electrical engineering Archives - ��سԹ�

Female engineering student first in family to attend college

Maegan Murray — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 14:00:21 +0000

By Maegan Murray, ��سԹ�

RICHLAND, Wash – Being a female going into a largely male-dominated field is daunting for most. Add into the mix that you are the first in your family to attend college, the level of daunting reaches all new heights.

��سԹ� engineering student Cynthia Castillo

Growing up, Cynthia Castillo’s parents worked in the fields, where she would join them each summer. And while her parents and other family were really supportive in her education, she was unsure as to how to approach the college-going process, mainly because no one in her family had done it before.

The application process, while achievable, was intimidating. The financial aid application process, while possible, was unapproachable. But a high school counselor helped her along the way, making her college aspiration dreams not only seem possible, but conquerable.

When identifying what college was right for her, Washington State University Tri-Cities seemed like the perfect fit.

Not only would it allow her to live at home and stay close to her family, she could pursue a world-class education in engineering based on her love for math, practical application and logical thinking

She also enjoyed the idea of the small-school atmosphere, as it would allow her to easily connect with classmates and make friendships, and she could connect directly to internships at world-class internships just up the road.

Faculty and staff also helped her navigate the process that was new to her and her family.

“It was exactly what I was looking for,” she said. “It feels like a small community where everyone gets along. Everyone is really helpful. It’s also easy to get involved in different clubs and activities. It’s a great fit.“

Finding the right major

��سԹ� engineering Cynthia Castillo works with Mohamed Osman, professor of electrical engineering, in one of the engineering labs on campus.

When researching what college majors were right for her, engineering seemed like the perfect fit because it would blend her love for math with a practical application of making the world a better place.

Initially, she pursued civil engineering as her degree emphasis, where she was excited about the prospect of designing and building structures like bridges, roads and more. But after taking a few courses in the subject, she realized that electrical engineering would be a better fit.

“I realized I liked the practical aspects of electrical engineering,” she said. “I could apply the theories directly into the field, and I like how it all seamlessly works together.”

Career connections while going to school

Like most of her classmates, Castillo said the ultimate goal of her college degree is to get a fulfilling job that will allow her to make a difference in the world and make her family proud. Her education at ��سԹ� helped connect her with an internship at Mission Support Alliance out at the Hanford Site.

While studying as a civil engineering student, she works at the Hanford site on the water and sewer utilities, helping to refine designs that would improve operations.

“I like it a lot,” she said. “It’s great to be able to apply what I’m learning at school into a job in an area that has a huge impact on the Tri-Cities.”

Throughout her internship, she said she has also enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about the Hanford Site, its impact on not only the Tri-Cities, but also to the rest of the world, and also about how her direct work is impacting her local community.

“Before, I didn’t know really what they were doing out at Hanford,” she said. “But they have taken us interns on tours, including to the B Reactor – the first large-scale nuclear reactor in the world. We’ve learned so much about the history of the site and I now know way more than I did a few months ago. It’s all incredibly valuable.”

Female in a male dominated field

��سԹ� engineering student Cynthia Castillo (center right), studies with a group of students in the Student Union Building on campus.

While Castillo admits that she was a bit intimidated to venture into a largely male dominated field of engineering, she said she has enjoyed the challenges that come with that.

“There aren’t very many females in this field, but it is great to be able to overcome those stereotypes of my ability to do the work, even if I didn’t come from a long line of engineers out at the Hanford Site,” she said. “I really like my classes and I love that I get to apply what I’m learning out in the field through my internship while I’m still going to school.”

Future in engineering

After graduating in a few semesters, Castillo said she would like to stay local and give back to the Tri-Cities through a career in engineering.

“I would like to work where I design systems, possibly for an electrical company or private engineering firm,” she said.

And after working for a few years, she hopes to pursue a master’s electrical engineering – hopefully from ��سԹ�.

“I have really enjoyed my experience here at ��سԹ�, and I feel like it is truly preparing me for a future that will make my family proud,” she said.

Interested in a career in engineering? Visit��tricities.wsu.edu/engineering.

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Hands-on experiences lead ��سԹ� graduate to start company helping future engineers achieve dreams

Maegan Murray — Thu, 02 May 2019 17:12:02 +0000

By Maegan Murray, ��سԹ�

RICHLAND, Wash. – Arthur Baranovskiy was in seventh grade when he broke his arm, an event that would serve as a catalyst for connecting him to his future career.

��سԹ� electrical engineering student Arthur Baranovskiy stands by the solar panels and electrical system designed by him and his fellow student engineers as part of an engineering capstone project.

Instead of participating in physical education class with the rest of his peers, he participated in drafting classes, which led him to an interest in engineering. At , in addition to the hands-on STEM opportunities and training he received related to engineering, he pursued an internship with in Kennewick, which solidified that engineering was the perfect career path for him.

“The internship was pivotal because it confirmed my passion for engineering, and specifically, electrical engineering,” he said. “What I didn’t know at the time was that it would lead to a future business helping other students. It would lead me to a future passion.”

At , Baranovskiy was able to combine what he was learning in his coursework in electrical engineering and other applicable courses with practical experience at the through three different internships. In pursuing these experiences, he realized there are a range of options and paths for students to take, but that they may not be obvious or well-known to students.

As a result, he decided to start his own company this year to help educate students about how they can best prepare for careers in engineering and related fields while still studying to be an engineer, himself – a company called .

While he still plans to pursue a full career in electrical engineering after graduating this week at the ��سԹ� commencement ceremony, his company will serve as a positive outlet for him to help the next generation of engineers.

“I want to help students to reach the same conclusion as early as I did and prepare them with the extra tools to be successful,” he said.

Preparing future engineers

Through AYB Drafting, Baranovskiy said he provides students with in-depth training and connections to a range of tools including AutoCAD and other technical software, content areas not taught in the classroom that are applicable to specific engineering paths, soft skills like interview and resume prep and others that would make them an ideal candidate for their desired engineering job or company. He also plans to work with current employees to provide them with training in a range of technical areas.

��سԹ� electrical engineering student Arthur Baranovskiy and his team present the solar panel project they designed as part of their engineering capstone course during the ��سԹ� Engineering Capstone Expo.

In addition, he works with companies to pair them with students for internships that meet ideal specifications.

He went through program to develop the company. WSU’s I-Corps is an eight-week program that engages faculty, students, staff and community entrepreneurs to transform their ideas into successful business products.

With his business partner Keith Warner, the duo has obtained their business licenses and established necessary legal requirements to begin working with local companies as a training and staffing firm. He said they are in the process of meeting with companies each week to pitch the opportunity locally in the Tri-Cities and have spent the past few months recruiting students for the opportunity, which they have narrowed to a pool to begin training.

“Through this program, we want it to be very exclusive and reward only the most passionate and motivated students,” he said. “We take students who really care about engineering and give them the chance to prove it and really use their passion. This eases the transition and learning curve for when students head into their first engineering job. It’s also a perfect fit for the Tri-Cities where we have so many engineering needs.”

After graduating this spring and while pursuing his master’s in electrical engineering from ��سԹ�, Baranovskiy will drive head-first into his new business while continuing his work full-time in the development and research of advanced batteries with a team at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

“My plan is to continue at PNNL full-time and put all of my effort into my career and battery research, and to also develop the business on the side,” he said. “The business model allows for easy scaling and suspension. We welcome conversations with local companies to really get the ball moving.”

Using his own foundation to help the future��

Baranovskiy said it was his experience at Delta High School, ��سԹ�, previous internship at Meier Architecture Engineering and current internship at PNNL that really gave him the fortitude to launch the company.

��سԹ� electrical engineering student Arthur Baranovskiy works on components of his group’s solar panel capstone project as part of an engineering capstone course at ��سԹ�.

Through his academic experience at ��سԹ�, Baranovskiy had the opportunity to partake in a range of hands-on engineering projects while learning valuable engineering theory and practical skill.

For his senior design capstone project in electrical engineering at ��سԹ� this year, Baranovskiy and four other engineering students designed a solar panel system and associated power supports that could easily be installed in a remote community in Uganda known as the Kagoma Gate Village. The group designed the project to provide stable power during the day and for at least three hours of power at night for a classroom and office space in the village. The project figured perfectly into his work at PNNL.

At PNNL, he is completing an internship developing batteries for future vehicles and grid applications, and formerly completed two internships with facilities and a team researching countering weapons of mass destruction where he did a significant amount of drafting.

“Through these opportunities, I have developed an in-depth knowledge of the different types of programs specifically to the field of engineering in which I’m working,” he said. “I have also learned how to best conduct myself in a range of situations, as well as present projects effectively to my superiors. It has been essential experience that I believe has given me a leg up for my future as an engineer.”

Baranovskiy said he looks forward to using his own experiences to grow the potential for other future engineers.

“I want to use what I’ve learned in my own career path, in addition to what I’ve spent months researching and gathering as part of my new company, to prepare and connect other passionate students to want the same things,” he said. “Relevant job experience is vitally important to your future success as an engineer. I would like to help connect more students to these experiences.”

For more information on AYB Drafting, visit .

Interested in a career in engineering? Visit tricities.wsu.edu/engineering. The ��سԹ� admissions application is open now at .

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Student receives rare opportunity to experience history made during LIGO internship

Maegan Murray — Thu, 09 Mar 2017 18:35:01 +0000

By Maegan Murray, ��سԹ�

Before LIGO announced that it had made its second-ever observance of gravitational waves last year, further proving Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, Daniel Cain was one of the few who already knew.

Cain, an engineering student at Washington State University Tri-Cities, took on an internship experience at LIGO Hanford last summer where he worked with engineers in

��سԹ� student Daniel Cain

radio frequency technology. He spent the summer building devices that would help filter and decipher radio waves, which would help prevent interferences and disruptions with equipment that had a larger role in the gravitational wave detection technology.

LIGO made their second gravitation wave detection on Dec. 26, 2015, but it wasn’t until July 15, 2016, that they made the detection public. A large part of the gap in time, Cain said, is that scientists must sort through a multitude of data to ensure that their detections are accurate and that they hadn’t picked up a false positive from another source.

While Cain’s internship experience didn’t deal specifically with the gravitational wave detection technology, it still had an impact on safeguarding the equipment that will continue to be crucial in the whole effort.

“While the radio waves don’t interfere with gravity waves themselves, they interfere with other electrical equipment, such as the laser controls,” he said. “My job was to help them make sure that radio interference doesn’t affect their detections.”

Cain will present his project at WSU’s Academic Showcase from 9 a.m. – noon March 27 in the Compton Union Building at WSU Pullman.

Preventing disruption

Cain said in order for scientists and engineers to detect gravitational waves at the facility, they use a number of very sensitive, very sophisticated instruments that detail intricate waves that, until 2015, had never been physically observed. Cain said the lasers used to detect the waves, which require a vacuum-sealed environment, also necessitate a range of equipment that prevent and decipher between even the slightest of environmental factors, which could lead to a false positive.

“The moon passing around the earth causes the earth’s crust to flex,” Cain said. “It changes the shape enough that they have to worry about it being a disruption to their monitoring equipment. The scientists and engineers at LIGO have to monitor a lot of environmental factors, from wind, to seismic activity, to even spring runoff from the mountains.”

Similar disruptions could occur with other vital equipment at the facility.

Cain said what they wanted him to create was a circuit that would take the output of their radio receivers and tell LIGO engineers how strong radio waves were in a way that could be turned into a digital number that they could easily read and categorize. Knowing the radio signal strength would help them eliminate false positives.

A learning experience

Cain said the difficult part of his initial study and creation of radio monitoring equipment is that radio waves are so fast that normal circuits can’t rate them accurately.

“The tiny things that wouldn’t interfere with normal circuits, interfere with radio,” he said. “It makes the engineering problem more challenging.”

Additionally, he said, most radio wave-reading equipment use the logarithmic decibel scale, which is effective for increasing equipment range, but not so convenient in understanding what the wave is doing, exactly.

Part of a radio wave device that ��سԹ� student Daniel Cain made for LIGO during his internship last summer.

“Almost all radio equipment is logarithmic, which is why they wanted my design to work because it wasn’t logarithmic,” he said. “It wasn’t absolutely necessary, but would have made their data processing a little easier.”

Cain created two prototypes, the first of which had a few design issues, which he corrected using new and modified materials. His second prototype worked, but its main issue was that it couldn’t pick up weaker radio signals.

“It became very accurate,” he said. “The output had to be between zero and two volts, and it was in the 90^th percentile for accuracy. It could detect the higher-strength signals very well. But the tiny signals, which are weak and easily blocked, it didn’t detect very well.”

Cain ran out of time for his third prototype. He was successful, however, in modifying one of their established device designs to do what was asked of him, but it remained in logarithmic scale, which was still an issue. But his efforts were not all lost. One of Cain’s major feats came by accident in the final stages of creating one of his devices.

“I figured out that one of the antennas for their radio receivers was broken,” he said. “It isn’t something they are always watching, but it is something they have to check. They told me they probably wouldn’t have found out it was broken until they were about to look for gravitational waves for real, which would have forced them to reassign an engineer to fix the problem. They told me it was almost worth the whole summer finding that.”

Applying school to the real world

Cain said even though he ran into some issues during his internship and wished he would have more time to develop the technology, the learning process, alone, made the whole summer a worthwhile experience.

“I learned so much,” he said. “I put to use a lot of things that I learned in school and I had to learn a lot of things from scratch. The practical experience, alone, I would recommend to anyone in an engineering program.”

Daniel Cain, left, and a classmate work on a device during an engineering lab course.

Cain said the body of knowledge in engineering has grown to be so large that it is becoming not possible to teach a student everything they need to know during an undergraduate education.

“It is not really possible to bring an undergraduate to the level of knowledge of the industry, which is where things like internships come to play,” he said. “Having the experience this summer means that some of the mystique surrounding engineering is removed. That is one of the main reasons why internships and practical experience is so important. It gets you out of the school mindset and into the real-world mindset.”

Cain said it was also incredibly rewarding to work with world-renowned engineers that have truly made a mark in history, but at the same time, are as down to earth as the next person. They were always willing to “help out the ultra noob,” he said with a laugh.

“The engineers were all really nice,” he said. “They all took pity on me as the new guy, helped answer my questions and offer their advice. They were all quick to help explain things that you wouldn’t normally learn in school, but that everyone else knows in the industry. That was the most valuable part.”

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electrical engineering Archives - ���سԹ�

Female engineering student first in family to attend college

Hands-on experiences lead ���سԹ� graduate to start company helping future engineers achieve dreams

Student receives rare opportunity to experience history made during LIGO internship

electrical engineering Archives - ��سԹ�

Hands-on experiences lead ��سԹ� graduate to start company helping future engineers achieve dreams