A few months back I was on my way to a meeting in Ross Hall when I noticed a flyer out of the corner of my eye for a project organized by Auburn’s Laboratory for Innovative Technology and Engineering Education. One meeting later I found out that I had been selected along with six other students to take part the IRES research program -- an 11 week research experience in India. I got to know my fellow travelers through a class that we all took last semester and once classes ended our journey began.
After touring Mumbai and Hyderabad we headed to Chennai -- home of the the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras campus. I have been teamed up with another Auburn student and three IIT students to work on a case study of the functional design and thermal comfort of the dorms here at IIT Madras. The problem is that the University is not allowed to develop more than twenty-four percent of preserve in which it sits – while the student population is growing each students each year. Students have the option of living off campus, but the majority live in one of the seventeen dorms currently on campus – which fall into two vintages. The older dorms house fewer students and feature central green space whereas the newer dorms are more cramped. I should also mention that due to energy costs in India neither of the dorms have air conditioning! That being said, students in the newer dorms have been complaining about the thermal comfort of their rooms. With temperatures often climbing well over forty degrees Celsius – and relative humidity often approaching one-hundred percent, the challenge of using natural ventilation to cool the residents and clever construction to shade them from the sun sounds very exciting to me. As a Computer Engineering student this project (lacking in the need for any computerized control systems or energy monitoring) falls outside of my field – but fits nicely with my personal passion of sustainable engineering.
Having spent eight weeks in India I'll be back in the US in two weeks. While I'm looking forward to being back home in Auburn, I'm sure I'll miss all of the wonderful people I've had the opportunity to get to know in my time in India. I've always wanted to go to India - and thanks to Auburn I was able to do so at no expense.

You can read more about my travels at my personal blog.