MERIT Undergraduate Research Program

Newsletter of the Department of Electrical Engineering

Department Poised to Become National Leader in Undergraduate Research Opportunities

Pictured: Student participants from the RITE Site program last summer, at the outdoor luncheon following the RITE Site Fair.

The Department will launch its Maryland Engineering Research Internship Teams (MERIT) program this summer, building upon the already successful undergraduate research program initiated last summer.

The MERIT program will merge the existing Research Internships in Telecommunications Engineering (RITE) program, which will be expanded, with the newly-created Microelectronics Research Collaboration Program (MRCP), giving the department one of the most comprehensive undergraduate research programs in the country.

The MERIT program, supported through funding from the National Science Foundation and the Army Research Laboratory, offers students the opportunity to engage in cutting-edge, team-based research in the broad areas of telecommunications and microelectronics. Students typically work in teams of 2-3, and are supervised jointly by both faculty members and graduate students.

The purpose of the MERIT Program is simple: to involve talented students from around the country in a diverse research program, introducing them to team-based, cross-disciplinary research, as well as to help them prepare for graduate school and define career goals.

Although the primary focus of the program is on research, the summer program is also supplemented with technical and educational seminars, as well as field trips to several local companies. These opportunities are designed to expose students to the latest technologies and educational opportunities, as well as to leaders in their respective fields of research. In addition, special seminars are conducted to help prepare students for their careers and/or graduate school.

Last summer, the RITE program brought together 19 electrical and computer engineering students, chosen from a group of more than 75 talented applicants from the University of Maryland, Carnegie Mellon University, Virginia Tech, Rensselaer, and George Washington University. Throughout the 11-week program, students developed their research projects, attended weekly technical seminars, and visited both Hughes Network Systems and Lucent Technologies.

Participants’ hard work culminated in the RITE Site fair, during which students demonstrated their projects and competed against their colleagues. Students gave brief introductions to their work as judges viewed the posters and asked participants questions about their research. Awards were given for the best and most promising projects, based on criteria such as technical difficulty, general knowledge the student had acquired in the broad field of telecommunications, clarity of presentation and novelty of the project’s main ideas. Winners received $100 each and a plaque bearing their name.

The Department expects to host at least 30 students for the MERIT program this summer. In addition to the Army Research Laboratory’s support for the MRCP component, and NSF’s support for the RITE component of the MERIT program, the Department plans to expand the program even further in the future through industrial sponsorship. With this increased support, the Department will be poised to become a major center for undergraduate research.

For further information about the department's undergraduate research programs, please visit the MERIT web site, or contact Dr. Lisa Kiely at lkiely@eng.umd.edu, or at (301) 405-6082.