Faculty and Undergraduate Student Research Database

As a rising star, perovskite-based photovoltaics have been demonstrated to be the most promising solar technology for low-cost mass production through high-speed printing. The certified champion power-conversion efficiency (PCE) of perovskite solar cells (PVSCs) has been boosted to 25.7%, which is on par with the best performance of dominating silicon solar cells. However, PVSCs still must overcome a few obstacles before becoming economically competitive in the photovoltaic market. The primary challenges include instability causing reduction in lifetimes and lengthy annealing times limiting the mass production. In this project, undergraduate students research fellow will work with graduate students and postdoctoral research fellows to explo...

MOTIVATED, CURIOUS STUDENTS SOUGHT Multiple positions available on a paid, course credit, or volunteer basis for students interested in getting involved in a multi-disciplinary research project relating to human gesture and activity recognition technologies using radar. No prior radar experience required. Depending on student interests and background, specific role in project will be designed and level of responsibility determined. Potential topics include - programming and experimentation with a variety of software defined radio platforms - human kinematic modeling and skeleton tracking using multiple Kinect sensors - machine learning algorithm development for activity and gesture recognition - radar signal processing and radar...

This interdisciplinary project aims to explore a new concept of using biological process (cell culture) to enable metal thin film deposition and device fabrication. It comprises three aspects, 1) study of biological process to see how the cell culture condition controls the cell growth and metabolic products formation; and 2) study of the metal film deposition process to see how we can modify the substrate to control the film growth; 3) combine the above two aspects using the bio-metabolism products to enable and control the metal thin film growth. This research position focuses the 2nd aspect, studying the metal deposition in relation to substrate and process. Strong interest is required, and some related background are preferred...

The Laboratory for Human-Environmental Interactions Modeling and Analysis (HEIMA; https://heima.ua.edu/) is seeking a motivated undergraduate student to support an ongoing National Science Foundation-funded project on Disrupting Illicit Supply Networks. The undergraduate research assistant will support efforts to detect unidentified or unregulated boats (UUBs) from high resolution satellite imagery. This will contribute to a larger study about the routes that cocaine traffickers use to move shipments through Central America to the United States and European Union. Responsibilities: • Downloading satellite images from designated sources based on predefined criteria. • Processing downloaded images through an existing object-detection m...

Undergraduate researchers in the Harris Laboratory participate in research projects related to heterogeneous catalyst synthesis, characterization, and measurement of reaction kinetics. As much as possible, students will have their own independent research projects in addition to responsibilities related to multi-student research thrusts in production of renewable fuels, chemicals, and protection of air and water quality. Students are expected to commit to ten hours per week of research activity that will be guided by Dr. Harris and his graduate students. Students are also expected to commit to working in the lab for a minimum of two semesters. Students will prepare final reports summarizing their efforts, and present in our laboratory gr...

Student can get involved in the following aspects of the project: 1. Development of novel radiation detectors optimized for the magnetic monopole searches. 2. Monte Carlo simulation and data analysis to support the current and planned searches for magnetic monopoles and other particles beyond the Standard Model of physics....

There are multiple projects that deal with interfacing of sensors to microcontrollers (MSP430, STM32). Skills in hardware and software interfacing are needed. These skills may include: microcontroller programming, PCB design, 3D design, sensor prototyping, smartphone programming, etc. Some of the projects may be taken for class credit in the research scholars program, some are paid positions. The paid positions typically are on time cards, but do not pay for time, but rather for the final result. Previous projects like this resulted in students writing papers and presenting them at various conferences. One project took the second place at student paper competition at IEEE Southeastcon, another took 3rd place (and a $5000 award) at TI Innov...

Designing new environmentally friendly and cheap materials for practical applications is one of the main challenges of our century. This process is however very slow because synthesizing and testing new materials take time and have considerable cost. Computational methods provide an alternative method to screen materials faster and circumvent the costly and slow experimental trial-and-error approach. In this research area, machine learning-based methods have emerged as flexible tools recently to predict the properties of hitherto unknown materials based on previously known information. The Szilvasi group is working on developing databases and machine learning-based workflows to design new materials in the area of catalysis, energy storage, ...

We have a number of occasional paid tasks associated with research. This is a good opportunity to develop design skills. The availability and selection of tasks varies from time time to time. Examples include: - software design: microcontroller programming, Bluetooth stack design, Java/Javascript - electronic design: sensor design, FPGA programming - 3D design: enclosure design and prototyping - manufacturing tasks, assembly - assistance with conducting human experiments and annotation of data...

The position is about developing deep learning tools to analyze geosocial media data for various applications, such as earth science, disaster management, and transportation. Required skills: 1. Strong Python programming skills 2. Have taken the class on statistics and probability 3. Being Self-motivated 4. Good time management and be a team player Preferred skills: 1. Knowledge in deep learning and tensorflow 2. Knowledge in machine learning or data science...