REU Site: Research Experience for Undergraduates in Computer Vision

This is a continuation of an Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) site in Computer Vision which has operated at the University of Central Florida for the past thirty-three years. Each year, 10 students will participate in a 10-week duration, full-time Summer program. Participants will be trained in Computer Vision; in particular, they will learn fundamentals of computer vision, which plays an important role in many areas, including, security, healthcare, defense, and manufacturing.

This project will provide opportunities to a diverse group of undergraduates, most from predominantly undergraduate institutions, to spend a summer with a highly successful research group. From lessons learned in recent years, the proposed model includes earlier project planning, round-the-clock mentoring by the research team, a streamlined 7-day short course that lets participants start their research projects sooner; and daily meetings with mentors to plan activities throughout the day.

Participants take the short course, match themselves to a project topic that they most desire, and spend sufficient time in focused research. They then can opt to continue through the year by working with the professors to write research papers on their project, to prepare for the GREs and to apply to graduate programs. Recruits will be a diverse group of undergraduates, mostly from predominantly undergraduate institutions Our model for REU will be disseminated among other schools.

This project includes development of new computer vision algorithms for solving scientific problems in video object segmentation, object detection, tracking, activity and event recognition, and visual reasoning. This involves both theory and practice; we are interested in mathematical modeling and analysis of difficult vision problems and developing algorithms, while at the same time building real systems for demonstrating those solutions in real life situations.

This project will strengthen the following skills in participants ability to: write complex computer programs; communicate orally about research problem; think about computer vision issues in real life problems; read and understand key research papers; contribute to discussion of computer vision problem; and, to apply to graduate school.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.