Vertically Integrated Projects Research Program

Current undergraduate students interested in exploring research have a unique opportunity to work with a multidisciplinary group of undergraduate students, graduate students, research staff, and faculty members to tackle novel research and design problems. Academic credit for your participation in the design and discovery efforts can also be earned, and you may even be included in the publishing of research papers. You will assist faculty and graduate students with research and development issues in their areas of expertise.

The 2024-2025 Winter Quarter VIP program teams include:

• Autonomous Soil Sampling System (Faculty Mentors: Dr. Lifeng Zhou)
• Astroparticle Physics in Extreme Locations (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Christina Love)
• Circular Cities: Assessing, predicting and tracking building material stocks and flows from urban areas (Faculty Mentors: Dr. Fernanda Cruz Rios)
• Cognitive Neuroengineering for the Brain and Mind (Faculty Mentors: Dr. John Medaglia and Dr. Gary Friedman)
• Consortium for Climate Risk in Urban Northeast (CCRUN) (Faculty Mentors: Dr. Franco Montalto and Dr. Patrick Gurian)
• Coordination and Planning for Multi-Robot Systems (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Lifeng Zhou)
• Designing Smart and Healthy Transportation Systems (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Zhiwei Chen, Dr. Shannon Capps and Dr. Gina Lovasi)
• Designing Sustainable Intelligent Transportation Systems (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Liang Zhang)
• Development of biomaterial-based nanofiber yarns and textiles for health applications (Faculty Mentors: Dr. Caroline Schauer, Dr. Christopher Rodell and Genevieve Dion)
• Peace Engineering: Achieving the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal #16 (Dr. Joseph Hughes, Dr. Mira Olson and Dr. James Tangorra)
• Robust and Risk-aware Planning for Autonomous Vehicles (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Lifeng Zhou)
• Wireless Systems for the Internet of Things (Faculty Mentor: Dr. Kapil Dandekar)

For more information and each of these teams, please download the Winter Quarter 2024-2025 informational packet.

In order to participate in VIP, you must formally apply and be accepted to a specific team. To apply, please log into ForagerOne and search for “VIP”. This will bring up all available open positions tagged as VIP projects. When submitting an application, please be sure to have uploaded an updated résumé to your ForagerOne profile and to include a statement regarding why you are interested in working on the team to which you are applying.

Please note that VIP team participation requires registration for the accompanying VIP course section. The number of credits required per quarter is flexible and will be determined on a case-by-case basis in consultation with the team's faculty mentor and a student's academic advisor; however, most VIP team members will register for a single credit per quarter. Long-term, sustained participation in the program (three or more quarters of working on a single team) is strongly encouraged and may be required in order for earned VIP credits to count towards degree requirements. More information will be provided to all applicants who are offered a position.

Should you have any questions about a particular team, please feel free to reach out to the team’s faculty mentor listed above; they will be pleased to talk with you. Any questions regarding the VIP program in general should be sent to Chad Morris via email at cam83@drexel.edu.