REU Site: Wireless Technologies for Health Applications

University Of Virginia Main Campus, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

BROADER SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROJECT: This REU Site effort will bring 10 undergraduate students, primarily at the end of their first or second year, to the University of Virginia for an eight-week, cohesive, actively mentored, summer research experience. It is designed to promote the professional, social, and cognitive development of these students, to encourage them to consider careers in engineering, and to help create a more diverse workforce. In order to ensure a diverse applicant body, recruitment efforts will be focused on HBCU's, women's colleges, institutions for individuals with disabilities, and institutions with less than very high research capabilities (i.e. community colleges, liberal arts colleges). This REU Site has the potential to engage students in the quest to address one of the key challenges of the 21st century: improving the quality of health care while making it more accessible and affordable. In addition, this REU Site will help create a more diverse workforce in science and engineering, providing women, underrepresented minority students, and persons with disabilities formative research experiences and connecting them to the social and professional networks as pathways for careers in these fields. The Wireless Health REU Site will expand the students' scientific knowledge and, more generally, teach students how to frame problems, design experiments, work collaboratively, make observations, draw appropriate conclusions, and communicate their results to others. PROJECT DESCRIPTION: The Wireless Health REU Site, with support from NSF's Division of Engineering Education and Centers, will host ten rising second and third year undergraduate students at the University of Virginia for an intensive eight-week research program focused on the interdisciplinary field of wireless technologies for health applications. Drawing on advances in wireless networks, integrated circuits, sensing, signal processing, communications, data mining, and databases, Wireless Health technologies will enable continuous, longitudinal, remote monitoring for health and wellness applications, ranging from early disease diagnosis and aging-in-place support to chronic care and general wellness management. REU participants will participate in multi-platform learning, including online coursework and a lab skills "bootcamp", before they engage in cutting edge research projects designed and actively-mentored by faculty, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate student mentors. Over the three years, students will work collectively to develop a body sensor network testbed that spans technology from lower-level device designs to higher-level networking protocols. Projects will be coordinated with overarching yearly themes to build cohort cohesion and allow for more sophisticated collaborations as follows: Year 1- Home Health Monitoring Systems; Year 2- Smartphone Based Sensors; and Year 3- Health Related Behavior Modifications. In addition to research activities, undergraduate participants will take part in a professional development series, journal club, and field trips to areas where wireless health technologies are being developed and used in the real world. The culmination of this experience is a symposium where each student presents oral and poster presentations of his or her research findings. This REU aims to provide a cohesive research and career enhancement experience for students at a strategic point in their undergraduate careers in order to develop a more diversified and prepared for 21st century engineering workforce.