formerly University of Missouri-Rolla
Research Opportunities

Research projects are available in a variety of disciplines. Each student will be paired with a Missouri S&T faculty mentor in their field of interest. For a few projects, students may work together in pairs.

Selecting a research project

There are two ways to select a research project for the Academy.

  1. Select from the list of available projects below.
  2. If you can't find a project on the list that piques your interests, select an academic area from the second list and we'll work to match you with a faculty mentor with similar academic interests. While we can't guarantee specific projects, we'll do our best to help you meet your goals.

Projects offered to the 2008 Academy by Missouri S&T faculty:

>> Projects are being posted as they become available

CIVIL ENGINEERING - LUNAR HABITATS
Dr. William Schonberg, Professor and Department Chair
Dr. Schonberg has research interests in the areas of armor and shielding. This summer, summer researchers will work primarily in designing safe lunar and martian habitats for landing spacecraft and shielding them from meteorites and orbital debris.

ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER ENGINEERING - SOLAR POWER
Dr. Jonathan Kimball, Assistant Professor
Dr. Kimball is looking for a summer researcher interested in designing, building and testing a switched capacitor power converter. The target application is residential solar power. The converter would interface between a low voltage panel and a high voltage suitable for further conversion to 120Vac. This project has several practical applications in every-day life as our society continues to explore renewable energy sources.

ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER ENGINEERING - PLUG-IN HYBRID VEHICLES
Dr. Mehdi Ferdowsi, Assistant Professor
Students interested in exploring hybrid electrical vehicles will be interested in this project involving computer simulations of next-gen hybrid automobiles. Project will likely include two summer researchers.

ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER ENGINEERING - DIGITAL SKIN CANCER DIAGNOSIS & OPTICS
Dr. Randy Moss, Professor
Dr. Joe Stanley, Associate Professor
Dr. Bijaya Shrestha, Lecturer
Electromagnetic Compatability Laboratory
 Interested students will be able to work with a combined industry-university team on detecting a feature of malignant melanoma automatically. Malignant melanoma is the most deadly form of skin cancer. The overall project deals with using a computer to automatically extract certain key features from skin lesion images to assist in the diagnosis of malignant melanoma. The student will be guided in both the programming and medical aspects of the research. If successful, the student's program will be incorporated into a program released to physicians for melanoma detection. Applicants who have programming experience in the C programming language (or, better yet, C++) will be preferred. No programming experience is required, but applicants who have had some programming experience, perhaps through a programming course, will certainly be preferred.

INTERDISCIPLINARY ENGINEERING - RISK IN ENGINEERING
Dr. Katie Grantham Lough, Assistant Professor
Failures in science and engineering in today's global arena mean gambling with billions of dollars and human lives. In partnership with the R.I.S.K. in Engineering Laboratory, Dr. Grantham Lough has several opportunities available to students designing physical experiments, investigating failures and working with 3-D CAD prototypes. Summer researchers will also explore forensic engineering in a "Mythbusters"-style setting.

MATERIALS SCIENCE - BIOFUEL
Dr. Fatih Dogan, Professor
Generation of electricity from biofuel cells, bacteria and renewable resources. A 10-gallon container of water, graphite and mud has been shown to produce enough electricity to power a light bulb at only the cost of the tank. Layers of graphite beneath bodies of water (such as Lake Michigan) have the potential to produce massive amounts of green electricity when coupled with the proper levels of bacteria and microbes. This project is a continuation of previous summer research projects. Dr. Dogan also has several side projects involving high-temperature superconductivity and related projects for summer researchers to get involved with.

PHYSICS - NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF WAVE PROPAGATION
Dr. Alexey Yamilov, Research Assistant Professor
Dr. Yamilov's research interests can be broadly described as condensed matter theory, particularly analytical and numerical modeling with a view toward experimental corroboration. Summer researchers will work primarily with numerical simulation of wave propagation in disordered waveguides. Knowledge of Fortran, Matlab and Linux is desirable.

 

Academic Departments for Potential Projects:

If you are requesting a specific project area that we haven't outlined above, please be very clear on your application about your goals and interests. We can't guarantee a research placement in that area but will work to locate a faculty mentor that's excited to work with you. Be as specific as possible and use key phrases to describe your interests. (Examples: Composite Materials, Solar Power, Actuarial Science, Civil War History, Blast-Resistant Glass, Cancer Research, etc.)

Don't know exactly what you're interested in? It's perfectly okay to simply list "physics" or "mathematics" or "chemistry" or even "I just really like airplanes" if you like those subjects but are open to any kind of research project in those fields. We've got part of the Titanic's hull on campus, next-generation space shuttle projects and much more available. We've largely left the door wide-open and want you to use your imagination.

Need some inspiration? [online]  [Missouri S&T research blog] [2007 project list]

The bottom line: if you have a specific interest, we'll do our best to support you.