Staff and Location

Faculty Director	Prof. Christopher Batten, 323 Rhodes Hall (cb535)
Admin. Assistant	Daniel Richter, 314 Rhodes Hall (tdr27)
Teaching Assistants	Patrick Cao, ECE Sophomore (pxc2) Olivia Gustafson, ECE Senior (org5) Victoria Hu, BEE Sophomore (vh66) Laura Johnson, ECE Ph.D. (laj64) Christopher Torng, ECE Ph.D. (clt67) Jon Tse, ECE Ph.D. (jdt76)
Staff Email	curie2014-staff csl cornell edu
Lab Space	237/239 Phillips Hall
Lecture Room	219 Phillips Hall (used for short introductory lectures)

Faculty Director Bio

The director for the CURIE Academy in 2014 was Prof. Christopher Batten. Prof. Batten is an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and a graduate field member of computer science at Cornell University. His research and teaching is in the field of computer architecture: the principle and practice of improving the performance, efficiency, reliability, and programmability of future computer systems. This highly interdisciplinary field stretches from circuits to operating systems with a focus at the hardware/software interface. Prof. Batten's research has been recognized with several awards including an Intel Early Career Faculty Honor Program award (2013), an NSF CAREER award (2012), a DARPA Young Faculty Award (2012), and an IEEE Micro Top Picks selection (2004). His teaching has been recognized with a Michael Tien '72 Excellence in Teaching Award (2013) and a James M. and Marsha D. McCormick Award for Outstanding Advising of First-Year Engineering Students (2013).

Objectives

The CURIE Academy is a one-week summer residential program for high school. CURIE scholars spend their mornings learning about the various fields within engineering, and spend their afternoons working on a design project. The morning sessions are meant to provide breadth across engineering disciplines while the afternoon design project is meant to provide depth in a single engineering discipline. The design project can help scholars evaluate whether or not they are interested in pursuing a career in engineering. By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• describe the various levels of abstraction used in computer engineering including devices, circuits, gates, register-transfer level, microarchitecture, instruction sets, operating systems, programming languages, algorithms, and applications.
• apply this understanding to new computer engineering design problems including a multi-bit binary adder, a mobile robot control application, and an internet-of-things "smart door" system.
• create a simple internet-of-things (IoT) system inspired by a real-world application of IoT.

Preqrequisites

Scholars were expected to have a strong background in math and science, enjoy solving problems, and want to learn more about careers in engineering. Scholars were not expected to have any prior experience with computer engineering; we taught scholars everything they needed to know to succeed in their design project!

Format and Procedures

The week-long design experience included a combination of assigned readings, short introductory lectures, structured lab sessions, an open-ended design project, and a final presentation.

• Readings – There were three assigned readings posted on this website that scholars were expected to read before arriving for the CURIE Academy. In addition, there were lab notes that accompanied each lab session that scholars are expected to read before the corresponding lab session.
• Introductory Lectures – Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday began with a short introductory lectures in 219 Phillips Hall. These introductory lectures gave the director a chance to review background material relevant for completing the lab sessions.
• Lab Sessions – Small groups of scholars completed three lab sessions involving incrementally building: (1) a simple calculator out of basic logic gates; (2) a mobile robot control application using the popular Arduino micro-controller; and (3) an IoT "smart door" system that integrates an input IoT device, the cloud, and an output Iot device. Scholars were required to work in different groups for the first two lab sessions.
• Design Project – Scholars had an opportunity to rank their choices from a selection of several project themes. The staff then formed groups of 5–6 students based on the scholars' background and project selection. During Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, groups designed, built, and tested their IoT system.
• Final Presentation – On Sunday, each group of scholars gave a short presentation including: (1) the motivation for their project; (2) a real-world example of an embedded system or IoT device similar in spirit to their project; (3) the design of their specific IoT system; and (4) a video demonstration of their IoT system.