REU Site: Summer Undergraduate Program in Engineering Research at Berkeley-Information Technology for Sustainability (SUPERB-ITS)

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This award renews a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) site at the University of California, Berkeley. The intellectual focus of the proposed research is information technology for sustainability through the efficient extraction, distribution and use of energy. The site will bring together a cohort of 8 undergraduate students per year who, together with faculty mentors, will participate in a range of projects based on the energy and sustainability theme. The site focuses on recruiting a sufficiently diverse pool of students, including women and underrepresented minorities. The main intellectual merit of the proposal is the innovative projects designed to optimize energy consumption and thereby promote sustainability. Example projects are (a) optimal control of building systems; (b) energy efficient air traffic control; (c) energy efficient, power proportional data centers; and (d) energy management systems for smart building infrastructures. A separate strand of work will consider how to retain performance speedups in the presence of low energy devices since often performance and energy consumption are inversely related. Students will be mentored by both faculty and graduate students and will be exposed to all aspects of the research process. The project's broader impacts are technological contributions to the significant national challenge of developing an optimized energy infrastructure for the 21st century. The projects are designed to find ways of reducing wasteful expenditure of energy and to manage energy systems in an efficient way. Thus the project can have a positive impact on the environment, which will lead to an improved quality of life. Moreover, the project trains a diverse pool of undergraduate students including women and underrepresented minorities, students of low socioeconomic status, as well as veterans of the US Armed Services, in acquiring basic research and problem solving skills. Because the proposed activities address critical national problems, students will be inspired to contribute to solutions to these problems by deepening their understanding which, in turn, will lead to their pursuing advanced degrees in science and engineering