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ECE
Day
W. Graham Rumble ’06 C&F
 On
Oct. 30, the College of Engineering celebrated its 17th Annual Electrical
and Computer Engineering Day in the Villanova Room, Connelly Center. Every
year a day is set aside for ECE students, ECE faculty, alumni and many
friends to gather at Villanova to discuss interesting technologies, student
projects and careers. This year’s ECE Day was conducted by Dr. S.S.
Rao, ECE Chairman and Ed Dougherty was the ECE Day Coordinator. The topic
for the event was systems engineering and how it is applied to the latest
homeland security systems. The presentations included the future of intelligent
autonomous robot teams, and the type of creative thinking that is needed
to design systems in the face of the unknown.
There were many presenters at the event. Terry Gibson, from the Science
Applications International Corporation, began with a chilling story; he
was supposed to be on one of the flights Sept. 11, 2001 that crashed into
the World Trade Center. He missed his flight because of a schedule conflict,
and the next day, he devoted his career to developing systems for homeland
security. He said, “I committed myself to take this imaging technology
and help address the very scary problem that exists.” His presentation
showed the many lapses in the container security programs of the United
States. He was followed by William Crowder with the Logistics Management
Institute, who gave a presentation on applied out-of-the-box thinking.
After the presentations were finished, the senior students were given
an opportunity to share their upcoming senior projects with the presenters.
ECE day is a wonderful opportunity for the presenters to share their expertise
with the seniors. It is hoped that through such discussions the students
will obtain practical insight that will aid them in the performance of
their projects.
Ken Salter, executive director of Systems Engineering for Walt Disney
Imagineering gave the final presentation following dinner. He shared many
new exciting and complex systems he has brought to life around the world.
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