CPES Develops Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) for Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Scholars

There is currently a severe shortage of power electronics engineers in the U.S. workforce. For this reason, the vision of the Center for Power Electronics Systems (CPES), a National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center (ERC), includes programs that introduce undergraduates to the field of power electronics and encourage them to consider power electronics as a career option. CPES’ objective is to increase the number and diversity of students exposed to the field, and to provide those students with hands-on laboratory experience at the undergraduate level. In 2002, CPES was awarded a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) supplement to the ERC. Each year, this program funds research experiences for four students at Virginia Tech, and two students at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez. During 2002-2004, fourteen of eighteen participants were minority or Hispanic students, and three were participants in the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program.

In 2005, NSF funded a new CPES initiative that seeks to build on this growing collaboration between the ERC program and the LSAMP program in order to develop an REU in power electronics targeted exclusively to LSAMP participants. The purpose of this program is threefold: 1) to provide additional opportunities to ERC students to obtain a rich undergraduate research experience, including consecutive summer experiences for interested students and a service learning component engaging participants themselves in mentorship relationship with younger students 2) to extend ERC resources to students at universities outside the ERC consortium, 3) to encourage the participants’ pursuit of engineering research activities and graduate study after completion of the REU program. Through this program, Virginia Tech will host six students per summer over a period of three years. Summer program experiences will be 8 weeks in duration and may be repeated for consecutive years during a student’s undergraduate program. Participants will select a project identified from among the following power electronics and related research areas: power conversion systems, electro-magneto-thermo-mechanical integration technology, integrated materials, thermal management integration, power devices and integrated circuits, control and sensor integration, high-density integration and advanced packaging.