The Next Generation of ECE Innovators: What They Did This Summer
A group of five undergraduate and high school students spent their summer gaining hands-on experience in ECE’s Wireless Network and Cyber Security Research lab and the Network and Information Security Lab. Professor Loukas Lazos and associate professor Ming Li hosted an Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship/High School Research Apprenticeship, part of the Army Educational Outreach Program (AEOP).
The students learned about the fundamentals of conducting research in a critical area of wireless network security – specifically, establishing trust among wireless devices to protect them from cyberattacks. In an increasingly connected world, where wireless devices can be connected with everything from health care devices to and financial information, this field is more important than ever. The students’ work focused on wireless network security in autonomous vehicles and groups of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices.
"I wanted to do something impactful during the summer, and electrical and computer engineering was a field that I wanted to explore further," said Richard Peng, a participant from University High School.
The students learned about the basic research process, from reading literature to identifying problems and potential solutions. They spent their days designing solutions, meeting with mentors and carrying out experiments with real-world testbeds such as vehicles, USRP devices and Wi-Fi routers.
Students also developed their programming skills, analyzed the data they collected and summarized their results. They plan to write and submit conference papers based on their work.
"It was a great experience and a way to get your toes wet in research," said David Li, a BASIS Oro Valley High School student.
Yanjun Pan, an ECE graduate student, acted as a mentor for the program, and said it was a valuable opportunity to develop her teaching skills.
"I learned how to communicate with students more efficiently," she said. "I enjoyed conducting experiments with the students, where we discussed our experiment setup and figured out bugs together."
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