Internship Opportunity Research Experiences for Undergraduates

Project Title: Study of the electric power infrastructure of Puerto Rico under hurricanes. 

 A project of the Integrated Socio-Technical Modeling Framework to Evaluate and Enhance Resiliency in Islanded Communities (ERIC).   

The ERIC project has three internship opportunities for Spring 2021 semester.  The main purpose of this undergraduate research experience (REU) project is to study the vulnerability of the electrical power critical infrastructure of Puerto Rico under natural extreme weather conditions. 

Project Rationale:

The project consists on recreating sections of Puerto Rico’s power transmission system after the nearly complete destruction of the grid caused by Hurricane Maria. The reconstruction will be based on data provided by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA). One will need to extract and process the data to create a clean and organized dataset, geo-referenced (i.e. maps). Then, do basic statistics with the data, and use GIS to overlay distribution and transmission line sections with different variables such as elevation and land cover. 

Expected Outcomes:

Organized dataset of Puerto Rico’s power towers, GIS maps of different sections of the transmission system.

Qualifications: 

Undergraduate student from engineering or sciences in good standing from any of the four ERIC partner schools; The City College of New York, New York University, Arizona State University, and University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez   Students must be US Citizen or Permanent Residents with GPA of 3.0 or higher, and have basic programming skills in Matlab and Python, with preferred experience in GIS. 

Compensation:

Compensation will vary according to student experience and at competitive rates for internships (typically ranging between $500-$800/month). 

To apply, send 1-page resume with GPA to Prof. Jorge E. González (ERIC-PI) at jgonzalezcruz@ccny.cuny.edu by January 31st, 2021.