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The WireThe Holcombe Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

2011

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Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering105 Riggs HallClemson, SC 29634-0915

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Michael Pursley receives grants for wireless communications research

ECE Department welcomes new faculty

Nick Willis, a senior in electrical engineering was one of seven students chosen to work as interns alongside the Clemson University Restoration Institute project team and partners statewide during the detailed design and initial construction of what will be the world’s largest wind-turbine drivetrain testing facility over the summer. The group of students gained valuable hands-on experience on a scale they could not receive anywhere else in the world. Willis worked on electrical design simulation with electrical engineering Ph.D. candidate J. Curtiss Fox.

Benjamin Ujcich, a sophomore computer engineering major, was one of two College of Engineering and Science students to win the prestigious Goldwater scholarship this year. Benjamin has conducted research with Kuang-Ching Wang and also with Varavut Limpasuvan at Costal Carolina. Each year, colleges and universities throughout the United States may nominate 4 sophomores or juniors for the Goldwater Scholarship. In the past 5 years, 13 Clemson students have won a Goldwater and 5 more have been named Honorable Mention.

Electrical engineering senior Ross Beppler was one of two Clemson students selected to participate in the summer internship program WISE (Washington Internships for Students of Engineering) in Washington, D.C. Beppler is an active member of Engineers Without Borders and has led a group of students on a trip to Nicaragua. He is a participant in Creative Inquiry research and has received a $5,000 grant to start a business initiative to reduce college recruitment mail. Beppler’s internship is sponsored by the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).

Michael Juang, a graduate student in electrical engineering, has been awarded a prestigious National Defense Science & Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) fellowship. Juang, who began his tenure as an NDSEG fellow in September, is working on wireless communications with Dr. Michael Pursley . The NDSEG fellowship program is one of the most selective in the world; just 300 winners from thousands of applications are chosen annually.

Chen Lu, a graduate student in electrical engineering, was chosen by Kaspersky Inc. as a finalist in their “America’s Cup” security technology competition. He presented his paper, “Botnet Traffic Detection” at the finals in New York this November.

Electrical engineering graduate student Yu Lu won a $250 cash prize for No 2 in the poster evaluation at the Oak Ridge Cyber Security and Information Intelligence Research Workshop in October.

Congratulations to Ze Li, a recipient of the 2011 Chinese Government Award for Self-Financed Students Abroad. Li was among 495 students chosen from 29 countries worldwide and among 11 disciplines covering philosophy, economics, law, education, literature, history, science, engineering, agriculture, medicine, and management. Li received his B.S. degree in electronics and information engineering at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and he is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in computer engineering at Clemson with an emphasis in peer-to-peer networking.

Andrew Clarke received the Harris Award for the Outstanding Graduate Laboratory Teaching Assistant in 2011 based on evaluations by undergraduates enrolled in ECE laboratory courses

and assessment by the faculty supervisors of the laboratories. Clarke completed the B.S. degree in electrical engineering at Clemson in 2010, and he is currently pursuing the Ph.D. EE degree with an emphasis in power systems under the direction of Prof. Elham Makram.

Githin Alapatt received the Harris Award for the Outstanding Graduate Researcher in 2011 based on the recommendation of a faculty member and evaluation by a committee of ECE faculty. Alapatt completed the B.Tech. degree in electronics and communications engineering at the Cochin University of Science and Technology in 2007, he received the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Clemson in 2010, and he is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering at Clemson with an emphasis in photovoltaic electronics under the direction of Prof. Rajendra Singh.

Graduate Scholarship and Fellowship Recipients:

Sadettin Cekic: Turkish Ministry National Education Fellowship Andrew Clarke: ECE Santee Cooper Graduate Fellowship and ECE Holcombe Scholarship Douglas Dawson: ECE Alan Griffith Stanford Fellowship Jason Ellis: South Carolina Graduate Incentive FellowshipScott Gibson: ECE Holcombe Scholarship Crystal Jackson: South Carolina Graduate Incentive Fellowship Michael Juang: Clemson University MacDonald Fellowship, CoES Dean’s Scholarship and ECE Holcombe Scholarship JaWone Kennedy: Southern Regional Education Board Fellowship Irfan Kil: Turkish Ministry National Education Fellowship Andrew McDowell: ECE Alan Griffith Stanford FellowshipJessica Merino: ECE Alan Griffith Stanford Fellowship Alper Mutlu: Turkish Ministry National Education FellowshipSerhat Obuz: Turkish Ministry National Education FellowshipIlker Ozcelik: Turkish Ministry National Education Fellowship Raul Ramos Garcia: CONACYT Fellowship William Suski: Science: Mathematics and Research for Transformation Scholarship Eric Tollefson: ECE Holcombe Scholarship Nicholas Watts: ECE Holcombe Scholarship Landy Youkhana: Fulbright Fellowship

2012 ECE Poster Competition Winners:All ECE faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students engaged

in research were invited to participate in this competition. The purpose of the ECE poster competition is to provide students and faculty the chance to showcase their research, and to provide high-quality visuals for those walking the halls of Riggs. An independent panel of judges evaluated over 30 poster submissions on quality, clarity, and impact.

1st place was awarded to Daniel Cutshall for his poster “Micro-Plasma Cancer Endoscopes Using Remote Atmospheric Plasma Jets,” co-authored by Jae Young Kim, John Ballato, Paul Foy, Thomas Hawkins, and Sung-O Kim. Daniel is a senior electrical engineering major.

2nd place was awarded to “Active Balancing for Reducing the Electrical Noise from Three-Phase AC Motor Drivers,” authored by Chentian Zhu and Todd Hubing.

3rd place was awarded to “Modeling of Data Transmission Process for Wireless Sensors on Industrial Rotating Structures,” authored by Fan Yang, Lei Tang, Jobin Jacob, and Xiaoyu Wang.

ECE Student Achievement

The Wire is published twice a year, by the Milton W. Holcombe Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, for alumni and friends. Please contact us with any story ideas or alumni news.

Contributors: Clemson News Service, Ron Grant, Janet Hendricks, Amanda Harris

ECE Professor Emeritus Jay Lathrop was inducted into the Thomas Green Clemson Academy of Engineers and Scientists at Clemson University at the academy’s 2011 banquet.

After earning undergraduate and graduate degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lathrop joined the National Bureau of Standard’s Tube Lab in 1952, where he established one of the first government research programs on miniature transistor circuits. He joined Texas Instruments in 1958, just in time to witness the invention of the integrated circuit by Jack S. Kilby, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery. Lathrop joined the Clemson faculty in 1968, working on the development of solar cells, integrated circuits and semiconductors until his retirement in 1989.

Also honored at the banquet was Outstanding Young Alumni John Shea, a leader in the field of wireless communication systems and networks, who teaches at the University of Florida. He previously was vice president of engineering for Extemporal Wireless Inc., where he was the lead developer for iPhone applications for technical conferences.

Alumni NewsClemson University grads finding jobs at twice the national average

Clemson News — Clemson University graduates are finding jobs at nearly twice the national average and the results of a recent survey may go a long way toward explaining why. The 2011 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) found that two-thirds of Clemson seniors had significant hands-on experience as part of their college educations.

The survey showed that 67 percent of Clemson seniors reported having an internship, field experience, clinical assignment or practicum — a supervised practical application of classroom learning. That’s significantly above the average of 50 percent for the more than 750 colleges and universities across the nation that participated in the survey and 48 percent for public universities in the Southeast.

The NSSE survey also found that 38 percent of Clemson seniors had worked on a research project with a faculty member outside of class, compared to a national average of 20 percent. As well, 77 percent reported working with classmates outside of class to prepare class assignments.

“Employers have come to expect Clemson graduates to not only be well educated, but to be well prepared to use their education in professional settings,” said Neil Burton, director of Clemson’s Michelin Career Center.

Department launches mentor programAt the start of the Fall 2011 semester, the Holcombe Department of Electrical and Computer

Engineering initiated a mentorship program geared at student success and retention. The ECE Plugged In Program at Clemson is aimed at connecting current CU ECE students

with ECE alumni. More specifically, participating ECE alumni or strong ECE advocates mentor one to three ECE sophomore students who are interested in being a “mentee” in the program. The Plugged In program mentors contact their mentee students throughout the academic year to help keep them motivated and excited about electrical and computer engineering.

Through this program, the mentors and the department strive to increase retention rates of ECE students past the sophomore year, motivate and encourage ECE students, improve the potential for success of ECE students, and enhance the educational experience of ECE students.

In its first year, the ECE Plugged In Program has involved roughly 40 mentors and mentee participants. The department hopes to expand the program to include all interested incoming sophomore students.

For more information on the Plugged In mentorship program and to learn how to participate, please visit our Web site at: http://www.clemson.edu/ces/ece/undergrad/PluggedIn/

ECE Holcombe Professor Michael Pursley has received a $345,000 grant from the Army Research Office for the study of Adaptive Reliable Unicast and Multicast Transmission in Tactical Packet Radio Networks.

The research in this project is devoted to new coding techniques and adaptive protocols that will meet future requirements for adaptive, reliable unicast and multicast transmission in tactical packet radio networks. Such techniques and protocols provide reliable delivery of messages to a single destination or to multiple destinations simultaneously. Pursley’s research group is seeking new protocols for adapting the modulation and coding that are used in these transmissions and for coordinating acknowledgments among the multiple destinations in a multicast network. They also seek coding methods that will mitigate the effects of undelivered packets at some or all destinations.

New application-layer coding techniques, referred to as fountain codes or rateless codes, are potentially very beneficial for multicast transmission in wireless networks, but they require adaptive transmission to make them suitable for the tactical communications environment. Without physical-layer adaptation, application-layer coding is ineffective during long periods in which one or more links have deep fades or strong interference. Pursley’s research group is employing a combination of analysis and simulation to gain an understanding of the interaction between application-layer coding, incremental-redundancy transmission, physical-layer coding, and the protocols for the adaptation of modulation and coding in multicast transmission systems.

Pursley is also the recipient of a $300,000 grant from the Office of Naval Research for his research on Adaptive Multicarrier Transmission for Dynamic Spectrum Access in Tactical Cognitive Radio Networks with Fading Channels. A multicarrier signal

consists of a set of carrier-modulated signals referred to as subcarriers. Individual subcarriers can be included or excluded from the composite signal to match the availability of subcarrier frequency bands after accounting for the spectrum occupancy of other users. By appropriate spacing of the subcarriers, multicarrier modulation formats, such as orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), provide frequency diversity to combat the fading and interference that are common obstacles to reliable communications in a tactical environment.

The goal of this research is to devise protocols that permit OFDM and related modulation formats to be used efficiently and reliably in tactical radio networks, thereby allowing dynamic access to the frequency spectrum. The research challenges are much greater for tactical applications than for typical commercial systems, because tactical radio networks lack the base stations, access points, and other forms of infrastructure that are employed in commercial networks. Pursley’s research group is providing methods that enable the radios to derive information about the network and its communications links, and to then exploit the information for adaptation of the modulation and coding that are employed to transmit and receive packets. To support this adaptive multicarrier transmission research, Pursley and his research group are also conducting basic research on new models that are suitable for the analysis and simulation of tactical communications over channels with time-varying propagation, fading, and interference.

The Holcombe Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is pleased to announce our newest faculty hires, Dr. Eric Johnson, Dr. G. Kumar Venayagamoorthy and Visiting Lecturer Dr. Ramtin Hadidi.

Dr. Johnson obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alabama at Huntsville, M.S. in Electrical Sciences from the University of Central Florida, and B.S. in Physics from Purdue University. As the PalmettoNet Endowed Chair in Optoelectronics, Dr. Johnson serves as the head of the South Carolina SmartState Center of Economic Excellence in Optoelectronics. Before joining Clemson, Dr. Johnson held a joint appointment as a Professor of Physics and Optical Science as well as Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he also served as the Director of the Center for Optoelectronics and Optical Communications. He was previously

an Associate Professor at the College of Optics (Tenured) and Photonics/CREOL at the University of Central Florida, and was the Vice President of Research and Development at Digital Optics Corporation. Dr. Johnson has also held various other positions in industry for development, engineering, and management.

Dr. Venayagamoorthy received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa, in 2002. Prior to joining Clemson, he was a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Founder and Director of the Real-Time Power and Intelligent Systems (RTPIS) Laboratory at Missouri University of Science and Technology. He was a Visiting Researcher with ABB Corporate Research, Sweden, in 2007. His research interests are in the development and applications of advanced computational algorithms for real-world applications, including power systems

stability and control, smart grid applications, sensor networks and signal processing. He has published two edited books, six book chapters, over 90 refereed journal papers, and 290 refereed conference proceeding papers. Dr. Venayagamoorthy is a Senior Member of the IEEE, and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, UK, and the SAIE.

Visiting Lecturer, Dr. Hadidi, comes to Clemson thanks to funding provided by five utility companies to support a power engineering lecturer for the 2011-2012 academic year. Dr. Hadidi received his B.S. from K.N.Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2004 and his M.S. from Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2007 both in Electrical Engineering. He then received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada in 2012.

Inside Spread Left Inside Spread Right

ECE Facu l t y Research and Awards

Clemson researchers finding ways to make every bite count

Gowdy wins Leadership and Service Award

Clemson News — Two Clemson University researchers seek to make diners mindful of mindless eating.

Psychology professor Eric Muth and electrical and computer engineering professor Adam Hoover have created the Bite Counter, a measurement device that will make it easier for people to monitor how much they eat. Worn like a watch, the Bite Counter device tracks a pattern of wrist-roll motion to identify when the wearer has taken a bite of food. Think of it as a pedometer for eating.

“At the societal level, current weight-loss and maintenance programs are failing to make a significant impact. Studies have shown that people tend to underestimate what they eat by large margins, mostly because traditional methods rely upon self–observation and reporting,” said Muth. “Our preliminary data suggest that bite count can be used as a proxy for caloric count.”

The advantage of the Bite Counter is that it is automated so that user bias is removed. The device can be used anywhere, such as at restaurants or while working, where people find it difficult to manually track and remember calories.

The device is not based on what happens in a single bite (i.e. exact grams or specific food nutrients), but in how it simplifies long-term monitoring. For commercialization, Bite Counters eventually will be sold as simple consumer electronics alongside such familiar devices as activity monitors, heart-rate monitors, GPS watches and pedometers. A device is available from Bite Technologies now for professional and research use at http://www.icountbites.com.

“The device only requires that the user press a button to turn it on before eating and press the button again after the meal or snack is done. In between, the device automatically

counts how many bites have been eaten,” Hoover said.

In laboratory studies, the device has been shown to be more than 90 percent accurate in counting bites, regardless of the user, food, utensil or container, according to Hoover. However, there are few existing data on how bite count relates to calorie count or how a bite-counting device could be used for weight loss. The device will allow for such data to be more easily collected.

This research is now being funded by a one year, $225,000 National Institutes of Health (NIH) Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) in partnership with the MUSC Weight Loss Center and Bite Technologies. The primary goals of this NIH-funded project are to: (i) begin to examine the relationship

between bite count and caloric intake; and (ii) examine if reducing bite count leads to reduced caloric intake.  If indeed bite count is shown to be systematically related to caloric intake, OR reducing bite count over time leads to reduced caloric intake, then the Bite Counter could prove to be a revolutionary tool in the battle against obesity.  It would be the only tool available to automatically monitor intake in free-living humans, without burdening the individual with cumbersome methods.  For clinical or nutritional studies, the Bite Counter will be combined with food diaries to provide a more comprehensive record of intake.  As a tool for intake assessment, the Bite Counter will enable new research studies to be undertaken and novel weight loss strategies to be developed.

ECE professor G. Kumar Venayagamoorthy was interviewed by the IEEE to discuss the Smart Grid and how it will impact consumers’ lifestyles. Venayagamoorthy joined the Holcombe Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering as the Duke Energy Distinguished Professor in January 2012.

Over the last fifteen years, Professor Venayagamoorthy’s research contributions have primarily focused on the development and implementation of advanced computational methods for smart grid applications, such as nonlinear modeling and control of power systems, power system optimization, predictions of wind and solar energies, energy management systems, wide area monitoring and control systems, dynamic optimal power flow, plug-in electric vehicles, micro-grid systems.

You can read the full IEEE interview here: http://smartgrid.ieee.org/questions-and-answers/490

Photos by Clemson University

The Bite Counter prototype is tested during a meal. Researchers hope the device can be used as a tool for weight loss and healthy eating.

Congratulations to Dr. John Gowdy, who was awarded the College of Engineering and Science’s 2012 Gulari Leadership and Service Award at the year-end CoES Faculty Meeting. This award is intended to recognize CoES faculty who make a selfless commitment of time and effort to undertake leadership and service roles to contribute to the advancement of the university, their profession, and society. In addition to being a productive researcher and effective instructor,

Dr. Gowdy serves as the Undergraduate Program Coordinator and Assessment Coordinator for the Holcombe Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Each year he organizes and oversees the collection and evaluation of assessment data from 18 ECE courses, surveys taken from exiting seniors, alumni, the departmental advisory board, Co-op employers, recruiters, and FE Exam performance data. After collecting, reformatting, and summarizing all of this assessment

data, he generates two annual reports, one for electrical engineering and another for computer engineering.During the Fall 2011 ABET visit, both Electrical Engineering and

Computer Engineering received the best possible reviews (no deficiencies, no weaknesses, no concerns, and no observations). Dr. Gowdy wrote the Self Study Reports for both Electrical Engineering and

Computer Engineering and organized all preparations for the ABET visit. That successful departmental

review was due in no small part to his commitment to thoroughly understanding the ABET process by becoming an ABET Program Evaluator (PEV) himself, which involved two days of training and making a commitment to serve annually as an ABET Program Evaluator at other schools. Dr. Gowdy has also served in

leadership positions outside the university, having been involved in several capacities with the Southeastern Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association, the Southeastern Center for Electrical Engineering Education, and IEEE.

ECE faculty awarded National Science Foundation grants

Three faculty members in the Holcombe Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering have been awarded substantial research grants from the National Science Foundation this fall.

Lin Zhu, Warren Owen Assistant Professor, has been awarded a $300,000 grant from NSF’s Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems. The objective of Zhu’s research is to control optical gradient forces in lightwave circuits through waveguide dispersion, to enhance optical gradient forces by using plasmonic effects, and to create novel resonant optomechanical devices. Optical gradient forces can be generated between integrated optical components by light and be used to control both optical and mechanical behavior of these components. The resulting integrated optomechanical devices provide a fascinating system to study the coupling between optics and mechanics.

Dr. Zhu and his research group will  investigate new methods, such as waveguide dispersion and plasmonic effects, to manipulate and enhance optical gradient forces and explore new applications of these methods. Zhu hopes his work will lead to the creation of novel devices for information processing and fundamental physics. The outcome of his research will have significant impacts across many disciplines, such as light-controlled biomechanical manipulation and detection, photonic information processing, and strong light-matter interactions.

Dr. Zhu has also been selected to participate in the Army Research Office (ARO) Young Investigator Program (YIP). The objectives of the ARO’s YIP are “to attract to Army research outstanding young university faculty members, to support their research, and to encourage their teaching and research careers.” The ARO solicits proposals for basic and scientific research in mechanical sciences, environmental sciences, mathematical and computer sciences, electronics, computational and information sciences, physics, chemistry, life sciences, and materials science. This award will fund Zhu’s research on high brightness broad area diode lasers for the next three years. As part of the YIP award, Zhu’s research team will develop novel folded, supercavity designs that can be integrated in a diode bar to provide high power, diffraction-limited output beam by coupling grating-confined zigzag modes. The successful realization of this transformative research could have enormous long-term impacts on laser weapons, laser radar systems, and other military applications.

Stan Birchfield, Associate Professor, and Ian Walker, CoES IDEaS Professor, have been awarded a $400,000 grant from NSF’s Division of Information and Intelligent Systems to conduct research that explores the concept of interactive perception or manipulated-guided sensing. In this project, successive manipulations of objects in an environment are used to increase vision-based understanding of that environment, and vice versa. Traditional robotics research has adopted a “sense-plan-act” paradigm in which it is assumed that the sensors are capable of providing enough information in order to decide the next course of action. Humans and animals, however, frequently adopt a different approach, such as shuffling through a pile of unknown objects in order to identify an item of interest hidden beneath the pile. In particular, the project involves developing appropriate low-order models of highly non-rigid structures such as fabrics and textiles; constructing algorithms to perform real-time vision-based sensing of such objects in cluttered, unstructured environments; and building prototype robotic hardware for testing the resulting models and algorithms. The research forms an integral part of next-generation household service robots performing everyday tasks such as sorting and folding laundry.

Clemson University engineers propose ‘connected vehicle’ systemsClemson News — A Clemson University

vision of how American cars and roads might interact in the future has been named a public favorite in a competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT).

Clemson students and faculty entered their connected vehicle plan — a detailed look at automotive and wireless technology — earlier this year in the DOT competition, which was held to generate ideas for the next generation of cars and highways. “The technology is already there. What’s necessary is the will and the resources to put it all together,” said automotive engineering professor Joachim Taiber. “That is what our entry in the Connected Vehicle Challenge proposes.”

The public was invited to rate 76 proposals submitted by universities, corporations and think tanks across the country. Clemson emerged as one of the winners in that voting.

As a result, a member of the Clemson team was invited to deliver a presentation on the winning submission at the 2011 World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems this October in Orlando, Fla.

The Clemson proposal focused on how cars can use dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) technology — wireless channels designed specifically for automotive use — to share information with highway databases, emergency personnel, global positioning satellites and a host of

businesses from gas stations to restaurants. The technology can be used for things like toll booths, where it allows cars to pay tolls electronically without the driver having to stop, roll down the window and toss coins into a basket or hand bills to an attendant.

The Clemson team involved students from a variety of academic disciplines: automotive, computer and civil engineering; as well as the business school.

Taiber led the team with faculty colleagues Richard Brooks and Kuang-Ching Wang, associate professors of electrical and computer engineering; Jim Martin, associate professor in the School of Computing; and civil engineering associate professor Ronnie Chowdhury.

“The electrical engineering students brought in the network expertise, the computing school students knew how to develop the software platform, the civil engineers analyzed the integration into traffic-management and road system-infrastructure,” said Taiber, a research professor based at the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR) in Greenville. “We also involved an MBA student to support the business model development.”

Of the more than six dozen competition entries, most described specific technical applications. The Clemson team took it one step further. In addition to describing the use of the technology, the members sought a way to pay for it using opportunities to incorporate mobile commerce to help fund the network.

An on-board computer could gauge the vehicle’s energy supply and calculate exactly when and where it will need to be fueled up. The system could identify places to eat along

trip routes or stream movies into the backseat video system for the kids, all paid for electronically. “DSRC technology has been known for years, but it hasn’t been adopted because of the cost. No one was willing to invest in the infrastructure,” Taiber said. “In the DOT challenge, we felt we

needed not only to address the technology, but how to implement the technology in a feasible business model.

“To employ DSRC technology on a wide scale, you need radios and transmitters in the cars, in the highways and in the emergency response agencies. That would cost billions of dollars,” he said. “What we are suggesting is a proposal for advanced safety features without the need for more taxes to fund it.”

Collaborative institute receives $1.5 million in-kind giftClemson News — Researchers

at Clemson University will find ways to make living at home safer for aging and vulnerable people with help from a $1.5 million in-kind software gift from Siemens PLM Software to the Institute for Intelligent Materials, Systems and Environments (CUiMSE).

Clemson Ph.D. student Joe Manganelli was central to securing the software gift, which supports his doctoral research under architecture professor and CUiMSE director Keith Green. Manganelli’s work is key to research by a team of Clemson faculty members from electrical and computer engineering, human factors psychology and mechanical engineering; their graduate and undergraduate students; as well as investigators from Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering.

The team will use Siemens PLM Software technology to design and test “architectural-robotic” living environments supporting aging residents living in their private homes and in institutional care settings. For this research, Manganelli, Green and the team have designed and fabricated “home+,” a home-lab in the Roger C. Peace Rehabilitation Hospital of the Greenville Hospital System.

“The process of developing complex, human-centered, technological living environments for vulnerable segments of the population should

prove easier with these software tools,” Green said. “They allow the research team to design physical environments that empower people, even as their physical capabilities alter over time.”

“We are committed to improving the technical stature of Clemson’s iMSE Institute and its ability to develop world-class engineers and technologists for our global communities, customers and business partners,” said Hulas King, director of GO PLM & Global Community Relations-Siemens PLM Software. “Our relationship with Clemson will increase students’ digital manufacturing skills, introduce the most advanced technologies and facilitate many ergonomic life-cycle processes. We are proud to team with Clemson’s strong academic leaders and gifted students to enhance technological living environments for under-served populations.”

The gift to iMSE, made through Siemens PLM Software’s GO PLM initiative, provides two types of software:

• NX, a comprehensive digital product development solution for advanced computer-aided design, simulation and manufacturing; and

• Tecnomatix, a best-in-class digital manufacturing solution for virtual task analysis and ergonomics studies with avatars representing targeted segments of the human population.

CUiMSE is a partnership of Clemson’s School of Architecture, its School of Materials Science and Engineering, and its Holcombe Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where Green holds a joint appointment.

“The technology is already there. What’s necessary is the will and the resources to put it all

together”

Graphics by CUiMSEDrawings of use scenarios and key components of an early concept assistive robotic environment developed by CUiMSE.

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storage for equipment, supplies

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