Abstract
The world is literally changing faster now than people can comprehend. Electrical engineers understand this best, and have even quantified it by means of Moore’s Law. This makes the job of our teachers even harder than in the past. Further, while professors learned the “old school” way from paper textbooks, today’s students are “digital natives,” having not known the world before the internet.
The age old difficulty for students receiving knowledge in a one-to-many classroom model still endures when trying to apply it in the field. But today we have new challenges because engineers are faced with equipment that never existed before. New equipment and techniques emerge yearly, and it is the norm for a professionals to change careers in mid-stream. How is a green engineer supposed to make sense of it all? What knowledge is critical and what knowledge is useless, or even self-destructive? How can an engineer ride the tiger of technological change, and even exploit it to their advantage?
The solid foundation of principles from the Age of Reason are combined with innovations in education to light the way for young engineers. Specific to electrical engineers – power electronics and electric machines in particular – we will view the recent past and discuss the existing state of the art. Then we will survey cutting edge technologies and see what to expect in the future.
Biography
Doug Maly is the lead engineer for Rimac Automobili’s flagship inverter. Including teaching and research experience at university, he has 30 years of experience in electrical engineering. Maly’s work experience is diverse, ranging from power electronics research and motor design to end use technology such as robotics in high volume production. He was lead engineer for the gatedrive in the Mercedes Benz NECAR 5 Traction Inverter Module (TIM). Maly was the electrical lead for a greenfield custom power module factory, where he automated testing with machine language in octal and worked on currents ranging from leakage measurements in pA to short circuits up to 8000A. He holds 10 patents.
During research at WEMPEC for NASA’s International Space Station, Maly was the first to quantify and model winding capacitance of electrical machines. He holds Extra Class amateur radio license ND1D and sends 13 wpm on a straight key. Doug reads Chinese and Japanese.