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2023 Engineering Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) - Development of a Horizon Simulation Framework Integrated Development Environment
The College of Engineering Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) is a unique opportunity for college of engineering undergraduate students to engage in hands-on research with a faculty mentor while using critical thinking, collaborative, and entrepreneurial skills. SURP is an 8-week long program (can be non-contiguous), and students are expected to spend at least 20 hours/week working on their research projects and additional time preparing and presenting their poster for the annual SURP symposium; SURP students and their faculty mentor will agree upon a start date and timeline for their research project (with a suggested start date of June 26th, 2023). The goals of SURP are to:
- Help Cal Poly Engineering students develop professionally and enhance their portfolios for future employment.
- Give opportunities for CENG faculty (including lecturers) to advance their research/project agendas over the summer quarter.
- Build lasting student-faculty mentoring relationships
- Provide opportunities for industrial and other external sponsors to work with Cal Poly faculty and students to advance connections, gain access to Cal Poly talent and capabilities, and engage in valuable collaborative activities.
Our Summer 2023 SURP will support over 30 projects (with some projects taking 2 students) for 39 students. You can apply to up to 3 projects on MustangJobs (each project has its own job posting). You need not be in the same department as the faculty advisor to apply to a given project.
Each SURP student participant will receive a CENG Summer Research Grant of $3,500.
Please note that the grant amount is fixed, and additional funding is not available. This grant will be disbursed through the Financial Aid Office toward the end of the summer. Preference will be given to students who have not yet participated in SURP.
This Project
Project Title: Development of a Horizon Simulation Framework Integrated Development Environment
Faculty Advisor: Eric Mehiel
Faculty Email: emehiel@calpoly.edu
Faculty Department: AERO
Number of Students for this project: 1
The Horizon Simulation Framework (HSF) is an open-source hybrid time/event driven Discrete Event Simulator (DES) that uses a Dynamic Programing, breadth-first approach to generate possible task-based schedules for dynamic systems written in C# and Python and hosted on GitHub. The viability of each task on the schedule is determined by a system state-transition model developed by the user and written in Python. In short, the user provides a list of tasks to perform, a model of the system to simulate, and HSF generates an optimal schedule based on a user “value” function. As part of our ongoing work, we propose building an HSF Integrate Development Environment (IDE) to grow our user community. The proposed SURP project is for a student to research, develop, and prototype several key elements of the HSF IDE, the details of which are listed below. The primary goals of the project are for the student to research software tools and architectures, select a coding platform and tools, develop the requirements for the HSF IDE, and prototype several of the key elements with an emphasis on system model design. The HSF project can be applied to many fields that require simulation; however our primary focus is on the modeling and simulation of space-based systems. Modeling and simulation tools and knowledge are in high demand within the Aerospace industry as a means to support Model Based System Engineering (MBSE) designs.
HOW TO APPLY:
PLEASE SUBMIT THE FOLLOWING TWO DOCUMENTS VIA HANDSHAKE AND SEE RUBRIC BELOW FOR EVALUATION CRITERIA. YOU CAN APPLY TO UP TO THREE SURP PROJECTS, BUT CAN ONLY BE AWARDED ONE.
- Submit your resume
- Submit a cover letter that answers the following three questions:
- Describe why you are interested in this research project.
- Describe how participating in SURP and working on this research project, will help you advance your academic and professional development goals
- Describe how your past experiences have helped prepare you for your participation in SURP. This includes relevant academic, other formal, and informal preparation.
INCOMPLETE APPLICATIONS COULD DISQUALIFY YOU FROM FURTHER CONSIDERATION.
Note that applications are due April 30; selected students will be notified by no later than May 12.