UCSD Division Awards 15 Summer Undergrad Research Scholarships
4.20.04 – UCSD Division Director Ramesh Rao and the UCSD layer leaders have selected 15 undergraduates to receive research scholarships this coming summer. The goal of this program is to give undergraduates a sampling of the various aspects of a research career – the challenges and successes of conducting research, the need to communicate the value of their projects (e.g., grant writing) and their results (poster session), and working in teams with others with different skill sets.
Each student will receive $4K for 10 weeks of research on a project and with an advisor of his/her choice. The students were selected based on their GPAs, the coherence of their project descriptions, and their potential for having successful research experiences.
True to the spirit of Calit², the projects needed to be interdisciplinary and include some aspects of telecommunications and/or information technology. They range from optimizing the parameters that control the growth of smooth aluminum oxide thin films on sapphire substrates to fabricate reliable magnetic tunnel junction-based nanosensors to developing a wireless device to guide the blind to implementing a multi-user gaming environment of “world-lets” derived from geo-spatial data and computer vision-derived architectural models.
“This is one of the few opportunities undergraduates have to conduct research prior to graduation,” says Ramesh Rao. “The scope of their projects is breathtaking, and we thank our industrial partners for their continuing support.”
During the summer, the students will also participate in a series of group meetings focusing this year on story telling. In addition to an initial orientation session and a session devoted to the differences between research jobs in academia and industry, the students will learn about oral, written, Web, and video communications; guidelines for interacting with the media; proposal writing; and resume writing. The program concludes with a poster session at which the students present traditional posters or software demonstrations.
Stephanie Sides, director or communications for Calit², who administers the program, says, “Undergraduates are very energizing to work with because they are so receptive. I’m struck each summer by how quickly they begin interacting with each other across disciplinary boundaries. They really ‘get’ Calit² and know how to take advantage of this program.”
The following students have been awarded scholarships by layer (with advisor in parentheses):
Materials and Devices
Matthew Ganjian (Schuller)
Jenny Hu (Lau)
Vijay Kollengode (Sailor)
Kevin Loewke (Delson)
Warren Mar (E. Yu)
Networked Interfaces
Crescentia Miscisin (Guest)
George Su (Orailoglu)
Mong Chit Wong (T. Nguyen)
Interfaces and Software Systems
Hoang-Anh Nguyen (J. Miller)
Daniel Tracy (Orailoglu)
Frank Uyeda (Chien)
New Media Arts
Angela Chen (Stalbaum)
Andrew Collins (Jenik)
Tana Sprague (Otto)
Jennie Stenhouse (Brown)
Two students, Sprague and Tracy, are returning undergraduate scholars from last summer.