Browse Active Research Projects
Undergraduates can participate in projects for credits by registering in CS 4974 or 4994. Consult the Faculty Advisor or Research Supervisor before you register for this course.
Participation on a VTURCS project could also lead to an honors thesis for CS majors interested in graduating with honors.
Can't find anything that piques your curiousity? Don't be afraid to check out the Computer Science faculty list for someone who has a research interest you'd like to know more about. They might just have something for you.
AdWiki: Designing a Wiki-Based System for Student Advising
Faculty Advisor- Aditya Johri
Research Supervisor- Aditya Johri
Description of Work- Student advising is a critical issue in undergraduate education, especially in engineering. The ever increasing faculty-student ratio in engineering requires innovations in the student advising model. The goal of this project is to develop a Wiki-based online system that can assist students with their advising needs by combining online information with online and face-to-face interactions. The first version of this system will be designed for Freshmen engineering students with later iterations encompassing other years. This project will provide the student with the opportunity to critically apply online community design concepts to solve a real world problem.
Application Instructions- Please email Dr. Aditya Johri (ajohri@vt.edu) to apply or if you have any questions.
Project URL- http://
Area(s) of Research- Human-Computer Interaction, Knowledge
Compensation- Work for Pay or Credit
Contact- ajohri@vt.edu
Deep, Personalized Searching
- Faculty Advisor
- Lenwood S. Heath
- Research Supervisor
- Lenwood S. Heath
- Description of Work
- Powerful keyword-based searching is available for the web (e.g., Google) and for scientific literature (e.g., Web of Science). However, a person searching for a very specific kind of resource may spend much effort on a search that ends in frustration due to a mismatch between keyword search and the semantics of her information resource needs.
The focus of this project is to incorporate semantic-based searching that is deep and time consuming, even leisurely. A search that takes 24 hours to find just the right resource(s) can be considered successful, as long as those 24 hours consist of automated effort only, while the person pursues other tasks and interests.
Keyword semantics will be obtained using word senses obtained through WordNet. A command-line user interface will launch semantic search algorithms that integrate keyword search (probably Google) and semantics. A relational database will be built to record search progress. Email notification of search milestones can be given. A prototype searcher will emphasize searching for a small list of high-quality tutorials on a precise topic specified by the user. Implementation will be under Linux or Mac OS X.
- Application Instructions
- If this description charges you up, then see Professor Heath during his office hours (available on his web site). Please bring a resume and transcript. A love of the subtleties of the English language is a definite plus.
- Project URL
- http://
- Area(s) of Research
- Databases, Data Mining, Knowledge, Artificial Intelligence
- Compensation
- Work for Credit or Volunteer
- Contact
- heath@vt.edu
Human Memory Mirror
- Faculty Advisor
- Lenwood S. Heath
- Research Supervisor
- Lenwood S. Heath
- Description of Work
- Human memory enjoys a very different structure and different capabilities from artificial memories such as RAM, file systems, and the Internet. For example, file systems were designed primarily for space efficiency and access speed and only secondarily for appropriateness for use by humans. In particular, directories, files, and hierarchies are far less powerful representations of knowledge than human memory.
The aim of this project is to design a radically new kind of "file system" (actually a human memory mirror) in analogy to human memory. A prototype that runs under Linux should be implemented as a proof of concept.
- Application Instructions
- If this description appeals to you, see Professor Heath during his office hours for a chat. Research may be done by a team or individually. Bring a resume and transcript.
- Project URL
- http://
- Area(s) of Research
- Systems, Knowledge, Artificial Intelligence
- Compensation
- Work for Credit or Volunteer
- Contact
- heath@vt.edu
Supercomputing on Video Gaming Consoles
- Faculty Advisor
- W. Feng
- Research Supervisor
- Ashwin Aji
- Description of Work
- Given the extreme needs of today's sophisticated video games, game consoles and video graphics cards in their own right have become supercomputers. The goal of this project is to program *and* optimize a bioinformatics application (or perhaps something else, if reasonable) on the Sony PlayStation 3 and/or the NVIDIA Tesla video graphics card using the CUDA programming environment. (For those interested in human-computer interaction, a nice interface to the above bioinformatics application would serve as a nice project as well, or an interface to our existing codes.)
- Application Instructions
- E-mail a resume to feng@cs.vt.edu. Optional, but preferred, materials include unofficial undergraduate transcript and a brief one-paragraph statement of what interests you about this project.
- Project URL
- http://
- Area(s) of Research
- Bioinformatics, Human-Computer Interaction, Parallel Computation, Problem Solving Environments, Software Engineering, Systems, Theory, Databases, Data Mining, Knowledge
- Compensation
- Negotiable
- Contact
- feng@cs.vt.edu