Recent ECSE Undergraduate Research Projects
Project Title: Reliability of Light-Emitting Diodes
Student: Mark White
Term or Duration: Fall 2006
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. J. K. Kim and Prof. E. F. Schubert
Project Description: The project involves the measurement of light-output power of light-emitting diodes, the assessment of the degradation mechanism, and quantitative analysis of the results.
Project Title: Light-Emitting Diodes Measurement Automation
Student: Alajandro Naranjo
Term or Duration: Summer 2006
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. J. K. Kim and Prof. E. F. Schubert
Project Description: The project entailed the programming and testing of automated measurement setups for light-emitting diode characterization.
Project Title: Compact Representation of Digital Terrain Elevation Maps
Student: Steve Martin
Term or Duration: Summer 2006
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. C. Westort and Prof. R. Franklin
Project Description: Usability of systems requiring digital terrain elevation maps where the amount of memory available for terrain data storage or the amount of bandwidth available for terrain data transmission limits the range or accuracy of terrain data may be improved by utilizing compact terrain representations. Many successful compression methods for images work using a hybrid of already-existing compression algorithms and transformations combined to take advantage of the characteristics of the data and observer. For terrain, most places on earth are heavily influenced by hydrological processes, therefore a method for compressing that terrain should take advantage of hydrology. In this research project compact representations utilizing the hydrological characteristics of the terrain to divide the data into more easily compressible components were implemented, explored, documented, and compared to other contemporary digital terrain elevation map representations.
Project Title: Hybrid Opto/RF on High Dielectric Constant Substrate
Student: Fay Smith
Term or Duration: May 2006 – August 2006
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. R. Huang
Project Description: We investigate monolithic integrated quasi-Yagi antenna and optical element on high dielectric constant substrate for hybrid wireless communication system. This project has three phases: (1) design and optimization of quasi-Yagi antenna structure, (2) placement of the optical elements on the antenna substrate that has minimized impact to antenna radiation, (3) co-optimization of RF/Opto radiation.
Project Title: Image Change Detection Algorithm Development
Student: Rosa Capo (UPRM)
Term or Duration: Summer 2006
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. R. Radke
Project Description: Please contact Prof. Radke for more information about this project.
Project Title: Soma and Neuron Segmentation in Structural/Functional Time-Lapse Image Sequences
Student: Karen Lai
Term or Duration: Summer 2006
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. R. Radke
Project Description: Please contact Prof. Radke for more information about this project.
Project Title: Image Change Detection Algorithm Development
Student: Steven Fernandez (Northeaster University)
Term or Duration: Summer 2006
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. R. Radke
Project Description: Please contact Prof. Radke for more information about this project.
Project Title: Monolithic DC-DC Converter Measurement and Design Optimization
Student: Aleksandr Biberman
Term or Duration: Summer 2006
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. J. Sun
Project Description: Design and performance evaluation of fully integrated dc-dc power converter in a submicron CMOS process. Targeted applications of the design are power management for microprocessors and high-performance ASICs.
Project Title: Single-Phase Power-Factor-Correction Control
Student: George Cheung
Term or Duration: Summer 2006
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. J. Sun
Project Description: Control design for a single-phase power-factor-corrected ac-dc converter; implementation of the control circuitry using a printed circuit board; testing of the control circuit.
Project Title: Feature Detection and Object Recognition in High-Dynamic-Range Imagery
Student: Justin Kwan
Term or Duration: Spring 2006
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. R. Radke
Project Description: Please contact Prof. Radke for more information about this project.
Project Title: ARTag Feature Detection for Camera Calibration
Student: John Swoboda
Term or Duration: Spring 2006
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. R. Radke
Project Description: Please contact Prof. Radke for more information about this project.
Project Title: Silicon/Silicon Dioxide Wafer Bonding for Realization of a Novel Silicon-Based Tunneling Laser For Electro-Photonic Applications
Student: Paul Ireifej
Term or Duration: Dec. 20, 2005 – Jan. 13, 2006
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. J. Lu
Project Description: The goal is to establish a process and to understand the science underpinnings, thus to create a perfect wafer-bonding interface between silicon and silicon dioxide for realization of novel silicon-based tunneling laser. The wafer-bonding involves a thin silicon dioxide layer (1 – 2 nm) and would produce a high-quality bonding interface with low defect density and low interface electron state density, while maintaining the properties of both silicon layers near the thin oxide layer. We developed a preliminary base-line process for wafer bonding between silicon wafers and between silicon and silicon dioxide.
Project Title: Pilot Talk
Student: Jialiang Kong
Term or Duration: Summer and Fall 2005
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. G. Nagy
Project Description: Experiments on recording and analyzing speech waveforms, and phoneme-level annotation. Implementation and selection of noise filters. Development of a limited-vocabulary speech understanding systems based on Hidden Markov Models with HTK toolbox for pilot-airplane dialogs.
Project Title: The Mobile Studio Project
Student: Jason Coutermarsh, Dave Shoudy
Term or Duration: Multi-Year Project
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. D. Millard
Project Description: The Rensselaer IOBoard is a small, inexpensive hardware platform for use in a classroom environment. Coupled with the Mobile Studio Desktop software, the system duplicates a large amount of the hardware often used to teach Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Control Systems, and Physics, among others. The "Mobile Studio" project is developing pedagogy and hardware/software which, when connected to the Tablet PC (via USB), provides similar functionality to that of the laboratory equipment (scope, function generator, power supplies, DMM, etc.) currently associated with an instrumented studio classroom. Our goal is to further expand the studio pedagogy (pioneered by Rensselaer with the help of HP) to have students learn with technology in mobile environments that are no longer limited by network access and equipment issues. Our aim is to: develop and use educational technology to eliminate the boundaries between theories provided in a lecture and practice; apply concepts in directed problem sessions; and enable/encourage our students' "hands-on" exploration of engineering principles, devices, and systems that have historically been restricted to specific laboratory facilities.
Project Title: Alternatives
Student: Matt Wilson
Term or Duration: Multi-Year Project
Faculty Supervisor: Prof. D. Millard
Project Description: "The world of the Internet is rapidly changing," Rob Burgess, former Chairman and CEO of Macromedia said. "What is changing is that it is going to be a profound entertainment medium." Alternatives, a musical for the Web is our answer to this challenge. Alternatives is an expedition across the frontier of emerging forms of interactive entertainment—whether for the Web, or the developing realm of interactive TV. The artistic intent is to evoke the full range of emotions possible from any work in any genre that tell the tales of love. The focus is on the alternatives faced at every major point in the life of a relationship, alternatives in perspective as well as in decision choices. His story is not her story. Their story is something the participant ultimately interprets, constructs, and even has say in the decisions being made. The story is told in music as well as dialogue—hence, the term musical is used—as a starting reference point. But Alternatives is not a recording of what is essentially a conventional theatrical performance ported (at high cost in overhead) to the Web with some menus, a site map, and a certain degree of freedom in navigational choices. It is a very old story told in a very new form. Alternatives is not only actively told to a receiving audience, though it can be experienced that way as one of the options. Alternatives allows active participation. Audience becomes inter-actor, inter-actress, participant observer, constructor of an experience, entering the process of creation of the ongoing story in a feedback loop of pro-active response that can affect the characters and the story itself.
|