Project RAMP Research Assistant - School of Aviation

Aviation Research Lab Project RAMP Student Position

The Aviation Research Lab is seeking a student to support Project RAMP in the development of high-fidelity Virtual Reality (VR) simulations for drone applications. The student will assist faculty researchers with various tasks including thorough literature reviews and research synthesis, VR simulation development, documentation, and scholarly/technical writing.

This position requires programming abilities as well as strong writing skills, careful documentation, and professional work ethics.

• Adjust tone and approach based on audience (e.g., peers vs. supervisors).
• Identify when additional information is needed before making a decision.
• Break down tasks into steps to complete work more efficiently.
• Demonstrate reliability and accountability in completing tasks.
• Support others by offering assistance when your workload allows.

• Assist with literature searches, reviews, and annotated summaries
• Assist with Virtual Reality (VR) development (preferably in Unity)
• Assist with basic data analysis, such as descriptive statistics, simple comparisons, trend identification, or visualizations
• Contribute to research documentation and technical writing, including short summaries, tables, figures, report sections, or publications.
• Follow research ethics, data integrity, and professionalism standards, including proper citation, confidentiality, and responsible data handling.
• Perform additional research-related tasks as assigned by the faculty

• Relevant education background and prior work experience
• Demonstrated experience/proficiency with C#, C++, and Unity (preferably)
• Some experience with academic research tasks, such as literature review, data organization, referencing, structured analysis, and methodological approach.
• Strong time management and organization skills
• Proven responsibility, accountability and determination
• Strong attention to detail, including accurate documentation and data handling.
• Ability to communicate clearly in written and verbal formats within a research team.
• Maintains good academic standing
• Experience with systematic or structured literature reviews.
• Familiarity with GIS, modeling, simulation, or visualization tools.
• Prior experience contributing to technical reports, research posters, or conference papers.