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Undergraduate Research Opportunities
We encourage undergraduates to participate in departmental research
projects. These projects provide the opportunity to work closely with
faculty and graduate students on real-world problems. Some of the
opportunities currently available for undergraduate research projects are:
- Professor Dinda (pdinda@cs.northwestern.edu) - 399 projects
- Peter Dinda would like a group of 2-3 students to implement a PAPERS network
for the Prescience Lab's compute cluster. PAPERS is an ultra-low latency
network implemented on PC parallel ports and TTL logic. The inventors
provide all schematics, code, and even board masks at http://www.aggregate.org/AFN/Hardware/.
Specifically, Peter is interested in a scalable TTL_PAPERS for 8-32 nodes.
In essence, this project would involve ordering the boards, components and cabling,
lots of soldering to put it all together, hardware debugging, and then installing and
testing the hardware and software on the cluster. If you've built just about any
hardware before, this should be relatively easy.
- Professor Edelson (d-edelson@northwestern.edu) has a
number of exciting opportunities for undergraduates to get involved in his
research projects. Students with multiple interests can combine these
different aspects into projects that suit their interests.
- For students interested in programming, he has opportunities to develop
educational software, including visualization environments and geographic
information systems. There are opportunities for programming in Java
and in C++ under Windows or Macintosh operating systems.
- For students interested in human-computer interactions (HCI) there are
opportunities to create interface designs for learners and conduct
user-tests. For students interested in cognitive science, there are
opportunities to conduct research on student learning.
- For students interested in science education, there are opportunities to
develop curriculum, work with practicing teachers, and conduct research in
classrooms.
Professor Forbus: We
are looking for students to help us in extending our research on
self-explanatory simulators into robust software for education and for building
computer games. To see what self-explanatory simulators are, please look here.
One example of how we have used them in education can be seen here
Our ideas for using them in computer games and interactive entertainment can be seen at
here
and here.
There are three positions that we would like to fill as soon as we can:
- SIMGEN IDE Developer: We are looking for a student to work
with us in building an integrated development environment (IDE) around our
self explanatory simulator compiler. This includes creating a good user
interface, integrating existing debugging and tuning tools, and building new
tools for making it easier to author simulators. The IDE will be written in
Common Lisp, since the compiler is, but the runtime systems are in Lisp, C++
and Java. Consequently, skill in Common Lisp is essential, and some
knowledge of C++ and Java would be very useful.
- SIMGEN Runtime Developers: We are looking for two students to work
with us on building runtime systems for self-explanatory simulators. One
student is needed to help us improve our Java-based runtimes, which are
being used for simulators in middle-school science curricula being developed
in collaboration with Chicago Public School teachers. Another student is
needed to help us update our C++ runtime, including converting it from
Borland C++ to Visual Studio and porting it to Pocket PC’s and Handheld PC
Pros.
These projects can be undertaken as either C99 projects for independent study
credit or for pay, level commensurate with experience. Assuming things go well,
summer research positions may also be available. Please contact Ken Forbus (forbus@northwestern.edu)
for details.
Professor Watson - 399
project opportunities
Professor Wilensky - 399
project opportunities
For a complete list of research overviews by our faculty, please consult the research
overview pages. If you're in the McCormick School of
Engineering, you might also be interested in the
Undergraduate
Honors Program.
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