REU Site: Declarative Approaches to Knowledge Intensive Applications

Texas Tech University, Lubbock TX

Investigators

Abstract

This funding establishes a new Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) site at the Texas Tech University. The site's aim is to inspire and prepare a group of undergraduate students for a career as a researcher or engineer in the broad area of computing science. To this end, the site's focus is on utilizing modern declarative problem solving techniques to tackle applications in areas such as Cybersecurity, Energy, Healthcare and Space Exploration. The research is led by an experienced team of faculty that will offer a balance of theoretical and practical skills, as well as mentoring and professional development opportunities for students. The site recruits a diverse pool of students including women, Latino/a students, first generation students, and students from a historically black college and university. The intellectual merit of the proposal lies with the leadership provided by an experienced team of mentors with excellent expertise and experience in the research areas. The site focuses on the use of declarative programming in applications in the following research areas. The first project is in the design of intelligent agents capable of acting rationally in a changing environment. The second research project pertains to healthcare, where students develop a mechanized system that provides treatment recommendations to doctors, using clinical practice guidelines. The third research project is in the area of cybersecurity, where students develop tools that guarantee that enterprise applications and cloud transactions satisfy appropriate security and privacy policies. The fourth research project is in the areas of energy-aware computing, where students formulate power consumption requirements in software components of mobile devices. The final project is in the domain of astronomical software. In this project students investigate techniques on how to operate solar arrays in the International Space Station in an effective manner, subject to safety constraints and preferences. The broader impacts center on the opportunities provided to a diverse pool of undergraduates, with the aim to inspire them to pursue graduate studies. The project activities permit students to acquire valuable skills, gain a broader and deeper understanding of research, and develop greater confidence in their abilities. The research projects are in areas of national importance and the technical advances in these topics have the potential to boost basic infrastructure leading to improvement of the quality of life. The evaluation plan and the data management plan should contribute to educational research on effective structures for involving undergraduate students in research.