Facilities
The Union College ECE department has a wide variety of teaching and research facilities for faculty and students. Every required course in the ECE curriculum has a weekly laboratory for hands-on projects in analog and digital circuits, microprocessors, field programmable gate arrays, programming, and computer networking. Two fully equipped laboratories are dedicated to senior design projects. Students have numerous opportunities to be actively involved in research areas such as musical acoustics, speech processing, biometric systems technology, and biomedical imaging.
Teaching Laboratories
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NWSE 100 and 102
These two laboratories are primarily used in the department for teaching. Each student workbench has an IBM PC, Agilent 54621A oscilloscope, Agilent 33120A waveform generator, DC power supply, and digital multimeter. In addition, each workbench has an 8051 microprocessor board and Altera FPGA design board for use by students in microcontroller and digital design classes and senior projects. Room NWSE 100 was renovated in 2005 with the generous support of grants and college assistance. Upgrades to the equipment and room aesthetics include a multimedia teaching center, projectors, white boards, and student lab areas.
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NWSE 106 and 108
There two laboratories are dedicated to senior projects: NWSE 106 and NWSE 108. The department places an emphasis on having students work as independently as possible on their projects so the equipment in this lab can vary daily! Each workstation in these rooms is equipped similarly to NWSE 100 and NWSE 102 so the students are already familiar with using the equipment while working on their own projects.
Research Laboratories
The Laboratory for Electrical Engineering and Music Research fuses artistic and technical work in an NSF-equipped, state-of-the-art facility designed by architectural acoustics consultants Walters Storyk Design Group. Known informally as the "Phasor Lab", the laboratory permits students to work on topics that fuse their scientific, technical and artistic interests and provides a unique place for collaborations between the Electrical Engineering and Music Departments. Located in the new Peter Irving Wold Center, the lab is coordinated by Dr. Palma Catravas and supported with funds from the National Science Foundation (NSF MRI program) and the Wold Center Donors. Planned research includes experimental studies of human speech production (Dr. Helen Hanson), audio digital signal processing, experimental characterization of musical instruments and music visualization research and other novel activities. |
CSI Union is dedicated to research in biometric systems technology. Located in the remodeled Butterfield Hall, the lab is supervised by Dr. Shane Cotter and partially supported with funds from NSF. CSI Union includes equipment for experimenting with fingerprint, face, and speaker recognition systems. Students work on a range of projects to incorporate biometric technology into engineering systems to increase usability or security. |
BUBL is a brand new research laboratory that focuses on developing high resolution biomedical imaging systems. Located in the remodeled Butterfield Hall, the lab is supervised by Dr. Takashi Buma and partially supported with NSF funding. BUBL research activities include high frequency ultrasound imaging, photoacoustic microscopy, and optical coherence tomography. Student research projects span various aspects of imaging systems development including device fabrication, fiber optics, laser development, signal processing, and image reconstruction.
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