Prior to the start of the IRES summer program in June, student participants will be mailed an onboarding package that contains the following: (i) agenda of the IRES program (before, during and post international visit), (ii) profile of the US and foreign faculty mentors along with their research backgrounds, and (iii) brief description of the sample projects to be pursued at the host institution with the industry partner. This will ensure that the students get acquainted with the faculty team and potential list of projects in advance.
The table below portrays the summary of the student and faculty mentor activities that will take place during the 9 weeks of the IRES summer program. The student activities discussed in this proposal can be categorized into three stages; Stage 1: training/pre-departure (weeks 1 & 2); Stage 2: IITM visit (weeks 3 - 8), and Stage 3: post-IITM visit/completion phase (week 9).
Stage 1: Training/Pre-departure (weeks 1 & 2)
Weeks 1 and 2: Online Student Orientation and Topical Lectures: Prior to their visit to India, the PI and Co-PIs will orient the students about the Indian culture, recommended vaccinations, housing accommodations, health insurance and other logistics at IITM. Cultural exposure will also be provided to the participants by the PI, who has resided in the host city for over 20 years. Subsequent to the orientation, faculty mentors will provide materials on AAM operations, associated challenges and an overview of the prior AAM research projects conducted by them. All lecture materials will be recorded and will be given access to IRES participants during the entire summer session.
Stage 2: IITM Visit (weeks 3 - 8)
Students will travel to IITM (mostly along with the PI and/or a Co-PI) at the beginning of week 3 and get acquainted with host faculty mentors and research facilities. Moreover, students will also be given the opportunity to interact with other IITM scholars (learn about safety, etc.) and the ePlane company’s R&D team at this stage. The students can contact the PI anytime if they have any concerns (e.g., health, logistics, safety) during their stay in India.
Weeks 3 - 5: Research Problem Conceptualization: Students will resume their research activities in the middle of Week 3. They will finalize the scope of the research projects with the host mentors and begin to gather data. Several detailed lectures on framing the research questions, data preprocessing, research approaches, output analysis, verification and validation will be provided by the PI and/or Co-PI. Based on these lectures, students will then identify the appropriate methodological tool (such as machine learning algorithms, explainable AI, optimization and simulation models) to be used for their research problem.
Weeks 6 - 8: Solution Approach Development: Students will complete the model formulation, code, verify and validate the developed model. They will also be trained in parallel on writing professional reports, conference and journal papers. In addition to their interaction with their host faculty mentors, students will be reporting to the PI and Co-PIs throughout stage-2 on a weekly basis to obtain recommendations.
Stage 3: Post-International Research Follow-on Activities (week 9)
Following the completion of their stay at IITM, students will remotely report to the PI and work towards analyzing the findings and disseminating the results. Students will also interact with the IITM faculty team on the updates remotely. During this week, they will complete the final report in the template discussed in Stage 2.
