ERC Adopts Broad Summer Activity Format Showcasing Industry, Faculty, and Student Research

Achievement date: 
2016
Outcome/accomplishment: 

In its tenth year the NSF-funded Mid-Infrared Technologies for Health and the Environment (MIRTHE) Engineering Research Center (ERC), headquartered at Princeton University, adopted a new Summer Activity format. First, MIRTHE hosted a Summer Symposium in June 2015 featuring technical talks from faculty and industry. Second, in late July, MIRTHE hosted a two-day Summer Research Presentation Workshop for participants in the REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) program along with summer interns to showcase their summer research. 

Impact/benefits: 

The overall vision of this two-session approach was to bring together the entire MIRTHE community in a format enabling the wide-ranging exchange of ideas, intense interdisciplinary networking, and socializing in an intellectual and technology-rich environment. As is evident from the figure below, this vision was realized. 

Explanation/Background: 

To support the overall vision, MIRTHE's summer symposium and presentation workshop are conducted with several set goals:

(i) to provide a venue for all student participants (graduate, undergraduate, REU, and select K-12 students) to present their work in an intellectually rich and challenging environment;

(ii) to provide a venue for MIRTHE leadership to assess quality of research work conducted in the ERC;

(iii) to provide opportunities for formal interdisciplinary training through selected tutorials, invited speakers external to MIRTHE, and focus sessions; and

(iv) to connect the MIRTHE academic and industrial practitioners.