an opportunity to train a qualified graduate student in high-speed IC designs.

3.3.5 Wireless sensors

(Ma) Wireless sensor networks are capable of revolutionizing the way humans perceive and interact with the physical environment. When properly deployed, these sensors have the ability to measure aspects and identities of the physical environment with unprecedented scale and precision, which allows critical decisions to be made [5, 21]. The features of wireless channels call for novel signal processing algorithms to build reliable wireless network links, and guarantee high rates along with high network performance [17]. Research will be conducted to use biomimetic adaptive reception techniques to minimize audio and/or RF interference experienced, for example, when hearing aid users attempt to use cell phones. Adaptive reception techniques,

using neural-network enhanced digital signal processing in the areas of wireless sensor networks, sensor fusion, and software-defined radio, will be researched.

(Lim) Distributed sensor software environment and tools will be developed that will enable software components to be composed and reconfigured in real-time based on the task and quality of service requirements of the application [11]. Distributed services also provide the capabilities to discover sensor and software resources and services, react to changes in the sensor network configuration, dynamically adapt to mobility and recover from failure and degradation [10]. The distributed sensor software design exploits lightweight mechanisms that conserve energy through multi-level power-awareness, in-network processing and data aggregation techniques.

Additional research is ongoing to integrate inputs from multiple sensor types (vision, acoustic, olfactory/chemical, etc.) to generate a machine-level "world view" that is more complete than can be obtained by any one sensor type alone. Past work has included infrared / millimeter-wave radar fusion, olfactory arrays, and rotational orientation using optical images processed with neural networks. An ongoing related study at a more fundamental (less applied) level involves chemical / optical arrays using novel ion-channel gating methods. Currently three graduate students (1 PhD, 2 MS) and four undergraduate researchers are developing a human-robotic interaction laboratory infrastructure under the supervision of faculty from electrical engineering and computer science. The goal is to develop a testbed encompassing software and hardware to enable studies of real-time interaction among mobile robots, stationary robots, and humans to accomplish a collaborative task such as assembly of a structure.

3.3.6 MEMS

MEMS technology aims to integrate microelectronics with the actuation, sensing, and control capabilities of micro-sensors and micro-actuators. These devices are already being examined and developed for numerous applications in our AMSTC and CAVE centers. We will further pursue the use of MEMS devices for sensing and communication in a human-machine collaboration environment.

3.3.7 HCI and Spoken Language Research

Further research will focus on the use of spoken language systems applied to human-machine interaction with robots, vehicles and other devices. There has been a wealth of research effort focused on

algorithm development, computational architectures, and interface design with a steady decrease in word error rates of about 10% per year. Most speech recognition applications, however, are evaluated in controlled environments with the desired speaker in close proximity to a microphone. It is well known that the performance of most recognition algorithms is severely degraded with even modest amounts of background noise. Even with beam-forming microphone arrays, speech recognition accuracy is compromised in open, potentially noisy environments. At present, the most widely used speech recognition algorithms are based on the familiar hidden Markov models (HMM), in which words are constructed from a sequence of states.

Although hidden Markov models have been successful in performing speech recognition, there is still much work to be done. In order for human-machine spoken interaction to be successful, speech recognition accuracy must be more robust and near human accuracy. We currently address this problem through distributed listening, a decentralized approach to speech recognition. [6].

3.3.8 Robotics, control, and computer vision

The IGERT program will include research projects that integrate a broad spectrum of studies to tackle man/machine system problems. Current activities at Auburn University include: robot control [7], control systems over communication networks [13], machine vision and optical flow [8], and remote/autonomous control of ground vehicles and aerial vehicles. IGERT-supported cross-disciplinary research teams will integrate wireless technologies (sensors, communication, control) to tackle man/machine applications such as virtual and augmented tele-presence environments, robotic therapy and medical/surgical applications, socially interactive robots, collaborative robotics, and communication, motion, task planning and coordination in human-robot teams

3.4 Education and TrainingWireless technology is inherently integrative in the sense that the development of wireless and related technologies requires designers to interact with people outside of their personal areas of expertise. Further, because wireless technologies quickly become outdated, this field of study also requires multidisciplinary design teams to be capable of rapid innovation that takes into account constraints from all involved engineering disciplines, manufacturing and reliability issues, support infrastructure and business models. We observe that the

traditional model for PhD education does not prepare graduates for this environment: a student’s research groups and advisory committee are typically limited to individuals working in a common field of study that is typically narrow in scope. We therefore propose the development of an interdisciplinary research and educational program based on wireless technology that will modify mentoring and curriculum of PhD students to foster innovation skills in a multidisciplinary engineering environment. While the curriculum model presented here is design for implementation at Auburn University, the model is general enough to be adapted to other universities such that the local strengths of each institution are emphasized.

3.4.1 Multidisciplinary graduate curriculum development

The proposed educational component will make use of the breadth requirement that is a part of all PhD programs among our participants. We shall develop a coordinated approach to ensure students have the capability to work and communicate with individuals outside of their area of expertise that are related to the wireless technology theme of the proposal. The curriculum model will be developed by a multidisciplinary curriculum committee that will develop courses that will fit into one of two general venues, to be determined by a multidisciplinary curriculum committee (MCC): Ongoing seminar/workshop A new 1-credit hour course, to be

repeated each semester for all students in the program, will bring researchers and students together with representatives from the Auburn Office of Technology Transfer and the Thomas Walter Center for Technology Management to address:

• Current topics in research and society related to wireless technology.

• Ongoing innovation projects that attempt to develop new products and/or services.

• Themes and issues not appropriate for a full semester engineering course.

This course will serve as a forum for large and small group break-out discussions and will be evaluated in terms of student activity with students outside of their own area of expertise and in terms of generated intellectual property and business teaming arrangements.

Graduate level interdisciplinary courses the MCC will coordinate with all member departments to develop a set of semester courses

that students in this IGERT program will be able to take in order to meet the multidisciplinary and rapid-innovation goals set forth in this proposal. Assessment of the success of these courses will be made regularly by the committee and in tandem with assessment of the ongoing seminar/workshop course.

Several investigators and senior personnel involved in this proposal have in excess of a decade of service on their departmental curriculum committee(s) and have been involved in the development of multidisciplinary courses within their own department [20]. The specific content of these courses will be selected by the MCC to enable student understanding of general concepts in wireless communication theory, RFIC design and microelectronics manufacturing, novel materials and mechanical structures, packaging and reliability, sensors and wireless sensor networks, MEMS devices for actuation, sensing, and/or communication, computer vision, (remote) control, and human-machine interface software. Additional topics to be addressed are technology commercialization (patents, licensing), disclosures and intellectual property, ethics and teaming practices, business plan, project management, and the mentoring of less experienced engineers. Topics deemed appropriate for a full semester course will be offered as college-wide courses (as opposed to courses offered by an individual department). Topics not given their own course will be covered in rotation in the 1-credit hour seminar/workshop course. Courses will be instituted on a rapid time-table, offering new semester courses as special topics courses until they can be made a formal part of the curriculum model in the College of Engineering.

These efforts will be coordinated with the Auburn University Office of Technology Transfer and the Thomas Walter Center for Technology Management (see §).

3.4.2 Recruiting/minorities

. The recruiting of U. S. citizens and underrepresented minorities into our IGERT PhD student program is a central focus of this proposal. Enrollment figures in the five participating departments for the spring semester of 2005 are shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Undergraduate and graduate enrollment in Spring semester 2005 for the five departments participating in this IGERT proposal. These figures are used as a baseline for the goals and assessment of recruiting of U. S. citizens and underrepresented minorities in this

IGERT proposal.Table not in RTF file.

These figures show that, at the undergraduate level, U. S. citizens form nearly the entire student body in the departments examined. However, at the PhD level, this situation is reversed: nonresident aliens comprise nearly three fourths of the PhD population of our five departments (180 nonresident alien PhD students out of 247 total PhD students). Within this project, we propose to boost the enrollment in each category (U. S. citizens and underrepresented minorities) by 25% within the first two years of the program (, to reach a total of 83 US citizens, including 16 underrepresented minority students)., During the five year life of this IGERT proposal and we propose to double the number of PhD students in each category ( to reach a total of 132 US citizens including 26 underrepresented minority students). during the five year life of this IGERT proposal. The meansIn order to achieve this goal will involve participating faculty will build building upon existing recruiting efforts being performed individually in some departments. For example, the Computer Science and Software Engineering (CSSE) department has the largest collection cohort of African-American computer science graduate students in the country (10 Ph.D. and 6 Masters). We have established a recruitment relationship with HBCUs with the area (, including Tuskegee University, Spelman College, South Carolina State University, and others). This work in CSSSE is supported in part by NSF award number 0420485. See also [12].

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3.4.3 K-12 outreach

Auburn University has many existing programs for K-12 outreach that can easily provide direct support to the research and educational goals of this proposal. These activities include B.E.S.T. Robot Competition Auburn University serves as Southeast

US regional host for the BEST (Boosting Engineering Science and Technology) robot competition for middle and high school students, which serves as a recruiting tool to interest young students in technologies related to wireless technology in general and robotic vehicles in particular. These teams often involve students and teachers with limited experience in wireless technology, and so these competition seasons provide a venue for our IGERT students and faculty to act as mentors to BEST teams in the region.

E-day open house Engineering day (E-day) is an open house held annually on the campus of Auburn University in which individual departments provide displays and tours designed to encourage students to consider engineering as a career. One department (ECE)

currently holds an annual student competition through the student professional society to develop student-led displays so that current students can encourage the next generation to consider engineering. These activities can be expanded to encourage IGERT graduate students to similarly develop practical demonstrations that capture the attention and vision of visiting students.

Middle and high school experiences Supported by NSF, a faculty member in Industrial and Systems Engineering obtained Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) Supplements. Middle school teachers ( of science and mathematics from different regional schools) joined the research team for the summer. sThey were exposed to current research projects. As a consequence, and AU faculty and students developed a keen interest in working directly with their young students. The teachers developed classroom modules including hands on labs that were deployed to the classroom in 2003 and 2004 . The schools involved were local public schools that serve a great range of economic and ethnic backgrounds, and are approximately 33% African American with approximately 30% low income families. In addition to these existing activities, WEREC plans to visit high

schools in the surrounding counties (Lee, Macon, Chamber, Tallapoosa, and Montgomery) on an annual basis to encourage students to consider science and engineering careers. This plan has been discussed with the College of Engineering Dean’s Office independently from this proposal. The impact will be far reaching in attracting quality students into these areas. WEREC will provide the technical assistance in preparing the presentation and demonstration materials for the visits. In addition, the annual Engineering-Day activities attract about 2000 high school students from Alabama and Georgia to our campus. WEREC will actively participate in these activities.

This IGERT proposal will build upon these existing approaches for recruiting and apply them specifically to build interest and participation in the research programs discussed in this proposal. For example, students participating in the seminar/workshop course may be directed to make presentations to area middle and high schools

3.5 Management, Assessment, and Institutional Commitment

3.5.1 Management

The proposed IGERT activities outlined in this proposal involve four interconnecting activities: research, graduate student education, U. S. citizen and minority recruiting, and K-12 and ugrad undergraduate outreach. The success of each of these activities must be achieved with direct faculty participation and with clearly defined goals and timetables. A committee comprising the PI and at least one representative from each participating department will meet regularly to establish and review goals and progress. (For the purposes of this proposal, evaluation activity of this committee does not comprise formal assessment of project objectives and goals.) As appropriate, formal project management procedures (milestones, Gantt charts, earned value analysis) will be used to monitor program progress toward stated goals. All IGERT supported faculty will be involved in identification and recruiting of potential IGERT fellows.

3.5.2 Assessment

Formal assessment of IGERT program progress will be accomplished by three vehicles: (1) the Industrial Advisory Board (IAB) of each participating department will conduct a semi-annual review of IGERT program activity and provide feedback to IGERT faculty for program adjustments during the life of the IGERT effort’ (2) an anonymous web-based discussion forum will be provided for IGERT fellows (PhD students) to give their feedback on IGERT activity and progress; and (3) objective measures of technology transfer progress will be evaluated such as technical disclosures, technology licenses or research contracts developed out of IGERT activity.

3.5.3 Institutional Commitment

The Samuel Ginn College of Engineering has recently established the Wireless Engineering Research and Education Center (WEREC). New curricula have been developed for both undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Highly talented new faculty members have been and continue to be recruited, while teaching and research laboratories are being established. An Industrial Advisory Board representing most key industrial players has also been established. It is the College’s vision to bring Wireless and Information Technology research and education

programs at Auburn University to a national prominent status. It should be noted that the initial efforts have been mainly on the establishment of the undergraduate program and faculty recruitment. Resources for a graduate program are relatively limited. The IGERT funding will help accelerate the graduate program.

Construction of a new 200,000 square-foot, $50M building on the engineering campus of Auburn University has already begun. This building will house the WEREC center, the CSSE Department and the AMSTC. The building is expected to be completed in 2006. Facilities of the AMSTC center will develop prototype VLSI devices (ASICS, sensors, MEMS, etc.) that capture the new ideas and algorithms researched and developed by IGERT fellows.

The IGERT Faculty team of this proposal has versatility in representing interdisciplinary technical diversity as well as ethnic/gender diversity. There are Check [ ]IEEE Fellows on this team. The team consists of 2 African Americans and 4 women.

Thomas Walter Center

The Thomas Walter Center for Technology Management (TWC) offers opportunities for engineering and business students to work as interns to commercialize faculty inventions. The office ofvice Vice president President for research Research provided funds of $100k over past year to support 6 grad students (engineering)engineering graduate students. The College of Business MBA program additionally supports graduate business students in the project. Students solve scale and manufacturability issues, locate companies for licensing, business feasibility, etc.

The TWC will aid in the development of course materials regarding technology commercialization.

3.6 Other Resources and Connections Industrial relationships Auburn University has strong ties to industry, especially in the communications and wireless equipment industry. The WEREC enjoys strong support from an Industrial Advisory Board representing most key industrial players, including Verizon Wireless, Nortel Networks, Nokia, Vodafone, Cingular Wireless, Nokia Mobile Phones, Ericsson, Texas Instruments and Hewlett-Packard. The progress of the WEREC research and education activities are presented (including student presentations) to the board that meets twice a year. The board provides valuable feedback to the students and faculty. The

board also presents traineeship and employment opportunities to Auburn students. Thus, we expect IGERT fellows to enormously benefit from the first hand interactions with and internships at leading industries.

Vodafone-US Foundation Grant

This grant program will provide several scholarships towards undergraduate stipends in Wireless Engineering over a 4 year period (2003-07). Both Tuition and Full Scholarships will be awarded.

Educational funding

The CSSE Department is in its second year of hosting an NSF funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program in pervasive and mobile computing. This year the program received 48 outstanding applications from all over the country for 8 positions. The CSSE Department also has a Department of Education sponsored Graduate Assistantships for Areas of National Needs (GAANN) program for computer science. This program is in its second year and provides supports for four CSSE PhD students. Two of the fellowship recipients are underrepresented and female students.

The BellSouth Minority Engineering Program

(MEP) at Auburn has received funding from BellSouth Corporation. One of the missions of the program is to provide a venue to recruit into and retain in Auburn engineering graduate programs through various symposiums, invitations and visits, workshops, and mentoring groups. Auburn’s IGERT project will work closely with the MEP program to recruit students into the program.

3.7 Recent Traineeship Experience and Results from Prior NSF SupportNSF-supported recruiting efforts and achievements are discussion discussed in §3.4.2. Additionally, one of our personnel (Seals) was an IGERT supported student during her PhD program.

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