2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) By Engaging Students Using IoT – Addressing AI and Cybersecurity

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session I

While Internet of Things (IoT) has become more common in everyday applications and products, many of these same IoT-based applications do not consider cybersecurity issues and associated concerns. In addition, with more access to cloud computing resources and more readily available graphics processing units (GPUs) being utilized for artificial intelligence (AI), AI-based processing continues to disrupt multiple technical fields and associated products. As a result, AI and cybersecurity were identified as areas that need to be introduced or included for the students participating in IoT-based projects.

In this project a team at two Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), Texas A&M University-Kingsville and Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, has developed new materials addressing the use of AI and taking into account cybersecurity. Using Python and appropriate Python libraries, pre-trained AI algorithms are added to Python coding which will allow more advanced features such as image recognition to be included in the student projects. Information on cybersecurity standards have been added to student project-related materials to introduce the student to an ongoing design and operational concern for IoT-enhanced products and projects. An exercise using AI has been added to the IoT tutorial materials previously developed as part of the work supported by this grant.

Authors

Dr. Lifford McLauchlan Texas A&M University - Kingsville [biography]

Dr. Lifford McLauchlan is an Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at Texas A&M University - Kingsville, and has also worked for Raytheon, Microvision, AT&T Bell Labs, and as an ONR Distinguished Summer Faculty at SPAWAR San Diego, CA. He has over 55 publications covering areas such as adaptive and intelligent controls, robotics, an ocean wave energy converter, green technology, education, wireless sensor networks and image processing. He is a co-inventor on 3 US patents related to control systems. Dr. McLauchlan is a member of ASEE and was the 2012-2014 Chair of the Ocean and Marine Engineering Division. He is also a member of IEEE (senior member), SPIE, Eta Kappa Nu, ACES and Tau Beta Pi, and has served on the IEEE Corpus Christi Section Board in various capacities such as Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary and Membership Development Officer. Dr. McLauchlan has received the Dean’s Distinguished Service Award twice and the Dean’s Outstanding Teaching Award once for the College of Engineering at Texas A&M University-Kingsville.
Dr. David Hicks Texas A&M University-Kingsville [biography]

David Hicks is an Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. Before joining TAMU-K he served as Associate Professor and Department Head at Aalborg University in Esbjerg, Denmark. He has also held positions in research labs in the U.S. as well as Europe, and spent time as a researcher in the software industry.
Dr. Mehrube Mehrubeoglu http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-5927-8408 Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi [biography]

Dr. Mehrubeoglu received her B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin. She earned an M.S. degree in Bioengineering and Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University. She is currently an associate prof

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

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