The Enterprise Governing Board and the School of Business Scholarship Committee has recently selected Olivia Burek to receive the Spring 2017 Carnahan Enterprise Scholarship. Burek is a double major in management and marketing. The selection was based on her strong application and essay communicating her role in Blue Marble Security Enterprise.
Burek will receive a $500 scholarship for the fall 2017 semester.
Natalie McGrath will be spending her summer in Narva, Estonia this year to further her studies in Russian language and culture.
Natalie was recently awarded a Project Global Officer (Project GO) scholarship through the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Russian and East European Studies. Project GO is a collaborative initiative with the Department of Defense aimed at improving the language skills, regional expertise, and intercultural communication skills of future military officers within all of the U.S. Armed Forces.
In just eight weeks, students cover the equivalent of one academic year of training in a designated critical language, as well as weekend excursions and cultural activities. Scholarship awardees receive full tuition for the 8-credit University of Pittsburgh language course, coverage of travel, lodging, and textbook costs, and a living stipend for meals.
Natalie is a second year computer engineering major in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a member of the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) at Michigan Technological University. She received a domestic Project GO scholarship in the summer of 2015 and studied first-year Russian at Indiana University in Bloomington.
Michigan Tech’s Microfabrication Facility, housed under the Department of Electrical and Computer, has launched its new website mtu.edu/microfabrication.
The Microfabrication Facility (MFF) consists of thin film, plasma etching, photolithography, and temperature processing equipment. MFF capabilities are broad and applicable to areas of biomedical engineering, chemistry, chemical engineering, electrical engineering, physics, materials science, and mechanical engineering. Deposition, sputtering, etching, and photolithography capabilities together with microcharacterization measurement systems enable precision device engineering.
The new site enables users to schedule reservations and check the live status of the MFF equipment, along with other user friendly features. 
The MFF was also recently selected as a member of the Northern Nano Lab Alliance (NNLA), a regional network of university fabrication facilities. The mission of the NNLA is to help each member improve their support of academic research in applied nanotechnology.
MFF managing director Chito Kendrick, PhD, says “Being a member of the NNLA allows for a partnership with some of the local regional universities that have similar nano/micro fabrication facilities, and will indirectly expose Michigan Tech to the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI), which has replaced the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN). This opens up availability to systems that are currently not provided by the MFF. The partnership will also benefit the MFF staff with access to technical support and loaning equipment from the other groups; also we are exploring ways to reduce the operational costs of these facilities.”
This week the Deans’ Teaching Showcase returns to the College of Engineering. Dean Wayne Pennington has chosen Glen Archer, principal lecturer and associate chair in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Dan Fuhrmann (ECE chair), recommended Archer because of his long history of teaching EE3010, a service course primarily populated by other engineering majors.
Besides being very large (enrollment was 193 last fall), students tend to find the material difficult and perceive it as not directly related to their major. Despite these challenges, Archer earned an “Excellent Teacher” rating of 4.36 on a 5 point scale.
Fuhrmann wrote, “In addition to this traditional teaching assignment, Glen also teaches students in a wide variety of less formal venues. Glen serves as a mentor to two Enterprise groups. He has been a long-time advisor of Blue Marble Security. Recently, as an overload, he enthusiastically embraced adding the Robotics Systems Enterprise and has already grown membership in that enterprise from five to 30 students.
“Glen also leads departmental efforts to assemble course offerings and the binder process for the department. He also assigns and mentors the graduate teaching assistants in ECE, and has been known to have them to Thanksgiving dinner at his home in some years.
“But when asked about his favorite parts of teaching, it’s his mentorship of his Enterprise students, especially as they lead a substantial outreach program in ECE. Through Summer Youth Programs, Upward Bound and other programs, Archer’s team hosts hundreds of pre-college students annually. Glen says he ‘couldn’t be prouder’ of the work these teams are doing. He also cites a recent win and third place finish in international competitions for the Blue Marble Security team.
“Finally, Glen measures his success by ‘hearing from students that what they learned in EE3010 was useful in their senior design projects. That’s what helps me get up in the morning.'”
Fuhrmann says “I think that Glen is terrific, and I don’t know what I’d do without him.”
But given Archer’s student focus, perhaps the best endorsement in his unique teaching capacity comes from a Reddit.com review by an anonymous student. “I’m not an EE so I had him for circuits for non believers, and man is he funny. He is also super helpful. He sets up online help groups, encourages participation, suggests going to his hours, and suggests going to the help center. He’s a really good professor and teaches the material well.”
Archer will be recognized at an end-of-term luncheon with 11 other showcase members, and is now eligible for one of three new teaching awards to be given by the William G. Jackson Center for Teaching and Learning this summer recognizing introductory or large-class teaching, innovative or outside the classroom teaching methods, or work in curriculum and assessment.
This paper introduces a novel method to improve the Time of Arrival (ToA) estimation resolution for a fixed available bandwidth in the presence of unknown multipath frequency selective (MPFS) channels. Significant desire on utilized bandwidth reduction in wireless technologies endorses exploiting this technique to increase ranging resolution and/or time synchronization while low bandwidth signal are exploited. Exploiting this method would have extensive impact on variety of technologies which enjoys ToA as ranging technique such as radar, wireless communications and etc.
By Mohsen Jamalabdollahi, Student Member, IEEE, and Seyed (Reza) Zekavat, Senior Member, IEEE.
Published in: IEEE Transactions on Communications ( Volume: PP, Issue: 99 )
Husband and wife graduate students have won honors from Tech’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Mohsen Jamalabdollahi was named Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant, and his wife, Sakineh Yazdanparast, was recognized as the ECE Department’s Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant.
Members of the Robotic Systems Enterprise (RSE) at Michigan Technological University recently visited Jen Davis’ eighth grade science class at Hancock Middle School to share their excitement in the rapidly growing field of robotics.
During the activities, students were shown how to use Scratch, a drag-and-drop programming platform which enables beginners to learn programming techniques without having to use complex syntax. From the Scratch platform, students were then shown how to create simple programs such as Hello World, which is the induction into a myriad of programming languages.
The visit was a huge success as the students enjoyed interacting, editing, and playing the Scratch programs that they helped the RSE Outreach members to create. Through events like this, RSE hopes to inspire future generations to the area of robotics and STEM education.
The Robotic Systems Enterprise is housed within the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and is advised by Dr. Glen Archer. RSE is an industry-driven enterprise that focuses on seamlessly integrating exceptional knowledge in electronics, robotics, and programming to solve real world engineering problems.
This paper, by Mohsen Jamalabdollahi (WLPS), and Seyed Reza Zekavat (ECE/WLPS), introduces a novel and effective ranging approach in Non-Homogeneous (NH) media consisting of frequency dispersive submedia via time-of-arrival (ToA) and Direction-of-Arrival (DoA) merger. Exploiting this technique, sensor node can be localized with in variety of NH media such as underground layers with different water content, airborne to underwater channels or even human body.
Moreover, this technique proposes a novel approach which can be utilized for layer thickness detection which have an prominent impact on the area of geoscience and remote sensing.
This paper is published in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing which is ranked the second journal in area of remote sensing according to Scholar google metrics.
Backstage 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).
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 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.
“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.