Funding & Awards
The College of Engineering and Computer Science and the Institute for Sensing and Embedded Network Systems Engineering (I-SENSE) sought proposals to support the establishment of multidisciplinary collaborations that lead to externally funded research programs. The goal was to enable proposing teams to engage in proof-of-concept designs, preliminary studies, infrastructure building, and other activities that will set the foundation for new research programs that will attract significant external funding and national recognition. Successful proposals were distinct from existing, well-established research activities. The total funding available under this program was $200,000, and eight submissions were awarded funding.
Through the Division of Research, I-SENSE began a new funding program designed to support collaborative student research projects. We sought proposals from student teams to engage in multidisciplinary efforts that have the potential for significant societal impact. The most important outcome of a successful project funded through this program was the demonstration of a well-documented application, system, or device prototype that has the potential to significantly benefit society.
Successful teams were awarded funds for materials, supplies, software license, and other services to support their projects. The awardees will conduct their projects in the Sensing and Smart Systems Innovation Laboratory, with access to all available facilities. Mentoring and engineering support is also being provided through I-SENSE. Congratulations to all of the awardees!
Title: Scan2Make: Evaluation of the Efficacy of Custom Fit in FDM Prosthetic Devices through Use of Portable Scanning Technology
Team Members: Willard Bachli, Roberto Sanchez, Michael Padron, Charles Perry Weinthal, Leonardo Rivas, Antwan Hoyte
Amount: $1,650
Description: This project will investigate the ability to design a custom fit prosthetic device, made for users with an acquired or congenital amputation, by using portable 3-D scanning technology and computer-aided design.
Title: GeoReferenced Augmented Reality Utilities App (GARUA)
Team Members: Jason Blakenship, Debojit Biswas
Amount: $1,499
Description: This app will allow users to identify the location of underground utility lines by simply using a smartphone or tablet.
Title: EEG-Based Emotional State Classification of Passengers in an Autonomous Vehicle Stimulator
Team Members: Corey Park, Shervin Shahrdar
Amount: $1,484
Description: The team members will evaluate real time self-driving cars (SDC) passenger emotional responses through electroencephalography analysis of passengers in a SDC stimulator.
Title: SAE Drive Optimization System
Team Members: Richard Nelson, Tais Kraljevic, Jhairus Lewis, Brandon Nava
Amount: $1,025
Description: By researching, designing and constructing a system to collect data and trigger outputs, using various sensors (including accelerometers, potentiometers, and other sensors), the team aims to fine-tune the design and build of their electric vehicle.
Title: A Sensor-Based, Dynamical Systems Approach to Guiding Therapeutic Interactions
PI: Paul Peluso
Amount: $20,313
Description: The research project is an extension of observational research into the therapeutic relationship, conducted in the Department of Counselor Education, that relies on the notion of synchrony to quantify emotional valence in both directions of the dyad. The project aims to provide new insights into the dynamics of therapist-client interactions, and ultimately, to guiding those interactions to successful outcomes.
Title: Human Aspects of Autonomous Driving
PI: Mehrdad Nojoumian
Co-PI: Dimitris Pados
Amount: $25,570
Description: The investigators will explore how to establish, sustain and rebuild (in the case of incidental failures) trust between humans and autonomous systems. They will perform experiments and look at the interaction between humans and their autonomous testbeds under the lens of trust in a controlled setting. They will develop a reflective module with three operation modes in the software system that controls the autonomous system.
Co-PI: Michael Twardowski
Description: This project will support the development of a benchtop prototype and the processing algorithm, which will allow the team to explore the proposed design and to show preliminary performance results for the concepts in a planned NASA proposal.
Co-PI: Madasamy Arockiasamy
Description: This proposal will pioneer a framework in infrastructure health monitoring using high-resolution wireless sensors to detect and analyze through a spatially distributed sensors to continuously monitor the structure, trigger alarms that identify the onset of global and local damage in the structure. The objective of this proposed study is to develop a framework in real time Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of bridges that will lead to a robust Asset Management Application (AMA). This will provide readily available and actionable data to a myriad of users, in accordance with their role, as user or maintainers or overseers of the nation’s infrastructure to ensure the efficiency and security of our infrastructure systems.
Co-PI: Sarah Du, Jenny Wei, Emmanuelle Togloni
Description: The investigators propose to develop a novel ROBO-SYNAPSE to noninvasively study neural plasticity.
Co-PI: Massimo Caputi
Description: The investigators propose to develop a novel, low-cost and automated tool for rapid detection of Zika virus from clinically relevant samples at POC settings.
Co-PI: James Galvin
Description: This project proposes a novel test for simultaneous assessment of motor and cognitive performance by incorporating wearable sensors to identify mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease in older adults.