A day in the life of Engineers Without Borders students in Guatemala

Engineers WIthout Borders at UWM work on an environmental engineering project in Guatemala to help residents get cleaner drinking water

By Nathaniel Wurzer, Co-Chair, Engineers Without Borders at UWM

It’s still dark outside, but the day is peaking at the edge of the world. As you get up, the smell of smoke from the fire in the kitchen greets you. You know there is water boiling for coffee & tea and oatmeal with honey, raisins, and fresh bananas. After getting ready for the day, it is time to work. And what a place to work! On a mountain ridge in Guatemala, surrounded by rainforest and farmland, clouds in the valley below, with eagles flying at your eye level and the sun shining down on your shoulders. We have a team that meets with residents, taking a survey with conversation about the work being done, the design team obtains survey data and records as-builts, and another team works on the concrete structures. At the break for lunch, a resident and her children bring a basket of tortillas and chili sauce. It packs a punch!

Students gathered together.

After lunch, some curious kids come to watch the work. They have slingshots and are happy to teach you how to use them. When the workday is done, everybody plays a game of futbol (soccer). Sports are universal; the language barrier disappears. Dinner is prepared by the longtime mentor, chef Heckman. He knows what he’s doing, and you can kick back until after-dinner chores. The sunset turns mountains to silhouettes but silence never stays. Gasoline generators have graced even here. The group revisits the events of the day and prepares for the next. Sleep comes easy. 

Engineers Without Borders at UWM

Engineers Without Borders at UW-Milwaukee is an awesome student organization, providing involvement opportunities for students who are seeking experience and want to do something positive. We work to facilitate water infrastructure construction in communities of the Ixil Triangle of Guatemala, create community at UW-Milwaukee, and value connecting individuals across the globe to share experiences. 

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Identifying most common patterns in highway accidents; WisDOT awards Qin $75K to improve data analysis of crashes

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation awarded $75,000 to Xiao Qin for a 10-month project that aims to improve the state’s highway safety by further improving data analysis related to crashes. Qin is a Lawrence E. Sivak ’71 professor of civil & environmental engineering in UWM’s College of Engineering & Applied Science and director of the university’s Institute for Physical Infrastructure and Transportation.

“Our goal is to identify the most common patterns in crash sequences,” Qin said.

To do this, Md Abu Sayed (PhD Civil & Environmental Engineering ‘22) and Qin will develop an algorithm that automatically extracts data from crash narratives. These narratives are written by law enforcement officers and detail the sequence of driver actions and vehicle movements preceding, during and following a crash. They often include information related to human behavior, which contributes to between 80 and 90 percent of crashes.

“The details found in crash narratives shed light on opportunities for effective safety interventions,” Qin said. The problem, he said, is that such data is not easily captured.

Work builds off nationally-funded, $100K project on crash narratives

The work builds upon Qin’s $100,000 project with WisDOT in 2021, research that was funded through the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration. In that project, Qin and Sayed used technologies (including machine learning, natural language processing and feature extraction) to capture and analyze valuable information from unstructured data, such as crash narratives, that relate to human behavior.

WisDOT awards Qin $75K; team will use popular bicycling apps to ID state’s most dangerous roads for cyclists

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation awarded $75,000 to Xiao Qin for a 10-month project to use crowdsourced data to estimate bicycle volumes on roadways statewide. Qin is a Lawrence E. Sivak ’71 professor of civil & environmental engineering in UWM’s College of Engineering & Applied Science and director of the university’s Institute for Physical Infrastructure and Transportation.

Wisconsin currently does not have a systematic way to glean bicyclist activity on specific roads, although it is key to improving safety and prioritizing infrastructure improvements.  

Team will use popular apps among cyclists to ID Wisconsin’s most dangerous roads

Working with UWM’s Robert Schneider, professor, urban planning, Qin will use crowdsourced data from popular smartphone apps including Strava and CycleTracks. Cyclists use such apps to map and log their routes and can make the information public.

Qin and Schneider will pair the crowdsourced data with land-use and socio-economic data to develop two tools: a roadway-segment level bicycle volume prediction model and a bicycle ridership map.

By integrating bike data with motor vehicle crash data involving bicycles, bicycle injury risk also will be analyzed and mapped, including the identification of the most dangerous roadway segments for cyclists.

Crowdsourced data could improve safety

Traditional bike data collection methods are expensive, labor intensive and time-consuming, Qin said. By comparison, crowdsourced data collection could provide cost-effective, broad geographic coverage of bicyclists’ activity. It has been used by several other state departments of transportation to analyze bicyclists’ route choice behavior, bicycle count distributions, and bicycle safety, Qin says.

Bicycling has gained popularity in Wisconsin but presents safety concerns for riders on public roadways. Statistics from 2017-2021 show that 1.29% of bicycle crashes are fatal and 10.58% produce serious injuries. Improving safety for non-motorists is one of the top 10 priorities listed in the Wisconsin Strategic Highway Safety Plan, which includes all roadways in the state.

UWM engineering students pitch in to inspire girls to pursue STEM

On March 5, three undergraduate students who are enrolled in the new class Topics in Engineering & Applied Science: STEM Outreach volunteered at Discovery World Girls & STEM, an interactive event that drew 2,000 visitors.

“We helped close to 200 girls and their family members make little circuits to light up pictures that they drew,” said Chris Beimborn, STEM outreach manager for UWM’s College of Engineering & Applied Science. The event aims to inspire girls to pursue STEM fields through interactions and conversations with female role models.

The class is taught by Sarah Blackowski, assistant professor of engineering education, with outreach fieldwork coordinated by Beimborn.

Park brings $1 million research project on eco-friendly circuit breakers to UWM

Chanyeop Park, assistant professor, electrical engineering, has brought to UWM a $1 million research project from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a clean alternative to the world’s most potent greenhouse gas—SF6.

As the nation looks to strengthen and upgrade its grid, it will be critical to phase out equipment that uses SF6, or sulfur hexafluoride. The man-made gas—an excellent insulator used primarily by electric utilities to manage electricity’s flow in high-voltage circuit breakers—is extremely bad for the environment, Park says. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, it is 22,800 times worse for the climate than carbon dioxide. It enters the atmosphere through equipment leaks and remains for 3,200 years.

Park is working with Georgia Tech researchers, who lead the nearly $4 million project from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to develop and test a prototype of a three-phase SF6-free AC high-voltage circuit breaker.

The team will test the prototypes throughout the project. In late summer or fall, Park will initially test a reduced-scale prototype at UWM; in the final year of the project, a full-scale prototype will be tested at KEMA Labs, in Chalfont, PA.

The project includes a plan to transfer the technology to market.

As professionals in multiple fields upgrade tech skills, UWM’s MS Computer Science enrollment sets record

Joseph Layden had no formal computer science education when he began earning his master’s of computer science degree at UWM. Yet by the time he graduated, he had created an app in his capstone research project called SlippAway—a tool for Lake Michigan boaters to locate open marina slips capable of accommodating the size and power requirements of their boats for a day, a week or even the entire season. He plans to market it.

Layden was one of 24 final-year computer science master’s student who recently presented their capstone research projects in which, under the supervision of a faculty mentor, they applied what they learned to a technical problem of their choice.

While many of these master’s students have earned their undergraduate degrees in computer science, an increasing number have not. Current students hold undergraduate degrees in such fields as meteorology, music education, English and film studies. Layden had earned his undergraduate degree from UWM in information science and technology.

During their capstone presentations, students spoke about the reasons they enrolled in either the professional track (for people interested in careers including senior software engineer, computer systems analyst, computer network architect and machine learning engineer) or the regular track (which adds career options including computer science professor and computer research scientist and opens the door to earning a doctoral degree).

Professional track is most in-demand program

The majority of students, including Layden, had followed the professional track.

“My goal was to really challenge myself and learn as much as I could,” Layden said. “I had worked freelance as a web developer and database coordinator, and I sought the structure and knowledge a formal education brings.”

Another professional-track student, Marissa Bedard, earned her undergraduate degree in music education from a college in Cleveland. She discovered it was a comfortable switch from studying music to studying computer science topics, such as artificial intelligence.

“There is a lot of overlap between synthesizing a lot of small [musical] pieces in order to make something bigger and learning a new language,” Bedard said.  

Bedard, who graduated in December, said that her employer—Boston-based Alegeus– paid part of her tuition. “It worked out very well for me.”

Before starting his computer science master’s degree, Sam Kersebet worked as a videographer in Door County. While at UWM, he interned at Kohls as a front-end web developer and accepted a full-time job upon his December graduation.

“The graduate program gave me a good groundwork for the future,” he said. “I learned the soft skills and the hard skills.”

Kersebet had earned a bachelor’s degree from UWM in digital arts & culture and selecting a graduate school was easy, he said. “I had chosen UWM for my undergrad because it’s part of a real city with soul to it,” he said. “I thought the education here was worth the value.”

Regular track is program of choice for students pursuing research

Several of the students at Capstone Day had followed the regular track and anticipated earning doctoral degrees or pursuing careers that included research.

Mohit Ramesh and Omana Anne both earned undergraduate degrees in electronics and communication engineering in India. Ramesh said he was drawn to UWM for two reasons.

“First, I saw that it was a top research university,” he said. “When I saw that Satya Nadella graduated from UWM in computer science, I thought ‘Yay!’ ”

Nadella (’90 MS Computer Science) is a UWM alumnus.

Anjali Venugopal also earned her undergraduate degree from India and was eager to graduate in December. “UWM’s program was wonderful” she said, “and I worked with amazing professors.” During her time at UWM, she completed an internship as a software developer with Amazon.

What was next? Before graduating, she was offered a full-time job with the company in Seattle.

Find out what a master’s degree in computer science can do for you

Enrollment has reached an all-time high in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Master of Science in Computer Science program. In 2022, 191 students were enrolled in the program, compared to 110 in 2021. Most students are following the professional track, says Susan McRoy, professor and chair of UWM’s Computer Science Department.   

Earning a master’s degree in computer science, she said, is helping many people, including working professionals, upgrade their skills and break into fields that offer high salaries and multiple career paths.

The regular track, she said, is best suited to students with prior degrees in computer science; students without undergraduate computing degrees may find the professional track more accessible.

Earning a master’s degree typically takes four semesters for those with undergraduate degrees in computer science; five semesters for those without undergraduate degrees in computer science.

Learn more about UWM’s master’s degree program.

First year of diversity internship program finds success for students, employers

Isaac Gonzalez used software that he learned in his engineering courses at UWM to solve a problem in a manufacturing plant.

Work experience like Gonzalez’s is the kind that brought 56 UWM students closer to identifying and starting their careers through an internship program designed to address the need to widen and diversify the talent pipeline in Southeastern Wisconsin and provide meaningful professional experiences to UWM undergraduates.

More.

EnQuest: Global software engineering company promotes UWM’s girls-only engineering camp

UWM’s all-girls engineering camp recently caught the attention of Ansys, a software company that employs 6,000 people worldwide.

In January, Ansys ran a story about the program, called EnQuest, which has addressed the gender ratio in STEM for 12 years. It is offered each summer through UWM’s College of Engineering & Applied Science.

Last summer, the girls completed a computer-modeling activity that improved their understanding of brain aneurysms, or strokes.

Read Anysys’s blog post: Female High School Students Embark on Engineering Quests at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Learn more about EnQuest and sign up to be contacted when 2023 registration opens.

Alumnus Jeff Kautzer named winner of the 2022 GE Edison Award for GE HealthCare

Congratulations to Jeff Kautzer (MS Electrical Engineering ’83, BS Electrical Engineering ’81), a long-time adjunct instructor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UWM and chief electrical engineer, GM Imaging Hardware Platforms, at GE HealthCare.

Kautzer, who holds 30 patents, recently received the 2022 GE Edison Award for career contributions at GE HealthCare. The award, named after Thomas Edison, recognizes the technical excellence, customer impact and organizational citizenship of GE employees.

At GE, Kautzer has been instrumental in developing digital imaging systems (including flat panel X-ray and large multi-slice CT detectors) that are revolutionizing diagnostic medical imaging. He brings his real-world expertise to the classrooms of UWM’s College of Engineering & Applied Science, where he has developed and taught courses—including the Electrical Engineering Capstone course—for 23 years.

Kautzer’s service to the college includes securing funding that helped develop the college’s first Senior Design Project Awards and serving as chair of the Electrical Engineering Department’s Industrial Advisory Committee.

In 2018, STEM Forward named him Engineer of the Year.

Otieno named STEM Forward Engineer of the Year

Wilkistar Otieno, associate professor and department chair, industrial & manufacturing engineering, was named the 2022 STEM Forward Engineer of the Year, an award that recognizes outstanding contributors to the engineering profession from the greater Milwaukee area.  She will receive the award Feb. 15 at the organization’s 70th annual Celebration of STEM banquet.

STEM Forward is a Milwaukee-based non-profit organization that inspires youth to pursue STEM careers.

Otieno was selected from a pool of highly qualified nominees who are committed to advancing the engineering profession and inspiring others. An independent judging panel evaluated and selected the nominees. Past winners have raised the visibility of the profession and the region while serving as role models to many.

Despite the many demands for her attention as a department chair, associate professor and researcher, Otieno devotes significant time to inspiring the next generation of engineers, which increasingly includes students of differing backgrounds. She has a passion for teaching statistical-related courses and inspiring student involvement.

Her industry-driven research involves sustainable manufacturing, particularly remanufacturing and machine learning.

Otieno is co-director of the U.S. Department of Energy Industrial Assessment Center at UWM. At the invitation of the chancellor, she serves as an assistant to the vice chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion on the UWM 2030 Action Plan. She has served in various leadership positions in the Milwaukee’s IEEE section (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). IEEE has sponsored STEM Forward activities for many years; its members serve as judges of the STEM Forward K-12 Smart City competitions, whose winners will be featured during this year’s Celebration of Stem bequest.

In October, UW System presented Otieno with an Outstanding Women of Color in Education award.