University of Cincinnati
Internet Mentoring Project
David L. Brown, PhD
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Introduction
• The Internet mentoring project is a multidiscipline, multi-year and multi-university
design project involving undergraduate
and master level students.
• Project is coordinated by a management
team made up of university faculty,
industrial mentors and selected students.
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Mentoring
• Mentors (graduate students, university
faculty, industrial, national-industrial
laboratory researchers and retired experts)
direct and instruct the students
participating in the project.
• The Internet is the media that connects the
students groups and mentors.
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Potential Projects
• Any large multi-discipline project with
significant social and engineering impact.
• Pilot project is a feasibility study and
design of a commuter system using small
energy efficient vehicles which are
networked to the highway and to each
other.
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Multi-University Participation
• A multi-university management team
determines the design specifications of the
overall project.
• The management teams coordinates and
assigns personnel to the various projects.
• Multi-university student teams are
assigned specific design and/or feasibility
projects.
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Management Team
• Consists of one faculty member from each
university, industrial mentors and selected
students from each university.
• Management team
– Defines overall project
– Recruits students teams and mentors to staff
each project.
– Makes personnel decisions
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Information Technology Team
• The IT team selects the Internet tools that
allow mentors and student to collaborate
using the Internet. Examples: Net
Meeting, Groove, Network Cameras, etc.
• Sets up web sites that coordinate the
project. Examples: VitalNet website and
Blackboard.com website.
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Multi-Year Project
• The proposed project will run for several years.
• Undergraduate and master levels students work
on the project.
• Students are recruited during their junior year.
As seniors they can select or be assigned to a
given project team.
• Undergraduate students can continue on as
master level students working on the same or
different project team and at the same or
different university.
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Academic Credit
• Satisfies ABET senior design capstone
requirements.
– Part of UC Senior Capstone Design
• Special masters level course offered with
the possibility of master thesis.
• Special topics courses available.
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Masters Student Support
• Graduate Coop Potential
– Summer internships for graduate students.
– Assistantships available during the school
year.
– Minimize funding problems for graduate
students.
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Multi-Phase Program
• Phase I – Kickoff
• Phase II– Project Definition
• Phase III – Design Project
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Phase I
• University of Cincinnati will kick off the
project. During the first year, UC in their Senior
Design Capstone Course (Design Clinic) will
investigate the feasibility of using the Internet to
coordinate a project.
• Initial feasibility study of commuter vehicle
project.
• Engineering, Business and Design Colleges
involved.
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Phase II – Multi-University
Project
• Integrate multiple universities.
–
–
–
–
Chuo University (Tokyo)
Katholieke University of Leuven (Belgium)
Rose-Holman
Purdue
• Management group defined.
• Recruit undergraduate students.
• Recruit mentors.
– Retired industry experts and engineering faculty
• Define Project
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Phase III– Project Completion
• Phase III – Complete Project as defined in
Phase II.
• Design vehicles and manufacture
prototype models.
• Engineering design common
• Each university will build a model.
• Models will be used to test networking of
vehicles and highway.
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Conference
• A conference will be held every May at
one of the participating universities and at
the conclusion of the project at a site
where the vehicles can be tested.
• The student teams will present their
results and have a chance to meet the
students (in person) from other
universities.
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Summary/Conclusions
• Project delayed
– September 11, 2001
– UC Design Clinic Director change
• Large design project orientation
• Implementation requires shared test
facilities
– VitalNet Concept
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VITALNet
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What is VITALNet
• VitalNet is a networked laboratory concept that
uses the Internet as the instrument for data
acquisition, the computer for data mining and
analysis, and the medium for delivering and
interpreting information.
• It is an extension of the Internet.
• It is practical, based upon and uses consumer
technology.
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VITALNet Schematic
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Who Uses VITALNet
• Two Groups
– Stakeholders
• Place their facilities onto the network for use in either a
collaborative or service-oriented testing.
– End-users
• Benefit solely through their collaborations with stakeholders
and other end-users
• Current Examples
– George Brown Earthquake Engineering Program
(NSF)
– NASA Ames Dryden Ring Buffer Network Bus
(RBNB)
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Pilot Program
• Deploy VITALNet by connecting two
large universities.
• Explore a compelling, unsolved, and
urgent engineering problem using
VITALNet.
• Internationally recruit academic and
industrial partners to VITALNet .
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Proposed Engineering Problem
• Develop methods for solving an
extraordinary complex phenomenon in
vibrations and acoustics (mid-frequency
range problem) in the presence of
nonlinearities and uncertainty.
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VITALNet
Cincinnati – Purdue Connections
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Project Summary
• Establish a cooperative, multi-universitygovernment-industrial Virtual
Instrumentation Test & Analysis
Laboratory Network (VITALNet) for
facilitating collaborate research, projects,
scholarship, and learning.
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Project Summary
• Transform how engineers model, test and
analyze complex systems by deploying
VITALNet to explore a compelling,
unsolved, and urgent problem in
engineering science.
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Project Summary
• Leverage past and future federal,
industrial, and institutional capital
research investments in infrastructure by
linking university test & analysis facilities
with VITALNet via scalable, affordable,
and easy-to-use consumer driven
information technologies and networks.
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Project Summary
• Educate and prepare engineering
students for the high-tech, teamdriven, global collaborative 21st
century workplace, and inform and
recruit academic and industrial
partners to VITALNet
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Future Potential VITALNet
Users
• Government
– International Labs
– US National Labs
• Los Alamos
• Sandia
• Lawrence Livermore
– NASA
• Industry
– GE, GM, Ford,
Honda, Suppliers, etc
• Universities
– Leuven, Chou, Mich.
Tech, Lowell, VPI,
etc
• Johnson, Huntsville,
Lewis
• Dryden, JPL
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Summary
• Internet technology is changing what we can do
and how we can work together.
• Internet mentoring is a natural extension of what
we are currently doing (email, FAX, video
conferencing, etc.)
• VitalNet gives more users access to expensive
test facilities and/or the data from such facilities.
Integration of compatible test facilities is also
part of the concept.
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