3/5/2015 Daniel Dexter, ECE Illinois
Written by Daniel Dexter, ECE Illinois
The new ECE building will be on display during its first Engineering Open House (EOH) March 13-14.
The department will welcome curious visitors, who will have the opportunity to see and interact with 25 different exhibits in the ECE Building. In addition, the Grainger Auditorium will host the EOH keynote speaker, Marcin Kleczynski from Malwarebytes, at 7 p.m. March 13. The ECE Building is located at 306 N. Wright St., Urbana.
Alumni who visit for Engineering Open House are encouraged to visit ECE ILLINOIS' welcome table in the ECE Building lobby between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Friday, and 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday.
ECE ILLINOIS will also feature a Saturday Engineering for Everyone talk by Professor Jonathan Makela at 10:15 a.m. Saturday morning in the ECE Building's Grainger Auditorium. iRobotics' Combots will also be hosting a Robobrawl both days in the ECE Building lobby, which will feature battlebot-style competitions.
The Coordinated Science Lab (CSL), across the ECE Quad, will also feature seven exhibits, including presentations from the Trustworthy Cyber Infrastructure for the Power Grid (TCIPG) center.
Several graduate students from ECE ILLINOIS' power and energy systems group will feature eight different projects in 4024 ECE Building, including several favorites formerly located in the basement of Everitt Lab.
Graduate student Andy Yoon said the group will showcase some of its most popular exhibits, including the Floating Frying Pan and the Magnetic Ring Cannon. However, the resources available at the new building gave the group a chance to revamp its displays.
“In the past, we have been trying to simply fix any projects that needed repair for exhibition, but this year, we took advantage of the new building and have been able to improve upon many of the projects,” Yoon said. “Specifically, because of more workspace, we were able get more undergraduate students involved in the exhibits.”
Various undergraduate student organizations will also demonstrate engaging and interactive exhibits for all the visitors to the ECE Building.
Emily Hannigan, EOH Director for Women in Electrical and Computer Engineering (WECE), said working on a project for the event gave members of WECE an opportunity to develop their engineering skills further. She hopes to generate interest in engineering among younger kids with WECE’s projects, which are muscle sensored slot car racing and mind wave headsets for playing Pong.
“We wanted something interactive for the kids,” Hannigan said. “They will be using actual physical signals to control something that you normally wouldn’t control that way.”
Yoon said EOH offers the Engineering at Illinois an opportunity to present the most remarkable parts of engineering to the public. The event allows his group to combine both entertainment and education to showcase the intuitiveness of engineering to kids and adults alike.
“There is some technology at Engineering Open House that people have seen in the movies, but they may not have had the chance to see it in front of them,” Yoon said. “We want to display projects that people will be astounded by."