Category: Electrical and Computer Engineering

North Macomb Students Attend Women in Engineering Program

Women in EngineeringA trio of local students recently had a chance to explore an array of engineering careers through Michigan Technological University’s Women in Engineering program.

The Women in Engineering program is a weeklong look at engineering careers in areas such as mechanical, computer, environmental, electrical, biomedical, civil, geological and materials engineering, school officials said in a news release.

Students accepted into the program received a scholarship that covered room and board, tuition and supplies.

Read more at The Voice, by Emily Pauling.

Affordable Fused Filament Fabrication-based 3-D Printing

Additive Manufacturing journal coverJoshua Pearce (MSE/ECE) co-authored the study, “Chemical Compatibility of Fused Filament Fabrication-based 3-D Printed Components with Solutions Commonly Used in Semiconductor Wet Processing,” which was published in Additive Manufacturing.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addma.2018.07.015

Extract

3-D printing shows great potential in laboratories for making customized labware and reaction vessels. In addition, affordable fused filament fabrication (FFF)-based 3-D printing has successfully produced high-quality and affordable scientific equipment, focusing on tools without strict chemical compatibility limitations.

The results show that 3-D printed plastics are potential materials for bespoke chemically resistant labware at less than 10% of the cost of such purchased tools.

In Print

ME students Aubrey Woern and DJ Byard coauthored a paper with Joshua Pearce (MSE/ECE) on Fused Particle Fabrication 3-D Printing: Recycled Materials’ Optimization and Mechanical Properties, which was published in Materials.

https://doi.org/10.3390/ma11081413

Detroit Students Introduced to STEM and Environmental Science Careers

Environmental CareersFifteen high school students from Detroit and southeast Michigan are exploring natural resources and engineering majors and possible careers at Michigan Tech this week. This is the fourth year that the program has been conducted in conjunction with Tech’s Summer Youth Program.

The students are investigating drinking water treatment, autonomous vehicles, drones, forest biomaterials, soils, wildlife and more with Michigan Tech scientists from mechanical engineering and electrical engineering along with experts from the Michigan DNR and U.S. Forest Service.

The program is coordinated by the Michigan Tech Center for Science and Environmental Outreach, with funding from Michigan Tech’s School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, College of Engineering, Admissions, Housing and Residential Life, Great Lakes Research Center and the Center for Diversity and Inclusion.

By Joan Chadde.

City students learn environmental values during career tour at Tech

HOUGHTON — A group of 13 high school students from Detroit and southeast Michigan spent last week getting a firsthand look at the Copper Country and environmental and engineering programs at Michigan Tech.

Student often come to the program with ideas of careers they are interested in, and many of them aren’t focused on natural resources or ecology, said Lisa Perez from the US Forest Service Urban Connections. However, they typically walk away from the program with new ideas and shifted focus.

Perez and Mike Reed of the Detroit Zoological Society have worked with the students since the program began four years ago.

“It opened their eyes, maybe not to a totally different career path, but it opened their eyes to the fact that they are responsible for the future of the environment,” said Reed.

Read more at the Mining Gazette, by Garrett Neese.

Joshua Pearce on At-home Manufacturing

3D PrintingAn article written by Joshua Pearce (MSE/ECE) for The Conversation, Trade wars will boost digital manufacturing – at consumers’ own homes with personal 3D printers, was picked up by the Associated Press and published widely in several newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, San Antonio Express, Times Union in New York and others. The story was covered on WTOP radio in Washington, D.C. and on TEGNA Broadcast Media (46 television stations covering 50 million people).

Pearce is quoted in an article regarding the Michigan Tech student developed recycling system: Equipment spotlight: Boost for at-home filament extrusion, in Plastics Recycling Update.

In the News

An article written by Joshua Pearce (MSE/ECE) was reprinted by khou.com, the Times UnionFinancial SenseWorld News and several other media outlets.

Joshua Pearce (MSE/ECE) was quoted in the article “3D printing news Sliced Siemens, ExOne, Stratasys, Massivit, CELLINK, Formlabs, Star Rapid,” 3dprintingindustry.com.

Pearce was interviewed on National Public Radio (NPR) for “3D Printing is Turning the Economics of Scale on its Head.” You can listen to the interview here.

Pearce writing on the trade wars and 3D printing was covered by Salon.

Timothy Havens Publishes on Fuzzy Adaptive Extended Kalman Filter

International Journal of Intelligent Unmanned Systems coverHanieh Deilamsalehy (ECE) and Timothy Havens (ECE/CS) published a paper entitled, “Fuzzy adaptive extended Kalman filter for robust 3D pose estimation,” in the International Journal of Intelligent Unmanned Systems, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 50-68.

doi.org/10.1108/IJIUS-12-2017-0014

Timothy Havens is the William and Gloria Jackson Associate Professor of Computer Systems in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the director of the Center for Data Sciences (DataS). DataS is part of ICC, the Institute of Computing & Cybersystems at Michigan Tech.

Hanieh Deilamsalehy, who graduated in 2017 with a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Michigan Tech, is working at Microsoft.

Purpose

Estimating the pose – position and orientation – of a moving object such as a robot is a necessary task for many applications, e.g., robot navigation control, environment mapping, and medical applications such as robotic surgery. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a novel method to fuse the information from several available sensors in order to improve the estimated pose from any individual sensor and calculate a more accurate pose for the moving platform.

On the Road

Tim Havens (ECE/CS) presented a paper entitled, “SPFI: Shape-Preserving Choquet Fuzzy Integral for Non-Normal Fuzzy Set-Valued Evidence,” this month at the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (IEEE WCCI 2018)in Rio de Janeiro. Havens also co-authored two other papers presented at the conference. WCCI is the biennial meeting of the three leading computational intelligence conferences: International Conference on Fuzzy Systems, International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, and Congress on Evolutionary Computation. Co-authors on the paper were Tony Pinar (ECE), Derek Anderson (U. Missouri) and Christian Wagner (U. Nottingham, UK). As general chair of the Int. Conf. Fuzzy Systems 2019 in New Orleans, Havens also presented a pitch for the upcoming event at the WCCI awards banquet. The conference took place July 8-13, 2018.

Additionally, Havens presented an invited seminar, “How to Win on Trivia Night: Sensor Fusion Beyond the Weighted Average,” at MIT Lincoln Laboratory on July 16.

Engineers on the Alumni Board of Directors

Husky Statue with people in the backgroundAlumni Engagement extends a warm welcome to the new members of the Alumni Board of Directors who begin their six-year terms July 1, 2018. This group of volunteers was elected from around the country to support the mission of “Celebrating Traditions. Creating Connections.”

The Board works with the Alumni Engagement team to develop and support programs for students and alumni.

There are eight new members, five of whom are engineers.

  1. Britta Anderson ’15 Electrical Engineering, Kalamazoo, Michigan
  2. Timothy Hartwig ’97 Environmental Engineering, Centennial, Colorado
  3. Jackie Jiran ’96 Civil Engineering, Carver, Minnesota
  4. Scott McBain ’86 Civil Engineering, Rochester Hills, Michigan
  5. Elizabeth Merz ’17 Chemical Engineering, Hudsonville, Michigan
  6. Adam Mitteer ’03 ‘17 Data Science Business Administration, Tampa, Florida
  7. Hannah (Bosseler) North ’16 App. Cognitive Sciences & Human Factors, Two Rivers, Wisconsin
  8. Andrew VanDyke ’11 Forestry, Marquette

The Board will meet on campus August 2-3 during Alumni Reunion.

Joshua Pearce on Higher Education in Finland

Aalto University Microfab
Aalto University Microfab

Finland is actually a relatively new country but has already built up a solid international reputation in education. When I first arrived in Finland, they were celebrating a century of independence.

Finnish universities are all public and among the top 2 percent of international rankings. For example, Aalto University ranks 137th globally. For perspective that puts it several spots above of Michigan State at 149th.

Finnish universities are actively recruiting foreign students. By making education free for their own students and low-cost for the top international students, Finland is clearly gaining a competitive advantage.

Read more at the Mining Gazette, by Joshua Pearce.

Editor’s Note: Michigan Tech professor Joshua Pearce is spending his sabbatical in Finland at Aalto University on a Fulbright Fellowship. In this first-person narrative series, he shares some of personal observations and insights on Finland’s educational system.

Related:

What America Can Learn From Finland’s Education System: We Should Respect Teachers and Take Only the Best

What America Can Learn From Finland’s Education System Part 2: Embrace International Students and Pursue Graduate School for a Secure Future

3D printers in the public library: Finland ahead of the curve

Paying it forward at Finland’s Aalto Fablab

2018 Employee Service Award Recognition

Last Tuesday (May 15, 2018), faculty and staff members, along with their guests, gathered at the Memorial Union Ballroom for an awards dinner recognizing 25, 30, 35, 40 and 45 years of service to Michigan Tech.

Within the College of Engineering, the following employees were recognized:

25 Years

Bruce Mork, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Timothy Schulz, Electrical and Computer Engineering

30 Years

Warren Perger, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Charles Van Karsen, Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics

35 Years

David Hand, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Lawrence Sutter, Materials Science and Engineering

40 Years

Surendra Kawatra, Chemical Engineering

Congratulations to all honorees. This year’s Staff Service Recognition Luncheon will be held Wednesday, June 6.

By Human Resources.

Bruce Mork
Bruce Mork
Tim Schulz
Tim Schulz
Warren Perger
Warren Perger
Charles Van Karsen
Charles Van Karsen
David Hand
David Hand
Larry Sutter
Larry Sutter
S. Komar Kawatra
S. Komar Kawatra

Tech’s Frozen Engineers to Compete in Make48 Competition this Summer

Frozen Engineers
The Frozen Engineers from left to right: Guyon, Gazdecki, Kolb, and Thompson

Michigan Tech’s Frozen Engineers were selected to represent Tech at the Make48: College vs. College competition this August in Baltimore, MD. Teams are given 48 hours to plan, prototype, and pitch an idea for prizes and licensing potential.

The Michigan Tech team consists of Mike Gazdecki (material science and engineering), Patrick Guyon (mechanical and electrical engineering), Rachel Kolb (mechanical engineering), and Ryan Thompson (mechanical engineering). The Frozen Engineers took fourth place in Michigan Tech’s 2018 Consumer Products Challenge for their single serve Margarita Machine.

Read more at the Pavlis Honors College Blog, by Amy Karagiannakis.

Research Excellence Fund Awards Announced for 2018

Jeremy Bos in the labThe Vice President for Research Office announced the 2018 Research Excellence Fund (REF) awards and thanked the volunteer review committees, as well as the deans and department chairs, for their time spent on this important internal research award process. The awardees in the College of Engineering are listed below:

Infrastructure Enhancement (IE) Grants

Portage Health Foundation (PHF) Infrastructure Enhancement (IE) Grants

  • Jingfeng Jiang “JJ” (BME/LSTI) – Electromechanical Biomechanical testing apparatus (ACUMEN [3KN systems])

Research Seed (RS) Grants

Portage Health Foundation (PHF) Mid-Career (MC)