IGERT-TEECH is developing a specialized program for Cultural Heritage Diagnostics with a series of core electives augmenting those required by the trainee's academic home department. The core conceptual areas of the curriculum include computational science, multispectral imaging, sensor networking, non-destructive data acquisition as well as visual analytics and analytical diagnostics. The curriculum is structured with core courses through focus sequences providing students with the ability to specialize in an area while providing breadth through technical electives. The first set of interdisciplinary IGERT-TEECH courses offered in Year One included:

Diagnostic Imaging (SE207): An active learning oriented course, focusing on imaging diagnostics for the analysis of engineered artifacts, leading course, focusing on imaging diagnostics for the analysis of engineered artifacts, leading to a better understanding about an artifact's state of conservation, and overall genesis.

Team-based Embedded Systems Design (CSE145): students design, implement and field-test sensor platforms in a culminating design experience.

Analytical Methods in Archaeology (ANTH258): Focuses on chronometric date techniques, site-formation processes, geoarchaeology, pedology, chemical analyses of soils, zooarchaeology, palaeoethnobotany, and inferring land-use strategies from archaeological remains.

Seminar in Anthropological Archaeology (ANTH280D): development of archaeological theory.

Future courses under development include Forensic Engineering, Cyber Culture, Visual Analytics and Diagnostics for Cultural Heritage.

All IGERT-TEECH Trainees and many Associates have participated in biweekly research meetings, where they present updates on their research progress to an interdisciplinary group of participants (both students and faculty). This gave them valuable practice in presenting their research to a diverse scientific audience, most of whom were not from the student's own research domain. Students have also had opportunities to present their work to more general audiences, such as participants of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, as well as local minority-serving institutions, giving them additional practice presenting to the general public. The latter is a significant challenge when it comes to communicating clearly and efficiently in technical and non-technical terms.

The goal of the IGERT-TEECH training program is to provide all Ph.D.-track students with core knowledge and methodologies that will eventually become standard for any scientist working in the field of cultural heritage diagnostics. The figure shows the various phases of research training, each of which builds on the previous training, ultimately equipping graduate students to do primary research in this field – and learning at subsequent steps how to do multispectral and diagnostic testing, modeling and simulation, analysis, visualization and visual analytics, and eventually dissemination and decision-making about appropriate methods for conservation of art works, historic structures or archaeological artifacts.

In its first year, the IGERT-TEECH program established a tightly and carefully integrated international component, which requires that all trainees conduct research as part of field experiences in Italy, Mongolia or the Middle East. International fieldwork will begin at the start of Year 2 of the IGERT-TEECH project. Trainees will work at one or more of our field sites from spring through 2011.

The program stages pre- and post-field training sessions to ensure that students get the most out of these experiences. These sessions address how to work and collaborate in the foreign environment, as well as how to adapt to the local culture in order to gain meaningful life experiences that will prepare students for the global workplace. Students have gone through the first round of training in preparation for fieldwork at our IGERT sites in Italy and Jordan (see Field Sites section), and will complete a pre-departure evaluation to assess their knowledge of the target culture, language and travel abroad, as well as their collaborative and technical skills needed for a successful international deployment. The students will be followed during their research experience abroad, and they will be de-briefed upon return to UCSD.

Research phases ensure that all IGERT-TEECH Trainees are exposed to most aspects pertaining to the application of advanced, non-invasive technologies to the protection of the world’s cultural heritage.