The robotics engineering course is designed for high-school students to provide them with understanding of robotics as an engineering discipline. The participating students will learn about a number of newly emerging robotics technologies and their impacts on a variety of areas ranging from industrial sectors, such as manufacturing, medical, defense; home assistance to elderly and disabled people; to improving learning for autistic children/students. The main goal of the course is to motivate the students in pursuing robotics as an engineering discipline by providing them an introduction to behind the scenes science and art of robotics. The course will involve interactive and fun-filled group sessions that include video lectures, interacting with real world robots, and hands-on programming.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

• Demonstrate an understanding of the robotics as an engineering discipline, state of the art in robotics and the relevant skills and knowledge required to become a roboticist.
• Describe the nature and type of research work conducted in robotics in various state of the art robotics disciplines and the impact of those on our world.
• Develop problem solving, critical thinking, and programming skills.

• Interactive introductory lectures on history of robotics and overview of robotics engineering as an interdisciplinary field.
• An overview of the three main areas of robotics engineering using a mix of video tutorials and class discussions. The areas are: Bio-robots, Human-robot interaction, Autonomous robots
  
• An invigorating hands-on experience of discovering the intricacies of electrical circuit wiring, programming on microcontrollers, and robot building using kits.
• Interaction with real world robots

Ashwin Dani received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Florida (UF), Gainesville, FL, USA, in 2008 and 2011, respectively. After graduation from Ph.D., he was a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA. In 2013, he joined4 the faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) as Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA, where he is currently an Associate Professor. His research interests related to robotics engineering include human–robot collaboration, autonomous navigation of robots, nonlinear estimation and control, and machine learning. Dr. Dani actively participates in outreach and teaching activities related to robotics at UConn and is an active researcher in the field of controls and robotics.

Data science is a fast developing science of extracting meaningful information from massive data for better decision-making. It is interdisciplinary by nature, involving statistics, computing, and domain knowledge. Important principles of data science will be elaborated through interactive games and real applications in this course.

Students will have a basic understanding of the essential components of data science as well as the basic computing skills needed to explore this field further independently. The fun, game-based introductions will engage students' interest in data science.

• understand most important principles in data science;
• learn the basics of data science computing skills - data manipulation, visualization, and analysis;
• program in R to run simulations of games;
• practice on real applications with data from climate change to sports.

Jun Yan is a Professor of Statistics at the University of Connecticut. He received his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in 2003. He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa before joining UConn in 2007. His research interests include survival analysis, clustered data analysis, multivariate dependence, spatial extremes, and statistical computing. He is actively involved in applications and education of data science in public health, climate change, ecology, and sports. He has a special interest in making advanced statistical methods widely accessible via open-source software. Dr. Yan is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and is the Editor of the Journal of Data Science.

More info is available at http://merlot.stat.uconn.edu/~jyan/.

The course is designed to provide an overview of the interaction between marine life and ocean processes. When we study living things in the ocean and how they interact with their environment we actually study marine ecology. We will use Long Island Sound as our outdoor laboratory to study coastal marine ecology and learn the tools marine biologists and oceanographers use to understand the impact of climate change and human activity on marine life. Marine scientists use the data and results from research of ocean processes such as ocean temperatures, currents, chemistry, geology and as well as biology to plan and carry out conservation measures to protect marine life.

Our goals for you once you have completed this program are:
1) That you leave the program with a better understanding of how scientists discover and explain the workings of the natural world
2) How oceanography helps us to appreciate and manage our planet
3) Marine Biology includes life from the microscopic algae to largest of whales and their survival depends upon our stewardship of the oceans.

This will be accomplished by touching on specific principles of marine biology and marine science in general, applying some mathematical analysis, and hypothesis testing and applying reasoning that will converge all our topics to not only develop a better appreciation of the marine environment.

Elements of marine chemistry and marine physics are explored using instrumentation.  You will collect data from field measurements and chemical analysis and record qualitative observations. Homework will be comprised of generating graphs and contemplating questions we plan to discuss during the next class.  The discussions about the data and observations will generate a final group “report” on Baker’s Cove as a snapshot of the health of Eastern Long Island Sound.

Prerequisite: Students must have completed two years of high school science and math through Algebra I to take this course.  High School transcripts will be evaluated to confirm this requirement has been met.  

• Measure and interpret coastal ocean properties in the laboratory and using instruments on the water: salinity, oxygen, temperature and nutrients
• Determine how these properties affect marine life composition
• You will observe and explore several different types of coastal marine habitats
• Marine biology hands-on topics: the algae and seaweeds, invasive species, invertebrate ecology, fish seining, dissections of preserved animals
• Apply some mathematical analysis, hypothesis testing and reasoning that will converge all our topics to develop a better appreciation of the marine environment.
• Learn the types of conservation methods and restoration efforts that are taking place globally and locally

This course will provide students with an overview of the entire drug development process. We will start with how pharmaceutical companies determine what disease they want to target and work our way through the entire discovery process over the one-week course, ending with post-approval monitoring by the FDA. Along the way, we will answer a variety of specific topics including the following: what is a lead compound, what are drug-drug and drug-food interactions, and how do clinical trials work. Much of our discussion on these topics will revolve around the development of currently used drugs such as Lipitor (high cholesterol), Januvia (type II diabetes), and Harvoni (hepatitis C).

By the end of their week in this course, students will be able to describe the general steps taken by a pharmaceutical company to produce a drug. Students will also gain hands on experience in both chemistry and biochemistry-based science experiments. Finally, students will be introduced to several career options associated with drug discovery, research, and pharmacy.

• Students will learn key steps of the drug discovery process.
• Students will learn about the interdisciplinary nature of drug research.
• Students will perform several chemistry-based experiments in the lab.
• Students will perform an experiment to test the anti-bacterial properties of several compounds.
• Students will tour several research labs at UConn.