Engineering and Inventing the Future: Making Things Smarter for a Better World Summer Scholars Session II
When you think of the future, do you see a world with flying robots, synthetic biology, virtual reality, autonomous vehicles, sweat-powered personal devices, internet for everyone, health monitoring clothing, cancer-detecting smart needles, brain implants, pollution-free energy, intelligent drug design, or quantum computers? This course explores the technologies needed to make these ideas a reality. We will start with the creation, transfer and storage of the energy needed to power these things. Then move to learning about how we can sense the world so that we can build machines that can reason, make decisions and act on the world. Finally, we will learn about how to build those machines so that they can be integrated into everything, from a car, your body or sent into the deepest reaches of space.
At the core of these advanced technologies are the electrical and electronic technologies that are studied in Electrical Engineering. Working in teams, students will experiment and build initial systems that provide insights into what is possible even today and what problems need to be solved to realize the dreams of embedded advanced intelligence into anything and everything. Students will be introduced to alternative energies, quantum computing, photonics, signal processing, communications and embedded systems through lectures and hands-on experiences.
Students with an interest in science and engineering are certainly encouraged to apply, but no particular background is expected or needed. Everyone will learn about the potential impact that the technologies we will be working with can have, being used to solve many problems and to create many new advanced items for the world. Whatever field you envision going into there will be technology utilized that are designed and built by Electrical Engineers. Knowing what can be done and what people are trying to do in that field will provide you insight into what will be done in the future.
Course Schedule
This course will be offered during Summer Scholars Session II on campus.
Academic Directors
Thomas O'Sullivan
Dr. Thomas O'Sullivan joined the University of Notre Dame in 2016 and is currently an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and the Bioengineering Graduate Program. Prior to that he was the Director of the Diffuse Optical Spectroscopy and Imaging Laboratory at the Beckman Laser Institute at the University of California, Irvine and a U.S. Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program Postdoctoral Fellow. He received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University in 2005 and the M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2007 and 2011, respectively. Dr. O'Sullivan is engaged in translational biomedical research based upon the development and application of deep tissue optical imaging and sensing. In particular, Dr. O'Sullivan’s lab is advancing diffuse optical spectroscopy and imaging (DOSI), which allows for contrast-free quantitative measurements of tissue architecture and metabolic function. This work, while relevant to many diseases, is presently focused on applications in breast cancer including risk assessment, screening, differential diagnosis, and predicting individual response to chemotherapy treatment. Dr. O'Sullivan has co-founded one company in this area (NearWave Corp.) and holds several patents on DOSI-related technologies. In addition to his research, Dr. O’Sullivan is passionate about community outreach, has served the optics and photonics community as a senior member of OSA and SPIE, and is currently an associate editor for Biomedical Optics Express.
Robert Stevenson
Robert L. Stevenson received the B.E.E degree summa cum laude from the University of Delaware, Newark, DE in 1986, and the Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, in 1990. While at Purdue, he was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship and a graduate fellowship from the DuPont Corporation. Dr. Stevenson joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, in 1990, where he is currently a Professor and Associate Chair. He has held visiting positions at the University of Delaware, Newark, DE, the Intel Corporation, Hillsborough, OR, and the US Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, NY.
Dr. Stevenson has served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, and the Journal of Electronic Imaging. Dr. Stevenson has served as Chair, Co-Chair, and on the advisory committees of several conferences on image and video processing. His research interests includes image and video processing, restoration, compression, and enhancement. He has published over 150 papers and contributed to eight books in his area of interest.