Students excel at microwaves
Extracurricular activities encourage students to pursue technical careers
Rick Nelson, Editor in Chief -- Test & Measurement World, 7/1/2009 2:00:00 AM
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At Test & Measurement World and sibling publication EDN, we have commented frequently about the need for efforts to encourage students to pursue technical careers. Those efforts include the incorporation of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) programs within schools and such extracurricular activities as FIRST (Ref. 1). In addition, students who have already chosen to study technical fields must be encouraged to continue to do so with extracurricular activities that give them a chance to shine.
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One such effort is EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge, a three-year program in which students re-engineer a 2009 Saturn VUE to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions (Ref. 2). In recent news from EcoCAR, students from Ohio State earned top honors at the 2009 finals for their EREV (Extended Range Electric Vehicle) design, powered by an E85-ethanol-fueled 1.8-l engine to offer an estimated 300% fuel-economy increase compared with the production four-cylinder vehicle. Over the next two years, teams will convert their designs to real vehicles.
Students also got a chance to demonstrate their engineering prowess at last month’s IEEE MTT-S (Microwave Theory and Techniques Society) International Microwave Symposium, which challenged students to participate in three design competitions as well as the symposium’s traditional student paper competition.
James Komiak of BAE Systems, who volunteers to help with the student program as a member of the MTT-S technical committee, told contributing editor Jennifer Kempe that he regards the student paper competition as an asset to both the students and professionals, saying that over the years “the quality of the student papers has been just amazing in what they’re achieving on a professional level. The program allows them to network and make contact with the judges, so it’s an important step in their academic and future professional career” (Ref. 3).
Even within engineering, disciplines have to compete for student interest. As Komiak explained to Kempe, MTT-S members “observed a lot of student interest in computers, while microwave technology was being neglected.” To revitalize student interest in microwaves, Komiak and other volunteers launched a student design competition as a means of engaging students with practical applications of design rather than mere theory. As Roger Kaul, a retiree of the Army Research Lab who judged this year’s Low Noise Amplifier Design Competition, explained to Kempe, “It’s very easy for students to make excuses if something doesn’t function properly, saying 'well, in my lab we had different equipment,’ but today no one complained at all…this is top-level stuff that they’re doing, and the devices they came up with today were very impressive.”
Thanks are due to Komiak and Kaul as well as the other MTT-S members for their equally impressive efforts in making the student programs possible.
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