Sarah A. Rajala - US grants

Image Processing equipment will be provided for researchers at North Carolina State University in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. This equipment is provided under the Instrumentation Grants for Research in computer and Information Science and Engineering program. The Research for which the equipment is to be used will be in the area(s) (1) Coding of single frame images for transmission and storage (2) Coding of Sequential frame imagery for transmission over low bandwidth channels (3) Image restoration and reconstruction from incomplete and partial information (4) Reconstruction of several biomedical imaging modalities, and (5) Three-dimensional object recognition and description from two- dimensional images.

North Carolina State University is developing a digital signal processing laboratory facility to form the nucleus of a state- of-the-art, real-time, real-data laboratory which allows students actual system design and implementation experience and complements the existing strengths in theory and simulation. It is comprised of 15 NeXTstations and one NeXTdimension color station in a local area network with one NeXTcube server as the central controller. The students use the laboratory to perform supervised experiments which demonstrate fundamental concepts (e.g. analog-to-digital conversion, spectrum analysis, aliasing, convolution, sampling) and for their design projects. Typical design projects include: building a modem for a digital PSK system; building a spectrum analyzer; or designing a compression and storage system for images and/or speech.

9312549 Abbott This three-year continuing award is under the "Self-Sufficient Partnership for Research" Program. It supports basic research to augment the research agenda of North Carolina State University's Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Communications and Signal Processing. The Center continues to meet the renewal criteria requirements of the I/UCRC Program. Funding for a three-year continuing award for an evaluator to study the industry/university interaction occurring in the Center is also provided. The U.S. Army (AMSEL) is providing funding to augment ongoing research projects and to obtain a membership in the Center. Additional funding is provided by the U.S. Department of Energy's Environmental Restoration and Waste Management Office to obtain a non-voting membership in the Center. The Program Manager recommends North Carolina State University be: awarded $58,000 for the first year of a three-year continuing award (includes $8,000 for an evaluator); $50,000 for one year with funds provided by the U.S. Army (AMSEL); and $10,000 for one year with funds provided by the U.S. Department of Energy. Near the end of each 12-month period, the Program Manager and/or the Division Director of the Engineering Education Centers Division will review the progress of the Center on a number of renewal criteria requirements, including the following: 1) the extent to which university/industry interaction is developing; 2) the extent to which the support base is developing; and 3) the extent to which a robust research program is developing. If the review is satisfactory, the Program Manager will recommend support for the next period of this continuing award.

9418533 Rajala The North Carolina State University Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Advanced Computing and Communication is becoming a multi-university Center with the addition of a research site at Duke University. Four companies are becoming part of the Center inconjunction with Duke University becoming a research site. The research agenda of the new multi-site Center will address high- speed networking, reliable and fault-tolerant systems, digital communication systems, distributed systems, and algorithms and digital image processing algorithms. The researchers are well qualified to perform the Center's research program. The Center is being co-funded with Dr. Yechelzkel Zalcstein in the Division of Computer and Computation Research. The Program Manager recommends North Carolina State University be awarded $55,000 for the first year of a five-year continuing award. This includes $5,000 for an evaluator for the Center. Funding for the second year is to be at the same level amount. Funding for years three through five will be at $30,000 per year (including $5,000 for an evaluator.) Near the end of each 12-month period the Program Manager and/or the Division Director of the Engineering Education Center Division will review the progress of the Center on a number of renewal criteria requirements, including the following: 1) the extent to which the industry/university interaction is developing; 2) the extent to which the support base is developing; and 3) the extent to which a robust research program is developing. If the review is satisfactory, the Program Manager will recommend support for the next period of this continuing award.

9417467 Rajala This is a "TIE" project on the topic of "Realizability of Potential of Multiuser Detection," to be conducted by the Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Communications and Signal Processing at North Carolina State University and the Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Wireless Information Networks at Rutgers University. The proposed activity is to conduct research to increase realizability and capacity of CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access) systems. The proposed project will concentrate on the ability of multiuser detectors to combat multipath fading present in the actual mobile environment. This project is being cost shared with the Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Wireless Information Networks at the Rutgers University. The Program Director recommends the North Carolina State University be awarded $50,000 for 24 months for this "TIE" project with Rutgers University.

The program will provide 90 scholarships in engineering, mathematics, and computer science over a two-year period to high-achieving undergraduate and graduate students who have demonstrated financial need. The scholarships should allow the university to make notable impact on the overall success of our student to complete the degree. These need-based scholarships are comparable to the engineering college's more lucrative merit-based awards.

At the undergraduate level, we will target upper division junior and senior scholars, and those who transfer into our engineering and mathematics programs at this level. At the graduate level, the need-based awards will supplement assistantship offers made to outstanding students. This significant enhancement to our recruitment package will allow us to become more competitive in attracting the best and brightest U.S. citizens into our graduate program.

Our major objective in this project is to reduce the time to degree completion of high-achieving engineering, computer science, and mathematics scholars. We will involve scholarship recipients in program activities that will help them to improve interpersonal skills, serve as mentors to other students, and reduce or remove the need to work off-campus during the academic year.

In 1999, North Carolina State University (NC State) ranked among the nation's leading universities in the number of baccalaureate degrees in engineering and computer science awarded to women. Currently, women comprise about 20% of NC State's undergraduate engineering enrollment of 5,097. More than 700 minority students are enrolled in the undergraduate engineering and computer science program. Programmatic efforts responsible for NC State's success begin with elementary and middle school visits designed to encourage children to view mathematics and science as fun disciplines for which they have ability. These visits continue through high school with more overt recruiting. A weeklong campus residential program exposes high school students to engineering and computer sciences. Summer and early freshman year experiences are offered to bridge high school to college and to foster student acclimation and maturation. Undergraduates are enrolled in a student mentoring program and, as upperclassmen, become eligible to participate in research activities.

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)

This engineering education award to Mississippi State University will develop innovative new graduate and undergraduate degree programs in engineering that are customized to the needs and strengths of veterans. A particular emphasis will be including research experiences and industrial internships within the degree program. The results will also be presented on the web, at technical conferences and published in professional journals. The project is expected to assist the transition of veterans to civilian life and to enhance the number of students who complete engineering degrees and are ready to fill engineering jobs or start new high tech businesses.

This engineering education research project seeks to establish a recruiting and retention program for veterans at Mississippi State University in partnership with the Mississippi College for Women. The research project, if successful, will create a portable, modular set of courses to transition veterans to college engineering programs and collect data on their effectiveness. A key element of this project is integrating research on learning preferences into the development of the transition modules. The broader significance and importance of this project will be to develop tested modules which other institutions and organizations can use to transition military veterans to college degree programs. The research effort partners with veterans organizations and professional associations to adopt best practices in recruiting under-represented students. The discoveries that may result from the modular courses to transition students will have broad applicability across organizations that deal with military veterans. This research project will enhance the number of students who complete engineering degrees and are ready to fill engineering jobs or start new high tech businesses.

Recognizing that engineering and computer science are making concerted efforts to increase the diversity of students in their academic programs and in the workforce, this multi-institutional research team proposes a two-pronged approach: (1) To provide scholarships to a diverse population of low-income academically talented students with financial need; and (2) to adapt, implement, and test a student experience model designed to increase the success of students in those fields. The primary disciplinary foci are Electrical, Computer, and Software Engineering (ECSE) with the inclusion of cyber-security at Iowa State University (ISU); Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) and Kirkwood Community College (KCC). The project plans to award scholarships to 272 students (100 unique scholars at Iowa State University; 90 unique scholars at Des Moines Area Community College; and 82 unique scholars at Kirkwood Community College.

The student experience model includes a set of well-established evidence-based practices that form an ecosystem of academic and co-curricular supports for students and is designed to foster retention, transfer, and graduation in STEM. The research team will conduct two research studies of this ecosystem of supports. The qualitative phenomenological study is designed to investigate and understand the development and maintenance of professional/career identity. The quantitative comparison study is designed to investigate the influence of individual motivation and the characteristics of the academic and social environments of ECSE on student success, retention, transfer, and degree attainment.

Electrical and computer engineering (ECE) technologies have evolved from simple electronics and computing devices and tools to complex systems that profoundly change the world we live in. Designing these complex systems requires not only technical knowledge and skills but also new ways of thinking and the development of social, professional and ethical responsibility. Through the RIDE project, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University is involving students, faculty, engineers and others in collaborative, inquiry-driven processes to collectively and systematically transform the department and the engineers it trains. Students are not only learning about fundamental ECE technologies in core courses during their sophomore and junior years (middle years), but also the socio-technical context to go beyond the hardware and software toward responsible development. Students are expanding their analysis and design skills to create solutions that work for individuals and society. To accomplish these goals, faculty are reshaping core curricula using evidence-based pedagogical strategies and are working together to enhance their understanding and integration of these strategies in courses. This work is being done through new structures for collaboration and facilitated through departmental change processes. The project is expected to advance scholarly teaching and education research department-wide; serve as a model for ECE, computing and engineering departments across the country; enhance the capacity to conduct engineering education research at Iowa State; develop a diverse, socio-technical-minded ECE workforce; and broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in ECE, especially women, through inclusive learning experiences.

Through this project, the ECE department is undergoing a transformation to a more agile, less traditional organization able to respond to industry and society needs and sustain innovations. This transformation is being driven by the project's novel cross-functional, collaborative instructional model for course design and professional formation, called X-teams. X-teams are reshaping the core technical ECE curricula in the middle years through pedagogical approaches that (a) promote design thinking, systems thinking, professional skills such as leadership, and inclusion; (b) contextualize course concepts; and (c) stimulate creative, socio-technical-minded development of ECE technologies for future smart systems. X-teams are also serving as change agents for the rest of the department through communities of practice referred to as Y-circles. Y-circles, comprised of X-team members, faculty, staff, and undergraduate and graduate students in the department, are contributing to an organizational culture that fosters and sustains innovations in engineering education through an agile framework that blends several documented change theories, including collaborative transformation, crucial conversations, and essential tension. Y-circles are engaging in a process of discovery and inquiry to bridge the engineering education research-to-practice gap. Research studies are being conducted to answer questions to understand (1) how educators involved in X-teams use design thinking to create new pedagogical solutions; (2) how professional formation pedagogy in the middle years affects student professional ECE identity development as design thinkers; (3) how ECE students overcome barriers, make choices, and persist along their educational and career paths in the middle years; and (4) the effects of department structures, policies, and procedures on faculty attitudes, motivation and actions. These studies are informing and improving project activities, advancing knowledge, and supporting adaptation by others.