Events Listing

Recommended for all ages

The red planet takes center stage as the Bell Museum kicks off Space Fest 2023: Going the Distance with a special star party! Outside, there will be telescopes set up to observe Mars and our favorite deep-space objects (weather permitting). Inside, you can explore hands-on activities, and experience the thrill of going the distance with the original Apollo missions in the planetarium.

Registration and further event details

Registration is required to attend the event

Join this session to prepare for the upcoming career fairs! This virtual event will feature helpful tips and information from presenters from ISSS and Career Services. All UMN international students who are attending spring career fairs are welcome to attend (including UMN system campuses). A recording will be made available. You must register via Zoom to receive the link to join. There will be two sessions of this workshop offered within the month of February 3 and February 21. We encourage you to attend one of the sessions.

Registration links for the events:

Friday, February 3, 12pm-1pm CT 
Zoom Registration 

Tuesday, February 21, 4pm-5pm CT 
Zoom Registration 

Please email UMN International Career Consultant, Jane, with any questions about this session at sitt0036@umn.edu.

Developing a Robust Workforce in Electric Power Engineering by Democratizing Technical Education

Just as we are facing an unprecedented climate crisis, the United States is simultaneously facing an educational crisis in the electric power sector. This rapidly growing series of industries is widely believed to be crucial to addressing our environmental challenges, as well as associated national security concerns. Study after study over the past decade has concluded that expanding the U.S. transmission grid will play a key role in decarbonizing the country’s electricity system. Charting the $2.5 trillion pathway to a zero-carbon US economy, as a variety of studies have shown, would require a massive workforce of electric power engineers. Hundreds of thousands need to be trained over the next five to ten years. Yet, along with the need for more engineers comes a demographic shift—a declining number of students graduating from high schools will begin in 2025. To address the need for students, we urgently need to motivate and incentivize young people—many of whom are deeply passionate about the environment and concerned about combating climate change. If we can interest students early in their lives in the benefits of electrical power and the need for improvement of our electrical infrastructure, we can show them how to direct their passions into meaningful, secure, and financially rewarding careers. Continuing the work, we’ve already begun at the University of Minnesota, we propose to jumpstart a national network of Centers for Electric Power Engineering Education to promote a multi-prong approach to creating a robust workforce in electric power engineering.

This presentation will describe our proposed approach where that democratizing technical education allows us to bring it to tribal and rural communities who otherwise would not have access to it, as well as to historically and systemically marginalized urban communities. Another vital component of this proposal is the international dissemination of information and educational resources since these challenges are not limited to the United States. Most importantly, this is more than a presentation; rather, it is meant to be a dialog to solicit your input as we proceed in this uncharted territory.

About Regents Professor Ned Mohan

Ned Mohan is a Regents Professor in the ECE department at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, where he has been teaching for the past forty-seven years. He is a member of the U.S. and the Indian National Academies of Engineering, and was recently awarded the IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Educational medal. His six textbooks have been translated into a total of nine languages. His research is at the interface of power electronics and power systems, and he is incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to graduate fifty-two PhDs to date.

Interested in getting leadership experience? Interested in helping plan and coordinate IEEE events? The IEEE subcommittee leaders will be hosting an event planning meeting and subcommittee info session in the IEEE room. Please RSVP so we can make dinner arrangements. Can't make it in-person? Join us virtually through Zoom (link available on registration). Stop by anytime and we'll fill you in. 

Join the WIE kick-off event for the new semester. On Thursday, January 26th at 5:30 PM, come and experience a warm and inviting atmosphere with hot chocolate and delicious cookies in Kenneth H. Keller Hall 2-260.This is a great opportunity for current members to connect and those interested in joining IEEE WIE to learn more about the organization and upcoming events. So come on down and network with like-minded individuals while indulging in hot cocoa and sweets, and discover the opportunities available through IEEE WIE. Please RSVP to attend the event.
 

Novel Wireless Bioelectromagnetic Agents: towards Whole-Brain Readouts of the Mammalian Nervous System with minimal invasiveness 

There is currently a concerted effort to develop the necessary technologies to record and stimulate neural activity across the entire volume of the mammalian brain. Recent engineering advancements have propelled electrode- and optical-based devices, achieving nanometer scale spatial resolution and impressive signal-to-noise ratio and temporal response. However, these probes usually require a tethered connection and provide access to relatively small areas in the nervous system. Developing modalities for whole-brain direct recording and stimulation of neural signals, will allow neuroscientists and neurologists to study and treat the brain network directly and as a whole, and will surely elevate brain science and medicine to new heights. I will describe the development of wireless, implantable electronic probes that are able to transduce electromagnetic fields in the brain, as well as the application of molecular agents for large volume in vivo measurements of neurotransmitter dynamics in live mammals. These strategies pave the way towards functional studies of neural activity across wide brain regions with molecular and electrophysiological specificity.

Details on the seminar and speaker bio

Join IEEE UMN today for board games, dinner provided by Sawatdee, and a chance to connect with your fellow ECE peers. We will have games, both digital and analog, and you will have the opportunity to meet and chat with chapter members about school, hobbies, and more. We look forward to working with you and helping you achieve your goals.

Using electric fields to control brain activity

Neural oscillations reflect and organize brain functions. Non-invasive Brain Stimulation methods such as Transcranial Alternating Current stimulation (TACS) and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) use electric fields to control brain activity. In this talk I will present our recent research on TACS/TMS mechanisms and how to develop more effective stimulation protocols using concurrent brain measurements. I will show how non-invasive brain stimulation affects neural activity at the level of local field potentials and single-unit activity. I will demonstrate how local electric fields will affect spiking behavior and how this is affected by neuron morphology and orientation to the electric field. I will further discuss how findings from animal experiments can be translated to improve human brain stimulation protocols based on careful modeling and mapping of stimulation parameters. I will discuss how tracking brain oscillations in real-time to inform stimulation timing can improve the effectiveness of brain stimulation.

About Professor Opitz

Alexander Opitz is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on developing non-invasive brain stimulation technologies. Dr. Opitz has a particular interest in the underlying biophysics and physiology of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial electric stimulation (TES). He believes it is necessary to study the effect of brain stimulation across various levels of investigation to make progress. Thus, research in his lab spans from computational modeling of electric fields and their effect on neurons, to electrophysiological recordings of brain activity in animal models and humans. His lab is further developing closed-loop stimulation technologies to improve the effectiveness of TMS. Dr. Opitz organizes the annual “Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation Workshop” at the University of Minnesota targeted at all researchers interested in advancing their methods tool kit in advanced brain stimulation methods.

ECE will host a winter school titled, "Quantum Phenomena to Computing Devices Winter School" at the University of Minnesota starting on January 3, and ending on January 13, 2023. This will be a 10 day crash course with introduction into electron discovery and wave particle duality, electron statistics and carrier distribution, quantum mechanics and electron wavefunctions, electron in a crystal, electron spin, coherence and entanglement, quantum capacitance, quantum transport, nanoscale transistor, spintronics and quantum computing. Morning sessions will comprise of lectures to be delivered by Prof. Tony
Low. Afternoon sessions include experimental labs and computational labs exercises and walk through. Two afternoon visits to industry will also be arranged. Student evaluations will be conducted at the end of the winter school.

Check the poster for schedule and other details

Attendance is by registration only. Registration is now open and the deadline to sign up is December 25, 2022. The winter school is for undergraduate students in their senior year. Please email Paul Palmberg Professor Tony Low to register for the winter school at tlow@umn.edu

The school is being sponsored by the NSF-funded Global Quantum Leap, the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Korea Science Foundation, and Kyung Hee University. 

This semester EE1301 students learned to program in C/C++, then brainstormed, collaborated, and decided on a real-world problem to address. Finally, they designed, built, and debugged their IoT device. Come, see, and try for yourself the creative and innovative IoT devices that first-year students created.