Electrical and Computer Engineering Newsblog

Fridays with Fuhrmann – Teamwork without Borders

Published January 22, 2016

I am writing today from beautiful Boulder, Colorado, where I have been attending a research progress review on a project I have been working on, along with other Michigan Tech faculty and students. The project is sponsored by Google. Michigan Tech is fortunate to be a research partner with Google on something they call a Multi-University Research Agreement, or MURA. I can’t tell you the technical details of what we are doing, yet, but later this year everything will be made public.

Having observed how this project is managed over the past year, I am struck by how much the workplace, the team organizations, and the expectations of engineers have changed over the years. This has been a great experience for me, not only because the work is interesting but because it gives me a glimpse of what our graduates can expect as they enter the workforce.

One of the most remarkable things I have noticed is how collaboration tools have made the world a smaller place, and have made geographical differences practically irrelevant. The team working on this project, about 30 people all together, comprises full-time Google employees, independent contractors, engineering companies, and university teams like ours from Michigan Tech. The group is spread out from Hawaii, to California, to Michigan, and to Europe. Subsets of the team meet regularly via Google Hangout, which is a pretty easy-to-use teleconferencing tool, and it is like being in the same room (there is the one remaining issue of time zones, but most people don’t have a big problem with it.) Even when most of the group gets together in the same city, like this week, there are still those who call in and contribute.

The success or failure of this project (and I’m pretty sure it’s going to be successful) depends on the ability of all the participants to work together as a team. This week we had discussions about how things went in 2015, and the overall consensus was that the teamwork was pretty good. It reminds me of why it is so important for us at Michigan Tech to teach our students about teamwork in our capstone projects, whether in Senior Design or Enterprise. They are going to be working on teams when they leave the university, and knowing how to collaborate, how to get along, how to get work done on time, how to communicate, how to make expectations clear for others – these are all things that are going to be critical skills for career success. The other side of teamwork that we stress at Michigan Tech is the development of individual skills. Everyone on this Google project has a seat at the table because they are really good at what they do, and I don’t imagine that’s going to be any different anywhere else.

Finally, I will mention that the nature of engineering careers is changing rapidly. Certainly there will be those that work full-time for a large corporation, and maybe they stay with that corporation a long time. On the other hand, there are those that work for corporations, but change jobs often. Others work as independent contractors, coming and going from teams as their skills are needed. I am fascinated by these engineers, at least the ones I have seen in this group: they are extraordinarily talented in their particular area of expertise, and because of all the collaboration tools available today they can live wherever they want. In all of these cases I am just talking about engineers selling their time and expertise; I haven’t begun to talk about entrepreneurship, which is another avenue that engineers are increasingly exploring. The bottom line is, if an engineer is good at what he or she does, their career arc and their lifestyle is limited only by the imagination.

At Michigan Tech we do our best to prepare students for this new engineering environment of the 21st century. I am always open to feedback about how well we are doing.

Being able to travel to meetings like this has its perks. On Friday, when this is posted, I’ll be taking a vacation day and skiing at Loveland Pass, in the Rocky Mountains not too far Denver. Finally, I have a chance to see if all my time spent on Mont Ripley has done me any good!

– Dan

Dan Fuhrmann, Dave House Professor and Chair
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Michigan Technological University

Fridays with Fuhrmann – ECE Undergraduate Programs

Published January 15, 2016

By Lisa Hitch

Winter break is over and the spring semester is underway at Michigan Tech – “spring” being a euphemism in Houghton for snow up to our eyeballs. I thought it might be a good time to write a few words about our undergraduate educational programs.

In the ECE Department we are all about teamwork and team projects. Our Senior Design program is a well-oiled machine with about 10 projects going each year, real industrial projects with real industrial financial support. Our Enterprise program, an alternative path to completion of the capstone design requirement, is unique to Michigan Tech; it gives students the opportunity to form their own virtual companies and work on projects that have longevity across semesters and across multiple personnel. Of course, we are not alone in this approach. All ECE Departments across the country recognize the importance the team-based design projects, as do the employers that hire new graduates every year. It is also a critical piece of everyone’s ABET accreditation.

What distinguishes Michigan Tech from many other institutions is our philosophy in the early part of the curriculum. We believe very strongly that the best path to becoming a valuable team member is to develop individual skills. I don’t think this is particularly controversial, and is unquestioned in other fields of human endeavor. Think of an orchestra, for example – every player has to know the technical aspects of playing his or her instrument, and enough music theory to understand what is going on. Or, think of a baseball team, where everyone has honed their skills in throwing, catching, and batting, and they know all the rules of the game. In both analogies, people bring their individual and diverse skills to the table, which makes the whole greater than the sum of the parts.

So it is in electrical and computer engineering. This is a wonderful and exciting field, with teams of people in major corporations and in small start-up companies changing the world every day through their ingenuity and innovation. The engineers who are going to make the biggest contributions are the ones who put in the effort early on to get really good at what they are doing. This needs to happen when students are young enough, and their brains are malleable enough, to learn new material with some degree of permanence – like playing the violin or learning to water ski. Author and social observer Malcolm Gladwell has pointed out that it takes about 10,000 hours to become an expert at something, and the 10,000 hours is about what you get by working 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for 5 years – in other words, a college education. In the ECE Department we emphasize individual skills in both the mathematical and scientific fundamentals of electricity and electronics, and in the laboratory.

Our required sophomore electronics laboratory is a prime example. Each lab bench has exactly one chair in front of it. When I was interviewing for this position and getting a tour of the facilities, it was one of the first things I noticed, without anyone telling me. I was blown away by the elegance and simplicity of this approach to laboratory education. Each student is required to learn how to use the equipment and how to carry out the experiments, on their own, human against the machine. Not everyone is happy with this approach at first – not everyone is happy with two-a-day football drills either – but in the end I would be very surprised if any of our graduating seniors ever told me it was a bad idea.

We take a similar approach on the mathematical side of things. I teach a one-credit course to freshman called Essential Mathematics for Electrical Engineering. The scope is quite limited but I cover a few things that I think are critical in electrical engineering that don’t show up as much in other engineering disciplines – sinusoids, exponentials, complex numbers, complex exponentials, phasors, that sort of thing. Basically I want them to know Euler’s formula and what it means. (In fact, every semester I tell students that if they see me around town and can produce Euler’s formula from memory I will buy them whatever beverage they are old enough to drink. This has actually happened.) The course is pass-fail, and to complete the course the students have to pass an old-fashioned paper-and-pencil exam with no books, no notes, no nothing. The pass threshold is 70%, which is pretty draconian, but I give them up to three chances to pass it, kind of like a driver’s test. Again, this is consistent with our philosophy that there are few things that all EEs simply need to know cold, and there’s no getting around it.

Our goal is to set every student on a path where they can realize their greatest potential, whatever that looks like to them. We think that by instilling individual skills in younger students, and then putting students together as they mature so they can learn how contribute those skills in a team environment, is the best way to do that. So far it seems to be working.

– Dan Fuhrmann, Chair, ECE

Follow ECE on Social Media

Published January 8, 2016

By Lisa Hitch

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) is now on Facebook and Twitter. Like and follow us for faculty spotlights, student accomplishments, outreach and events, industry and alumni news, and more; including a weekly post from the chair in “Fridays with Fuhrmann”. We hope you’ll add us to your social media picks.

ECE Annual Report 2015

Published December 18, 2015

By Lisa Hitch

We are happy to share with you our newly released ECE Annual Report 2015. A look back at our past year highlights research activities by Profs. Zhaohui Wang, Wayne Weaver, Bruce Mork, and Mike Roggemann, along with ECE’s involvement in Michigan Tech’s new research agreement with Google ATAP. Once again the year included a wide variety of hands-on student projects in our Senior Design and Enterprise programs and we thank our sponsors for making it all possible! Our undergraduate programs added two new concentrations starting Fall 2015 – Biomedical Applications and Environmental Applications within the Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. We invite you to read about these stories and more. From all of us at ECE, best wishes for 2016!

Zhaohui Wang Receives Outstanding Service Award

Published October 27, 2015

By Lisa Hitch

Zhaohui Wang resized — Zhaohui Wang, ECE Assistant Professor

Zhaohui Wang, Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan Tech University, received the Outstanding Service Award for her work as Information Systems Chair in the 10th ACM International Conference on Underwater Networks & Systems (WUWNet), held in Washington DC, October 22-24, 2015. The scope of the WUWNet conference covers a broad range of research directions relevant to underwater networks and network-related signal processing, communications, systems, and applications. The goal of WUWNet is to bring together researchers and practitioners in areas relevant to underwater networks, and serve as a forum for presenting state of the art research, exchanging ideas and experiences, and facilitating interaction and collaboration.

WUWNet’15 link: http://wuwnet.acm.org/2015/

Systems Control Announces Expansion

Published October 22, 2015

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From Tech Today by Systems Control

An Upper Peninsula company with ties to Michigan Tech has announced a major expansion. Systems Control has begun a 70,000 sqare foot addition that will bring the total footprint of the company’s headquarters and manufacturing facility in Iron Mt. to more than 315,000 square feet. This expansion comes on the heels of a 127,000 square foot expansion that was completed in 2012.

Systems Control is owned by Michigan Tech alumnus Dave Brule, Sr., ’72, who also served for several years as a member of the Michigan Tech Board of Trustees, culminating in a term as chairman in 2004.

In announcing his most recent investment in the Upper Peninsula economy, Brule stated, “Given our markets, we could have expanded our manufacturing capabilities anywhere in the country. I prefer to leverage the strong work ethic and technical expertise of residents in the Upper Peninsula. Quality and innovation are hallmarks of our success. Engineers and workers in the U.P. embody these traits.”

The additional space will be devoted primarily to the manufacture of equipment enclosures used in the electrical transmission, energy storage and oil and gas distribution industries.

Accompanying the investment in plant and equipment, Systems Control has embarked on a substantial program to develop and grow the human resource side of the business. In order to achieve its strategic goals, the company plans to add 70 to 150 people per year for the foreseeable future, possibly doubling its workforce by 2020. Immediate needs include electrical engineers, manufacturing engineers, project managers, CAD designers and many tradesmen.

In May, Systems Control established an engineering office in Houghton located in Michigan Tech’s Lakeshore Center, home of the MTEC SmartZone, on the Houghton waterfront. To learn more, visit the Systems Control website.

Seminars: “What is a Systems Engineer?” and “A Focus on the Entry Level Engineer”

Published September 18, 2015

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seminar

ECE Speaker: Two seminars: What is a Systems Engineering and A Focus on the Entry Level Engineer

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, with sponsorship from the IEEE Student Chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, will host two presentations by guest speaker Steven Lien on Tuesday.

Steven Lien, Southwestern Missouri IEEE Section Chapter Boeing Associate Technical Fellow (retired), will deliver an afternoon presentation, primarly for faculty, titled “A Discussion On: What is a Systems Engineering?” It will be held from 2:05 to 2:55 p.m in MEEM 111. Visit here for more information.

The evening presentation and pizza reception, primarily for students will be held from 6:05 to 6:55 p.m in EERC L100. The title is, “A Focus on the Entry Level Engineer.” The pizza reception will follow the presentation in EERC 515. Visit here for more information.

ECE News Briefs

Published September 1, 2015

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Tim Havens (ECE) co-authored two articles, “Data-informed Fuzzy Measures for Fuzzy Integration of Intervals and Fuzzy Numbers” and “Quadratic Program-based Modularity Maximization for Fuzzy Community Detection in Social Networks,” in the latest issue of IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems. The second article was written with former graduate student, Jianhai Su, who is now at McAfee.

Wayne Weaver (ECE) has received $97,460 from Sandia National Labs under contract for a research and development project titled, “Unstable and Pulse Load Control Designs for Naval Electrical Systems.”

Laura Brown (CS/AIM) is the principal investigator on the research and development project, “Collaborative Research: CRISP Type 2: Revolution through Evolution: A Controls Approach to Improve How Society Interacts with Electricity” that has received a $699,796 grant from the National Science Foundation. Also working on the project are co-pi’s Chee WooiTen (ECE) and Wayne Weaver (ECE). This is a three-year project.

Durdu Guney (ECE) has received a $131,305 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, Office of Naval Research for the research and development project titled, “Full Compensation and Control of Losses in Metamaterial Devices without Gain Medium.” This is the first year of a three-year project, totaling $374,027.

Joshua Pearce (MSE/ECE) published an article “Overcoming the North’s Diesel Dependence With Renewable Energy” in Circle, the magazine of the World Wildlife Federation’s Global Arctic Program and was posted on their arctic blog, Thin Ice Blog. Joshua Pearce’s (MSE/ECE) research showing a high ROI for open source scientific hardware development was the top story on NSF’s Science 360. It was also covered by others including ECN Magazine and 3Ders.

Graduate students Tony Pinar (ECE) and Bas Wijnen (MSE) collaborated with Jerry Anzalone (MSE), Tim Havens(ECE), Paul Sanders (MSE) and Joshua. Pearce (MSE) on a paper titled: Low-cost Open-Source Voltage and Current Monitor for Gas Metal Arc Weld 3-D Printing published in the Journal of Sensors.

Graduate students Wyatt Adams (ECE), Ankit Vora (ECE) and Jephias Gwamuri (MSE) co-authored a paper with Joshua Pearce (MSE/ECE) and Durdu Guney (ECE). Controlling optical absorption in metamaterial absorbers for plasmonic solar cells, for the SPIE Proceedings on Active Photonic Materials. Graduate student Bas Wijnen (MSE) co-authored a paper with Jerry Anzalone (MSE) and Joshua Pearce (MSE/ECE) on Multi-material additive and subtractive prosumer digital fabrication with a free and open-source convertible delta RepRap 3-D printer published in the Rapid Prototyping Journal.

Shiyan Hu named as an ACM Distinguished Speaker

Published June 8, 2015

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The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world ‘s largest educational and scientific computing society, has named Associate Professor Shiyan Hu (ECE) as an ACM Distinguished Speaker.

ACM’s Distinguished Speaker Program identifies top computing technology leaders and innovators, and makes them available to speak at colleges and universities, corporations, events and conferences and ACM local chapters.

Each distinguished speaker serves a three-year term. Hu will be available to speak about computer aided design for VLSI circuits and cyber-physical systems.

Hu received a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and has chaired more than 70 committees for IEEE conferences.

Hu’s ultra-fast slew buffering technique has been widely deployed in industry. For example, it became a default option in the IBM physical design flow used for designing more than fifty microprocessors and ASIC chips, including IBM flagship chips POWER 7 and 8.

ECE Senior Design Team Wins Expo Award

Published April 27, 2015

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The 2nd Place Award for the 2015 Michigan Tech Design Expo was won by the ECE team: Front End Protection for Data Aquisition
Team Members: Sylvia Ferragut, Caleb Wright, and Ben Veltman, Electrical Engineering; Matthew Zawisza, Computer Engineering
Advisor: Duane Bucheger, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Sponsor: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Project Overview: Often devices under test can behave in erratic ways, resulting in catastrophic damage to expensive test equipment. By designing specifications based on National Instruments’ limitations and typical automotive testing requirements, the team created a buffer box to protect from over-voltage and add layers of isolation. The buffer box, used in conjunction with the $50k–$500k tools being regularly used by the automotive industry, is a simple tool, which can be used by a wide range of people with varying levels of expertise to keep expenses down.

Team Members Sylvia Ferragut, Caleb Wright, and Ben Veltman, Electrical Engineering; Matthew Zawisza, Computer Engineering Advisor Duane Bucheger, Electrical and Computer Engineering Sponsor Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering — Team Members: Sylvia Ferragut, Caleb Wright, and Ben Veltman, Electrical Engineering; Matthew Zawisza, Computer Engineering
Advisor: Duane Bucheger, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Sponsor: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

View a Video about Michigan Tech: Front End Protection for Data Acquisition on Michigan Tech Expo Channel on Youtube

View a Video about the award winning ECE team on Michigan Tech Expo Channel on Youtube

When the Design Expo 2015 Image Contest winners were announced, Robotics Systems Enterprise 216 team won second place for its image of ECE student Kealy Smith working on an Afraid-of-the-Dark bot. The team is sponsored by ArcelorMittal and 205 (Blue Marble Enterprise) team entry won 3rd Place.

See the Design Expo Summary Report with links to more articles and pictures