Undergraduate Researcher (Student wage)

The Center for Emerging Technology Identification for Roadway Infrastructure Construction & Maintenance has developed a radar and rubric to evaluate emerging technologies for VTRC scientists to pilot and research.

This rubric has undergone several iterations of refinement through discussions with faculty and iterations with LLMs. The existing version of the radar has been created using a retrieval augmented generation (RAG) concept. The LLM compiles 30 URLs for each technology and uses them to rate the technology against the rubric. These scores are then used to place the technology on the radar. Around 90 technologies have been rated; these were identified using a VTRC Report on Emerging Technologies in 2004 and research conducted by the Center’s postdoctoral researchers. 

As the Center shifts toward generating pilot projects for VTRC scientists, postdoctoral researchers, and undergraduate students to work on, there is still a need to verify the LLM output and to build a more extensive database for each technology. The goal of this document is to outline a plan for undergraduate researchers hired by the Center to conduct this literature review and generate these scores with the supervision of the postdoctoral researchers. 

Outline: 

Undergraduate researchers hired by the Center are expected to conduct the following tasks: 

• Verify the URLs provided by the LLM. If these URLs are sufficient, no additional information is required.
• For URLs to be considered sufficient, they must meet the following criteria: Provide information about the performance of the technology 

• Provide information about the cost of the technology 
• Provide information such that the technology can be compared with conventional practice 
• Come from credible sources (e.g., .gov or .edu sites or official vendor sites) 

If the URLs are not sufficient, the undergraduate researchers must conduct an additional literature search using academic papers or the websites of industry vendors offering the technology. 

• Generate a summary based on the literature review. The summary should define the technology and provide context for the rubric ratings. The summary should contain references and be no longer than one page. 

• Rate technologies based on the literature review. The ratings should be self-supporting (justifiable