Educational Outreach
One of CSU-CHILL's goals is to support educational interests. This includes the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU), supporting classroom activities for undergraduate- and graduate-level Atmospheric Science and Engineering programs, remote demonstrations and virtual radar tours, field trips to the radar site and remote data access. In addition, student research activities are conducted at the CHILL site.
Research Experience for Undergraduates
Founded and supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program is designed to provide valuable educational experiences for undergraduate students through research participation. Working closely with faculty and researchers at host institutions around the world, REU projects involve undergraduates in meaningful ways in ongoing research, including opportunities for laboratory visits, writing workshops, and other activities to enhance the research experience. Students are granted stipends and, in many cases, assistance with housing and travel.
The CSU-CHILL REU annual summer program provides an opportunity for undergraduate students to conduct research focused on the Radar Facility and its revolutionary weather sensing technology. Students are assigned an individual mentor, who supervises the students' daily activities, and monitors weekly progress. This program solicits applications from Physics, Engineering, Computer Science and Atmospheric Science disciplines.
Examples of research topics assigned to previous REU students are
- Antenna pattern evaluation for the CSU-CHILL Offset Feed Antenna
- Implementation of radar signal processing algorithms on Graphics Processor Units (GPUs)
- Real-time implementation of Hydrometeor identification for the VCHILL system
- Verification of offset-feed antenna performance through meteorological observations
Interested students should contact the program coordinator through the ECE website.
Classroom Activities
The CHILL facility provides access to a rich collection of radar data in support of classroom activities.
- Interesting cases (VCHILL)
- Radar data (real-time/archives)
- Tutorials
- Coursework/ware
- NCSU Sandy Yuter demo
- ATS741
- UCAR COMET
- AMS Short courses/calibration workshop/broadcast
Virtual Radar Tours
Field Trips
VCHILL
The Virtual CHILL, or VCHILL system allows remote users to display data both from the CHILL archives as well as from realtime operations. The Java VCHILL display client software is a cross-platform tool to allow radar access from a variety of computer systems running various operating systems.
More information can be found on the VCHILL section of this website.
