Gisele Ragusa, Ph.D. - US grants

Engineering - Chemical (53)

Chemical Engineering education is facing a growing disconnect between a curriculum focused primarily on unit operations and faculty research that has increasingly emphasized nano- and bio-technology. This discrepancy has been recognized by an NSF-sponsored Frontiers in Chemical Engineering Education initiative, recommending a move from the macroscopic, unit-operations educational approach to one in which teaching is done from the molecular point of view in a bottom-up fashion. The challenge, however, is to continue to serve the more conventional chemical and petroleum industries while instituting this change. This project team is developing a two-pronged approach of utilizing (1) a recently-created nanotechnology course-work emphasis within the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, and (2) vertically- and horizontally-integrated degree projects. The degree projects consist of emphasis-specific laboratory modules in successive Chemical Engineering courses that build upon a student's growing knowledge in their chosen emphasis, while at the same time relate the degree project to traditional areas of Chemical Engineering. Students in the Nanotechnology Emphasis, for example, synthesize nanoparticles in the Mass Balance course, examine nanoparticle interactions in Thermodynamics, fractionate nanoparticles in Separations, investigate nanoparticle catalysts in Kinetics, and examine the thermal conductivity of nanocolloids in Heat Transfer, all culminating with an independent research project in the senior year. A comprehensive assessment strategy, including an observation rubric, an efficacy scale, and a success scale, allows evaluation of how the merger of traditional Chemical Engineering subjects with advanced nanotechnology and biotechnology topics may better prepare students for today's increasingly molecular-oriented workplace.

This exploratory project will expose leading K-12 students to the same educational materials and activities that have dramatically improved the retention of freshman in engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). This approach, which has yielded 98% retention rate in engineering freshman classes at USC, includes well-prepared lectures by well-known practicing engineers in various fields of engineering, such as the construction industry, and wireless telephones, as well as extra-curricular activities such as engineers without borders. All the existing materials and activities will be scaled up from about 400 engineering freshman to a larger number of K-12 students using the web resources of the Distance Educational Network of the Viterbi School of Engineering, the largest e-learning program in the Nation. The proposed research will build an infrastructure called the ?Inner City Civil and Environmental Engineering Academy? (ICCEEA), which combines five existing infrastructures to form an interdisciplinary engineering academy for urban middle and high school students and their teachers. The focus of the academy will be STEM secondary education and teacher professional development with an emphasis on increasing students? science literacy. In this exploratory phase, this research will be limited to a particular field of engineering, such as civil and environmental engineering, and to a few high-schools which have previously collaborated with the USC Rosier School of Education. The strengths and weaknesses of the proposed approach will be documented in detail so that they can be available to other engineering schools and high-schools.

The percentage of students studying engineering in the U.S. is far lower than many of our economic competitors, and increasing the visibility and attraction of engineering to high school students is vital to increasing participation in engineering. This research will utilize the educational materials and extra-curriculum activities that have proven successful in retaining freshman in engineering and the scalable power of well-established e-learning distribution systems to reach K-12 students. This will help build a large-scale web-pipeline from high schools to engineering schools, and contribute to rebuilding the size and leadership of the engineering workforce in California and the Nation.

This pedagogical qorkflow research project will create a novel hybrid-workflow framework that supports efficient assessment of student learning through interactive generation and execution of various assessment workflows. Unlike in many existing workflow systems, the task of student assessment includes steps that cannot be fully automated, such as obtaining grade, background and student survey information. The system will provide assistance in executing and integrating the results of the manual steps. Research steps will include (a) knowledge-based modeling of computational and non-computational assessment tools as workflow components; (b) interactive generation of assessment workflows while propagating and combining constraints from both computational and non-computational components; and (c) interactive execution of hybrid workflows that incorporates new constraints that are inferred from execution of non-computational components. Evaluations will focus on the effects of Pedagogical Workflow technology on learning assessment performance, especially the assessment of pedagogical discourse in undergraduate engineering courses.

Educational technology to support online learning is now centrally supported by many colleges and universities. The perceived mandate to use technology for instruction, in addition to the enormous amount of information available for consumption on the Web, places a considerable burden on instructors who must learn to integrate appropriate student practices and learning assessment via the new media. Pedagogical workflows will allow instructors with little or no training in educational assessment to perform large-scale complex diagnosis and assessment of student learning in ongoing lessons. Facilitating the integration of personal student information into assessment will point to directions to improve STEM participation, learning, and retention. The finding will provide benefits to society by sharing results and technology with instructors and educational experts. The proposed work also has the potential to lead to a new research field on e-Learning workflows, similar to the way in which workflow technology transformed e-Science research with e-Science workflows.

This award provides funding for a three year standard award to support a Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) in Engineering Site program at the University of Southern California (USC), entitled, "Societally Relevant Engineering Technologies-Research Experiences for Teachers (SRET-RET)", under the direction of Dr. Maja J. Mataric.

The vision of this RET in Engineering Program is to leverage the considerable resources of the USC to create long-term partnerships among world-renowned engineering researchers and K-12 teachers in Los Angeles inner-city schools. The six week SRET-RET summer program will bring knowledge of science, technology and engineering directly to middle and high school educators (10 teachers/year for 3 years) by involving them in mentored, discovery-based authentic learning and research experiences in state of the art engineering research facilities including the NSF Engineering Research Center for Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems (BMES). In addition to immersion in the research environment SRET-RET teachers will participate in engineering, technology, ethics, and pedagogy professional development workshops which will facilitate the synthesis and translation of their newly gained knowledge and skills into meaningful and rigorous K-12 classroom activities that sprark enthusiasm for science, technology, engineering and math, using Stigler's lesson study approach to processional development. The academic year follow-up component of the SRET-RET program is structured to sustain and elaborate on the accomplishments the teachers make during the summer and facilitate communication between the teachers and their K-12 colleagues as well as their university partners. The SRET-RET teachers will be role models and conduits of science, technology, and engineering, bridging the traditional gaps between university centers of research and 6-12th grade classrooms.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): We will develop and evaluate Virtual Sprouts: Web-Based Gardening Games is an interactive and simulated version of the First Lady's Organic Garden in a game-based environment that will target subjects from low income, minority populations in Los Angeles, including children ages 8 to 11, their parents, other family members, teachers and the community. Virtual Sprouts will serve as a highly engaging and innovative research education program to improve PreK-12 research career opportunities and the community's understanding of the health science advances in obesity and nutrition that are supported by NIH-funded clinical and basic research. Our program has the potential to revolutionize STEM education on obesity, promote healthy food choices and decrease obesity rates, especially in minority youth at high risk of obesity and related disorders. Broad dissemination of Virtual Sprouts will be achieved through our partners, including USC's NCRR-funded Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI), USC Family of Schools, and the California Science Center. Specific Aim 1: Develop a web-based, interactive Virtual Sprouts: Web-Based Gardening Games and web dissemination portal. The game content will build on our successful LA Sprouts gardening curriculum and will incorporate advisory committee feedback to optimize STEM content. The game interface will be grounded in experiential learning theory and developed using a participatory research approach with our target audiences. Specific Aim 2: Disseminate the Virtual Sprouts Web-Based Gardening Games. We will disseminate our game to audiences in three local settings: a) Public Schools: 100 teachers and 3,000 children in grades 3-5 in seven schools from the USC Family of Schools. Over 90% of students are from low-income, minority populations, and over half of teachers are African American or Latino. Our program will include teacher in-service professional development and classroom-based informal science education. b) Community Clinics: We will place kiosks in 3 safety net clinics to reach 83,000 patients, including 3,000 children aged 8-11 and their families from an underserved, low income and largely Latino (70%) population receiving public healthcare services. c) California Science Center: We will incorporate Virtual Sprouts into the Science Center's SuperKids Academy, an existing community outreach program of the Science Center focused on nutrition and obesity, to reach a targeted audience of 1.4 million annual visitors, of which over half are from minority populations and 200,000 of which are children aged 8-11. All of our dissemination partners have national collaborations and partnerships with peer organizations through which they will disseminate our program. Specific Aim 3: Evaluate the Virtual Web-Based Gardening Games. We will use a mixed design with both quantitative and qualitative approaches to evaluate the effectiveness of our education efforts. We will collect multiple diverse, formative and summative data sets related to our program features and goals to measure the impact of our program's educational content on the obesity research knowledge.

The investigators seek to explore the extent to which the quantity and quality of student participation in course discussion boards (a.k.a. online asynchronous discussions (OAD)) is associated with retention in or dropping out from undergraduate computer science and industrial engineering majors. This study represents a planning and pilot study using data from discussion board enhanced STEM courses at the University of Southern California. The ultimate goal of the investigators' intended future research will be to produce knowledge usable in making more effective use of this learning technology.

The methods include computational analysis of the discussion text, a survey questionnaire, and information gathered from the registrar's office. Machine learning/natural process learning techniques will be used to process the data. The investigators will use generalized linear modeling and Multivariate Analysis of Covariance techniques in their analysis. Additionally, the investigators seek to determine differences in participation by demographic characteristics and language/technical backgrounds.

Discussion boards are now commonplace in undergraduate STEM learning environments, yet a solid base of research on their use and on user behaviors does not exist. This research is intended to begin to fill that gap. And, given many instructional reforms depend upon them, it is vital that we understand these factors better in order to improve instruction and learning.

PI Name: Krishna Nayak
Institution Name: University of Southern California
Proposal Title: BE-LA: Body Engineering Los Angeles
Proposal ID: 1045595

This project will establish a new GK-12 program at USC that will develop graduate fellows majoring in engineering and related disciplines into well-rounded STEM leaders of tomorrow, while introducing cutting-edge body engineering research into urban Los Angeles middle school science classrooms. Graduate fellows will be provided with training and practice in education, communication, leadership, collaboration, and cultural sensitivity that enhances their doctoral training. Each graduate fellow will be paired with a middle school science teacher, and will serve as an in-class science resource throughout the school year. Fellows will develop and deliver original lesson plans incorporating their doctoral research and the research of their faculty advisors. Topics will include: non-invasive sensing and imaging, speech articulation, hand articulation, neuromuscular control, vision and recognition, cardiovascular mechanics, nutrition and metabolism, biological and bio-compatible materials, and human-machine interaction. The intellectual merit of this project includes 1) the research theme of body engineering, which is a strength of USC, and provides an engaging vehicle for demonstrating scientific and engineering principles and introducing university research into K-12 classrooms; and 2) the development and use of powerful pedagogical structures that will help graduate fellows communicate their research to middle school students.

The broader significance of this project includes 1) development of a cadre of graduate fellows that possess the communication, leadership, and collaboration skills, and cultural sensitivity required to become STEM leaders; and 2) development of skills and interest in students at a critical stage for STEM learning.

This engineering education research project will investigate the types of experiences that undergraduate engineering students have to develop global competencies. Since globalization and technology have "flattened" the world there is an increasing need for engineering students to be able to work in an environment that is increasingly international. A variety of means, including surveys and interviews, will help the research team understand the range of experiences available to students, as well as what types of experiences best foster global competencies.

The broader significance and importance of this project will be to inform engineering degree programs and university administrators about the range of options available to develop international competencies. Since such experiences are increasingly important yet potentially expensive, such insights have the potential to inform program development and evolution. The results of this study, while focusing on engineering, can be generalized to other STEM fields. This project overlaps with NSF's strategic goals of transforming the frontiers through preparation of an engineering workforce with new capabilities and expertise. Additionally NSF's goal of innovating for society is enabled by creating results and research that are useful for society by informing educational policy and practices.

Socially Assistive Robots
Lead PI/Institution: Brian Scassellati, Yale University
This Expedition will develop the fundamental computational techniques that will enable the design, implementation, and evaluation of robots that encourage social, emotional, and cognitive growth in children, including those with social or cognitive deficits. The need for this technology is driven by critical societal problems that require sustained, personalized support that supplements the efforts of educators, parents, and clinicians. For example, clinicians and families struggle to provide individualized educational services to children with social and cognitive deficits, whose numbers have quadrupled in the US in the last decade alone. In many schools, educators struggle to provide language instruction for children raised in homes where a language other than English is spoken (over 20%), the fastest-growing segment of the school-age population. This Expedition aims to support the individual needs of these children with socially assistive robots that help to guide the children toward long-term behavioral goals, that are customized to the particular needs of each child, and that develop and change as the child does.
To achieve this vision, this Expedition will advance the state-of-the-art in socially assistive human-robot interaction from short-term interactions in structured environments to long-term interactions that are adaptive, engaging, and effective. This progress will require transformative computing research in three broad and naturally interrelated research areas. First, the Expedition will develop computational models of the dynamics of social interaction, so that robots can automatically detect, analyze, and influence agency, intention, and other social interaction primitives in dynamic environments. Second, the Expedition will develop machine learning algorithms that adapt and personalize interactions to individual physical, social, and cognitive differences, enabling robots to teach and shape behavior in ways that are tailored to the needs, preferences, and capabilities of each individual. Third, the Expedition will develop systems that guide children toward specific learning goals over periods of weeks and months, allowing for truly long-term guidance and support. Research in these three areas will be integrated into socially assistive robots that are deployed in schools and homes for durations of up to one year.
This Expedition has the potential to substantially impact the effectiveness of education and healthcare for children, and the technological tools developed will serve as the basis for enhancing the lives of children and other groups that require specialized support and intervention. The proposed computing research is tied to a comprehensive student training program, bringing a compelling, engaging, and grounded STEM experience to K-12 students through in-school and after-school activities. It also establishes an annual training summit to provide undergraduates with the multi-disciplinary background to engage in this promising research area in graduate school. Finally, by establishing a brand name for socially assistive robotics, this effort will create a central authority for the distribution of high-quality, peer-reviewed information, providing a coherent focal point for enhancing outreach and education.
For more information visit www.yale.edu/SAR

There is a critical need for more students with engineering and science majors to enter into, persist, and graduate from postsecondary institutions. Increasing the diversity in engineering and science is also a profound identified need. According to national statistics, the largest groups of underrepresented minority students in engineering and science attend America?s public higher education institutions and in particular the community colleges. Recent research has indicated that students from these populations who are strong problem solvers, and who understand how to seek assistance and navigate college campuses, are most likely to persist to degree completion. Accordingly, this Research in Engineering Education (REE) project entitled: Research on Innovation and Creativity in Higher education in Engineering and Science (RICHES) for Community Colleges, intends to study a sample of non-traditional college students enrolled in science and engineering programs in urban community colleges to determine: (a) the types and frequency of support practices they utilize, (b) how such practices influence their achievement, persistence and transfer status to four year colleges and universities, and (c) how in turn their propensity for innovation and creative problem solving affect such choices and persistence.

The intellectual merits of this research project are: (1) to explore the informal and formal instructional and support practices used with non-traditional students in community colleges to inform persistence, (2) to understand whether such practices are effective in offering non-traditional students a program that enables them to stay in engineering and science majors and to transfer to a four year college or university, and (3) to determine if students? propensity for innovative problem solving influences use of pedagogical practices and ultimately, transfer persistence. RICHES studies an area and group of students that have been historically understudied, community college students in engineering and science, and builds upon the researchers? current studies of STEM pathways and students? propensity for innovation, both of which are research areas recognized as areas that engineering education must cultivate in students. This project has broad impacts because it has great potential to transform instructional and support practice for non-traditional students and those who are typically underrepresented in engineering and science. It contributes to the development and improvement of educational opportunities for the preparation of a new generation of scientists and engineers who will play a critical role in maintaining U.S. leadership.

This award renews an exemplary Research Experience for Teachers (RET) Site at the University of Southern California (USC). The USC Viterbi School of Engineering has partnered with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to develop an integrated engineering and computer science RET Site targeting middle school science and math educators. The resulting program is a collaborative research-based professional development effort that combines the computer science, engineering, technological, and pedagogical expertise of USC faculty with inner-city teachers in 6th- thru 8th-grade science and math classrooms in the LAUSD. The primary goals of the program are to: (1) increase teachers' knowledge of computationally-focused science and engineering technologies; (2) increase middle school teachers' disciplinary pedagogic competence in computer science, engineering, and applied math through a comprehensive program that includes targeted lab-based research experiences focused on computer science and engineering aligned with Next Generation Science Standards, Common Core Math Standards, and advanced lesson study; and (3) build and maintain long-term collaborative partnerships between LAUSD middle school teachers and the research community that positively impact student achievement and career paths.

The intellectual merit of this project lies in the strong research foundation at the core of the RET Site combined with a leadership team that excels at both research and educational outreach. This RET Site is focused on innovative, societally relevant computer science and engineering research and brings this research to high-need middle school science and math teachers using lesson-study focused professional development approaches. The goal is to facilitate team teaching between math and science teachers to integrate their subject areas with engineering and computer science problem solving aligned with the Next Generation Science and the Common Core Math standards. This project effectively translates research into educational practice and provides exemplary models for weaving computing and engineering concepts into K-12 education.

The RET Site program has significant broader impacts. It will result in innovative curricula that not only address new curriculum standards, but also address an area of significant need in middle school content. It will provide video-based middle school lesson exemplars and units of study for teachers nationwide to use in their classrooms. The LAUSD, the second largest public school district in the United States, has a significant population of students from under-represented groups. Thus this project has the potential to have a positive influence on many students who are traditionally under-represented as computer scientists and engineers.

Seismic protective systems, such as base isolation, passive energy dissipation, and semi-active and active control, can be applied to new and existing buildings to provide significant reductions in building motion and damage during earthquakes. The objective of this award is to build a community of researchers from Chile, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States, through a virtual institute, to accelerate research on seismic protective systems. This institute will enable U.S. researchers to proactively learn from their foreign counterparts from Pacific Rim countries about the performance of buildings with seismic protective systems during recent major earthquakes in Chile in 2010 and in New Zealand and Japan in 2011, to ensure that seismic protective systems research is directed to better prepare for future hazards. This award will enable the U.S. seismic protective systems community to better anticipate structural damage from future large earthquakes, and avert risk to these events by conducting research now to address the challenges that will facilitate seismic protective systems implementation in buildings.

The virtual institute will incorporate the following face-to-face and virtual activities: (a) one workshop per year, hosted sequentially in the countries of the foreign partners, to provide direct opportunities for U.S. participants to share research and data and chart future research directions with international collaborators, (b) pairings of early career U.S. faculty participants with foreign counterparts to develop case studies about the effectiveness of seismic protective systems in past earthquakes, thereby building long-term research collaborations, (c) lectures by the foreign counterparts and U.S. senior participants about research on seismic protective systems in their country, (d) an on-line, directed-study seismic protective systems course that will be used to teach graduate students in the United States and around the world about the state-of-the-art and the state-of-the-research in seismic protective systems, and (e) regular quarterly virtual meetings using online collaboration tools. The virtual institute will bring together researchers on 13 active NSF awards in the areas of seismic protective systems, as well as 20-30 early career participants, to form long-term global research relationships with their international collaborators, who share common research interests and are supported by their respective government research agencies. This award is designated as a Science Across Virtual Institutes (SAVI) award and is co-funded by NSF's Directorate for Engineering and NSF's Office of Integrative and International Activities.

Participating in the school environment is essential to children's social, emotional, and cognitive development and learning. It has long been recognized that the quality of a student's school experience is important not only for the academic and achievement outcomes, but for fostering self-esteem, self-confidence, and general psychological well-being. Yet annually 26.6% of America's children have health or behavioral challenges that cause them to miss significant amounts of school, and 13% of all US K-12 public school students receive interventions due to learning disabilities or emotional disturbances. This project focuses on the problem of using mobile remote presence co-robots as a means to provide numerous K-12 aged children who cannot be present in school access to the curricular and social learning experiences critical to their development and future outcomes. Using mobile remote presence for access to K-12 classrooms for homebound students may be a powerful gateway for minimizing the effects of physical separation from the school environment. This project develops methods that enable the creation of personalizable robots that allow shared autonomy, socially appropriate movement and socially expressive nonverbal communication in dynamic in-class K-12 environments, allowing children to be truly embodied in the classroom, even from a distance. The impact of this NRI project spans K-12 education at large, but also applies to general uses of mobile remote presence systems outside of the classroom setting, for both education and training. In addition, the project connects the research themes with outreach; it engages K-12 students and teachers in co-robot-themed activities and holds annual NRI-themed workshops at large-scale public venues. The broader outreach program is designed to train students in STEM, so they can become not only end users of robotics and other technologies but capable of developing such technologies themselves, thereby contributing to the US STEM workforce.

This proposal focuses on developing control algorithms for mobile remote presence (MRP) co-robot systems that will improve human access to a learning/training environment, focusing on homebound K-12 students, but with general implications to users of all ages and a variety of contexts. Work with MRP systems has identified key missing technical capabilities necessary for facilitating natural remote interaction and learning: 1) simple, socially-appropriate autonomous behavior and context awareness that reduces user cognitive load; 2) expressiveness for conveying the user's affect and communicative intent; and 3) the ability to personalize the way the user interacts through the MRP. This project addresses these challenges with participatory user-informed algorithm development, system integration, and evaluation. Specifically, it first develops an approach to automating and facilitating spatial and social context awareness for the operator and the MRP, and uses it to enable the two research thrusts, social appropriateness and expressiveness, with algorithmic methods for personalizing both. To ground the results in the selected real-world context, iterative design and evaluation is performed in the K-12 in-class setting, involving users across the age and education span, providing a test of the co-robot's relevance, effectiveness, and robustness. The project brings together a pair of interdisciplinary experts with a track record of successful past collaborations and three partners: industry, deployment, and outreach, committed to a project timeline with specific evaluable milestones.

California State University, Los Angeles seeks to meet the need for a diverse STEM workforce through the expansion and scale-up of a first-year experience (FYrE@ECST) program for undergraduate students at its College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology. The institution serves primarily Hispanic, first-generation, Pell-grant eligible, commuter students, and is an access institution, offering many kinds of students the opportunity to study and complete an engineering or computer science degree. The FYrE program aims to build a stronger academic foundation during the students' first year by developing the cultural and social capital necessary for students to successfully navigate their undergraduate experience. The program uses evidence-based strategies to promote student success, including working with student cohorts, offering peer-assisted mathematics Supplementary Instruction, emphasizing hands-on labs, building classes that integrate mathematics and physics, and providing a faculty mentor throughout students? first year.

The intellectual merit of this project is the expansion and evaluation of the FYrE model. The performance of each student cohort will be tracked during their first year, and continue for the duration of their time on campus. A multivariate, structural equation modeling (SEM) approach will be used to quantitatively respond to a set of research questions about the impact of the interventions on student attributes. The results of this work will include new knowledge about the first-year experience of low-income, Latinx-majority commuter student populations in the context of the development of their identities as engineering students. Research will be conducted on the impact of a first-year experience program that integrates engineering education best-practices such as cohorting, supplemental instruction, summer bridge experiences, a project-based Introduction to Engineering course, and integrated mathematics-physics courses on student persistence and academic performance. This knowledge will improve the ability of American universities to serve the growing population of low income Hispanic students, especially commuter students who cannot take advantage of built-in cohorting that takes place in on-campus living situations. Best practices for supporting success of first-year engineering students from underrepresented minorities have often been developed and implemented at predominantly white institutions. In a public Hispanic-serving institution in which most students are members of one or more underrepresented minority, scaling these best practices can be challenging. The FYrE@ECST program is designed for scalability and sustainability and may provide insight into successful strategies for supporting student success at similar institutions.

New technologies for improving the safety of infrastructure during natural hazards are advancing through ongoing research in the United States (U.S.) and abroad. Locations that have been recently impacted by earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes form prime opportunities for multidisciplinary groups of graduate students from the U.S. to learn the lessons of how infrastructure protective systems performed during recent disasters so that these students can direct their current and future research in the most contemporary and productive directions to better prepare the U.S. for future natural hazards. The objective of this award is to engage U.S. advanced graduate students from various disciplines in embedded learning through research at the forefront of protective systems for natural hazards engineering on the Pacific rim and beyond, and to build a sustained research community between them and their overseas counterparts. The award will enable six Advanced Studies Institutes (ASIs), each in a different location, in which the U.S. students learn from local and U.S. faculty experts, initiate protective systems research in natural hazards engineering, and experience first-hand the effects of natural hazards on built environments. Through these activities, this award advances U.S. scientific capabilities in multidisciplinary components of natural hazards engineering, and trains a diverse upcoming cohort of the scientific workforce to preemptively advance new technologies to prepare for future disasters at home; collaborate with counterparts, senior and early career faculty; and establish a new multidisciplinary approach to engineering hazard resilience. The project will involve a total of 81 U.S. graduate students via the six ASIs in different sites around the world.

The PREEMPTIVE (Pacific Rim Earthquake Engineering Mitigation Protective Technologies International Virtual Environment) ASIs explore topics in disaster science and resilient infrastructure from a highly multidisciplinary perspective to train a diverse group of graduate students in the broad areas of protective systems and disaster mitigation. A series of six week-long PREEMPTIVE ASIs are planned over three years, each enabling a cohort of advanced graduate students and senior and early-career faculty from the U.S. with counterpart faculty and students from around the world to learn about global efforts in protective systems for natural hazards, establish new frontiers of multidisciplinary research, and form long-term global professional relationships. The ASIs will explore the Resilience of Aging Infrastructure, Tsunami Hazards and Infrastructure Resilience, Structural Control & Geotechnical Challenges, Extreme Earthquake & Tsunami Hazards, Hurricane and Multi-Hazards, and Interdisciplinary Disaster Science in Costa Rica, Thailand, New Zealand, Chile, Puerto Rico, and Japan. Each ASI will consist of 2-3 day workshops, 1-2 day cultural and technical tours to provide context to the performance of protective systems in recent natural hazards, and 2-3 day collaborative group projects providing guided experiential learning experiences in infrastructure protective systems. Through this award, U.S. graduate student researchers learn to be preemptive in: addressing current and future research needs in advanced hazards mitigation; collaborating with overseas counterparts; and establishing a new multidisciplinary approach to engineering hazard resilience. The U.S. graduate student participants are selected via rigorous application processes. Student learning outcomes will be assessed through a variety of modalities, analyzed and disseminated through a website and in conference and journal publications.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated engineers and technicians in production engineering, specifically in advanced manufacturing. Advanced manufacturing is key to keeping U. S. manufacturers competitive by reducing cost, improving quality, and producing innovative products based on new technologies. The project will support the design, deployment, and evaluation of an advanced manufacturing curriculum that integrates advanced systems engineering concepts. This curriculum will consist of a set of modular, online courses designed to serve working professionals, as well as students at two-year and four-year colleges or universities. To ensure industry and community college participation, the project will be conducted by the University of Southern California in collaboration with East Los Angeles Community College, Los Angeles City College, Santa Monica College, Los Angeles Trade Technical College, and the Industry Advisory Board for the USC Viterbi Center for Advanced Manufacturing. An innovative aspect of the curriculum is its use of telepresence and simulation technologies to provide students with virtual design and testing experiences when they do not have access to physical laboratories. As a result, the project has the potential to provide important results about the effectiveness of virtual laboratory experiences as substitutes or enhancements for hands-on experiences. In addition, because the curriculum will allow students to learn course content remotely and is easily scalable, it has the potential to reach thousands of students across the globe.

The overall goal of this project is to design, develop, and deploy online curricula to accelerate training of the U. S. workforce in the critical systems engineering skills area and its application to advanced manufacturing. The first aim is to identify the required competencies in the systems engineering-related areas that are needed for the workforce in advanced manufacturing enterprises. Second, the project plans to develop modular courses that integrate relevant simulation-based and telepresence-based experiments to improve comprehension and retention of content during online delivery. Third, the project will conduct a research-based assessment of the courses. Specifically, it will investigate the effectiveness of a challenge-based, guided experiential learning pedagogical approach in an online context at the two-year college, four-year college, and professional settings. The research will be grounded in social cognitive and socio-constructivist learning theories, using guided experiential learning as its instructional framework. The project will use grounded assessments including multidimensional challenge-focused rubrics, checklists and student concept inventories and questionnaires to measure faculty use of guided experiential learning pedagogy and students' subject mastery and attitudes. This project will be evaluated using a formative and summative mixed methods approach, using information from an independent advisory group, students, and faculty via surveys and focus groups. Results of this project will be delivered as open educational resources using a web-based repository.

This project is funded by NSF's EHR Core Research: Production Engineering Education and Research (ECR: PEER) program, which seeks to improve the education of future and current professionals in production engineering. It also aims to study the effectiveness of the innovative educational strategies adopted by these projects.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

This Future Manufacturing Research Grant (FMRG) EcoManufacturing grant supports research that will contribute new knowledge related to sustainable manufacturing of composites. Composites are high-performance, lightweight materials used in the production of structures to minimize weight while preserving performance and durability. Lighter structures translate to an increase in fuel efficiency and range for land and air vehicles, and increases in power generated by wind turbines, each contributing to mitigating atmospheric carbon dioxide content. These advantages accrue throughout the operational lifetime of the products. Current composite manufacturing processes consume a significant amount of energy, and most composite materials cannot be easily recycled. Many of these processes require ergonomically challenging manual labor. The goal of this award is to stimulate fundamental research and education that enable the realization of more sustainable composite manufacturing, with the aim of positioning composites as a sustainable material of choice for delivering high performance in a broad spectrum of applications. By decreasing energy consumption, decreasing carbon dioxide impact, and enabling recycling, the industry can become greener, while improving composite manufacturing’s cost competitiveness by improving consistency and quality, and improving conditions for composite manufacturing workers. This award will also lay foundations for preparing the workforce for new employment opportunities in manufacturing and increasing the retention of the existing workforce by developing new skillsets and enhancing workforce diversity by including students from institutions serving underrepresented populations, especially via two-year community college education programs and professional training.

The research supported by this grant will make advances to enable realization of the next-generation sustainable composites manufacturing. The holistic approach will address the life cycle of composites, elements of which are presently regarded as intractable challenges. These elements include prepreg design, automated layup, out-of-autoclave cure, end-of-life treatment to separate components, and return of component materials to second- and third-life service. The team will develop an overarching technology roadmap for sustainable composites manufacturing. In addition, new technologies will be investigated for chemical recycling of both fibers and matrix via catalytic depolymerization, semi-preg formats that restore manufacturing robustness to out-of-autoclave cure of composites, and flexible automation of the vacuum bagging process, sheet handling, and sheet preparation.

This Future Manufacturing project is jointly funded by the Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems Division, the Office of International Science and Engineering, and the Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation Division.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.