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.
Building a Linux Cluster
Faculty Advisor- Danesh Tafti
Research Supervisor
Description of Work- Update an existing linux cluster. Requires reconfiguration with OSCAR. The hardware is in place but needs to be reconfigured with updated software and OS. Great opportunity to get hands on experience in building clusters.
Application Instructions
Project URL- http://www.hpcfd.me.vt.edu
Area(s) of Research- Networking, Parallel Computation, Software Engineering, Systems
Compensation- Work for Pay
Contact- dtafti@vt.edu
Characterizing Virtual Machine Performance
- Faculty Advisor
- W. Feng
- Research Supervisor
- M. Gardner
- Description of Work
- In the past year, virtual computing on physical resources has become in vogue at major companies throughout the U.S. The aim of this project is to do a qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the different virtual machine environments out there, e.g., qemu, VMware, Xen, and so on.
- 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
- Networking, Systems
- Compensation
- Negotiable
- Contact
- feng@cs.vt.edu
High-Performance Biological Sequence Search
- Faculty Advisor
- Wu Feng
- Research Supervisor
- Jeremy Archuleta
- Description of Work
- Biological sequence searching has become a fundamental aspect of all bioinformatics. It can help in tasks such as sequencing the human genome, designing pathogen signatures for pathogen detection, identifying unknown viruses (e.g., the virus now known as SARS), and so on. In this project, you will be coding different modules of part of a much larger project (i.e., mpiBLAST at http://www.mpiblast.org) in order to improve functionality, maintainability, and performance.
- 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://www.mpiblast.org/
- Area(s) of Research
- Bioinformatics, Parallel Computation, Software Engineering, Systems, Theory, Computational Biology, Databases, Data Mining, Artificial Intelligence
- Compensation
- Negotiable
- Contact
- feng@cs.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
Investigating the Application of Pervasive Computing Concepts to Teaching and Learning
- Faculty Advisor
- Scott Midkiff
- Research Supervisor
- William (Bill) Plymale
- Description of Work
- The focus of this project is to learn how pervasive computing concepts and technologies can be used to enhance the areas of teaching, learning, and other university experiences. Pervasive computing concepts will be studied, and realized using hardware prototyping and development kits. Team-based projects will associate pervasive computing concepts with real-life student experiences at Virginia Tech. Sun Microsystem's SunSpots, Arduino controller and development environment, Crossbow and Sentilla/Moteiv motes, and the Processing programming system will be used for hands-on work.
- Application Instructions
- Please contact Bill Plymale (plymale@vt.edu) with an expression of interest. Include a current resume and/or a list of technical courses taken and any other relevant experiences.
- Project URL
- Area(s) of Research
- Databases, Human-Computer Interaction, Networking, Systems
- Compensation
- Work for Credit
- Contact
- plymale@vt.edu
NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU)
- Faculty Advisor
- Daniel R. Dunlap, Andrea Kavanaugh
- Research Supervisor
- Dunlap, Kavanaugh and others in the Center for Human-Computer Interaction
- Description of Work
- We have positions for undergraduate researchers funded by the National Science Foundation's Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. The projects involve user-centered design and evaluation of collaborative virtual environments and applications. Specific projects include a collaborative learning environment for science students, a knowledge management system for public school teachers, extensions to the Blacksburg Electronic Village, and quality-of-life support for military personnel. Technical questions include -- how can collaborators maintain "awareness" of one another in virtual environments?, how can we log and evaluate "sessions" in distributed systems?, what is the impact of community networking on families and community groups?, how can military personnel maintain their personal lives while serving thousands of miles from home? We will hire at least 6 undergraduates in this program, and probably 8. Students can also arrange to work for course credit of various sorts, including service learning, independent studies, and honors theses.
- Application Instructions
- Send email to dunlapd@vt.edu, kavan@vt.edu
- Project URL
- http://java.cs.vt.edu
- Area(s) of Research
- Human-Computer Interaction, Software Engineering, Systems, Computer-Aided Instruction
- Compensation
- Work for Pay or Credit
- Contact
- dunlapd@vt.edu
Parallel Programming with Video Cards and More ...
- Faculty Advisor
- Wu Feng
- Research Supervisor
- Description of Work
- The world of computing is now irrevocably parallel. CPUs have "topped" out roughly 3.0 GHz. So, while performance in the past has doubled roughly every 2 years due to increases in clock frequency, future performance increases will be due to the doubling of the number of cores in a system every 2 years. As such, we are looking at programming models, environments, and applications on multicore and manycore architectures. Of particular relevance and accessibility for VTURCS students are mapping applications onto traditional multicore (Intel and AMD), hybrid multicore (Cell and PlayStation3), manycore (video cards), and reconfigurable multicore (Tilera TILE64) architectures.
- 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://synergy.cs.vt.edu/
- Area(s) of Research
- Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Data Mining, Human-Computer Interaction, Parallel Computation, Systems, Theory
- Compensation
- Negotiable
- Contact
- feng@cs.vt.edu
Programming Language Reference Project
- Faculty Advisor
- Godmar Back
- Research Supervisor
- Godmar Back
- Description of Work
- Create a web resource that provides a quick reference for different programming languages, based on how common programming idioms are expressed in them. The idea is to compare by saying: "If you write this in C, you'd use this in Perl". Using this resource should make it easy to learn a new programming language by referring to a language one already knows. A key criteria should be conciseness, but pointers to further information should be provided as well. See the project web page for a further description.
- Application Instructions
- Send email to gback@cs.vt.edu if you're interested.
- Project URL
- http://people.cs.vt.edu/~gback/PLCP/PLCP.html
- Area(s) of Research
- Software Engineering, Systems
- Compensation
- Work for Credit or Volunteer
- Contact
- gback@cs.vt.edu
Securing a Gigabit Network with a Playstation
- Faculty Advisor
- Dimitris Nikolopoulos
- Research Supervisor
- Description of Work
- We will use the microprocessor of a Sony Playstation 3 (known as the Cell Broadband Engine) to perform multi-gigabit rate network packet processing to filter unwanted incoming traffic and outgoing sensitive information.
- Application Instructions
- Background in operating systems, parallel programming and networking is desirable but not necessary.
- Project URL
- http://
- Area(s) of Research
- Networking, Parallel Computation, Systems
- Compensation
- Negotiable
- Contact
- dsn@cs.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
The Sockets Benchmark Suite
- Faculty Advisor
- W. Feng
- Research Supervisor
- T. Scogland
- Description of Work
- Create a sockets benchmark suite that provides a number of tests, either with TCP, UDP, or SCTP: 1. Two-process performance: Latency, Bandwidth, Bidirectional bandwidth, Connection time. 2. Multi-process performance: Hot-spot, fan-in, fan-out. 3. External CPU usage measurement utility (by reading samples from the proc file system). 4. Rate-controlled bandwidth and packet loss measurements (UDP only).
- 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
- Networking, Systems
- Compensation
- Negotiable
- Contact
- feng@cs.vt.edu
Virtual Computing for K-12 Pedagogy
- Faculty Advisor
- Wu Feng
- Research Supervisor
- Description of Work
- Computing has become an indispensable tool for enhancing productivity, accelerating scientific discovery and innovation, and enriching K-12 education. However, with respect to the latter, computing has arguably had limited impact on children, parents, and teachers in rural and economically disadvantaged areas and serves as additional evidence of the ever-expanding digital divide between the “haves” and “have nots.” To address this inequity as well as reduce the overall cost of adopting and maintaining information technology (IT) infrastructures in K-12 education, we propose to build upon our virtualization project: • To simplify and expedite the delivery of educational content anywhere and anytime. • To create an engaging and “kid-friendly” curriculum so as to improve the quality of IT education holistically from elementary school through high school and in support of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
- 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://service.cs.vt.edu/
- Area(s) of Research
- Computer-Aided Instruction, Systems
- Compensation
- Negotiable
- Contact
- feng@cs.vt.edu