Interdisciplinary Experience
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program 2024
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The SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship) program is designed to give undergraduate student hands-on research experience in a variety of scientific fields.
My Interdisciplinary Experience:
My proposed interdisciplinary experience is my 2024 summer undergraduate research fellowship at NIST. I was working in the engineering laboratory under a Research Structural Engineer in the Earthquake Engineering Group. I was working on the analysis of fiber reinforced polymer retrofitted shear walls with openings; their failure modes specifically were analyzed. A database was created in excel that contained data pertaining to geometric properties, material properties, and failure modes and details for each specimen, which was gathered from various literature.
Credit: Strong-Tie
What are "fiber reinforced polymer retrofitted shear walls"?
Shear walls are walls that are designed to resist any lateral loading that could occur in an event such as an earthquake. They are a very important structural component in houses and buildings for this reason.
Fiber Reinforced Polymers (FRP) are composite materials that consist of a polymer matrix and fibers for added strength.
FRPs are retrofitted, or applied, to shear walls to increase their strength
The purpose of the database is to allow future researchers to compare the performance of different retrofitting procedures, and to determine the most effective methods of retrofitting walls based on geometric and material properties. At the end of the program I had to make a ten minute presentation summarizing my work, and present it at a colloquium.
In this SURF program, I was working in a field different from my major. My major is mechanical engineering, but my mentor was a structural engineer, and the entire earthquake engineering group was considered to be a civil engineering group. A lot of the data I was filling out in the database was terms I was familiar with from mechanical engineering classes, but were being used in a civil engineering application.
That summer, I also took the opportunity to try to connect with other SURF students. During lunch, I would meet with other Engineering lab students who were working in groups such as the Infrastructure Materials Group and the Mechanical Systems & Controls Group. We were able to discuss and explain out projects amongst ourselves, and it was interecting to know what else was going on in other parts of the engineering lab.
Meeting the Interdisciplinary Objectives: Flexibility
I found that I had to be incredibly flexible when filling out the database, since everything was based off of existing literature. I had about 50 unique specimens to read about and determine roughly a dozen properties about their design and behavior. In theory I knew what I was looking for; in practice, finding those things were quite difficult. Some of the properties I was looking for were directly stated in the papers. Some of the papers had the property I was looking for, but called them by a different name. In many cases I had to derive the property I was looking for from other values in the paper, but sometimes those values would be difficult to find. Sometimes the literature my mentor provided was incomplete, and I had to reach out to the original authors to request data about the specimens in that literature. There was a certain piece of literature that my mentor provided a pdf of, and the material properties I was looking for was provided in a table, but that table was not included in the pdf copy. When my mentor and I tried to locate an original copy of the paper, it was from a European library that no longer existed. Somehow my mentor located another paper that referenced those specimens, but that whole thing took about a month to figure out. The whole project involved me asking my mentor of the tactics I should be using or if the tactics I was thinking of using would be accurate.
How I Met the Core Learning Objectives
Credit: Planeteco
Identify the different disciplines that contribute to the solution of a complex problem.
Identify the different disciplines that contribute to the solution of a complex problem.
That summer, I took the opportunity to try to connect with other SURF students. During lunch, I would meet with other Engineering lab students who were working in groups such as the Infrastructure Materials Group and the Mechanical Systems & Controls Group. We were able to discuss and explain out projects amongst ourselves, and it was interecting to know what else was going on in other parts of the engineering lab. One of them was also following the work done by the the Fire Research Division. It was interesting to talk with my peers and see how so many different divisions were working in similar areas of infrastructure. The structure and build of a residential home was considered at least partially by all of these groups: strengthening walls for earthquake resistance, analyzing the building materials, evaluating HVAC systems, and even determining how to reduce the risk of fire.
Describe and apply strategies for creating common ground between different disciplinary perspectives.
Describe and apply strategies for creating common ground between different disciplinary perspectives.
One important aspect of the SURF program were the weekly STEMinars, which were seminars led by different researchers in different disciplines. This allowed every student to learn a little bit about each of the six research laboratories that make up NIST. Once a week, every SURF student would top working on their personal projects for an hour and get to learn about a different project or discipline. This served to introduce students to fields they'd never heard of or aspects of a field they had never considered. It was a great way for students like me to learn something new, and it facilitated a lot of discussion with the speakers and even among peers. It was a great way to see firsthand how important it is to take the time to learn new things, even while working, and how those kinds of seminars can open up a world of discussion between different disciplines.
Describe and apply bridging strategies that facilitate the conscious integration of different disciplines.
Describe and apply bridging strategies that facilitate the conscious integration of different disciplines.
As stated previously, my mechanical engineering background allowed me to partially understand the civil engineering work I was doing, but I still found myself adopting a civil engineering mindset as I continued my work. In fact, to prepare for the colloquium, I presented my project presentation to this the Earthquake Engineering Group in case they had any questions or suggestions, which would help fill in any gaps in the presentation. It also served as a test to the knowledge I had learned. At the end of the presentation, one of the members was surprised to learn that I was a mechanical engineering major, since during the presentation I was speaking like a civil engineer.
I found that I was able to integrate my mechanical engineering background into civil engineering, and that background was a perfect bridge into pursuing research in civil engineering.
Reflection on my Experience and Grand Challenge:
Similar to my other NIST SURF experience, this project was not related to providing access to clean water at all. I would consider this a rank 1 challenge. Because I was working in a civil engineering group, I could potentially apply this knowledge to damn design someday, but that opportunity only lies in the future.
This program ran for 11 weeks from June 3rd to August 16th, for 5 days a week and 8 hours a day. In total, I worked 440 hours over the entire summer.
While the SURF program did not relate to my grand challenge, I still appreciate the experience. It gave me a chance to learn about earthquake engineering, and I have always wanted to try my hand at civil engineering. I was also able to make connections with my peers, and found a community of people who were similar to me in ways beyond just our chosen majors. It was a wonderful reminder that my community is all around me, I just need to find them.
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