Informatics Skunkworks
Informatics transforming science and engineering

Project Resources

Educational materials:

  • Modules and course plans for introductions to machine learning for materials scientists.
  • ML curriculum

Onboarding Course:

  • Targeted at student with little to no background in machine learning, we teach a remote and in-person one semester Introduction to Machine Learning for Engineering Research course to bring students from ground zero up to being able to participate on a machine learning research project
  • The course is open to both UW students as well as remote participants from other institutions

Technical Help-Desk

  • In collaboration with other experts in informatics and machine learning we are hosting weekly remote help-desk to assist researchers in solving their technical code problems so that they can get back to doing the exciting parts of research.
  • We are also always looking for more volunteers to help staff the weekly Zoom calls. If you’d like to give back to the community by volunteering your time please reach out to let us know!

Software:

  • MAterials Simulation Toolkit – Machine Learning (MAST-ML) is an automated tool for setting up, executing, and managing output machine learning tasks in materials science.
  • MAST-ML documentation | Source (MAST-ML)

Databases:

Computing:

  • We have CPU and GPU resources we would be glad to share with collaborators. Please reach out for details.

Other Communities:

  • Learn more about student AI work at UW from the AI Club.
  • General machine learning community at UW here.

Fellowships and research programs are a great way to

  1. Get funding for skunkworks activities (e.g., over the summer), typically a few thousands dollars.
  2. Get funding for schooling as UG or Grad (typically tens of thousands of dollars).
  3. Strengthen your resume.
  4. Obtain extra funds.

Skunkworks participants have a huge advantage in fellowship and research program applications as they typically have a well-defined project in an cutting edge area with many positive learning benefits. Skunkworks applicants can therefore often write excellent applications quickly. Here are a few opportunities that might be relevant and please send me (Dane Morgan <ddmorgan@wisc.edu>) more if you learn about them. Also see UW list for campus and national awards here.

UW Fellowships:

  1. University Bookstore Award which will provide $1,000 for independent research.
  2. Hilldale Undergraduate/Faculty Research Fellowship which provides $3,000 to a student and $1,000 to an advisor to further their research collaborations.
  3. Welton Summer Sophomore Apprenticeship which provides a $2,500 stipend to help support work in the summer.
  4.  WISCIENCE Summer Research Program which provides $1500 for work in the summer.
  5. Sophomore Research Fellowship provides $2,500 to student/$500 to advisor for research. For 2nd year undergraduates.
  6. Ralph B. Abrams Scholarship which provides $500-$1000 for seniors pursuing a degree in College of L&S.

National Fellowships:

  1. NSF Graduate Fellowship, DOE Graduate Fellowship, Hertz
  2. Department of Defense SMART Scholars:

The Department of Defense (DoD) SMART Scholarship Program is an opportunity for students pursuing an undergraduate or graduate degree in STEM disciplines to receive a full scholarship and be gainfully employed by the Department of Defense upon degree completion.

SMART Scholars will receive:

  • A full tuition scholarship while in school
  • An annual stipend
  • Summer research internships
  • A job after graduating in their STEM field at a cutting edge Department of Defense Facility

Applicants must:

Running a Research Project

  • New research mentors might find it useful to reference a template for structuring undergraduate research projects. We’ve put together a research mentor guide which outlines some standard operating procedures that have worked well for organizing and running undergraduate research group projects.
  • Additionally it may be useful to have a similar document that can be shared with students participating on projects. A sample project syllabus is included and can be copied and modified as desired
  • For more in depth information, there is a useful book from UW’s own Prof. Wendy Crone: Introduction to Engineering Research, Wendy C. Crone, University of Wisconsin – Madison
    ISBN: 9781681737997 | PDF ISBN: 9781681738000, Hardcover ISBN: 9781681738017
    Copyright © 2020 | 232 Pages, DOI: 10.2200/S00995ED1V01Y202002EST006