Faculty Center

Featured Professor

Joe Mixsell
University of Alaska Anchorage
School of Engineering
www.uaa.alaska.edu

The University of Alaska Anchorage has embarked on a new four-year engineering degree program called the Bachelor of Science in Engineering Degree, with majors in Electrical, Mechanical, and Computer Science Engineering. The faculty in this program intend to use MATLAB® as a fundamental analysis tool for our students, bridging not only their engineering courses but as a tool for their basic science and mathematics classes as well.

Even though faculty have been using MATLAB for numerous applications, the 2006 spring semester will be the first time we introduce MATLAB to our new engineering students. The course, Engineering Practices II, will become a staple for all incoming engineering students, providing basic skills and knowledge, and enabling them to immediately use MATLAB in their daily course assignments and projects.

As our students build new skills, the faculty will use MATLAB to illustrate various principles and to develop solutions to complex problems in the following courses: Electromagnetics, Signals and Systems, Digital Signal Processing, and Data Communications. We will present some of the following interesting applications:

• Solutions to various boundary value problems
• Finite difference modeling
• Plotting waveguide modes and multidimensional antenna power patterns
• Studying various series convergence, e.g., Fourier series
• Analysis of modulation techniques such as AM or FM in the frequency and time domains
• Studying the effects of noise
• Digital filter performance
• Network performance modeling for several types of local area networks

Today students at the University of Alaska Anchorage are just beginning to use MATLAB. We look forward to introducing our students to this powerful, versatile, intuitive, and easy to use application. In a couple years, I would like to report again on the numerous and creative uses of MATLAB by our students and faculty at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

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