Author: College of Engineering

Sue Hill is the Digital Content Manager for the College of Engineering.

The Dan Fuhrmann and Tim Havens Duo Jazz it Up This Weekend

Backstage Jazz Mic and SignBackstage Jazz Celebrates “50 Years of Jazz” at Michigan Tech

Backstage at the Rozsa” again opens its doors to the groovin’ sounds of small-combo jazz to celebrate the 50th year of jazz studies at Michigan Tech.

There will be three student ensembles: Jaztec, Momentum with a combination of funk and fusion; AstroSax; and one special guest ensemble: The Dan Fuhrmann and Tim Havens Duo, here for their second guest appearance at Michigan Tech.

Join us in Club Rozsa and enjoy the intimate atmosphere reminiscent of the birthplace of jazz. Backstage at the Rozsa is at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday (Jan. 27/28, 2017).

Read more at Tech Today.

LISTEN LIVE

Leonard Bohmann Quoted on the Handling of Power Outages

The Virginia Gazette quoted Leonard Bohmann, associate dean of Michigan Tech’s College of Engineering, in a lengthy article on power companies’ back-up plans for handling power outages on peninsulas caused by faults in the transmission system.

Dominion Virginia Power sets plan for emergency blackouts

Dominion Virginia Power has taken the unusual step of planning for an emergency blackout, with a plan to cut power to 150,000 customers on the Peninsula in the extremely rare event of faults at two components of its high-voltage network occurring at a time when demand for power is high.

Leonard Bohmann
Leonard Bohmann

“In an ideal world, you wouldn’t need an RAS because the system should be able to handle two faults. But it looks like their plan to deal with shutting the power plant has been taking longer than they expected,” said Leonard Bohmann, a professor of electrical engineering at Michigan Technological University, who lives in one of the few other regions of the country where a similar plan is in place, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Read more at The Virginia Gazette, by Dave Ress.

Cyber-Physical Systems Story Featured

Shiyan Hu
Shiyan Hu

Online outlets from the National Science Foundation to Science Daily to Electronic Product Design and Test have featured a research keynote paper led by Shiyan Hu (ECE) on cyber-physical systems. Other outlets include: Communications of the ACM, Industrial Safety and Security Source, Michigan Ag Connection and close to a dozen other science blogs.

In the News

Science 360, a science news website published by the National Science Foundation (NSF), featured a Michigan Tech research news story about Shiyan Hu’s (ECE) research as its top headline story of the day on Jan. 4.

Former Professor Theodore Grzelak Passes Away

Ted Grzelak
Dr. Theodore Alan ‘Ted’ Grzelak
1938-2016

Retired Michigan Tech Professor Theodore “Ted” Grzelak of Dollar Bay passed away Sunday at St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Rapids following a lengthy illness. He was 78.

He was born in Detroit and earned his bachelor’s of science in electrical engineering from the Michigan College of Mining and Technology in 1960.  While at Tech, he was involved with Phi Kappa Tau fraternity. He received his master’s and PhD degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

He married the former Mildred Savalox in 1959 and in August the couple celebrated their 57th anniversary.

In 1965 he accepted a position with Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory near Buffalo, New York. According to his obituary, concern about heavy local pollution at the time convinced him to accept a position in the department of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan Tech.

He taught here from September of 1966 until his retirement in 2000. He was a coach for the Copper Country Junior Hockey Association, a member of the the Copper Country Ski Club and an official of the Central Division of the United States Ski Association. He was Dollar Bay’s Little League and Senior League baseball coach for several years.

He was an active member of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Hancock where he sang in the choir for nearly 40 years.

He is survived by his wife, Mildred, his three sons and eight grandchildren.

Funeral Services for Ted Grzelak will be held at 11 a.m. Friday (Nov. 18) at Gloria Dei in Hancock. Friends may call from 5 to 8 p.m. tomorrow at the Memorial Chapel Funeral Home in Hancock and Friday from 10 a.m. until the time of the service at the church.

A complete obituary can be found on the Memorial Chapel website.

Lucia Gauchia Quoted on Graphene Batteries

Lucia Gauchia
Lucia Gauchia

Lucia Gauchia (ECE, ME-EM) discusses graphene batteries in a Business Insider post about Henrik Fisker’s new electric car model. A number of other business, tech and science news media picked up the story including Yahoo! News, the San Francisco Chronicle, seattlePI.com and Latest Nigerian News.

Henrik Fisker is using a revolutionary new battery to power his Tesla killer

We took a closer look at the battery technology Fisker is promising to use, which he refers to as “the major leap, the next big step.”

Rather than working with conventional lithium-ion batteries, Fisker is turning to graphene supercapacitors.

Graphene is both the thinnest and strongest material discovered so far.

“Graphene shows a higher electron mobility, meaning that electrons can move faster through it. This will, e.g. charge a battery much faster,” Lucia Gauchia, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and energy storage systems at Michigan Technological University, told Business Insider. “Graphene is also lighter and it can present a higher active surface, so that more charge can be stored.”

Read more at the Business Insider, by Danielle Muoio.

Shiyan Hu to Deliver CPSCom 2016 Keynote

Shiyan Hu
Shiyan Hu

Shiyan Hu (ECE) is delivering a keynote talk at the Ninth IEEE International Conference on Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom 2016). CPSCom, sponsored by IEEE Computer Society, is a major CPS technical conference in IEEE and is a premier forum to bring together researchers to present the state-of-the-art research results and exchange ideas in the area of CPS. In the ninth year of the successful CPSCom conference series, the organizing committee invited three world-leading CPS experts to deliver the keynote speeches. The conference takes place December 15-18, 2016, in Chengdu, China.

Hu will deliver the talk of “Smart Energy Cyber-Physical System Security: Threat Analysis and Defense Technologies.” In addition to directing the Center for Cyber-Physical Systems on campus, he is an ACM Distinguished Speaker, an IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor, an invited participant for U.S. National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, and a recipient of National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award. He is a Fellow of IET and the Editor-In-Chief of IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications. More information about his keynote speech can be found online.