Summer Scholar: The Research Process in Lehigh University’s STEM-SI

STEM-SI, a summer research experience for undergraduates, recently finished its fourth edition. The brainchild of Lehigh biology faculty members Vassie Ware and Neal Simon, as well as I-CPIE founding Director Richard Sause and current Director Shalinee Kishore, the 10-week program pairs students from Lehigh and other schools with Lehigh researchers across the spectrum of STEM disciplines.

Many STEM-SI students perform their first independent research during this program. Rising sophomore and RARE student Nghi Bui, from Houston, Texas, is participating in the program this summer. And it’s a smart choice: Studies show that undergraduates who participate in such research experiences reap benefits such as higher retention rates, earlier self-identification as STEM researchers, improved technical skills, a higher sense of personal and social responsibility, and greater success at integrative and applied learning.

Nghi and her STEM-SI mentor, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics Aditya Aiyer, talked about the research experiences they’ve had this summer, including their setbacks and frustrations. With two weeks left in the program, both felt that Nghi’s research was coming along and holds potential not only for summer study but beyond–and that it has promise to help US wind farms.

Can you introduce yourself?

NB: I was born and raised in Vietnam, and I moved to Houston about five years ago. My major is IBE [Integrated Business Engineering] and Industrial Systems Engineering.

Why did you pick that major?

NB: I just chose one! They said, Oh, you need to choose a major. I was like, Let’s do ISE for now and I’ll figure it out later.

What interested you in STEM-SI?

NB: I got introduced to STEM-SI through RARE–I’m one of the RARE scholars–and I was interested but I didn’t know a lot of resources around campus. There’s an international one. They go to the Philippines, to Africa to do projects. I just want to learn more, to see what I want to do, to try to figure out options–there are a lot of majors within engineering. I have my business side too.

What is your project this summer?

NB: I do offshore wind energy, so I look at remote sensing, using Soar [an open-access digital map and image repository] and other stuff. I just look at public data to see if I can use programming to find the correlations. And for wind farms, I look at how to choose a site close to a location like a city that uses a lot of energy and can use the resources like renewables to replace gas and other resources that are running out right now.

What is the ideal site for a wind farm?

NB: You definitely need a lot of wind, but I also look at the West Coast where there’s big cities–San Francisco, Los Angeles–because they are close to the coast. Because I live in Texas, I also look at the Gulf of Mexico. But there’s not a lot–the wind is not really good. But I think it’s doable because Texas uses a lot of energy. We have AC on like 24/7–it’s so hot.

AA: In the Gulf of Mexico, there have been some areas leased out–we were just talking about it the other day. They are trying to build stuff there. As she mentioned, in Texas the wind index is not great. There are a few installations; they are trying small wind farms like on the roof of houses, trying to get vertical access via smaller installations. They’re not as efficient but they’re easier and cheaper to install, so you can actually put them on the buildings. On land, solar is way better in Texas, that’s why you want to look at offshore candidates.

In the project, she’s going to look at these areas and then use satellite data and remote sensing data. She’s learning–which is very impressive for a sophomore student–GIS software, which is software to look at global, spatial data. She can look at a particular area of the globe and extract wind speed, wave height, from that area, then actually make a plot of how it changes over time, how it changes historically. All of these things are things that she has already learned how to do just this summer.

NB: I actually learned a lot over summers versus classes, because in classes you are doing homework and you learn, but now you have to learn on your own.

What tools are you using?

NB: Mostly Python and GIS Snap tool, which lets you download global information.

AA: The main thing she’s using is ArcGIS. GIS is basically geospatial data, and a lot of software uses it. The one that Lehigh has access to is ArcGISPro. She’s been learning it. I haven’t used it. She’s going to teach me how. But she’s been struggling with concepts like, How do you even get the software running? These data sets are huge.

NB: I didn’t know that Lehigh had virtual computers that you can access, so I tried to download it to a PC in FML [Fairchild Martindale Library] but I couldn’t. So I had to ask the help desk, like I need this for my research, how do I access it? They helped me. Sometimes you have to make a ticket, then you have to wait two or three days for the software to work.

What have you had to learn to get started with this project?

NB: At first I did some reading to learn what technology is used, like, Where do we get the data? and how does Soar work? Which layer of it do I use? And to understand the project as a whole, What is offshore wind energy, how important it is right now? And after that I’ve had to learn how to download the software, like Python, and learn coding. I learned basic coding in ENG 10 but not deeply. It’s a lot of How do you extract one of the columns and use different data? It’s not only like text files–there are different files you have to use and there are different things within Python. I don’t know everything yet.

How are you doing the experiment–what are the steps?

NB: It’s really hard. At first I would try to find basic data I could use, but there’s no basic data around. It’s all huge or super complicated, so you have to use a supercomputer to extract data. It was one of our struggles at first—that’s when we started looking at the GIS in one area.

AA: The ideal scenario that we first envisioned was we’d pick a location and there would be satellite data available or data from NOAA and other government agencies, and we’d download that data and start analyzing it. Then we realized that to get from satellite data to raw data requires considerable work and is probably not in the scope of something you can do over the summer. And the other data sets that are publicly available are like 100 gigabytes of data, which you can’t just download to your personal computer. There are ways to access it, but it’s all too technical. So then we went the other way, thinking, Where can we find data? and look at that. We found some data near Boston and New York, and we just downloaded it into text files.

And there’s the business side of things, like she also wants to look at the cost effectiveness of these things and calculate the levelized cost of energy for a particular site.

Your majors seem like a productive pairing.

NB: If you want the project to happen, you have to convince the government, or people who have money, that this is going to give you money back because no one wants to put their money in and never see it again.

AA: This data that she gets, she can also use it as an input to do simulations. You can say, okay, This is what historically the wind and waves were the last six years in Massachusetts–now what if I put a wind farm there? What’s the wind and wave going to look like after a wind farm is there? How is the local climate changing because of that wind farm? You can only do that after you have that initial data sorted out. So there’s a lot of scope for what she’s doing.

What have you learned about research, the research process?

NB: It’s not easy and it’s not fast, and you don’t get your results right away! In class, you know what’s right and what’s wrong, because there’s already a result you can compare it with. But for research, it’s like you go this route then you hit the wall, then you have to back it up and see if there are any other routes. You learn a lot through it. When you hit the wall, that’s another way to find another thing that doesn’t work. And also you find something new that people haven’t seen yet.

Aditya, what has your role as a mentor been like?

AA: I think my role has been quite hands-off. We discuss the project, I tell her what I think we should do, then she will go and find a way to do it. Most of the stuff that she’s done has been mainly her. I haven’t written any of her code, I haven’t taught her how to code or anything. I think it’s really great that she stepped up and could do all this. But it’s all about interest. She’s interested in doing something with renewable energy, and so she starts working and does that. If something doesn’t work out, I will step in and say Okay, this is how you do it. I don’t need to step in and tell her how to write a code or what exactly to write. We just have our whiteboard discussions of what we think needs to be done. And then she will go back and do it. Then I respond to her email, or we will have a zoom, or she will come to my office.

So you’re pretty independent?

NB: Yeah, pretty much. Because if people work in biology or chemistry, they have a lab that they have to be in. I mostly spend my time in FML on their computers, because they are bigger and the screen is easier to see.

Is there anything you’d like to add to STEM-SI?

AA: Because I am also new [Aiyer came to Lehigh in 2023] and don’t have a lot of students, she’s probably been on her own for a lot of things. It would have been a lot easier for her to have a group. It would be nice to have an undergrad lab space where students can come and work, especially the computational ones, so they have some communication between people. And I’m sure there are a lot of other projects where people are using Python, for example. If they have a question, like I can’t get this file to work, then they can go and ask. A lot of learning happens with your peer network.

Nghi, what do you want to do after you graduate?

NB: That’s three years! I don’t know yet. I hope to learn a lot here, I hope to explore more. My first semester of my Lehigh college career, I did Lehigh Launch so I got to explore the American West. I got to visit a national lab and talk to people there. Next summer, I hope to get something at one of the national labs to learn more about research. I actually want to learn about renewable energy more, because I see the future of it and how it is important. I also talked to Rudy [Shankar] in Energy Systems Engineering. He says electricity is central to everything now, everyone needs energy. So I’m thinking about that for my master’s.

Aditya, why did you decide to be part of STEM-SI?

AA: It’s a very nice program for students in all years, not just the final years. In school, for me, research was very important. I did undergraduate research very early, and that’s kind of what led me to research. It’s not like I did the same project every summer, I did a lot of different projects, but I had exposure as well as involvement. So I wanted to be part of that. I also made it a point to take a younger student, like second year, third year, at least to start. It’s also difficult in some sense because you want them to do research, but you also want them to do something that they can complete. As a student, you want to see some results for yourself, feel some sense of accomplishment that yes, I could solve this problem, I did these steps, I failed a bunch of times but here are the results.