Summer Research Project Research Articles

Role of Artificial Intelligence in Different Sectors of Society

t was in 1956 that the concept of artificial intelligence came into existence. John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky hosted the Dartmouth Summer Research Project, and here they coined the word “artificial intelligence.” The workshop laid the foundation for the field of artificial intelligence. Back to the current timeline, few studies believe that artificial intelligence will contribute 15.7 trillion dollars to the world economy by the year 2030. A branch of computer science that commands machines to simulate human intelligence, artificial intelligence is bringing a paradigm shift in each sector of society. The smart machines working on the concept of deep learning, are capable of performing tasks and making decisions that only a human mind can. These software systems operate in such a manner that they adapt to the situation. Artificial intelligence has the potential to make society even better by bringing positive changes in healthcare, education, governance, policy formulation and implementation, technology, resource management, innovation, etc. Artificial intelligence holds the potential to make human lives better in thousands of ways. Today, if we look around, we are already using AI in our daily lives in some way or another. Artificial intelligence technology in smartphones has grown rapidly in recent years. Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa are a few examples of AI personal assistants that make our daily tasks easier. Not only do these solution-driven technologies follow commands, but they also learn from experience to provide better services. Today, artificial intelligence is reshaping and redefining industries. It is bringing about a revolution in technology and impacting the global economy. Artificial intelligence can solve complex problems in a limited amount of time and with enhanced accuracy.

SOARinG to New Heights Through a Structured Medical Student Research Program.

Since the US Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 became Pass/Fall in 2022, medical students competing for residency spots must distinguish themselves with alternative criteria. Research experiences and output offer valuable skill development and objective metrics to support competitive residency applications. We describe the methodological development of a structured program to support, enhance, and track medical student research efforts at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville, explain the implementation of the program, and summarize initial program outcomes. The Student Opportunities for Academic Achievement Through Research in Greenville (SOARinG) Program was established to serve as a centralized hub for rising second year medical student research. The program matched medical students with mentored research projects scheduled during the summer following first-year coursework. The program included a required weekly seminar series on research basics and current biomedical literature. SOARinG culminated with a student research symposium for which students submitted abstracts and presented a poster or a talk. Quantitative and qualitative program outcomes of student and mentor satisfaction with the program were measured through surveys. The program was successfully implemented in summers 2021 and 2022. Most students (80-95%) in each class engaged in mentored summer research projects. Students reported overall satisfaction with research projects and mentor support. Overall, 69% of students rated their overall research experience in the program as extremely good or very good. Each student submitted an abstract and presented at the program's symposium or alternate research venue. Overall, 97% of research mentors reported that students were adequately prepared for summer research and suggested that students would benefit from additional skills-specific research training. The SOARinG Program provided a formalized process for tracking and showcasing medical student research and allowed for increased student participation in research. Additionally, each participating student produced objective research output, thus enhancing future residency applications.

Applications sought for Marie Maynard Daly Scholarship

The American Chemical Society Eastern North Carolina Local Section is seeking applications for the Marie Maynard Daly Scholarship. Daley was the first Black woman to receive a PhD in chemistry in the US. This program financially supports undergraduate students to conduct summer research projects. Student applicants should be ACS members, attend a university or college in eastern North Carolina, and be working on a current research project that they wish to continue. Applicants who are first-generation students or demonstrate financial need will be prioritized. Up to two scholarships will be awarded this summer, and a maximum of $1,500 will be available per student. The funded research should start no later than July 1 and conclude by Aug. 15. Students should submit a research proposal and a letter of support from their research mentor to ryan.cotroneo@gmail.com by June 23.

A Short Summer Research Experience for Secondary Education Mathematics Majors at a Small Liberal Arts College

One of the best ways for STEM students to understand the methods and thought process of their discipline is through participation in an undergraduate research project. However, mathematics secondary education students at Hood College are historically less likely to self-select for these types of supplemental experiences than traditional mathematics majors. Hood’s Noyce STEM Teacher Education Partnership (NSTEP) sought to address this by designing a shortened summer research experience specifically for secondary education students in mathematics. The Summer Research Experience in Mathematical Modeling (SREM2) was a 4-week summer research project that provided this opportunity at a small college. Here we describe the benefits of such an experience and present the design of our program and its outcomes.

Blown Away: Extreme Wind Events Impact Grass Mortality

Understanding extremes in ecological change is critical given the anticipated increasing frequency of such events. This is especially true when extreme events trigger transitions to alternative stable states, as in drylands that have seen conversion from grass- to shrub-dominated states. We examined the responses of a Chihuahuan Desert community after record winds in 2019 killed grasses and reduced greenness. We argue that wind has two faces like Janus, aptly the Roman god of transitions, because it participates in change as both a forcing and a feedback and that, similarly, other types of extremes can alter the character of ecological interactions. Photo 1. Record-breaking wind in southern New Mexico in the spring of 2019 had major impacts on grass at the Jornada Long Term Ecological Research site in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The exposed roots of two Sporobolus spp. grasses are a result of these storms. Photo credit: G.S. Okin. Photo 2. In some cases, grasses, like the one on the left in this image, were able to green up following rain in the early summer. Other grasses appear to have been killed by the root exposure and sandblasting that occurred during the extreme wind events in the spring of 2019. Photo credit: G.S. Okin. Photo 3. UCLA undergraduate, Sarah Payne (shown here indicating the extent of root exposure on a native bunchgrass), conducted an NSF-supported summer research project that resulted in a publication of an article in Ecology. Photo credit: G.S. Okin. These photographs illustrate the article “The two faces of Janus: Processes can be both exogenous forcings and endogenous feedbacks with wind as a case study” by Sarah A. R. Payne, Gregory S. Okin, Abinash Bhattachan, and Michael R. Fischella published in Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.3998

Surface plasmon resonance sensing in the advanced physics laboratory

We present a set of experiments and computations suitable for introducing upper-level undergraduate physics and engineering students to the interdisciplinary field of nanoplasmonics for periods ranging from a week-long advanced laboratory session to a summer research project. The end product is a tunable optofluidic device capable of detecting changes in a fluid medium as low as 0.002 refractive index units. The sensing element—a thin gold film on a glass prism coupled to a microfluidic cell—owes its sensitivity to the bound nature of the surface plasmon–polariton waves that are resonantly excited by evanescently coupled light at the gold–fluid interface. Pedagogically, surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensing immerses students in the rich physics of nanoscale optics and evanescent waves in constructing and operating a precision apparatus and in developing theoretical, analytical, and numerical models to aid both in the physical understanding and engineering optimization of the SPR sensor.

The 1st Annual 2022 Conference for Undergraduate Health Research (CUHR): Innovations in Science

The 2022 Conference for Undergraduate Health Research (CUHR) was a 2-day academic conference for undergraduates to showcase their research work. CUHR 2022 was hosted by York University and welcomed 79 virtual oral presentations from 14 countries. CUHR aimed to promote interdisciplinary health research, by providing a platform to disseminate research works with implications for human health. CUHR's inaugural theme, Agents of Change, seeks to bring a group of next-generation health researchers as transformational leaders in science. CUHR accepted summer research, volunteer research, independent study, honours thesis, and internship projects. CUHR 2022 concluded on May, 28th 2022. For full itinerary of the 2022 CUHR, please visit http://www.uhre.ca.

Discussion Guide for the Brogan Article.

Discussion Guide for the Brogan Article.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND COMPUTER VISION – A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN?

After becoming independent in 1957, Malaysia continued as an agricultural country but quickly grew into a manufacturing nation in a relatively short time. Literally from nowhere, the manufacturing sector now commands more than 38% of the nation’s GDP overtaking the agriculture sector which commands just slightly above 7%. In addition to the multinational manufacturers who are mainly in the electrical and electronics sectors, there are also other smaller producers who produce for the rest of the world. Nevertheless in order to compete, they cannot just rely on manual labour whether local or foreign, to produce high volume and high quality goods at a competitive price. With intense competition, even the old way of making many products to satisfy the global appetite for good products from both the brick-and-mortar shops to your huge online shops is no longer adequate.
 Manual operations in the manufacturing process can come in various forms, ranging from the very simple but monotonous and repetitive to the highly complex or sophisticated. In the quality department many of the local manufacturers have chosen to use human labour to ensure their quality is maintained. For many of these highly repetitive but relatively simple tasks, the human operators need to be properly trained for an appropriate length of time before they can perform effectively. Other than the intelligence of these operators, their ability to detect deviations from the desired patterns are also utilised. And this is where artificial intelligence and computer vision can help.
 The term artificial intelligence was first coined at the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence by John McCarthy in 1956. While there are many definitions, Ray Kurzweil, an American inventor and futurist defines it as machines that perform functions that require intelligence when performed by humans[1]. On the other hand, computer vision deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the human visual system can do. This paper shows how artificial intelligence combined with computer vision can be used to improve productivity and effectiveness in three different areas.

How graduate work with David T. Blackstock led to a lifelong obsession with wave equations

As one of David T. Blackstock’s first graduate students at the University of Rochester (1966), I quickly admired his elegant style of normalizing and solving equations and was baffled by his frequent allusions to great acousticians and mathematicians of the past. Shortly after my arrival, he submitted his transient solution to the viscous wave equation to J.A.S.A. We planned a summer research project (1967) to validate his solution experimentally. He also introduced me to advanced methods for solving equations. David told me there was no general transient solution to this equation, which inspired my determination to solve it. My data confirmed his predictions leading to my first published paper. I left Rochester with an M.S. and afterwards, I filled several notebooks with unsuccessful equations. Eventually, after ten years in ultrasound imaging, I chose the University of Bath for its excellent PhD program in nonlinear acoustics. David visited me there in 1990 and we discussed his 1985 general solution to the Burgers equation. Later at Bath, twenty-three years after beginning, aha moments led me to more general and causal solutions to both linear and nonlinear viscous wave equations for frequency power law media and papers, cited a thousand times.

The discovery of insulin in Toronto: beginning a 100year journey of research and clinical achievement.

There has been a great deal of controversy regarding priority of discovery of insulin. Indeed, many scientists made important and, in some cases, seminal contributions to identifying the endocrine role of the pancreas and the potential for pancreatic extracts to have a glucose-lowering effect. The purpose of this article is to describe the early experiences with respect to research leading to the discovery of insulin in Toronto (ON, Canada). The experiments conducted at the University of Toronto resulted in the first demonstration that a pancreatic extract could be prepared that would consistently lower glucose, reverse ketosis and arrest the catabolic effects of type 1 diabetes. The remarkably rapid commercial production of insulin soon followed. The Toronto story begins on 17 May 1921, when Frederick Banting and Charles Best began their summer research project in the laboratory of John James Rickard Macleod, and we are now celebrating the 100th anniversary of this landmark achievement. The article herein outlines the steps leading up to the discovery of insulin and provides an overview of some of the key developments in insulin therapy over the past 100years.

Engagement in Practice: Engineering Minority Student Engagement Project (EM-STEP)

The US is in greater need of STEM graduates to keep its competitive edge. Various US government agencies have raised concerns about shortage of STEM graduates for 35 years. It is equally important to keep US in technologically superior position. One way to grow the STEM workforce is to increase enrollment, retention, and graduation rates. It has been reported that incoming students are weak in Mathematics and thereby having great difficulty in engineering courses. As a result, they are dropping out of engineering programs resulting in low retention and graduation rates. It is desired to reinforce mathematical concepts. It is desired to engage, mentor and tutor them to keep them from dropping. There are three objectives in this project. One is to increase recruitment; the second goal is to improvement via engagement and providing help. The third goal of increasing graduation rates will be automatically achieved by enhancing retention rates. To meet this objective, Engineering Minority student Engagement Project (EM-STEP) is using an innovative five prong approach of offering Saturday Academy, peer lead group, professional lecture series, freshman seminar and summer research projects. Four high D, withdrawals, incomplete and F grade rates courses have been identified and they are Fundamentals of Electric Circuit Analysis, Engineering Mechanics: Statics and Dynamics, Introduction to Fluid Mechanics and Introduction to Thermodynamics. Students in these courses are from four engineering disciplines of Chemical, Electrical, Mechanical and Petroleum Engineering. These courses are being taught in the Saturday Academy and twenty students are working as peer group leaders. We are also offering motivating lectures in the professional lecture series. Summer research project for 8-week duration is also offered.

Improvement of DVM Curriculum to Meet OIE Recommendations at Chattogram Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Bangladesh.

A veterinary education twinning project between Chattogram Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (CVASU) and Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine (TCSVM) was supported by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) to align CVASU's veterinary curriculum with OIE's recommended Core Curriculum and Day 1 Competencies. The major objectives were curriculum development with improvement to the internship program, introduction of problem-based learning (PBL), and implementation of continuing education (CE). Major activities to achieve these objectives involved several workshops and seminars at CVASU and establishing student exchange and CVASU faculty training programs. Major accomplishments were (a) implementation of a revised Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) curriculum at CVASU aligned with the OIE-recommended curriculum and Day 1 Competencies; (b) incorporation of PBL into the curriculum and development of 23 PBL cases relevant to Bangladesh-specific diseases; (c) improvement of the internship program by including Day 1 Competencies; (d) development and implementation of 11 structured CE sessions including hands-on training; (e) improvement of curriculum, teaching, and clinical training at CVASU following training of CVASU faculty and students at TCSVM; and (f) three peer-reviewed publications from summer research projects by TCSVM students at CVASU. The twinning project allowed CVASU to improve its DVM curriculum by aligning with OIE's recommended curriculum and Day 1 Competencies. The impact of the project went beyond CVASU as evidenced by other veterinary schools adopting the CVASU curriculum and PBL, veterinary school deans engaged in improving veterinary curriculum and clinical training, and implementation of a national CE program for veterinarians.

Soft computing applications in the field of industrial and environmental enterprises

Soft computing applications in the field of industrial and environmental enterprises

Publication rates of, and attitudes toward, summer research projects: 10-year experience from a single institution in New Zealand.

Background: Research is increasingly being emphasized from an early stage in medical students’ careers. Medical student involvement in research and authorship of peer-reviewed manuscripts have been shown to enhance their academic performance—both in the short term and long term. The aim of this study was to evaluate outcomes and motivations of the summer studentship research program at our institution, using Vroom’s expectancy theory as a conceptual framework.Methods: We utilized a mixed-methods approach to our study. Two databases (PubMed™ and Google Scholar™) were searched for publication data. In addition, students and supervisors of the program at the University of Otago were invited to provide comments on the program. Qualitative data were analyzed using an inductive, pragmatic approach which involved coding responses and grouping codes into common themes.Results: Between 2007 and 2016, 1,345 projects were completed, of which 326 (24.2%) resulted in a peer-reviewed publication. Students made up 48.1% of the first-authors. Three themes each emerged from the students and the supervisors’ survey. Student themes included: motives for undertaking a summer studentship, administrative benefits and barriers, and perceived outcomes of the program. Supervisor themes included: motivations for engaging in the summer studentship program, administrative benefits and barriers, and expectations placed on the student. These themes are consistent with Vroom’s expectancy theory where motivation is related to expectancy, instrumentality, and valence.Conclusion: A dedicated program to foster an interest in research by medical students has great value as judged by an overall publication rate of 24.2%. In addition, it provides opportunities to explore areas of interest in depth, acquire research skills, pilot new avenues of research, and create professional networks. Student research program needs to be well founded and well supported including administrative and statistical support.

MAKING UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH EXPERIENCE MORE PRODUCTIVE

Problem analysis is taught in the classroomenvironment by having students solve problems that oftenhave ready solutions. Because classroom problems areoften solvable within an hour, problem analysis, as oneCEAB (Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board)graduate attribute, may be viewed separately from othergraduate attributes. Students participating inundergraduate research, however, learn problem analysisby also developing investigative skills, use of engineeringtools (Matlab, Excel), even communication skills. In thispaper we discuss our undergraduate research experiencefrom perspectives of mentor and mentee. Mentor'smotivation to recruit undergraduate research studentscould include (i) high probability of finding talentedstudents to work on project of relatively short duration(i.e., one year) and (ii) producing solutions to a variety ofproblems that could lead to research problems. Thesemotivations align well with motivations of undergraduateresearch mentees, i.e., experience in solving morerealistic (open-ended) problems and strengthening theirresearch portfolios. Generating "real world" problemscan be achieved by introducing student-proposed designor analysis project component into a third-year course.Projects completed can then be continued into summerresearch projects. Results from the summer projects inturn enrich the third-year course content. To makeundergraduate research experience more productive,mentor encourages mentee to write and present together aconference paper, such as CEEA 2018 Conference.National-level conference experience would strengthenstudent's research portfolio. Projects with highertechnical content could even be presented to engineeringconferences, which is what we are aiming for. We discussways to increase student participation. We provide acourse project template for faculty members who areinterested in adopting our experience into their teachingand research activities.

Design, implementation, and evaluation of a multi-disciplinary professional development program for research mentors

ABSTRACTUndergraduate research experience has been shown to enhance student learning and improve persistence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Researchers studying undergraduate research experiences have largely focused on student outcomes and have seldom investigated the outcomes of graduate and postdoctoral mentors. Here, we report a non-credit, year-long mentor professional development program designed for graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and research staff in STEM. Mentors attended a series of six interactive and discussion-based workshops and mentored first-year undergraduate students in independent summer research projects. We report evaluation findings for three mentor cohorts using a combination of qualitative analysis of mentoring philosophies and quantitative assessment of pre- and post-surveys about mentoring objectives and skills. Results indicate that mentors gained self-efficacy in some objectives and skills. However, many other objectives and skills remained unchanged. We explore possible explanations for the lack of more broad-scale gains across survey items and present ideas for program improvement.

Regenerative medicine: a vehicle to infuse laboratory-bench modules into an exercise physiology curriculum.

Regenerative medicine is a novel discipline that both excites undergraduates and may be used as a vehicle to expose students to scientific concepts and opportunities. The goal of this article is to describe the implementation of a National Science Foundation-funded Targeted Infusion Project in which underrepresented minority undergraduates are exposed to laboratory-bench skills and summer research opportunities that they may not have encountered otherwise. A 3-wk infusion of laboratory-bench and data presentation skills, in the context of a regenerative medicine/bioengineering project, aimed to engage students and expose them to opportunities as summer researchers and teaching assistants. The infusion aimed to assess the extent to which students improved 1) attitudes toward laboratory-bench-based techniques, using attitudes toward science as a proxy; 2) perceptions of scientific inquiry; 3) intentions to engage in undergraduate research; and 4) intentions to persist in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-related fields. Results indicate that the 3-wk infusion had no effect on science attitudes, but transcribed responses to structured interviews administered after the summer research experience indicated that students who completed summer research projects had positive experiences. Differences in intentions to engage in research were detected between groups of students in different STEM majors, in addition to differences in intentions to pursue a career in science. We describe the implementation of the infusion and briefly discuss quantitative outcomes. We conclude that infusion of laboratory-bench modules in the context of a regenerative medicine/bioengineering project may play a small but important role in increasing (minority) participation and persistence in the STEM pipeline.

How to apply to a summer undergraduate research program.

Want to get more experience in research, but find it difficult as an undergraduate? A summer research project may be the answer and there are many ways to organize this. Various universities around the world offer summer undergraduate research programs. These tend to be very competitive; hundreds, even thousands of students can apply for only a handful of positions. However, with some proactivity and strong planning, diligent undergraduate students can get accepted onto these prestigious programs. In this article, we outline the steps involved in selecting and successfully applying to a summer undergraduate research program.

ATVB Named Lecture Review-Insight Into Author.

HomeArteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular BiologyVol. 37, No. 1ATVB Named Lecture Review—Insight Into Author Free AccessResearch ArticlePDF/EPUBAboutView PDFView EPUBSections ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload citationsTrack citationsPermissions ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InMendeleyReddit Jump toFree AccessResearch ArticlePDF/EPUBATVB Named Lecture Review—Insight Into Author Originally published1 Jan 2017https://doi.org/10.1161/ATV.0000000000000042Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. 2017;37:4ATVB Named Lecture Reviews—George Lyman Duff Memorial LectureInsight Into the Author: Dudley Strickland, PhD, University of MarylandDownload figureDownload PowerPointWhy did you choose the profession of scientific investigation?I was inspired by my older brother, who was a Chemistry major in college, and thus selected Chemistry as a major. I loved Organic chemistry, and was selected to do a summer research project with other students studying the reaction of olefins with bromine. These summer research programs turned me on to science. When I was ready to apply to graduate school, my Organic teacher recommended Biochemistry as a field of study for my graduate work.Who have been your role model(s) in your scientific and professional life?The laboratories of Brown and Goldstein have served as role models for me as well as countless other scientists. I’ve always enjoyed reading their papers. They are enormously talented scientists who continue to make major contributions to science.What have been important influences on your professional life?My wife and family have been an important influence on my professional life. They are all extremely supportive, especially during the grant writing seasons. Of course these days, those seasons extend for rather lengthy periods!What wisdom do you impart on new investigators?The current scientific climate is really difficult for new investigators. My main advice would be to not give up as persistence is a requirement. Secondly, ask a lot of questions. When you discover a question without a satisfactory answer, pursue it.What are your non-scientific activities?My non-scientific activities include photography, especially of birds, and cycling. A few years ago, some friends and I rode from Missouri to the East coast. I thoroughly enjoyed this ride, and wish I had time to repeat the trip.What are your favorite books, movies, music (pick one or all)?Some of my favorite books include “Over the Edge of the World” which describes Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe and “Pompeii” by Robert Harris.FootnotesThis Insight Into ATVB Authors was originally published as part of the ATVB Named Lecture Review series. The original article is available online at http://atvb.ahajournals.org/content/34/3/487.full Previous Back to top Next FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails January 2017Vol 37, Issue 1 Advertisement Article InformationMetrics © 2016 American Heart Association, Inc.https://doi.org/10.1161/ATV.0000000000000042PMID: 28062454 Originally publishedJanuary 1, 2017 PDF download Advertisement