May 2014 Update

Quick update on things that have happened over the past 18 months.

• Finished coursework at Wilkes University; I'll be graduating on the 17th with my major in Electrical Engineering and three minors.
• Received two awards at school's award ceremony: one from our IEEE branch and one from the engineering department.
• Offered positions at three different engineering companies and offered fully funded position as a graduate student at Wilkes.
• Accepted offer from Boeing to work in electronic warfare at facility in St. Louis, MO.

So I'll be moving out to the "show me" state shortly to begin working at Boeing. I've talked to Boeing about graduate school and they offer to pay for any advanced degree at a rate of up to $25,000 annually so long as it is related to my position.

Exciting stuff.

Reflection Paper

Power Grid Failure Reflection Paper

REU NSF Summer 2012

University of Texas at Arlington

Ryan Habib

My experience at the University of Texas at Arlington REU program was very enjoyable and interesting. Working alongside professors and graduate students has been a great way for me to learn about how research is done in academia, which is very important if I decide to continue my education further than a bachelor’s degree. I had the privilege to work with some fantastic people here at UTA, including Dr. Lee and two of his Ph. D. students: Zhaohao Ding and Zhenyuan Zhang. Along with my partner, Huy Tran, we were able to learn a lot from these individuals, both in terms of knowledge and work ethic.

The purpose of this experience was primarily to get acquainted with the research environment. Throughout the experience, we worked on a project with the grad students entitled “Arc Flash Safety.” Before beginning to work on this project we needed to learn quite a bit about how control systems are designed and used. Being on the campus of a major research institution proved useful here, in that we had no trouble finding resources that would help us throughout the process.

The REU experience was unique from any part experience in that I was able to work in a research environment for the first time, in an opportunity that wouldn’t be possible at my current school. Being able to see the day-to-day life of the Ph. D. students should provide me with very useful information for when I weigh my options after my undergraduate degree.

It was also nice to see how the classes I’ve taken so far in my undergraduate studies can be applied to an application like this. Another strength of the program was when we were able to sit down with the grad students and discuss which parts of their undergraduate degrees they felt proved to be the most useful in post-graduate research. In fact, I enjoyed taking every opportunity possible to dissect the brains of the grad students, asking questions ranging from their undergraduate and high school experiences all the way to how

Some other nice things to come from the program were the occasional workshop, where we learned about a specific topic related to research, including ethics and graduate programs. The graduate program was especially interesting because it included a round table discussion with some current grad students where we were able to learn a lot about the commitment that graduate studies can be, both in terms of time and effort. I feel the information gathered here will be the most useful when I decide what my post-bachelor’s degree are.

Overall, the testing seemed a bit lacking in terms of both quality and quantity. It would have been nice to spend more time working with the different parts around the lab. There seemed to be a lack of organization and communication between our superiors and us. Halfway through the project, we were switched from working on a microgrid to the arc flash project. It’s disappointing to see weeks worth of work not find its way into our final presentation due to it being unrelated.

Apart from the research, there were some other great experiences here in Texas. As a group, we went to see some interesting attractions around the city, including a tour of Cowboys Stadium and a trip to Six Flags over Texas. I got to meet people from all over the nation and the world, and was able to share experiences with them. It was interesting seeing how other people’ college experiences can be both similar and different from mine. It was also exciting to see other peoples’ plans for the future, though it seemed everybody was infinitely surer of their futures than me.

Overall, I was pleased with my experiences here at the University of Texas at Arlington. While not all my expectations were met, I feel that I still learned enough about the research process that I’m not disappointed at all. I was able to meet some talented and driven people here and share experiences with them that will help me develop as both an engineer and a person. I can only hope the knowledge gained here will prove to be useful in both my undergraduate studies as well as my post-college career. I feel my experience here will help drive me to achieve greater things, either in the world of research or not, and that alone is all I could ever desire from this.

July 16 - July 20 Recap

July 16

Final Day of Testing

Picking up where we left off last Friday, we continued the tests with the thermocouples. We also spent some time planning out what our presentation would look like now that we had some more information.

July 17

Reflection Paper

Upon the completion of the tests yesterday, we commenced work on our reflection paper. I'll post the completed copy at the end of the month. The grad student is out of town the rest of the week, so we're on our own for now.

July 18

Reflection Paper, Poster

Similarly to yesterday, we worked on our reflection paper for most of the day, as well as collaborated on what our poster would look like.

July 19

Reflection Paper, Poster

Today I finished up my reflection paper. It took longer than hoped since I completely ignored the rubric on the first draft and had to rewrite most of it. We also began writing the text posts for the poster, as well as deciding which pictures to include.

July 20

Poster, Powerpoint

While my partner took control of the production of the poster, I spent the day beginning work on the powerpoint. After reviewing the presentations from last year's students, I began outlining what I'd want it to look like. I also gathered some more information from outside sources that we could use in both the powerpoint and the poster.

July 9 - July 13 Recap (Picture Version)

Plan of attack

Plan of attack v2

Type K Thermocouple

7B47 Signal Conditioner

Assembling 7B47 Setup

GL800

Assembling GL800

Completed Setup

July 9 - July 13 Recap

July 9

Setup

We spent the day testing the equipment to make sure it was still working, as some of the materials appear as though they haven't been used in 20 years.We got a quick explanation of how everything works from the grad students before trying anything out. We also began to formulate how our end-of-project presentation/poster would look like, seeing as this whole thing is already over half over I suppose it was a good time to get started on that.

July 10

Cowboys Stadium Tour

Instead of heading to the lab today, my amigo and I trekked with the rest of our undergraduates to the home of the Dallas Cowboys to see the 2 billion dollar palace in the desert. It was an exciting experience, especially because I got to recreate my favorite moment in Dallas Cowboys history.

Doing Research

July 11

Setup

A continuation of what happened on Monday. We also ran some early tests with the thermocouple. It appears as though there is a lot of variance between the temperature readings on the multiple thermocouples, including differences of at least 10 degrees F. It's a good thing for our actual test we plan on using 7 or 8 thermocouples to counteract this. It's interesting to note that the range on the thermocouples appears to be 0 to 600 degrees C, so it may have issues distinguishing between differences of a few degrees.

July 12

Preliminary Testing

Today we started fooling around with the thermocouples a bit more. We finally transferred our first sets of data from the GL800 data logger to the computer after some hassles with that. The GL800 transferred the data to my computer as a .csv file, which WinRAR didn't know how to handle. Eventually, we were able to get the GL800 to send over the data as an excel worksheet and were able to see the data come up on the computer.

July 13

First Day of Testing

We started doing some tests with our newly functioning DAQ system. All of the components were working as expected, and the data seemed to match what wold be expected. We'll talk with the grad students on Monday to see what more things we can do with our system, as today's tests were rather elementary.

July 2 - July 6 Recap

July 2

Studying

Most of today was spent looking over the materials for the arc flash project, these included a type K thermocouple, a signal conditioning module, and a data logger. For the interested, some more information on the thermocouple can be found here, information on the signal conditioning module here, and data logger information here.

July 3

Studying, Meeting

Similar to Monday, today we spent more time in the morning reviewing the components mentioned in the above paragraph. In the afternoon, we met with the grad student to talk about the project some more. In the meeting, we discussed what each part does, as well as what its role in the project is. He gathered the materials needed for the project together so we could look over them a bit before using them.

July 4

Independence Day

Instead of going to the lab today to do more studying, we observed Independence Day and stayed at home and watched Will Smith beat up aliens.

July 5

Studying

Today we were supposed to start on the data recording part of the project, but the grad student was busy. Instead, we continued reviewing the information from earlier in the week. Not much else to report.

July 6

Graduate Studies Workshop

There was a workshop today in which we listened to a few lectures on the benefits of graduate school. We also had a round table discussion with some current grad students, and another "discussion" with the leaders of some of the engineering clubs. The second discussion is in quotes because there wasn't much discussing happening. At the end, a lady from the Society of Women Engineers came over to talk to me. "We let men join too." Not convincing.

In the afternoon, we had some more lectures regarding publishing papers in journals, going to conferences, and things like that. In all honesty, the only thing interesting was the discussion with current grad students about what grad school was like. It was supposed to last about 45 minutes, but went on for over an hour before being inorganically halted by the organizers for some other presentation.

Finally, we ran into our grad student to discuss a course of action for Monday, it seems like we're going to start setting up the experiment part of the project. About time.

June 25 - June 29 Recap

June 25

LabVIEW

With the program fully installed on my computer, I spent the majority of the day learning the basics of LabVIEW. With occasional assistance from the grad student, I worked my way through some of the tutorials built into the program. LabVIEW comes equipped with about 20 different practice topics, each divided further into a few smaller chapters. These chapters consist of approximately 25 slides of notes and a few practice situations at the end. It took all day to get through about 4 of these. Needless to say, this will take some time.

June 26

LabVIEW, Meeting

Tuesday began similar to Monday did, making further progress with the tutorial program. In the afternoon, the grad student showed me and the other undergrad around the lab a bit, introducing us to some of the equipment, as well as how it's used. At the end of the day, the professor held a meeting that included the other grad students working under him as well as my partner and I. The meeting served as a progress report for each of the six grad students and their projects. At the end, the professor talked to my partner and I about lab safety and showed us a news report of a guy getting his face melted off from unsafe lab conditions.

June 27

LabVIEW, Meeting

Reminiscent of that Bill Murray film Groundhog Day, Wednesday was almost a carbon copy of Tuesday, except the meeting was in the morning and didn't involve people getting their faces melted off. After the meeting we worked on more LabVIEW tutorials. In the afternoon, the grad student gave us some situations he came up with to test our new skills. We got to take data off of the microgrid in the corner of the room, and had to use a few different methods of displaying it. After making some progress, 5 o'clock arrives and we agree to finish the rest of it tomorrow.

June 28

LabVIEW, Lecture

We begin the day where we left off yesterday, trying to get the data off of the microgrid and onto the graph on LabVIEW. By lunch time we have finally finished this task. In the afternoon, the grad student gives us a lecture on a few of the things going on in the project. Topics covered ranged from circuit theory and power generation to some tips in LabVIEW to make our lives easier. Time spent with the grad student seems to be infinitely more efficient than with the LabVIEW tutorial. At the end of the day, he assigns us what would be our final practice situation with LabVIEW, combining data from multiple modules on the microgrid on one graph.

June 29

LabVIEW, Discussion

The task that was assigned on Thursday ends up taking our entire morning, but thanks to some of the tips we learned from our lecture yesterday, we were able to complete it in a timely manner. After lunch, the grad student reviewed our worked and pointed out some more places we could have improved our code. At the end of the day, we got a surprise visit from a grad student working on a different project, informing us that we were going to be working on his project from now on, since it would be more hands-on and be better for our end-of-program project (a report and poster). For the weekend, we are given new tasks, learning about thermocouples and the signal conditioning methods used to interpret their output. Hopefully we can still use what we learned from the last two weeks on this new project.