Undergraduate Research Projects
This web bulletin board helps students identify opportunities to participate in faculty research projects and to earn credit for their work.  Credit is appropriate because the emphasis is on what the students learn; however, the students’ contributions to the projects are often of a very high order.  These projects are for course credit, you register for Independent Study in the professor's department, and the important thing is what you learn, rather than what you give to the professor's project, though frequently students' contributions to those projects are of a very high order.
            For more information on these projects, please contact David N. DeVries, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education, 172 Goldwin Smith Hall (5-3386).

Field of Study:    Linguistics
Description of project: A team of cornell linguists are investigating the articulation of click and lateral consonants found in endangered and undocumented languages spoken in Southern Africa (Namibia and Botswana). We are collecting audio files and ultrasound movies of the tongue for the different speech sounds found in words in the !Xung and =Hoan languages. Some of these sounds have not been fully described ever before.
What the undergraduate would do: The student would work with a research team (two professors and a graduate student), and contribute by processing audio files of unique speech sounds found nowhere else in the world, and processing ultrasound video files of tongue movement during the production of these sounds in speech. They might also contribute by building a website to educate outside scholars and lay people about the structures of these indigenous Southern African languages, and post audio and video files for people to listen to.
Requirements, including special skills, schedules: Students should have good computer skills, especially in web design or audio or video processing.  If the student does not have particular audio / video or web skills, but has linguistic knowledge and is willing to learn, we can train the student in the particular skills needed.

Field of Study:  Sociology, Information Science
Description of project: We are interested in understanding the processes of social influence, coordination and participation in online communities.  We are primarily working with two datasets: a complete history of contributions to Wikipedia and a crawl of internet pages from the Internet Archive.  Here is a sample of research questions that we are currently exploring:  (a) Are product reviews on retailer websites influenced by the preceeding reviews and the status of their authors? (b) How does feedback received from other members of an online community affect one's contribution and longevity?  (c) What are the properties of social networks in online communities and how these networks evolve over time?  (d) Does    homophily (the tendency of similar actors to interact each other) have a different signature in the structure of links between business websites and between personal pages?  We are an interdisciplinary group of faculty, postdocs and graduate students who are currently working on these and related projects (most of which are at the beginning stages) and we will be happy to involve undergraduate students in our research activities.
What the undergraduate would do: Participate in the research process through all its stages: from study design, data collection and preparation, to statistical analysis and write-up of the results; learn and apply modern methods of data analysis to study social networks and online communities.
Requirements, including special skills, schedules: Strong quantitative aptitude; willingness to learn new research methods; familiarity with (or interest in) social network concepts and methods; programming experience or knowledge of statistical packages may be beneficial, but is not required.

Field of Study: Accelerator physics and engineering
Description of project: I need to investigate methods for cooling an electron photocathode device to reduce the thermal energy of the emitted electrons. This is a critical parameter for making a high brightness x-ray source.   The problem is a difficult one as the photocathode is at very high voltage and the usual techniques cannot be employed.
What the undergraduate would do: Investigate and try out methods for transferring power optically across a high voltage gap.  Perform heat transfer calculations and simulations, and design a system to keep the cathodes cool
Requirements, including special skills, schedules: Good problem solving ability, some knowledge of heat transfer, and basic circuit design would be helpful.

Field of Study: Dendrochronology (tree-ring dating and analysis) = archaeology, history of art, environmental studies
Description of project: Participate in a research project analyzing and dating ancient timbers and charcoal samples from the Mediterranean and Near East from the last several thousand years. For more information, see: http://dendro.cornell.edu/
What the undergraduate would do: Learn how to prepare wood and charcoal samples for analysis; and then study and measure tree-ring samples using a microscope measuring system. Training, supervision and support would be provided.
Requirements, including special skills, schedules: No special skills - just interest, and the ability to show care and attention to details. You would need to be available for at least a 2-hour block of time, preferably for at least 4 total hours (two sessions) per week, sometime between 8am and 3.30pm

Field of Study: English
Description of project: For much of the twentieth century the New York Times has been a principle source of  America's  historical memories and cultural contexts and a source of how we saw and  ourselves and how  the world saw us.  Current and back issues of the Times are a diary of how our history unfolds from day to day.
What the undergraduate would do: I am using the techniques of close reading in which I am trained (as I did in my aforementioned study where New York  City is as much the text as Runyon) to discuss how the Times has evolved from being the newspaper of record--something most of us no longer believe in now that our view of government has becomes skeptical if not cynical-- into a daily  national  (as opposed to a New York City) magazine presenting its version of national and international news even while discussing in its features how to live, where and what to eat, what to read, how to take care of ourselves, where to travel, and how to invest and spend our money.
I am comparing what the Times looked like on, say, June 6, 1944 (The Normandy Invasion) and what it looks like sixty years later and discuss how the audience has changed.  I am interested in how the Times evolved over each decade by looking at one particular week in June at ten year intervals, and I am continuing this process during the academic year.  I will show how the 2004 Times's more dramatic,  visual and performative writing reflects the influence of television and cinema, and how news analysis and commentary now complement and often  replace what we used to think of as straight news reporting.
I shall discuss how the Times became a national newspaper--including its pedagogical role as a student text for high school and college students-- and the role  and development of its various special sections: The Sunday Book Review, The Sunday Magazine,  Arts and Leisure (daily and Sunday and the influential Friday Weekend), Sports, Science, Dining,  and Home.   I shall also consider the profound recent effects the Jason Blair scandal--and the introduction of a Public Editor (a kind of ombudsman) writing as an outsider.
Requirements, including special skills, schedules Independent study will involve reading and abstracting NY Times microfilm, reading and abstracting histories  of  the Times, including memoirs and biographies, and perhaps other light library and editorial work. The student will write an essay based on her or his individual specific interests within the larger project.