PowerPoint Presentation - Pulsed Neurons

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Electrical and Computer EngineeringCareers
Neil E. Cotter University of Utah
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Overview

• EE and CE briefly described
• Salaries and companies who hire
• Case studies of EE/CE jobs
• Lessons learned

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What is Electrical Engineering?

• Electrical Engineers are inventors and innovators
  who apply knowledge of signals, circuits,
  physics, and systems to develop technologies to
  improve people's lives

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What is Computer Engineering?

• Computer Engineers design and program computer
  systems, small and large, to improve people's
  lives

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How do CS and CE and EE Differ?

• EE

CE
CS
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Are there EE and CE Jobs?

• Example EEs 2011 (CEs similar)

• 46 of 53 graduates had job offers / grad school
  acceptance by graduation day
• Many had multiple offers
• Average reported starting salary 59,000

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What are Salaries by Industry?
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Who Hires U of U Graduates?

• Northrop Grumman
• Raytheon
• Reliable Controls
• Rio Tinto
• Rocky Mtn. Power
• Sorenson Communications
• Varian Medical Syst.

• ATK
• Bachtel Marine
• Harman Signal Proc.
• Hill AFB
• Knolls Atomic Power
• L-3 Communications
• Micron
• Moog Aircraft
• Navsea

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Case Study Speech Recognition

• Write software to decode speech waveform

• Use frequency analysis to detect vowel sounds

• Use probabilistic models to guess which phonemes
  were most likely

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Case Study Pulse Deconvolution

• Shoot X-rays at object, detect photon emissions
  (pulses)

• Pulse size and quantity indicate makeup of sample

• Undo the overlap to determine original pulses,
  (math problem)

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Case Study Modeling Heat Flow

• Induction furnace in steel mill heats by creating
  eddie currents in bar

• Model of cooling derived by (slow) numerical
  simulation

• Nonlinear differential equation used to model
  temperature in real-time

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Case Study Security System

• A Hall effect sensor can detect if a door is open

• A central computer can monitor a farm of storage
  lockers

• Fast turnaround in prototyping creates a business
  opportunity

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Case Study Auditory Prosthesis

• Auditory prosthesis stimulates auditory nerve
  electrically

• To create proper sound, flow of current must be
  controlled

• Threshold tests with patients determine how
  current spreads out from electrodes

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Case Study Fuzzy Control

• An algorithm is needed to control the positioning
  of a large motor

• Fuzzy logic translates operator knowledge into
  control signals

• An adaptive algorithm tracks performance and
  tweaks the control algorithm

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Lessons Learned

• Your immediate boss is the most important person
  in the company

• Do what you love

• In school, individual performance rules in
  industry, teams rule

• Figure out how you can help, instead of looking
  smart