School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Air travel can be made safer with artificial intelligence guarding against human error. That’s the vision of Andrew Dassonville, an engineering senior at Oregon State University, who recently took second place in a national airport design competition.

Human error is the leading cause of commercial airline crashes and general aviation accidents, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Dassonville, who studies computer science and robotics, zeroed in on radio communications as one source of human error where AI can provide a critical safety check.

Dassonville was awarded second place in the runway safety category at the 2022 ACRP University Design Competition, which challenges students to create innovative solutions for issues facing airports and the National Airspace System. The competition is sponsored by the Airport Cooperative Research Program, part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Transportation Research Board.

In Dassonville’s design, an artificial intelligence-based system constantly “listens in” on radio exchanges between pilots and air traffic controllers, looking for discrepancies in communication, such as readback errors. Suppose, for example, a controller instructs aircraft ABC to climb and maintain 8,000 feet, but the pilot reads back 9,000 feet. The eavesdropping AI would catch the error and avert potential disaster.

“This system is capable of identifying that discrepancy and would alert the controller that the aircraft might not be doing what they’re expecting,” Dassonville said.

Dassonville, an avid pilot who discovered his passion for flying though the Oregon State Flying Club, saw the competition as a perfect overlap of his interests in aviation and computer science.

“As a pilot, safety is always on your mind, and you’re taking on some risk whenever you take off,” Dassonville said. “Being able to use my skills that I’ve learned at Oregon State through computer science in order to help mitigate risks in aviation is pretty cool.”

Kiri Wagstaff, associate research professor of computer science at Oregon State, advised Dassonville on the project.

“Andrew is an outstanding student and pilot,” Wagstaff said. “As a pilot myself, I’m very excited about Andrew’s concept, and I have thoroughly enjoyed discussing AI, flying adventures, and flight training with him.”

After graduating, Dassonville plans on a career that involves aviation.

“I’d love a career that combines computer science, robotics, and aviation,” he said. “It could be something that involves self-flying planes, autopilot technologies, or aviation instruments.”

Some of the reasons Andrew Dassonville loves being a pilot.

Gabor Temes and wife Ibi — Gabor Temes and his wife Ibi accept his lifetime achievement award at the ISCAS Conference in Austin, Texas. Photo (c) 2022 Lucero Valle Archuleta. www.lucerocreativestudio.com.

Gabor Temes, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Oregon State University, received the IEEE International Circuits and Systems Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his “contributions to delta-sigma converters, analog filters and signal processing, and engineering education.”

His work has improved technologies like cellphones and medical devices, and his mentorship of more than 100 students has multiplied the impact of his work.

Among his many awards, Temes received the nation’s highest professional distinction for engineers in 2015, when he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. He was also named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2020.

Temes earned his undergraduate degrees at the Technical University and Eotvos University in Budapest, Hungary, from 1948 to 1956, and his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Ottawa, Canada, in 1961.

Prior to arriving at Oregon State in 1990, he held academic positions at the Technical University of Budapest, Stanford University, and UCLA. He also worked in industry at Northern Electric R&D Laboratories (now Bell-Northern Research) and Ampex Corp.

“Any achievements of mine are largely thanks to the excellence of my students and the support I received from my school and industry over many years,” Temes said upon receiving the award at the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems.

Learn more about Temes in “An Interview with Professor Gabor C. Temes” in the IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine.

For the 15th year in a row, Pacific Power has awarded a grant to Oregon State University for engineering scholarships. To date, more than 100 students have received Pacific Power scholarships, which help future engineers obtain their degrees, especially in electrical and computer engineering.

“We believe in the power of education to create a lifetime of opportunity,” said Stefan Bird, president and CEO of Pacific Power, in an article about the company’s latest round of grants.

Eduardo Cotilla-Sanchez, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and associate head for graduate programs in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, has seen how the scholarships provide benefits for his students.

He regularly takes his classes on field trips to learn about the power system equipment at Pacific Power facilities, where employees, including some Oregon State alumni, show students how the equipment operates.

“Our courses in power and energy systems provide a strong foundation to tackle problems that electrical and computer engineering graduates will encounter in the utilities industry,” Cotilla-Sanchez said. “Partners like Pacific Power are instrumental in translating the application of, for example, power system protection concepts, by facilitating co-curricular activities.”

Jeffrey Chu, a postbaccalaureate computer science student at Oregon State University, had a perfectly fine career as an attorney. After earning a law degree in 2016 from the University of Texas at Austin, Chu worked first as a felony prosecutor, then as a civil litigator.

He liked his job but came to realize that it wasn’t his passion.

Outside the courtroom, Chu’s time was occupied not only with preparing his cases, but also with a ton of monotonous data entry tasks.

“The worst was tracking billing hours,” he said. “I had to keep track of what I was doing every six minutes.”

Chu, who lives in Houston, was working every weekend and didn’t get many days off. In order to make better use of his time, he decided to teach himself to automate some of the mundane tasks. That’s when he fell in love with programming.

Around the same time, one of Chu’s friends completed a six-month coding boot camp and told him about job offers he had received, which motivated Chu even more to make a career switch. Though he could have chosen to attend a boot camp, Chu researched his options and decided he needed a computer science degree.

“I thought the best opportunity for me was to pursue a CS degree, to get a strong foundation and give myself more time to absorb the concepts,” he said.

The degree and the foundation, Chu believed, would help him develop a career as a software engineer, not just a coder. He also realized that a computer science program would give him the opportunity to pursue internships, which would in turn give him an advantage in obtaining a full-time job.

Making an informed decision

Chu dove in to researching online computer science programs.

“One thing you learn in law school is the ability to look for things and do it efficiently,” he said. “So I was pretty confident in my ability to make an informed decision after I did all my research.”

Chu liked Oregon State’s program because he wouldn’t have to take, or retake, core curriculum classes. He could dive in to computer science classes right away. He also perused LinkedIn and found that Oregon State alumni had jobs everywhere: big tech companies, small companies, and startups.

What really convinced him to choose Oregon State was the online community he found in the student-led Slack channel, where anyone can ask questions and many will share their perspectives. Students and alumni constantly interact over a wide range of topics — including classes, interviews, career choices, and professional development opportunities.

“There were great reviews about the program there,” Chu said. “And people were so helpful, building each other up and giving advice. Other programs I looked at didn’t have that sense of community.”

A funny thing happened on the way to a degree

Though Chu quit his job as an attorney to become a full-time student in 2020, he landed a full-time cybersecurity job in 2021, while still pursuing his computer science degree. Chu thought cybersecurity would be an interesting path, and a friend connected him with another friend who worked in the field, who ultimately offered him a job.

Chu has since decided that cybersecurity isn’t the field for him. He anticipates graduating in December 2022, two years after beginning the program. In the meantime, he recently finished an internship at Amazon in Washington, D.C., and is currently on a second internship at Ford in Dearborn, Michigan.

“I’m the type of person who just likes to try multiple things and see what sticks,” he said.

Jeffrey Chu’s interview tips for career-changers

Even before he started the online postbaccalaureate program in computer science, Jeffrey Chu was a fan of the student-led Slack community. During his time at Oregon State University, Chu has been an active participant in the channel, including the following, his contribution to a recent discussion about getting through a technical interview.

To give you some perspective and to contrast with some stories here, my very first tech interview went well and I got an offer for an internship after. My first year at OSU I had major imposter syndrome and didn’t apply to any internships so I was pretty stressed going into this year’s internship recruiting season as it will be my final one (hopefully). I think I owe my success to mostly luck, but there are some things I did to reduce uncertainties.

Get familiar with the interview process.
- Essentially, know how the interview will go. (Will it be purely behavioral? Two tech questions, one behavioral? Only tech questions?)
- There are a lot of anecdotes from people who have interviewed with some companies in the past if you do some research online.
Reach out to people you may know who work for the company.
- Being older, leverage the professional network you have already built.
- Even if that person doesn’t work in a tech role, they can probably put you in touch with someone who does to get some insight into how the interview may go or what it’s like working there.
Do Pramp/mock behavioral AND technical interviews.
- Practice doing LC-style questions while speaking out loud while someone watches over you and judges you. When I did my first mock tech interview I floundered on an easy merge intervals question just because I wasn’t used to the pressure.
- Behavioral wise, practicing the STAR method out loud is much more difficult than in your head.
It’s not always about getting the right/optimal answer on tech questions.
- Interviewers want to see your thought process, how you bounce back from setbacks, and how you take direction.
- Sometimes you have to get the right answer though.

Students in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, along with their family and friends, commemorated their graduation during the school’s graduation celebration on June 10, 2022.

“Our last in-person celebration was in 2019, so it was great to see how happy everyone was to watch the students walk across the stage and be recognized for their achievements,” said Gaulke Professor and School Head Tom Weller.

Oregon State University alumna Nadia Payet, who earned a Ph.D. in computer science in 2011 and is the Senior Engineering Manager for Navigation on Google Maps, shared words of wisdom for the graduates.

After losing her younger sister to cancer in 2017, Payet changed her outlook on life and offered three lessons:

Nadia Payet delivers her speech to the graduates — Alumna Nadia Payet delivered the keynote speech at the 2022 EECS graduation celebration. Watch the entire event on YouTube.

Figure out what you want. It’s not what your parents or society wants for you. After her sister died, Payet shifted her focus from solely building a career to building more meaningful relationships. “I still love the successful career,” she said. “Because I listen more carefully now, I’m just a more human leader; someone who truly cares and puts her people first.”

Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today. She urged the graduates to pretend they don’t have all the time in the world to get things done. “I remind myself that we don’t have forever, so let’s make today count,” Payet said.

Lead with empathy and kindness. “Leadership is taking care of yourself, and empowering others to do the same,” she said, and advised the audience to practice gratitude as a path toward leading with empathy and kindness.

The graduation celebration also recognized faculty, staff, and students with awards.

Outstanding Staff Member of the Year
Awarded to Calvin Hughes, assistant director for graduate programs, this honor is given to an individual who goes above and beyond their duties to help students. They always have an open door for questions, even with work sprawled across their desk.

Innovative Teaching Award
This award is presented to a faculty member who brings a new edge to the classroom. These individuals make learning fun and help enhance students’ understanding of the material through new techniques. Instructor Rob Hess received the award for computer science. Professor David Allstot and Senior Instructor Roger Traylor both received the award for electrical and computer engineering.

Faculty of the Year
Computer science professor Mike Bailey received this award which is given to a faculty member who inspires students both inside the classroom and out. The passion and pride they take in their teaching and their subject matter is evident in everything they do.

Sophomore of the Year
Julian Henry was the recipient of this award from Eta Kappa Nu, the honor society for electrical and computer engineering students.

Undergraduate Learning Assistants of the Year
Computer science students James Taylor and Andrew Kamand took home these honors. Taylor, who was among the 2022 graduates, was a learning assistant for multiple classes. Kamand, an online postbaccalaureate student in computer science, served as a learning assistant for an Introduction to Databases course.

EECS Outstanding Dissertation Award
Shashini De Silva, a doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering, received this award for her thesis, “Secure Data Analytics under Data Integrity Attacks.” De Silva was advised by Assistant Professor Jinsub Kim.

Robert Short Graduate Teaching Assistant of the Year
This award, established in honor of Robert Short, was a professor of electrical engineering and the founding chairman of the computer science department, to encourage students to consider a career in academia. Shane Allen, a master’s degree student in electrical and computer engineering, was the recipient of the award.

Dmytro Shabanov and Harry Herzberg — Oregon State University students Dmytro Shabanov (left) and Harry Herzberg are working on a startup company to help students get better grades.

Two Oregon State University students are winning entrepreneurship awards as part of the team developing Alerty, a mobile app to help students — especially those with ADHD — perform better in class.

Most recently, the team won the Social Entrepreneurship Award at the TiE University Global Pitch Competition and was one of 30 teams to advance to the semifinal round, out of some 1,400 accepted into the competition.

Harry Herzberg, a senior in computer science, and Dmytro Shabanov, a senior in finance and marketing, are joined on the Alerty team by their business partners Jade Zavsklavsky, Artemis Kearny, Nicholas Craycraft, Alexander Victoria Trujillo, and Freya Crowe.

The Alerty app transcribes class lectures in real time to help students not only to review content, but also to see what they might have just missed.

Herzberg explained that students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder may unintentionally lose focus in class and — because college courses are often fast-paced, with information that builds upon itself — quickly get left behind.

“I’ve had many classes where I’ve missed the teacher talking about the homework assignment, or a key point,” said Herzberg, who has ADHD. “Then I’m spending the entire day or even weeks trying to catch up, just because I missed that one important point.”

Herzberg got the idea for Alerty when he was in high school. His sister worked as a paraeducator who assisted students with learning disabilities by sitting with them in class, giving them one-on-one support.

“I wanted to make something that people would want to use as a tool, without drawing attention to themselves,” Herzberg said.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when classes were being taught asynchronously online, Herzberg liked that he was able to go back and replay the lectures and absorb concepts he may have missed in real time.

“I was able to get better grades and even made the Dean’s List because I was able to go back and replay, slow down, and speed up the videos,” he said.

Alerty is a two-way street. The instructor must use the app in order for students to use it themselves. When the instructor makes an important point, they press a button on the app, which alerts students with a vibration on their phones or tablets. The app also highlights the corresponding part of the transcript in blue.

After class, students can review the lecture and, if necessary, select a portion of the transcript to ask the instructor for clarification. This feature also helps instructors to see where students are struggling over certain concepts.

The app can help many other students as well, including those who have different learning styles, English language learners, and those who have difficulty hearing.

In addition to the TiE award, Alerty earned second place in the College of Business’s Launch Academy competition, and a grant from the 1517 Fund.

Shabanov, who is responsible for the company’s business strategy, marketing, and financial planning, is working on obtaining additional funding.

Mike Bailey, professor of computer science, beta-tested Alerty in one of his classes during spring term. “For those who have difficulty focusing and taking notes in class, I think this could be a game-changer,” he said.

Watch a demonstration of the Alerty app.

Siddarth Rai Mahendra, a doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering at Oregon State University, was honored with a Top 10 Presenter Award at the Semiconductor Research Corporation’s TECHCON 2021 conference. The conference showcases cutting-edge research being conducted in areas that will shape semiconductor technology over the next decade.

Mahendra’s presentation, “A Compact and Broadband On-Chip Delay Line Design Based on the Bridged T-Coil,” was selected from over 150 student presentations.

Mahendra, who is an SRC Research Scholar, is advised by Professor Andreas Weisshaar. His research is sponsored by SRC through the Center for Design of Analog-Digital Integrated Circuits.

Mahendra earned a bachelor’s degree in electronics and communication engineering from DA-IICT in India, and a master’ degree in integrated circuit design from National Taipei University in Taiwan. Before coming to Oregon State, he worked as an IC design engineer in Taiwan and in IIT Bombay, India.

SRC is the world’s leading non-profit industry-government-academia microelectronics research consortium funding academic research tasks selected and directed by industry and government members.

Jacob Cook is the definition of an overachiever. This spring he had the rare distinction of graduating with not one but two honors bachelor’s degrees from the College of Engineering at Oregon State University, in bioengineering and electrical and computer engineering, as well as a minor in computer science.

“Successful completion of a dual degree requires unparalleled dedication and discipline to meet requirements for both programs,” said Matthew Johnston, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering.

Cook’s achievements were recognized with the Burgess/Tektronix Award, given each year by the College of Engineering to a senior who has demonstrated exceptional participation in activities beyond academic performance.

In addition to excelling in two challenging academic programs, Cook also completed a MECOP internship, participated in research for two different labs, served as both an undergraduate learning assistant and a resident assistant, and was an active community member.

“Jacob’s dedication and productive contributions to multiple hands-on research programs is remarkable, and it speaks to his future potential for contributions to the industry,” Johnston said.

Although he put in a huge amount of work on his own, Cook says he was lucky to have had tremendous support from his family.

“Both my parents are computer engineers who taught me great perseverance and an intense work ethic,” he said. “They raised me to do my best and encouraged me to go to college. Likewise, my grandfather was a businessman who taught me the importance of leadership and interpersonal skills for success. I cannot imagine where I would be without my family, and I wouldn’t have received this award without their help.”

The Burgess/Tektronix Award was initiated in 1990 to honor Fred Burgess, past dean of the College of Engineering. Cook received a plaque and a check for $500 and will be recognized at the fall College of Engineering Celebrate Excellence event in the fall.

Eta Kappa Nu at Oregon State University is an honor society for electrical and computer engineering majors through IEEE. At the end of each school year, the club recognizes two students with awards. This year winners were Yeojin Kim for the Robert Short TA of the Year award, and Noah Koontz for the Sophomore of the Year award.

Robert Short TA of the Year: Yeojin Kim

Yeojin Kim was born and grew up in Seoul, South Korea. She went to college at Sogang University where she completed a double undergraduate degree in computer science and engineering, and mathematics. She also worked as an intern for Naver, a South Korean web search engine, and as a software engineer for Qualcomm in Korea. She has served as a mentor for the Institute of International Education’s program Women Enhancing Technology to help female undergraduates studying in STEM fields.

“It is a great honor to receive this award. Sharing things I’ve learned with others during TA activities was one of the most pleasing moments,” Kim said.

Sophomore of the Year: Noah Koontz

Noah Koontz has been fascinated with the fusion of hardware and software from an early age. In middle school he got his first Arduino and attempted to build an open-source laser tag system with it.

“I’ve been a maker ever since,” he said.

At Oregon State, he has been working at the Open Sensing Lab, which has allowed him to apply his passion and skills to solve real-world problems in agriculture — building internet-connected devices for farmers and researchers to monitor their crops.

“I will continue to seize opportunities to work with embedded systems and solve real-world problems, hopefully having fun along the way,” Koontz said.

Laurel Hopkins was awarded the Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology fellowship to support her doctoral research to improve species distribution models. The models link environmental variables to species occurrences and are useful tools for science and conservation.

Hopkins, a graduate student of computer science in the College of Engineering at Oregon State, was inspired by a class project in which she was modeling butterfly occurrences. She realized she could improve species distribution models using deep learning methods to analyze satellite images.

“Deep learning methods are incredibly powerful in extracting semantic information from images, meaning these techniques are well suited to analyze remotely sensed data,” she said.

She will use a large dataset of NASA Landsat images to train deep networks which, based on preliminary results, she expects will produce habitat summaries that are more descriptive than traditional methods, and lead to more informative species distribution models.

Hopkins will publicly share the image library and deep network architectures so other researchers can use them to advance ecological research.

The award is for $135,000 to support her research under the guidance of Rebecca Hutchinson, assistant professor of computer science, and of fisheries and wildlife.

“I am thrilled to be working towards better understanding how we can limit our footprint and help support biodiversity,” Hopkins said. “It is phenomenal to get this support from NASA because it means that they understand the need and importance of this area of work.”

OSU EECS News

News from the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Oregon State University

Tag Archives: School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Student envisions AI for safer skies, takes home prize

Temes honored for lifetime achievement

Pacific Power continues longstanding support for engineering students

Breaking free, with a CS degree

Making an informed decision

A funny thing happened on the way to a degree

Jeffrey Chu’s interview tips for career-changers

Electrical engineering and computer science students celebrate their graduation

Graduate student wins top 10 nod at semiconductor research conference

Senior wins award, recognizes family support

Honor society recognizes outstanding students

Robert Short TA of the Year: Yeojin Kim

Sophomore of the Year: Noah Koontz

Graduate student receives NASA fellowship to improve ecological models

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