FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WOWO): A group of students and faculty from Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW) presented this week at the 20th annual Society for Design and Process Science (SDPS) conference in Dallas, Texas.
SDPS 2015 Dallas celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Society for Design and Process Science. This conference explores the vast possibilities of highly complex systems that emerge from the pervasive, interconnected disciplinary elements of today’s science and technology.
The undergraduate student group from IPFW includes Mitchell Eilerman, Leandra Lee, Charles McIntosh, Josh Weaver, Andres Cobos, and Austin Swihart. McIntosh and Cobos are presenting the results of their research from their senior design projects. The students also heard from notable Nobel Prize winners at the conference including Steven Weinberg and Herbert Simon.
“Senior design projects such as this one provide an excellent hands-on experience to IPFW engineering students on real-life applications that benefit not just the local industry but also society in general,” said Carlos Pomalaza-Ráez, interim dean of the College of Engineering, Technology, and Computer Science (ETCS). “All engineering, engineering technology, and computer science students are required to do a senior design project. Most of these projects are sponsored by the local industry or by external grants from federal and state agencies.”
The student research group is working on IPFW's first electric vehicle, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and IPFW departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Civil and Mechanical Engineering. The technology for the EV, including dc-dc converter, solar system, thermal system and control system, has all been developed and built at IPFW under faculty advisors Abdullah Eroglu, Hossein Oloomi, and Hosni Abu-Mulaweh.
“We plan to have a running electric vehicle at the end of this semester,” said Eroglu. “This is a three-year project where we want to improve our design for EV by developing the required technology.”
