Collaborative Research Teams

Collaborative research is a hallmark of SmartGeo. Significant advances in intelligent geosystems require integrative efforts from individuals with expertise in geoengineering (geotechnical, geological, environmental, mining, petroleum), geosciences (hydrology, geophysics, geology, geochemistry), engineering (electrical, mechanical, civil), and computer science. SmartGeo students and faculty pursue scholarship individually and as a team, but always within a collaborative structure. As just one example, the Intelligent Earth Dam project provides an idea of a collaborative team makeup and responsibilities.

While students will develop depth within one (or two) disciplines and pursue individual research accordingly, each team will have collaborative technical responsibilities. Students and faculty within each collaborative research team will develop team goals that integrate and build from each student’s individual research goals. A well-defined structure of bi-weekly team activities, meetings, and reporting requirements will be constructed. Leadership and teamwork program components (see below) will be reinforced and integrated into the collaborative activities to assist in building effective teams. We envision that each doctoral student's dissertation (often a collection of peer-reviewed journal papers) will incorporate their individual contributions and collaborative efforts with students from other disciplines. One chapter of each student's dissertation will be reserved for Policy integration (see below). This framework will reinforce the importance of cross-disciplinary collaborative work. This approach will produce more talented and versatile graduates. Industry, government and academia are desperate for talented leaders multi- and interdisciplinary projects. Traditional graduate programs do not produce these leaders. SmartGeo graduates provides this need.

Social/Environmental Ethics

Geosystems face significant social and political challenges, and are increasingly wrestled with at city, state and federal levels. For example, one response to the threat of terrorism has been to limit the public flow of information about critical infrastructure. This creates a tremendous obstacle for an earth dam monitoring system that relies on broadcasting information to communities down stream. The social, political and environmental challenges must be woven with and addressed alongside the technical aspects when developing and implementing intelligent geosystems.

As an integrative graduate program, SmartGeo seeks broader integration with the social sciences, humanities, and policy studies. Broader interdisciplinary education and research will promote the understanding of science, technology, and society interactions related to Intelligent Geosystems. This aspect of SmartGeo will be supported by collaboration with the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

To meet this need, the technical education and research of SmartGeo students will be complemented with five activities.

• First year students will take a self-paced course on the "Social History of Science and Technology during the 20th Century."
• Second year students will participate in a graduate seminar in science, technology, and environmental policy, and participate in the annual AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) “Science Policy Forum” in Washington, D.C.
• Students take at least one graduate seminar from a suite of elective options that includes environmental philosophy, environmental law and policy, political risk assessment, and global engineering cultures.
• Students attend at least one seminar conducted by the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research per semester.
• One chapter/paper of each Ph.D. student's dissertation will focus on the environmental ethics and policy dimensions of their technical research. One important goal of SmartGeo is for all students to have published in the area of environmental ethics and policy.
  
  

This effort in Environmental Ethics and Policy will prepare a more holistic graduate as illustrated by continuing our Intelligent Earth Dam (IED) example project.

Leadership

This IGERT component will provide SmartGeo students with leadership and management skill sets that often does not exist in science and engineering graduate programs. Our goal is to weave formalized concepts of leadership and teamwork throughout each student's collaborative research, social and environmental ethics and policy efforts, and internship and industry/agency experience. SmartGeo students will participate in leadership and teamwork training through retreats, workshops and seminars. Ms. Debra Lasich, Executive Director of the Women in Science, Engineering and Mathematics (WISEM) Program will develop and coordinate the Leadership and Teamwork Development Program. The curriculum will consist of the following:

Developing Community:

All new and returning students take part in a two-day (Colorado mountain) retreat at the beginning of the academic year to promote teamwork and community building through teambuilding exercises, individual assessments, and professional development presentations. Returning students will serve as mentors to the first year students. A key objective of the retreat is to develop and strengthen our interdisciplinary culture for both students and faculty.

Professional Development Series:

This series will incorporate a variety of methods to expose students to leadership and management theories and applications. Students will attend monthly workshops or seminars on leadership, teamwork, policy issues and professional development. The presenters are experts in their particular topics from industry, other universities, and CSM. The presentation topics will include leadership and management, ethics, teamwork, professional communication, conflict resolution, negotiation, policy and legal issues, resource management, diversity, and organizational behavior. Students will apply the principles learned within their collaborative research team. Students will complete a series of assessments focused on leadership/managerial style, team development, personal preferences, organizational climate, and learning styles. The students will complete assessment tools provided by the Hay Group which include Managerial Style, Leadership Competency Inventory, Kolb Learning Styles, and Personal Values questionnaires, as well as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Selected assessments will be given at the annual retreat and at then again at the end of academic year to determine if their experience in SmartGeo has influenced their leadership and team development. This information will enable students to learn more about their strengths, challenges, and preferences as they relate to the classroom and workplace.

Community Project:

Each year, SmartGeo will choose a non-profit organization to work with as it relates to one of the collaborative research team projects. This activity will enable students to apply the concepts they have learned in the areas of teamwork, collaboration, communication, community building, stewardship, and cross-disciplinary thinking. In addition, the students can involve stakeholders in the system level design of an Intelligent Geosystem. For example, there are numerous community groups associated with superfund or other contamination sites. Similarly, communities downstream of earth dams often gather/establish a group to stay informed and lobby on behalf of their safety. Our students will select a group and participate in their discussions and activities. After completing their project, they will have a follow-up meeting to assess if they have accomplished their goals.

Cross Discipline

SmartGeo provides a formal structure to support cross-disciplinary research so that graduate students will benefit from the experience of studying across traditional disciplines. The content of the training for students will include preparation in:

• standard language/jargon for disciplines included in the SmartGeo framework
• methods for reading and evaluating articles across the included disciplines
• strategies for developing interdisciplinary research in other higher educational settings, national research labs, and industry
• conflict resolution strategies for recognizing and addressing the pitfalls inherent in interdisciplinary research 

With the increased commitment to collaboratory research teams, leadership development, and environmental ethics & policy, we purposely require minimal common technical coursework. Required coursework will include: a self-paced course on Intelligent Geosystems, two one-credit courses related to professional skills, and three policy oriented courses. Each fellow and their doctoral committee will design their additional coursework requirements. The Intelligent Geosystems course includes modules on: Sensing, Data Processing, Modeling, and Decision Support. The goal of this technical interdisciplinary coursework is to provide a brief introduction to the topics, including training for standard language/jargon across disciplines, so as to facilitate learning through research team interaction. The self-paced course will be focused on geosystems while presenting the following topics:

• Sensing: Overview of relevant sensing elements, basic operation of a sensor node, wireless signal propagation in geosystems, wireless sensor networks and remote sensing techniques.
• Data Processing: Introduction to analysis of spatio-temporal data from distributed systems; embedded programming for in-situ analysis; data compression and fusion; signal processing; and machine learning.
• Modeling: Characterization, monitoring and modeling of subsurface environmental systems, including an overview of parameter estimation so models better fit observations; evaluating the quality of the model; predictive uncertainty analysis; improving data collection to reduce uncertainty.
• Decision Support: Open and closed loop feedback control systems; risk assessment; basic techniques for abstracting data and meaningful presentation to a lay audience.
  
  

Professionalism Coursework: SmartGeo students will take two one-credit hour courses: "Professional Oral Communication" and "The Art of Science". These two courses will train students on the aspects of conducting interdisciplinary research, defining research topics, making a work plan, effectively executing a work plan, time-management, surmounting obstacles, choosing a venue and writing a publication, proposal writing, ethics of research, career choices, and, most importantly, strategies for working with team members from different disciplines. The courses will blend students from all disciplines, ensuring a rich and diverse intellectual environment.

Internships

SmartGeo Ph.D. students will participate in an internship (minimum four-month duration) with our industry and government partners, preferably at the end of their second year in the program. SmartGeo faculty maintain close ties with industry and government agencies active in geosystems research and technology development. Internships create a win-win situation, in which our students receive an effective technical and professional development experience, and industry/government receives a creative boost to their research and development efforts. To this end, we are very careful in selecting sponsors and internship positions, and the individual student plays a significant role in finding the internship. A small sample of entities that regularly host graduate interns from CSM or are collaborating with SmartGeo faculty include: Ingersoll Rand, Caterpillar, Microsoft Research, Google, Schlumberger, Olson Engineering, US Geological Survey, Sandia’s National Labs, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, Pacific Northwest National Labs, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Federal Highway Administration, and various State Departments of Transportation.