UCC 12 INTERN PROJECTS - University of Notre Dame

Naughton  
Internships
 
for  students  from  the  University  of  Notre  Dame
 
 
Tony  Lewis
   
[One  internship]
 
 
1.      
 
HMRC:  Ocean  Energy  Systems
 
Design  and  integration  of  marine  renewable  energy  devices  into  the  electricity  grid  system.    
There  are  a  large  number  of  active  research  projects  in  progress  and  the  intern  will  be  
assigned  to  one  of  these  for  a  specific  research  task.    For  further  informa
tion  on  HMRC  see  
http://www.hmrc.ucc.ie
 
 
 
Alistair  Borthwick
   
[One  internship  from  …]
 
 
2.  
 
Environmental  Fluid  Mechanics
 
Mixing  processes  in  shallow  lakes  are  important  regarding  water  quality  and  the  health  of  
the  aq
uatic  eco
-­‐
system.    This  internship  will  involve  the  development  of  a  particle  tracking  
model  for  chaotic  mixing  driven  by  fluctuating  wind  over  a  shallow  body  of  water.    
 
 
3
.
 
HMRC:  Coastal  Hydrodynamics.
 
Tsunamis  and  storm
-­‐
induced  extreme  wave  events  can  l
ead  to  severe  flood  wave  
inundation  of  land  protected  by  sea  defences.    A  Boussinesq  model  of  sea  waves  
propagating  in  coastal  waters  will  be  used  to  simulate  wave  run  up  and  overtopping  of  a  sea  
defence  at  laboratory  and  field  scale.    It  is  intended  that  
the  model  will  be  set  up  and  
calibrated  to  reproduce  wave  conditions  in  one  of  the  flumes/basins  at  HMRC.
 
 
4
.
 
One
-­‐
line  beach  modelling
 
This  internship  will  consider  the  long
-­‐
term  response  of  beach  profiles  to  climate  change  and  
human  influences.    An  existi
ng  one
-­‐
line  beach  response  model  will  be  validated  against  
standard  cases
,  and  then  calibrated  and  used
 
to  determine  the  long
-­‐
term  effects  of  climate  
and  human  changes  to  a  particular  (idealised)  coastline
.
 
 
 
Dominic  O’  Sullivan  [One  internship]
 
 
5
.
 
Building  Automation  and  Control  Systems
 
Building  Automation  and  Control  Systems  (BACS)  have  been  used  for  the  last  20  years  to  optimise  
and  manage  the  day
-­‐
to
-­‐
day  operations  of  large  facilities.  During  this  time  a  number  of  different  
hardware  and  software  m
anufacturers  have  entered  into  this  lucrative  space  with  proprietary  
products  designed  to  solve  specific  problems.  This  has  led  to  a  situation  where  a  number  of  different  
BACS  can  be  operating  within  a  single  facility  controlling  various  systems  and  produc
ing  significant  
quantities  of  data.  This  data  can  be  difficult  to  access  due  to  the  closed  proprietary  nature  of  the  
individual  applications  and  so  a  single  central  repository  of  all  the  available  building  automation  and  
control  network  system  information  
is  difficult  to  achieve.  The  purpose  of  this  research  is  to  
establish  the  validity  of  utilising  an  OPC  framework  to  coalesce  the  disparate  information  sources  
that  can  exist  within  a  facility  into  a  unified  database  than  can  be  easily  accessed  and  manipula
ted  
by  a  facility  manager.  
 
The  student  is  to  support  this  work  through  the  investigation  of  utilising  a  universal  OPC  driver  to  
access  information  directly  from  a  programmable  logic  controller  (PLC)  that  is  used  to  control  an  air  
handling  unit  (AHU).  The  
data  will  then  be  stored  in  a  database  system.  This  will  give  a  student  a  
significant  insight  in  to  the  operation  and  control  of  air  handling  units  as  well  as  practical  experience  
in  the  implementation  of  the  OPC  Data  Access  specification.
 
Emanuel  Popovici  [Two  internships  from  …]  
 

7.
 
 
neuro
-­‐
BAN

In  the  iBAN
-­‐
Med  project  we  aim  to  use  a  number  of  sensors  to  monitor  and  quantify  the  
movement  of  a  patient.  We  intend  to  use  a  number  of  Wireless  Inertial  Units  to  build  a  body  
area  network  for  mon
itoring  particularly  the  deterioration  of  movement  of  limbs.  This  type  
of  monitoring  can  be  used  to  give  a  feedback  for  a  number  of  neurological  conditions  or  can  
be  potentially  used  in  rehabilitation.  We  will  use  C/TinyOS  to  program  and  to  collect  the  
dat
a  as  well  as  machine  learning  algorithms.  Some  integration  with  other  sensors  within  the  
body  area  network  might  be  also  feasible.
 


8.  
 
iBAN
-­‐
Play
 
In  the  iBAN
-­‐
Play  project  we  aim  to  build  a  body  area  network  used  for  gesture  recognition  
for  gaming.  A  numbe
r  of  sensors(wireless  inertial  measurement  units)  will  be  integrated  
within  the  body  area  network  and  sensed  data  will  be  analyzed  on  an  sMote  DSP  platform.  
The  main  challenge  will  be  in  designing  power/memory/energy  efficient  DSP  for  gesture  
recognition  o
n  the  Blackfin  DSP.  We  will  use  embedded  C  and  graphical  interfacing  to  
demonstrate  the  technology.
 

9.  
 
ECO:  Wireless  Sensor  Networks  for  Energy  Control  and  Optimisation
 
The  aim  of  this  project  will  be  to  deploy  a  wireless  sensor  network  in  a  small  wind  f
arm  
setup  which  is  built  using  some  scaled  wind
-­‐
turbines.  The  wireless  sensor  network  will  sense  
for  example  data  such  as  wind  speed,  and  orientation  which  can  be  used  in  both  modelling  
and  optimisation  of  the  energy  output.  
Another  goal  of  this  internship
 
is  to  develop  the  
basic  infrastructure  for  a  centralised  data  collection  using  a  web  interface.

 
Padraig  Cantillon
-­‐
Murphy  
[One  internship]
 
 
10.
 
Magnetic  compression  for  colon  repair  after  colorectal  cancer  surgery
 
The  goal  of  this  work  is  to  develop  a  
magnetic  ring  assembly
 
consisting  in  two  coupled
 
magnetic  components,  for  post
-­‐
 
operative  fusion  of  the  human
 
colon.  It  is  hypothesised  that  
a  minimally
-­‐
 
invasive  alternative  to  suturing  or  stapling  severed  colon  using
 
magnetic  
components  will  improve  pati
ents  outcomes,  reduce
 
anaesthesia  and  complications  and  
decrease  healthcare  costs.
 
Colorectal  cancer  is  the  third  leading  cause  of  cancer
-­‐
related  
death  in
 
the  western  world.  Iterative  prototypes  will  be  constructed  using  3D  rapid
 
prototyping.  Integration  o
f  biodegradable  films  (e.g.,  PLA)  into
 
the  final  assembly  will  be  
examined.
 
 
Eoin  O’Reilly  
[One
 
 
internship
 
from  ……..
]
 
 
11.


Tunneling  through  disordered  barriers
 
Many  semiconductor  devices  include  an  element  where  charge  carriers  are  required  to  
tunnel  
quantum  mechanically  through  a  barrier.  There  are  simple  models  available  to  
estimate  the  tunneling  rate,  assuming  that  the  tunneling  is  taking  place  through  a  perfect  
barrier.  Often  however  the  barrier  may  be  far  from  perfect,  with  various  disorder  effect
s  
modifying  the  overall  barrier  structure.  The  aim  of  this  project  is  to  set  up  quantum  
mechanical  models  to  investigate  the  influence  of  disorder  on  tunneling  rates  through  a  
barrier.  This  project  should  both  strengthen  a  student’s  understanding  of  fundam
ental  
physics,  and  in  particular  quantum  mechanics,  while  also  providing  insight  into  factors  
involved  in  the  design  of  specific  semiconductor  devices,  including  the  design  of  the  tunnel  
barrier  in  high
-­‐
efficiency  GaN
-­‐
based  LEDs.
 
 
 
12.
 
Quantum  Entanglement
 
in  site
-­‐
controlled  quantum  dots
 
 
Site
-­‐
controlled  (111)
-­‐
oriented  InGaAs/GaAs  quantum  dots  (QDs)  have  attracted  
considerable  attention  due  to  a  number  of  very  advantageous  properties  over  more  
conventional  InGaAs/GaAs  QDs.  Due  to  the  underlying  crystal  symm
etry,  it  is  possible  to  
produce  dots  of  sufficiently  high  symmetry  to  emit  entangled  photons,  where  orthogonally  
polarized  photons  have  identical  energy.  The  emission  of  the  entangled  photons  requires  
that  effects  such  as  QD  shape  anisotropies  and  composit
ion  disorder  are  minimized.  
Disorder  effects  depend  on  the  dot  composition,  height  and  base  width.  The  aim  of  this  
project  is  to  study  the  impact  of  alloy  fluctuations  on  the  electronic  structure  of  site
-­‐
controlled  such  QDs.  Since  in  practice  it  is  very  di
fficult  to  directly  measure  the  dot  shape  
and  composition,  the  calculations,  in  combination  with  experimental  data  on  the  optical  
properties  allow  also  for  a  deeper  insight  into  the  QD  structural  properties  and  their  
application.