Project Title: New Sustainable Cementitious Material for Infrastructure
Department: Civil and Coastal Engineering
Faculty Mentor: Kyle Riding, kyle.riding@essie.ufl.edu
Ph.D. Student Mentor(s): Hossein Mosavi, smosavi@ufl.edu
Terms Available: Fall, Spring
Student Level: Junior, Senior; 1 student per term
Prerequisites: Civil and Coastal Engineering Student
Credit: 0-3 credits via EGN 4912
Stipend: $15 per hour up to 20 hours a week
Application Requirements: Basic online application, resume, faculty interview; email Kyle Riding, kyle.riding@essie.ufl.edu for interview request
Application Deadline: October 1 for Fall term and November 1 for Spring term
Website: n/a
Project Description: Portland cement manufacturing is responsible for around 5% of global CO2 emissions. Calcined clay offers the potential to replace part of portland cement, making concrete more durable and environmentally friendly. This project will be a pilot study into the potential for a local source of calcined clay to be used in infrastructure.
Project Title: Natural Hazard Wind Engineering Research for Undergraduates
Department: Civil and Coastal Engineering
Faculty Mentor: David Prevatt, dprev@ce.ufl.edu
Ph.D. Student Mentor(s): David Roueche, david.roueche@ufl.edu
Terms Available: Fall, Spring, Summer
Student Level: Junior, Senior; 3-5 students per term
Prerequisites: CES3102, Common Sense, Architecture and building construction interests
Credit: 0-3 credits via EGN 4912, for most students 0-1 credits per semester
Stipend: Volunteer with no stipend first term, potential OPS later, potential University Scholars
Application Requirements: Resume, statement of research interest, faculty interview; email one pdf file with all application requirements to David Prevatt, dprev@ce.ufl.edu, to set up an interview
Application Deadline: As projects are available to match skills of applicants
Website: n/a
Project Description: Conduct experimental and analytical research to understand how tornado forces create structural damage in low-rise buildings, particularly houses that annually suffer over $2 billion in economic loss. The research involves field deployments following tornadoes to document and analyze the damage, publication of summary reports on the web, as well as modeling of the probabilistic losses using Matlab and other software to develop Monte Carlo simulations of extreme-wind structural system interactions.
Project Title: Transportation Research Internship Program (TRIP)
Department: Civil and Coastal Engineering
Faculty Mentor: Sivaramakrishnan Srinivasan, siva@ce.ufl.edu
Ph.D. Student Mentor(s): n/a
Terms Available: Summer
Student Level: Junior, Senior; 6 students per Summer
Prerequisites: Applicants must be in their junior or senior years and should be completing their undergraduate program no earlier than December 2016. Applicants must demonstrate a desire to pursue graduate studies and/or a career in transportation and are required to have excellent analytical and communication skills.
Credit: n/a
Stipend: $3,000 Summer stipend
Application Requirements: Basic online application, resume, UF or other institution unofficial transcripts, letter(s) of recommendation; email one PDF file with all application requirements to the UFTI Assistant, ufti@eng.ufl.edu; application materials will become available in early September 2016
Application Deadline: December 1, 2016
Website: http://www.transportation.institute.ufl.edu/
Project Description: Each intern will contribute to one or more on-going projects. These projects are in a variety of areas including traffic operations, highway capacity and quality of service, safety, travel modeling, pedestrian activity, network optimization, simulation and optimization of transportation systems, traveler behavior, infrastructure design and monitoring, big data and data analytics, emergent technologies such as electric/automated vehicles, dynamic traveler information systems, and safety and sustainability of multi-modal transportation systems, and transportation systems planning.
Students are expected to work 20-30 hours per week. Each intern will be supervised by a faculty advisor and will be expected to work in close collaboration with master’s and doctoral students. At the end of the internship period, the interns are required to present a PowerPoint lecture and submit research reports describing their projects.
Project Title: Evaluation of Sodium Montmorillonite Clay Treated with Hydrolase Enzymes
Department: Civil and Coastal Engineering
Faculty Mentor: Scott Wasman, scott.wasman@essie.ufl.edu
Ph.D. Student Mentor(s): n/a
Terms Available: Fall, Spring
Student Level: Senior; 1 student per term
Prerequisites: Civil and Coastal Engineering Student
Credit: 0-3 credits via EGN 4912
Stipend: none unless selected for University Scholars
Application Requirements: Resume, UF Unofficial transcripts, faculty interview; email statement of interest, resume, and unofficial transcripts to Scott Wasman, scott.wasman@essie.ufl.edu
Application Deadline: March 1 for Summer and Fall terms; November 1 for Spring term
Website: n/a
Project Description: Expansive soils, such as sodium montmorillonite, are common throughout much of the United States and often lead to damaged infrastructure. The expansion of clays can cause instability in foundations as soil settlement does not occur regularly. Current solutions to this problem are often expensive and some techniques are environmentally unfriendly. To combat the expansion of sodium montmorillonite, it is proposed that soils can be treated with hydrolase enzymes to reduce the amount of swelling.
Project Title: Human-Robot Collaboration for Complex Construction Works
Department: Civil and Coastal Engineering
Faculty Mentor: Eric Du, eric.du@essie.ufl.edu
Ph.D. Student Mentor(s): Qi Zhu, qizhu@ufl.edu
Terms Available: Fall
Student Level: Sophomore, Junior, or Senior; 2 students per term
Prerequisites: Unity game engine development (basic); C# (intermediate level); Robotics knowledge (basic)
Credit: 0-3 credits via EGN 4912
Stipend: None
Application Requirements: Resume, UF Unofficial transcripts, faculty interview; email statement of interest, resume, and unofficial transcripts to Eric Du, eric.du@essie.ufl.edu
Application Deadline: Open
Website: faculty.eng.ufl.edu/ericdu/
Project Description: This research aims to understand the use of Virtual Reality as an intuitive user interface to enable a more natural collaboration between human workers and collaborative robots in complex construction tasks, such as pipe works.
Project Title: Performance-Based Design and Optimization of Building Systems
Department: Civil and Coastal Engineering
Faculty Mentor: Arthriya Subgranon, arthriya@ufl.edu
Ph.D. Student Mentor(s): N/A
Terms Available: Fall, Spring, Summer
Student Level: Junior or Senior; 1-2 students per term
Prerequisites: CES3102 and interests in building design. Knowledge of programming (Matlab) and statistics is a plus. Students considering graduate school are strongly encouraged to apply!
Credit: 0-3 credits via EGN 4912, for most students 0-1 credits per semester
Stipend: Volunteer with no stipend first term, potential OPS later, potential University Scholars
Application Requirements: Resume, UF Unofficial transcripts, faculty interview; email statement of interest, resume, and unofficial transcripts to Arthriya Subgranon, arthriya@ufl.edu, to set up an interview
Application Deadline: Rolling until filled
Website: N/A
Project Description: The substantial economic losses and social impacts seen in the aftermath of hurricanes have triggered interest in enhancing building design for mitigating wind-induced risk. In this project, student(s) will use computational models to assess the building performance through performance-based wind engineering frameworks. To achieve the high-performance goals at affordable costs, the student(s) will explore ways to integrate optimization methods with the performance-based design concept to identify optimal design solutions for wind-excited systems.
Project Title: Partnering Workers with Interactive Robot Assistants to Usher Transformation in Future Construction Work
Department: Civil and Coastal Engineering
Faculty Mentor: Denise Simmons, denise.r.simmons@essie.ufl.edu
Ph.D. Student Mentor(s): Hwangbo Bae, hwangbo.bae@ufl.edu
Terms Available: Fall, Spring, Summer
Student Level: Junior or Senior; 1 student per term
Prerequisites: Though not required, it would be helpful if the student has previously conducted qualitative research.
Credit: 0-3 credits via EGN 4912
Stipend: $10 per hour up to 10 hours a week
Application Requirements: Resume, UF Unofficial transcripts, faculty interview; Email answer these two questions in one page or less: What problem do you want to address? How is that problem connected to the work of my research group or, specifically, the project described? [See our research here: https://faculty.eng.ufl.edu/simmons-research-lab/research/]. Email all application requirements to simmonsresearchlab@gmail.com to request an interview with Hwangbo Bae and Dr. Simmons.
Application Deadline: Rolling until filled
Website: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2128415&HistoricalAwards=false
Project Description: This project investigates if construction work can be conceived as a human-robot partnership, where human workers play the critical role of planning the work, and training and supervising robotic assistants to adapt to presented workspace conditions and perform useful work. The project team is integrating advances in interactive task learning, mixed reality, and reinforcement learning to enable construction workers to naturally collaborate with robot assistants through direct physical interaction and virtual supervision and training. For such a symbiotic human-robot partnership to benefit construction workers and result in widespread deployment, workers need to be equipped with new skills. The project team is exploring new educational and professional development programs to support worker aspirations for upskilling and lifelong learning, and to open avenues for people of diverse abilities to be productive members of the construction workforce. Tight-knit partnerships with industry collaborators will inform the project activities and provide access to construction work sites and training facilities for testing and evaluation.