The Magic of Engineering for the Customer
Creating a schedule for the first time can be a daunting task, especially for a first year engineering student. There are so many aspects to consider…
Spring is here, the semester is drawing to a close, and my year as a slightly-less-clueless-than-before sophomore is coming to an end. All-important decisions about majors and housing and summer plans have all been taken care of, and the shock of being halfway through college(!!) is slowly starting to settle in.
So I decided to look back on my sophomore year and talk about some of the things I had the opportunity to do as an officially declared electrical engineer.
1) Meeting an astronaut
Growing up devouring book after book of Clarke’s and Asimov’s science fiction novels and dreaming about space travel, I never once imagined I would get to see an actual astronaut in my lifetime. By a lucky turn of events, that very thing happened last Fall as part of the ‘Introduction to Engineering – Simple Robotics’ class I was TA-ing that semester. To give the students a chance to hear about how robots were used in real NASA missions, our professors brought down Dr. Jeffrey Hoffman, a renowned former astronaut who is currently a professor at MIT. It was simply awe-inspiring hearing Dr. Hoffman speak about his first-hand experience of the wonders of space, as well as the skill, intelligence, and determination needed to brave such dangerous missions. This event will be etched in my memory as one of the highlights of my time here at Tufts. (I posted a longer account of his visit back in October 2015).
2) Drones, drones, and more drones
The Tufts Robotics Club is competing in the Intel-Cornell Cup design competition this year and we’re working on a project that is named, in true engineering fashion, with its own nifty acronym: T.R.E.A.D (Tufts Robotics Earthquake Assistance Drone). We’re designing a drone that can be deployed in the aftermath of an earthquake to help search-and-rescue teams locate survivors more efficiently. It’s been a fun two semesters of brainstorming, trial, error, unexpected breakthroughs and setbacks, more trial and error, and with only a few weeks before the final round, we’re working our hardest to win.
I also began working as a research assistant at the Tufts CRISP (Control, Robotics, and Signal Processing) lab, where I had the chance to play around with even more drones, programming them to follow flight patterns, track colored objects, and occasionally crash into the ceiling for fun.
3) Being part of Tufts IEEE
Unless you’re an ECE/CS major, it’s probably unlikely that you’ve heard of IEEE. This is the largest international organization for electrical and electronics engineers, with chapters in educational and professional institutions across the world devoted to the progress of science and technology. Tufts has its own student chapter, and as part of it, I had a wonderful time meeting fellow ECE majors across all grades, attending research conferences, organizing professional and academic events on campus, and understanding more about what it means to be an electrical/electronic engineer. If you’re an incoming freshman considering ECE, or a current ECE major who wants to know more about the field and the various professional/academic opportunities available for you, or just someone who wants to hear about the cool things ECE majors do, I’d highly recommend coming to our meetings!
4) TA-ing engineering classes
This year I had my first opportunity to work as a teaching assistant: in the aforementioned ES93 (‘Intro to Engineering’) class in the fall, and in ES2 (‘Computing in Engineering’) this spring. TA-ing was a completely new experience for me – apart from helping out friends with their homework, I had never officially worked as a tutor before. I could immediately see why teaching is considered one of the most stressful but rewarding jobs. The sense of accomplishment that follows when a student understands a difficult concept after you’ve explained it to them and their gratitude feels wonderful, but sometimes, dealing with a lot of different students in a very limited time can feel overwhelming. Even with its challenges, TA-ing has been very fulfilling – it’s given me the chance to work with some great professors, meet a lot of wonderful younger students and help them in their courses as well as mentor them, and learn more about the subject myself.
5) Finally meeting our ECE class
If you’re an ECE major, and unless you’re very lucky, you won’t get to know other ECEs in your class year until sophomore spring. This is because most classes you take as a freshman or a sophomore are core requirements for all engineers. But in the second semester as a sophomore, only ECEs take EE21 (Electronics I) with Prof. Jeff Hopwood, and this is the first of our many classes together as electrical/computer engineers. But fear not! Pretty much all of our classes after this will be together, and we’re told that ECEs always end up being a small but tightly-knit group by the end of our time here, having had to brave through EE23, Junior Design, and many other challenging ECE classes.
6) Building a pulse oximeter
Hands down, the most fulfilling part of being an engineer is watching your creations come to life (in a very non-Frankenstein way unless you’re a BME). For our EE21 class, our lab project was to build a functional pulse oximeter, which is the little gadget that is clipped on to your fingers when you go to the doctor’s. A pulse oximeter measures the blood oxygen content, and to build one, we had to design a sensor that emits IR waves through a patient’s finger and detects the amount hitting an IR sensor, and a filter circuit to single out the pulse signal and convert it to a form that can be used to calculate the blood oxygen content. Designing the oximeter was, as all engineering projects are, a mix of careful calculation, interesting design choices, testing, reiterating, and a little bit of luck, but once everything was wrapped up, it felt wonderful to have designed something so useful with nothing more than some diodes, resistors, and capacitors.
7) Summer Scholars
To wrap up my year, I had the honor of being selected as one of the Tufts Summer Scholars for this year. This is a program that funds students to do independent research over the summer with a Tufts faculty member in any chosen field. In addition to this, the selected students can attend various academic development programs hosted throughout the summer as part of the Summer Scholars program. I will be doing research on control systems under the guidance of Prof. Usman Khan at the CRISP lab. I’m thrilled to have gained this opportunity as I’ve been interested in learning more about the field but wouldn’t have a chance to study it formally until senior year, when all ECEs take a course in Feedback Control Systems. It’ll definitely be an interesting experience to spend the summer in Boston, for once, not under ‘x’ feet of snow, and maybe I’ll finally get to see all the places I haven’t been to yet.
It’s certainly been an exciting year, and I hope the coming year will be as eventful for all of us!
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