Research in Industrial Projects for Students:
2002 Program
Current year projects and company information
Company Info:
Arete was founded in 1976 and
conducts leading-edge research and development in:
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Sensor hardware technology,
data analysis, signal processing, and algorithm development
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Applied
oceanography including experiment design and execution, instrumentation
development, and data analysis
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Physics-based modeling,
simulation, and high-resolution scene generation;
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Assessment
of the impact of advanced technologies on military capabilities
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Work Statement
Company Info:
HRL Laboratories (HRL), as it
is known today, has a rich reputation for discoveries and innovations since its
early roots in 1948 when Howard Hughes created the Electronics and Guided
Missile Department (very soon to be known as the Research and Development
Laboratories) employing approximately 150 people.
The Hughes Aircraft Company
(the trade name under which Hughes Tool Company conducted its aeronautical
business) of which HRL was a part was soon to be a subsidiary of the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute, formed in 1953, for the stated purpose of "the
promotion of human knowledge within the field of the basic sciences
(principally the field of medical research and medical education) and the
effective application thereof for the benefit of mankind." The Medical
Institute became a major step toward a philanthropic goal conceived by Howard
Hughes many years earlier.
Today HRL is jointly owned by
Raytheon Company and The Boeing Company and provides corporate research and
development for both companies.
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Company Info:
Protein Pathways is a
bioinformatics company that develops computational methods to identify protein
interactions, thereby discovering small molecule drug targets. In this era of
full-genome sequencing, thousands of newly sequenced proteins currently have no
assigned function and little or no homology to previously characterized
proteins. The Company provides missing links in the path from genome sequences
to new drugs.
Genome sequences instruct cells how and when to make proteins. The proteins in
turn are the active players in the cell. Proteins form the machinery of cells,
allow cells to communicate, and can control the growth or death of an organism.
Because of their role in cells, almost all drug targets are proteins. Drugs
work by binding specifically to a protein, thus changing the protein's
function. Extensive knowledge about the function of a protein can guide the
selection of targets for pharmaceutical chemists.
Protein Pathways provides a new way of discovering protein function.
Previously, the only way to determine a protein function was by sequence
similarity to another protein of known function. This bootstrapping approach
left many gaps in our understanding. The analysis of genomes by the methods of
Protein Pathways fills the gaps by creating extensive networks of interactions
between proteins. Human genomic sequence data from Ensembl and expression data
from SAGE and NCBI provide some of the data for human drug target discovery.
The Company’s algorithms use additional genetic data from 62 sequenced genomes
to search for trends and correlations that reveal the interacting partners of a
given protein. This set of links suggests functions for previously
uncharacterized proteins, as well as novel functions for "known" proteins. The
computational technology of Protein Pathways produces reliable information
about protein functions, but is much faster and less expensive than traditional
experimental methods. The proprietary algorithms were developed at Protein
Pathways and at UCLA by the founders of the Company.
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