REU Site: Exploring Human Centered and Socially Relevant Interactive Technologies in Computer Vision, Visualization, Pervasive Computing, Serious Games, and Social Networks

The objective of the REU Site at UNC Charlotte is to implement effective practices to engage a diverse group of undergraduate students in computing research. Undergraduate students will actively pursue research that applies human-computer interaction (HCI) concepts to advance the state of the art in a particular field, including pervasive computing, computer vision, data visualization, social networks, and serious games. Each research project has a socially relevant theme, providing students with the opportunity to apply and extend their computing knowledge to address problems that have a real-world impact. The site emphasizes participation of promising students from underrepresented groups in computing and from institutions that have limited research programs. To help students become rapidly immersed in the culture of research and to prepare them for meaningful research experiences, the site cultivates an authentic community of practice that values the contributions of REU students as researchers, and provides REU participants with explicit, just-in-time training in research skills at a weekly workshop. The intellectual merit of this project lies in the REU students? contributions to the discovery and evaluation of innovative, interactive computing solutions to address problems of interest in society; specific projects may address open problems in the fields of computer vision, pervasive computing, data visualization, social networks, and serious games. The broader impact of this project lies in the opportunity to introduce talented students from underrepresented populations to computing research and in the potential to increase the enrollment of domestic students in doctoral computing programs.