What I really enjoyed about the REU Smart Cities Program at UNLV was the availability of my mentor Dr. Sarah Harris and UNLV's Office of Undergraduate Research to provide me the resources needed to perform proper research. Dr. Harris was always willing to provide advice and helped me devise a research plan for my project, which was to help test and optimize a low-power, high-performance, configurable microprocessor and to lead its evaluation and benchmarking. In addition, with research oriented workshops and guest speakers from various engineering fields related to smart cities, I was able to learn a great deal about the research process and apply the skills they taught to my own research. But the most exciting part of the program for me was finally being able to present my research findings at the O.U.R. Summer Research Symposium alongside my peers!
What I wish was different
If I could change one thing about my experience with UNLV's REU Smart Cities Research program, it would be the remote aspect, which was a circumstance inevitably brought about by covid-19. While I was able to learn and stay productive through remote participation in the program, from my experience, in-person research is often more engaging. Fortunately however, the last two weeks of the program did happen to be in-person, so I was still able to enjoy the company of my mentors and peers!
Advice
One piece of advice I would give to future researchers is to never be afraid to ask for help. If I have learned anything from being involved in research, it is that the pursuit of knowledge is done on the shoulders of giants. Any progress you make will always build off of the work of the ambitious scholars that came before you. That said, you won't always have all the answers, but fortunately there are many professionals out there who will often be more than eager to share their expertise and research findings with you to help with your journey. So always remain humble, be open to others' ideas, and ask questions!
