Faculty and Undergraduate Student Research Database

We plan to develop and deploy to local schools a physics experiment that will potentially be included in the standard roaster of physics labs in Tuscaloosa area and statewide. The student will work on the following aspects: 1. Help deciding what lab to deploy. This could be either one of the standard labs implemented with the off-the-shelf commercial instruments (e.g., PASCO Scientific) like the ones offered in the intro physics courses at UA, or a bespoke setup that could be manufactured at the UA machine and electronics shops. 2. Under the supervision of the faculty and the Science In Motion specialist, the student will take care of developing the lab, procuring needed equipment, producing a write-up (manual) for teachers, and orga...

Catalysis is used to produce most chemicals worldwide. Thus, optimization of catalysts is relevant for both economic and environmental reasons. The ever-increasing computational power has led to the rise of computational research in catalysis that has been one of the main developments of the previous decades in the field. Computations have helped understanding chemical bonding, assign spectroscopic features, and explore reaction mechanisms among others. Regarding this latter, identifying rate-determining steps and analyzing critical chemical interactions have become standard tools to understand catalytic reactions and design more active, selective, and/or stable catalysts. As such, the Szilvasi group is interested in using computational met...

We have several projects that deal with development and testing of biomedical instrumentation. Depending on the project, the students may participate in several related research activities: 1) Sensor design, manufacture and testing. Practical hands-on tasks that often need 3D design skills, working with plastics, resins and other materials. 2) Signal processing and pattern recognition of signals collected by our sensors. The sensors are used in the human studies and the collected data need to be processed to recognize events of interest in the sensor data. Either direction can be used as a credit in research scholars program or for conference paper preparation....

Dr. Cheng is looking for motivated undergraduate students to join his group. The students will participate in several projects funded by NSF, GLPF and UA. As an example, his group is developing new implantable material, sensors and machine learning algorithms in order to remotely monitor people with disabilities. The students should be familiar with engineering principles, programming and problem solving....

Participate in one or more of the following: (1) NSF I-Corps and Customer Discovery Activities, (2) Data collection and analysis for Battery State-Of-Health (SOH) Diagnosis and State-Of-Charge Estimation, (3) Design and Fabrication of electronic circuits for battery related measurements, (4) Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning (ML) algorithms development for Battery Management Systems, and (5) Matlab Modeling or Programing for Battery Management Systems. The project is co-advised by Dr. Jaber Abu Qahouq (ECE, College of Engineering) and Dr. Rob Morgan (The Culverhouse College of Business). Additional information details are available upon request by contacting Dr. Jaber Abu Qahouq at jaberq@eng.ua.edu or Dr. Rob Morgan at ...

I am looking for a student who is interested in learning 3D modeling, CNC machining and extrusion molding. My lab has a very nice CNC machine, Tormach 440 (see here https://www.tormach.com/pcnc-440/). I plan to utilize this CNC machine to make plastic enclosures for the small wearable sensors. First, 3D models of enclosures and molds to make these enclosures need to be designed in Fusion 360 software. Then the molds need to be machined out of wax and tested. When the molds are fully tested, we will need to machine them from aluminum. The machined molds then will be used with a plastic extrusion machine to make enclosures. This is a rather involved project but a fun learning experience for anyone interested in advanced manufacturing....

The control of chemical transformation via catalysis is both an exceptional intellectual challenge and critically important to the Nation. Catalysis is central to energy production and utilization, to chemical manufacturing, to the minimization of environmental impact, and it has been arguably the single most important agent for sustainable development in the developing world. The revolutions in nanotechnology and high performance computing provide unprecedented new opportunities to elucidate the fundamental principles governing the control of chemical transformation by catalysts. Indeed, the coupling of theory, modeling and simulation with experiment will provide the most profound insights into catalyst behavior and thus enable the design ...

The participant(s) will review papers, perform big-data analyses and basic statistical tests, and generate a project report that may potentially be published in a journal....

Students can work on the following projects: 1. Novel approaches to simulation of nuclear track detector data for the MoEDAL experiment at the Large Hadron Collider using Generative Adversarial Networks 2. Position reconstruction of gamma and beta decays in the EXO-200 neutrinoless double-beta decay experiment using Convolutional Neural Networks Fluency in programming languages (Python and/or C, Linux OS) are required. Familiarity with deep learning technique and relevant software (PyTorch, Keras) are preferred. Access to GPU computing system will be provided...

Sexual violence is a pervasive problem for young people and our understanding of factors that increase the risk for sexual violence to occur or impede our efforts to prevent sexual violence is not well-understood. Within our lab, projects focus on three main areas: 1) understanding how alcohol use impacts people's ability to communicate about the sex they do or do not want, 2) how alcohol use impacts people's ability to intervene when they witness risky sexual experiences, and 3) how alcohol use increases the risk for sexual violence to occur. Across these studies, we also examine how these factors may look similar and different among cisgender women and men, and sexual and gender minority persons. If these topics interest you, students...