Undergraduate Students Archives | Electrical and Computer Engineering Newsblog

Michigan Tech at SPIE Defense and Commercial Sensing 2024

Published May 3, 2024

Outdoor, night scene in National Harbor showing the water, ferris wheel, and city lights.

Tim Havens (CS/ICC/GLRC) and Steve Senczyszyn (GLRC) attended and presented at the SPIE Defense and Commercial Sensing conference, held April 21–25 in National Harbor, Maryland.

Senczyszyn presented “Comparing performance of robot operating system (ROS) mapping algorithms in the presence of degraded or obscured depth sensors.” His co-authors include Havens; Tony Pinar (ECE); Adam Webb (MTRI); ECE undergraduate Mohamed Salem; ECE graduates Elizabeth Donoghue, Shelby Wills and Moira Broestl; and U.S. Army engineer Stanton Price.

Havens presented “Synthetic augmentation methods for object detection in infrared overhead imagery.” His co-authors include Ashley Olson (MTRI) and Jonathan Christian and Jason Summers of ARiA.

Dylan Kangas (ECE) presented “Developing robust unmanned surface vehicles with ROS.” His co-authors include Havens, Senczyszyn, Pinar, Keven Li (ME-EM), ECE undergraduates Salem and Tyler Ryynanen, U.S. Army engineers Steven Price and Stanton Price, and Stephen Taylor and Timothy Murphy of the U.S. Navy’s Naval Surface Warfare Center.

Havens and Olsen are also co-authors of a presentation by Summers and Christian of ARiA titled “Generative EO/IR multi-scale vision transformer for improved object detection.”

Oberloier and Forney Celebrate Maker Fest 2024

Published March 26, 2024

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Shane Oberloier (ECE), Ian Raymond (HU) and undergraduate student William Forney (robotics engineering) were quoted by the Daily Mining Gazette in a story about the 2024 Maker Fest, held March 23 at Houghton High School. This was the second year for the event, put on by Superior Fab Lab.

“It’s the chance to show off the tools we use in the enterprise, show how they can be used and generate interest in it that way.”
William Forney, robotics engineering undergraduate

The event celebrated the process of making and offered nearly 30 hands-on activities. Raymond let visitors engage in stop-motion filmmaking. Forney, an Open Source Hardware Enterprise member, offered 360-degree 3D scans of people’s heads. Also mentioned was the Society of Women Engineers, which ran a booth on building paper circuits.

Group of people in an auditorium engaging in activities. — Students and families attend Maker Fest 2024.

Presenter in front of screen with large group in the background. — Dr. Shane Oberloier gives a presentation on YouTube methods.

Matt Kouba Wins Excellence in Presentation Award at URSS 2023

Published March 30, 2023

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Winners Announced: Undergraduate Research & Scholarship Symposium

Second story view of the poster session, with attendees and presenters.

The Pavlis Honors College hosted the Undergraduate Research & Scholarship Symposium (URSS) last Friday (March 24) in conjunction with the Great Lakes Research Center (GLRC). The event featured a panel discussion in which participants discussed how undergraduate research impacted their present work, two poster sessions and a networking social event that culminated with the announcement of the award winners. In addition to Michigan Tech students, students from the Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College shared their work during this year’s URSS.

Thanks to the Portage Health Foundation and the DeVlieg Foundation for supporting the Undergraduate Research Internship Program as well as to the faculty, staff and graduate students who served as judges for the event.

The winners of the 2023 Undergraduate Research & Scholarship Symposium include computer engineering student Matt Kouba for his poster “Low Cost CAN FD and Automotive Ethernet Development Boards.” Kouba was selected for Excellence in Presentation. Kouba’s faculty advisor was Aurenice Oliveira, Electrical and Computer Engineering.

By the Pavlis Honors College.

Extract from the URSS Booklet 2023:

Low Cost CAN FD and Automotive Ethernet Development Boards

Student Presenter: Matt Kouba, Computer Engineering
Faculty Advisor: Aurenice Oliveira, Electrical and Computer Engineering

CAN FD is currently used in nearly every new vehicle, but at Michigan Tech we do not yet have any resources that can be used in a teaching environment.

To design these teaching systems I have used Altium Designer to design the circuit and Printed Circuit Board layout.

When both the CAN FD and Automotive Ethernet learning systems are completed Michigan Tech will have the first low cost Automotive Ethernet development system for use in a classroom.

MTU RedTeam Places Third in CyberSEED CTF

Published March 22, 2023

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CyberSEED with light bulb and plant growht.

The MTU RedTeam competed in the 2023 CyberSEED Capture the Flag (CTF) competition, held virtually March 4. The highly competitive seven-hour collegiate CTF engaged 333 students and 118 teams from universities across the country.

Placing third, RedTeam Team 1 earned 2,390 points with 93.41% accuracy. Team members were undergraduates Ryan Klemm (computer science), Audrey LaCost (chem informatics), Joshua Stiebel (computer engineering) and Noah Holland (cybersecurity). The team was awarded a $2,000 prize.

ReadTeam Team 2 placed 73rd in the contest. Team members were undergraduates Noah Hansen, Riley Meeves and Mason Staedt (all cybersecurity) and master’s student Gary Tropp (cybersecurity).

RedTeam Team 3 finished 99th in the event. Team members were undergraduates Ava Gullitti (electrical engineering) and Joshua Stevens (cybersecurity) and master’s student Dev Sanghani (cybersecurity).

The annual CyberSEED CTF event is hosted by the University of Connecticut. The competition’s cybersecurity challenges included a set of flags focusing on reverse engineering, web application security, network traffic analysis, cryptography and other challenges.

Maurer, Brock, and Hilliker Present at Defense Manufacturing Conference

Published December 13, 2022

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The Defense Manufacturing Conference (DMC 2022), was held in Tampa, Florida, on December 5–8. DMC is the nation’s annual forum for enhancing and leveraging the efforts of engineers, managers, technology leaders, scientists, and policy makers across the defense manufacturing industrial base.

Developing Disruptive and Transformational Solutions

Three electrical and computing engineering students presenting their research were:

Michael Maurer (PhD Candidate)
Presentation Title: Periodically Poled Polymers as an Entangled Photon Source

Giard Brock (Undergraduate)
Presentation Title: Ultra-violet Liquid Crystal Display Resin Printer Exposure Method for Rapid Prototyping of Printed Circuit Boards

Austin Hilliker (Undergraduate)
Presentation Title: Utilization of a Commercial Off the Shelf Laser Engraver for Rapid Production of Printed Circuit Boards

Three students check in for the conference. — Giard Brock, Michael Maurer, and Austin Hilliker

Two students standing near a project slide with their presentation titles.

Two students at a table in the audience.

Anna Browne Wins President’s Award for Leadership

Published April 26, 2021

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Outstanding students, staff, and a special alumni were honored Friday (April 16, 2021) during Michigan Tech’s 27th Annual Student Leadership Awards Virtual Ceremony.

Anna Browne was selected to receive the President’s Award for Leadership. Brown is pursuing a degree in electrical engineering with a concentration in electrical power. She has shown excellent success during her time as a student. Her involvement and contributions to Michigan Tech’s campus are numerous and cast such a wide net as shown in her 13 nominations.

Anna, who has had multiple internships at Black & Veatch and Westwood Professional Services, has served in project and team leader roles with the Alternative Energy Enterprise on projects like the Baraga Community solar and the on-campus mine water geothermal system. She’s been an active part of the residence education and housing services community as a senior student resident assistant and resident assistant for three years.

She’s also been a valuable contributing member to the Center for Diversity and Inclusion community. Anna has left a mark on Michigan Tech’s community. In her essay she writes how she strived to be a role model for others through community building.

She wrote, “Through my Michigan Tech Experience, my values of leadership, community, openness, and integrity have been demonstrated through every aspect of my involvement. In trying to create a supportive community, I have strived to give a sense of comfort and belonging to those without a place. Michigan Tech has helped me find my values and my identities, and I hope through my involvement that I have left a positive mark on Michigan Tech as it has left on me.”

By Student Leadership and Involvement.

27th Annual Student Leadership Awards

MTU Team Among Winners of TiM$10K Challenge

Published May 28, 2020

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Group of five team members. — L-R: Brian Parvin, Paul Allen, David Brushaber, Alex Kirchner, and Kurtis Alessi

A Michigan Tech team is among the winners of the SICK Inc. TiM$10K Challenge. For the second year, students from universities around the country were invited to participate in the challenge, designed to support innovation and student achievement in automation and technology.

For the competition, teams were supplied with a 270-foot SICK LiDAR sensor and accessories, and challenged to solve a problem, create a solution or bring a new application to any industry that utilizes the SICK LiDAR.

The Tech team members — Brian Parvin, Kurtis Alessi, Alex Kirchner, David Brushaber and Paul Allen — earned Honorable Mention (fourth place overall) for their project, Evaluating Road Markings (the Road Stripe Evaluator). The innovative product aims to help resolve issues caused by poor road markings while reducing maintenance costs and improving motorist safety.

Each team was asked to submit a video and paper for judging upon completion of its project. A panel of judges decided the winning submissions based on creativity and innovation, ability to solve a customer problem, commercial potential, entrepreneurship of the team, and reporting.

“This was a unique project in that the team was required to identify a problem and develop a solution to it that is based on SICK’s TiM LiDAR — most teams are handed a problem and asked to create a solution,” said team advisor Tony Pinar, senior design coordinator in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “I think this format allowed the team to exercise even more innovation than a ‘typical’ project.”

Pinar said the team was well organized and demonstrated an excellent work ethic from day one. “It was exciting to watch them identify a salient problem and develop a functional proof-of-concept solution despite the setbacks that affected us all after spring break,” he said.

SICK is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of sensors, safety systems, machine vision, encoders and automatic identification products for industrial applications.

Elementary Students Build Circuits

Published February 5, 2020

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Last Friday (Jan. 31, 2020), students from Michigan Tech, along with the Lake Linden-Hubbell eighth grade eCYBERMISSION team, visited the fifth-grade classes at Calumet-Laurium-Keweenaw Elementary. Students in each fifth-grade class learned about electrical engineering by making circuits from Play-Doh, creating a paper circuit, and building a small wiggling “BouncyBOT.”

The fifth graders were very curious about Michigan Tech and what it means to be a college student in engineering. They asked the Tech representatives about projects they had worked on during their time on campus, as well as what they did in high school to get ready for college.

These students—coming together from the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Mind Trekkers—represent the great characteristics of the Tech community: they stepped up to give back through hands-on engagement with engineering and science.

Better to Light a Candle: Chapter Two

Published May 1, 2019

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EE4800 Poster — Figure 1: EE4800 course poster.

Michigan Tech’s new course in printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing is the topic of a series of columns in I-Connect 007. The second column “Better to Light a Candle” Chapter Two—Introduction to PCB Fabrication,” by Marc Carter, features an interview between Marc Carter, Christopher Middlebrook (ECE), and the students in the PCB manufacturing class.

Better to Light a Candle: Chapter Two—Introduction to PCB Fabrication

Editor’s Note: This column is part of a series on a new university course in PCB manufacturing at Michigan Technological University. Marc will chronicle the progress of this class, interview the guest lecturers, introduce the students, etc. The interview with students was also edited for clarity.

In my first column, I reported on a grassroots effort being started to prepare the next generation of printed circuit board (PCB) “experts.” A fortunate alignment of academia, the industry, resources, and concerned, well-seasoned board geeks came together to pass on PCB experience to the next generation through a very practical design, build, assemble, and test opportunity at Michigan Technological University (MTU). I also shared the thoughts of a few of the many people that were key players in getting this effort started.

As a reminder, “EE4800: Printed Circuit Board Fabrication” is a hands-on class intended to give engineering undergraduate students an introduction to the basics of printed circuit design, fabrication, and assembly, which started on January 14 of this year. A high-level overview of the course, it’s approach, and goals can be seen in the poster shared at several events at IPC APEX EXPO 2019 in San Diego, California (Figure 1).

Cameron Philo Wins Best Technology Venture at 2019 CMU Competition

Published April 16, 2019

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Five student teams from Michigan Technological University traveled to Central Michigan University (CMU) in Mount Pleasant, MI to compete in the ninth annual New Venture Competition held Friday, April 12, 2019.

Cameron Philo won Best Technology Venture for Life Pro Jackets and was awarded $10,000. Philo participated in Michigan Tech’s I-Corps Site Program last Fall. I-Corps is a team-based program structure that was developed through a partnership between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

Category: Undergraduate Students

Winners Announced: Undergraduate Research & Scholarship Symposium

Low Cost CAN FD and Automotive Ethernet Development Boards

Developing Disruptive and Transformational Solutions

27th Annual Student Leadership Awards

Better to Light a Candle: Chapter Two—Introduction to PCB Fabrication