My Experience at Texas State University’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) in Edge Computing 2023

Admittedly, I’m an odd candidate for a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. I graduated with my first bachelor’s degree in 2019 and have been enrolled in various graduate programs since then. But in early 2023, partly for personal enrichment and partly due to my increasing interest in computation and software engineering, I decided to start a BS in Computer Science at Western Governors University (WGU). Given that I was working full-time for 23andMe , WGU’s fully online program worked wonderfully for me.

One evening in February ’23, I realized that by pursuing an undergraduate degree, I was thereby eligible to apply to REU programs. Thinking that computer science research might be interesting, I decided to take a chance and apply to several REUs across the country.

Since 1987, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has provided funding for undergraduate students to engage in summer research projects at US-based universities. From their site, NSF explains, “The Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program supports active research participation by undergraduate students in any of the areas of research funded by the National Science Foundation. REU projects involve students in meaningful ways in ongoing research programs or in research projects specifically designed for the REU program.” Notably, REUs are highly competitive. It is not uncommon for a university to receive several hundred applications for 10 spots each summer.?

After browsing through several dozen exciting research projects for summer ‘23, I applied to ten REUs located mainly across the south and coasts. Three programs expressed interest in my application, and I accepted an offer to join Texas State University’s REU in Edge Computing (REUEC) 2023. (I will not be addressing REU application tips in this post, but feel free to leave any application questions in the comments and I will be sure to reply! I also recommend watching this video for tips and this document.)?

In what follows, I will provide an overview of my time at Texas State University this summer. I hope this post may be a helpful resource to anyone considering an REU, including Texas State’s REU program.?

Texas State and San Marcos

Texas State University’s REU was scheduled to run from May 30, 2023, to Aug 4, 2023, in San Marcos, Texas – roughly a 30-minute drive from Austin. On May 29, I made the 8.5-hour drive from El Paso, Texas to San Marcos. My drive was mostly peaceful except for a stormy, hour long stretch as I got nearer to the city. I stayed in a hotel that night and moved into REU housing the next morning.

Computer Science was one of several departments hosting REU programs over the summer at Texas State, and university housing arranged for all REU participants to room in Arnold Hall. Arnold is a traditional dorm with hallway bathrooms on each floor. ?

Moving into Arnold was a transition for me, as the last time I lived in a dorm was in 2017. Arnold was not a perfect place to live. The three buildings that comprise Arnold are old with decaying bathrooms and lower floors beset by a noticeable number of roaches. Despite these issues, I enjoyed my time living in Arnold Hall. Unfortunately, due to maintenance upgrades within the building, many REU participants were required to move to another dorm halfway through the program. The dorm we moved into, named Jackson Hall, was an upgrade in multiple ways but lacked some of the things I found endearing about Arnold. For instance, whereas Jackson had better air conditioning, it lacked the lounges on each floor which characterized Arnold.?

Beyond REU housing, I found Texas State’s campus to be a great one. I was surprised by how large the campus is. Fortunately, many of the buildings have been built to accommodate the university’s 38,000 students. One of my favorites is Alkek, a seven-story library filled with computer labs, quiet floors, and the Alkek One Makerspace. In fact, the makerspace was my absolute favorite place on campus. After receiving training on how to use their laser cutters/engravers, I greatly enjoyed creating dozens of wooden and acrylic art pieces for friends and myself. ?

Another great spot was the on-campus gym. Formally called the Student Recreation Center, the gym was well equipped with everything from weights to volleyball courts. Signing up to use the gym was a bit of a hassle for REU participants: since we are not Texas State students, technically we should not be allowed to use certain on-campus facilities like the gym and makerspace. However, both the gym and makerspace staff accommodated REU students and created new operating procedures to allow REU folks to use their facilities. ?

In addition to the makerspace and gym, I spent lots of time in the Lyndon B. Johnson Student Center. Named after the former US president and Texas State alumnus, the student center provided excellent dining options and a handy bookstore for picking up merch and office supplies. I especially enjoyed eating at Tu Taco, a Chipotle-like Mexican eatery on the first floor of the building.?

Speaking of food, I was shocked by how many fantastic cuisine options are in San Marcos. It’s not as though I had low expectations; the variety of wildly good food options was just way higher than I would have guessed. There are at least four restaurants whose food I would rate as 10 out of 10: Halal Project (fantastic shawarma); Jax Burgers Fries and Shakes (their grilled chicken sandwich is ridiculously good); North Street Curry (especially their butter chicken); Shai Yo Thai Cuisine and Grill (their House Special 1 - Shai Yo Gai Yang is life-changing).

In addition to eating, I enjoyed tubing down the San Marcos River, going on walks across campus, and visiting nearby Austin on the weekends.?

Computer Science @TXST

There are lots of things to like about Texas State University’s Department of Computer Science. The Department is housed at Comal, a building situated about five minutes’ walk from the student center and Arnold Hall. Over the summer, REU participants were given keycard access to the building along with a research lab on its upper floor. ?

Several faculty members teach and conduct research in the Department, although I only interacted with a few of these during my time there. Although I met only a handful of undergraduate students, I met several graduate students pursuing research-based MS and PhD degrees. Texas State attracts many international students to its graduate programs; all but two of the grad students I met were from countries other than the US. ?

In my opinion, two opportunities for improvement are worth noting in the Department. First, there is a level of dysfunction among the faculty leadership that was felt even among temporary REU participants during the summer. Second, graduate students in one research lab were antagonistic to each other and to undergraduate students assisting their research, and this trickled down to my REU cohort. ?

Nevertheless, I think there are numerous positives about the Department. Our REU program coordinator was a faculty member, and they did a truly stellar job of coordinating our travel to and from San Marcos; communicating logistical updates in a quick manner; supporting our cohort through administrative issues; and being a constant source of kindness and helpfulness throughout the program. Additionally, the Department’s IT staff assisted our cohort with a range of technical problems and did so with a welcome, characteristic sense of humor. And it was great to meet a leading software engineer at one of the companies we visited during the REU, who had graduated with an MS in Computer Science from Texas State. His success is a testament to the Department’s ability to produce successful industry professionals.?

My Research Project

Regarding the bulk of my REU experience, I engaged in summer research under the theme of health informatics. Health informatics is the application of data science methods to healthcare, with the goal being the improvement of human health outcomes. I was teamed up with another REU participant for the summer, and together we chose to focus on mental health informatics, a subfield of health informatics concerned with improving specifically mental health outcomes. ?

My partner and I were mentored by a Texas State faculty member who devoted significant effort to walking us through the research process in health informatics. I am grateful to have had such a great REU mentor. After discussing with other REU participants within and outside the computer science program, I realized that mentor engagement can vary widely. ?

We worked on two related projects over the summer. One was an ongoing collaboration on a small, private, depression data set. The other was a new exploration of a large public health data set. Given the ongoing and confidential nature of the depression data project, I will not discuss it in more detail. However, I will provide greater in-depth information about the large public health data project. ?

Our mentor asked us to write a proposal for what research questions we wanted to explore in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). BRFSS is a large public health data set coordinated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in collaboration with all US states, along with some US territories. After exploring the BRFSS data in detail and reviewing relevant literature, my partner and I decided to use multi-task learning (MTL) to obtain a ranked list of risk factors for binge drinking. Binge drinking is tied to several negative mental health outcomes including increased severity of anxiety and depression symptoms. Given this, we believed that researching binge drinking risks would fit nicely under our summer research theme of mental health informatics.

The reason we chose to use MTL is that many existing methods of identifying binge drinking risk factors fail to account for data heterogeneity within a population. Put another way, several of the studies we found which evaluated binge drinking risk factors did not account for subpopulation factors but instead looked at the entire US population. To address this limitation, we formulated a subpopulation binge drinking risk factors ranking problem, under the framework of MTL. This outputs a ranked list of risk factors for each subpopulation (task) concurrently while incorporating shared information across tasks. We then analyzed the ranked lists of risk factors and compared the top-ranking factors for each MTL setting.?

Above is our poster, which summarizes our binge drinking risk factors research. We presented this poster at the Research, Inquiry, and Creative Expression (R.I.C.E.) Poster Showcase 2023, as seen in the photograph below.?

Overall, I enjoyed the research process. I appreciated learning a ton about what computational research is like. Unlike the wet biology research that I had done before, which required the collection of live insect samples for analysis, research in computer science only requires an attentive mind and a reliable computer. Yet while it was nice not having to deal with the frustrations that accompany working with organisms and chemicals, the constant process of working at a computer was, at times, decidedly less fun for me.??

There are two other things I would like to highlight about my summer research experience. For one, I thoroughly enjoyed conducting literature reviews for our research. In years past, I sometimes found reading scientific articles to be a chore. However, I was excited to read as much as possible about my REU area and appreciated any opportunity I had to immerse myself in literature. ?

Also, I loved learning new programming libraries, packages, and integrated development environments (IDEs) throughout the summer. Three Python Coding packages I gained significant competency in through my REU include NumPy , Pandas , and scikit-learn . I also used Project Jupyter 's notebooks and Anaconda, Inc. 's Navigator software for managing environments for data science work. And I used MATLAB Coding for the first time by jumping right into the deep end, as I started my journey by utilizing a complex MATLAB package called MALSAR, short for Multi-tAsk Learning via Structural Regularization. My partner and I used one specific function from this package, called the l2,1-Norm Regularization with Least Squares Loss (Least L21) function. The complexity of the problem this function solves, as seen in the image below, illustrates the intricacy of this package.

Company Visits

At three points throughout the summer, our cohort took a break from research to attend scheduled visits at companies throughout central Texas. We visited global giants like IBM as well as lesser-known industry leaders like 艾默生 and Southwest Research Institute (SWRI). I greatly enjoyed each visit and discovered that each of these companies works on a wide range of interesting technical problems.?

Professional Development Workshops

Our REU coordinated several workshops throughout the summer. In my opinion, the most valuable workshop was given by Texas State’s Research & External Funding Coordinator, who presented on the NSF Graduate Research Fellowships Program (GRFP). The GRFP is a fantastic opportunity for new and rising graduate students, and I appreciated the Funding Coordinator’s many insights on the program. More details can be found here.

The Best Thing About My REU

By far the best thing about my REU experience was the people I met in my cohort! I loved meeting awesome students from all over the country, and we meshed well from the start. We hung out often and helped each other on our research projects. I am very grateful for each person in the group and enjoyed our many laughs, moments of commiseration for research challenges, and game nights.?

Conclusion

Overall, I had a wonderful time living in San Marcos and working on a data science research project this summer. I recommend Texas State’s REUEC program to anyone interested in exploring central Texas, who can handle the intense summer heat and bugs. ?

I was happy to represent my home institution of Western Governors University. I wonder if anyone from the fully online school has attended an REU beforehand, and if not, then I am blessed to have been the first REU participant from WGU. ?

Beyond Texas State’s REUEC, the NSF REU program is a fantastic opportunity for any undergraduate student interested in learning what research is like. An REU will provide wonderful preparation for undergraduates considering graduate school or a career in research, as well as a chance to meet some of the brightest and most interesting students from across the US.