Student Design Engineers at Work
Students seen here breadboarding a simple circuit before committing components to final circuit design.
Faculty | Staff | Current Students | Past Students
Our faculty is devoted to teaching students how to incorporate their work experiences with the Integrated Design Services in such a way to compliment their classroom studies. Faculty are not only extremely involved in student progress, but also in the development of new research and client projects.
Campus Address: |
123 Transportation Research Building |
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Phone: |
814-865-2818 |
Fax: |
814-865-6663 |
Email: |
Click here to email |
Dr. Michael A. Pusateri is the Director of Integrated Design Services and a Senior Research Associate in the College of Engineering at Penn State University. His current research interests are in the fields of signal processing, novel sensors, novel sensor fusion techniques, multispectral vision and image processing algorithms, real-time image and vision processing, and power efficient hardware implementation of algorithms. He is a strong proponent of experiential education and considers student involvement in design projects as the primary academic mission of Integrated Design Services. Michael has taught electrical engineering courses in continuous and discrete linear systems, electromagnetics, and embedded microcontrollers.
Currently, Michael is working on the development of several night vision systems for the Army Night Vision & Electronic Sensors Directorate in partnership with Heatfusion Incorporated. He is assisted in this effort by a team that, over time, has included a total of more than fifteen undergraduate and graduate student employees of Integrated Design Services.
Michael’s team recently finished the second phase of work on the Advanced Digital Multispectral Night Vision Goggles, a prototype featuring stereo intensified visible/near infrared imagers, a short wave infrared imager and a long wave infrared imager. The team researched and tested over 100 candidate algorithms for the goggles. Of these candidates, the four that survived the vetting process were included in the design. They were extensively developed in MATLAB, first using floating point simulations and then using integer simulations on a library of multispectral videos. Once satisfactory performance was achieved, the team implemented the algorithms in Verilog HDL and continued to refine the design to maximize the power efficiency of each algorithm. Field testing of the goggles was successfully completed in early 2009.
His team also recently completed a full brass board development for the Rattler program; this system was designed to provide both broadband multi-spectral vision from UV to LWIR and hyper-spectral imaging in the SWIR band. The IDS team wrote control software for the systems’ four cameras, the AOTF, and the four laser illuminators included in the system. The team also provided a significant portion of the Verilog HDL used to perform image acquisition, processing, fusion, and display; this code was implemented on the Heatfusion MonaLisa embedded video processing system. His team also developed a brass board for the Active Handheld SWIR program using a subset of the components in Rattler. Both systems were successfully completed and field tested in June 2009.
Michael began his higher education at General Motors Institute (currently Kettering University). In this program, he alternated semesters between work at General Motors and school. While enrolled, he gained an appreciation for the value of experiential education. His work experiences included press room production supervisor, metal assembly production supervisor, quality inspection supervisor, second-shift quality control manager, and production and facilities engineer. After graduation, he continued working for General Motors at their Milford, MI Proving Grounds as an electrical and electronics test engineer, validating systems on prototype cars. He left General Motors to pursue graduate studies at Penn State and completed his master’s and doctorate in electrical engineering. He also worked on the FindIT/TIPS project at the University’s Pennsylvania Transportation Institute, developing an inertial navigation sensor array from low cost micromechanical sensors. Michael’s doctoral research was the development of novel quadrupole resonance probes using high-temperature superconducting resonators.
In addition to his duties as the Director of Integrated Design Services, Michael is a member of the committee for the IEEE Computer Society Applied Imagery and Pattern Recognition workshop held annually during October in Washington, D. C. He serves as the faculty advisor to E-house, a special living option for engineering students. Outside the university, Michael serves on the school board for a local charter school. An Eagle Scout, he continues his involvement in Scouting by serving as the Committee Chair for both a Cub Scout Pack and Boy Scout Troop in State College, PA.
Campus Address: |
149 Hammond Building |
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Phone: |
814-863-8428 |
Fax: |
814-863-7582 |
Email: |
Click here to email |
William Burkhard is the Director of Information Technology and Design and heads Electronic and Computer Services (ECS) for the College of Engineering. Bill’s vision for ECS, particularly for the Integrated Design Services, is to amplify alignment with the College’s academic mission and objective of educating World-Class Engineers; the success in this area is evident in the growth of student participation in engineering design programs. Under Bill’s supervision as director, the group’s number of student engineers involved in real-world design programs continues to grow. While student participation varies by semester, it continues to average of six undergraduates and two graduate students throughout any given year. Summer full-time support offers our students with an opportunity to take a more active and lead role in projects. Students are continuously provided an opportunity to work with state-of-the-art equipment and instrumentation, high-performance computing, visions systems, Field Programmable Logic Arrays, and software applications that include MATLAB and LabVIEW. As a former systems designer of 20 years, Bill appreciates the educational opportunities this group has to offer aspiring engineers.
Bill began his engineering career as a Senior System Analyst with a defense-related company and gained experience as a software systems analyst for a high performance threat acquisition system onboard a military aircraft and developed the company’s first microcontroller design for signal generation system to stimulate and test military systems. Employed by the College of Engineering since 1983, he continued his systems design career for another five years. During this period Bill designed microprocessor controllers, software, electronics and mechanical systems for numerous application, including a payload for biological experiments on the space shuttle. He also designed a high power Microwave Measurements and Test System for the US Army and constructed several of the system’s test stations to show proof-of-concept.
In 1999, he assumed the position of Associate Director for Communications and Computing in the College’s Center for Electronic Design, Communications, and Computing, which is now Electronic and Computer Services. At that time, his primary responsibility was to improve the performance and responsiveness of the College’s networking and computing environment, migrating operations from a flat Ethernet/VAX networking/ centralized computing environment to an ATM network and distributed computing environment. As the University migrated away from supporting colleges with ATM networks, Engineering returned to an Ethernet-centric network, but still maintained distributed computing services. For four years, Bill also taught senior design classes in Electrical Engineering. In 2003, he assumed his current position as Director of Information Technology and Design and head of Electronic Computer Services.
Students seen here breadboarding a simple circuit before committing components to final circuit design.
Students Will Ferry and Jeff DiTeodoro attend Texas Instruments TechDay in New Jersey, helping IDS evaluate new technology.
ECS is designing for the future.