Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA)

New Inter-Institutional Collaborative PhD Programs

The Engineering Research Center (ERC) for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) is helping to build a new Ph.D. program in Electrical Engineering at core partner University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez (UPRM), a Hispanic-American serving institution, where no such program exists today. CASA has completed and signed-off on memoranda of understanding between the Electrical and Computer Engineering Departments at the University of Massachusetts (UMASS-UPRM) and Colorado State University (CSU-UPRM). These memoranda define collaborative Ph.D. programs that will enable UPRM students to complete their Ph.D. programs at partner campuses while doing intensive research on a CASA testbed located at UPRM.

These collaborative Ph.D. programs lay the foundation for long-term improvement in the diversity of the science and engineering workforce by:

• Increasing the number of underrepresented and female doctoral students in engineering. Virtually all of UPRM's students are from underrepresented groups, and 40% of UPRM's students are women.
• Enhancing doctoral-level research capacity at UPRM. When students return to the UPRM campus they perform doctoral-level research with UPRM faculty; this gives faculty at UPRM an opportunity to mentor graduate engineering students and augments long-term research at UPRM.
• Supporting UPRM as it establishes its own doctoral program.

An ERC is the ideal environment for such a program because of the close inter-institutional collaboration among faculty, the continuity of research programs across institutions, and faculty and graduate student exchange programs among all of CASA's academic partners.

To learn more about this topic:
See the Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere web site at http://www.casa.umass.edu/ourteam.html and http://www.casa.umass.edu/educationandoutreach/diversity.html

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Francesc Junyent-Lopez is one of the first students
in the collaborative Ph. D. program.

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Last modified: May 16, 2006