Designing for Safety and Safety by Design

A Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site at UC San Diego, Department of Structural Engineering (grant no. NSF-EEC 1757994)

The final year of the 2023 NSF REU Summer Program at UC San Diego was conducted as an in-person and on-campus Program.

Overview

The overarching goal of this NSF REU Summer Program is to immerse students in a meaningful and highly interdisciplinary research environment within the structural engineering domain and to teach them that design does not end with construction. Instead, designing for safety embodies: quantifying potential load conditions, damage mechanics, and uncertainties; monitoring for anomalies during operations; processing this information through cyber-modeling via digital surrogates; and translating the information to actionable knowledge for improving current and future system designs. This REU Site will recruit and train 12 to 14 diverse U.S. scholars, working in pairs in a faculty member's lab, for eight weeks each summer to conduct high-impact research alongside other undergraduate and graduate students. Download the flyer today!

Faculty Mentors

• Prof. Ken Loh (PI), Director of REU Summer Program - Stimuli-responsive and smart materials/sensors

• Prof. Michael Todd (Co-PI), Associate Director of REU Summer Program - Structural health monitoring

• Prof. J. S. Chen - Machine learning data-driven computing 

• Prof. David Kamensky - Electromechanics of 1D to 2D materials

• Prof. H. Alicia Kim - Topology optimization

• Prof. John McCartney - Thermo-hydro-mechanical behavior of unsaturated soils and geosynthetics 

• Prof. Shabnam Semnani - Damage and behavior of composites and geological materials

• Prof. Ingrid Tomac - Video imaging, image analysis, theoretical and computational fluid-like dynamics problem and particulate flow and transport 

• Prof. Georgios Tsampras - 3D digital image correlation to measure seismic response of structures

• More faculty mentors continue to be added

Eligibility

• Limited to U.S. citizens, nationals, and permanent residents (no exceptions)

• Enrolled as a student during time of application

  • Students transferring institutions (e.g., from two-year to four-year institutions) are also eligible

  • Students must also plan to continue their undergraduate studies in Fall 2022

• Completed at least one-year of their undergraduate studies

• Declared majors in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines 

  • For exceptions and waivers, please contact the Director of the REU Site, Prof. Ken Loh

• Minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0

  • Preference will be given to students with GPA greater than 3.3

• Completed online application and supplemental documents, including:

  • PDF copy of official transcript

  • Resume or curriculum vitae

• Women, underrepresented, economically-disadvantaged, and first-generation college students are strongly encouraged to apply

Applications for Summer 2023 are being accepted as of November 1, 2022, and the priority deadline is February 1, 2023. To help you prepare your application, you can download the list of questions before formally submitting your application. Note that letters of recommendation are not requested nor required during application submission.

Applications will still being accepted after the deadline, but priority will be given to those applications submitted before February 1 with early-decision notifications sent out around February 28, 2023. 

Note: You may need to sign into Google (Gmail) in order to complete the online application.