Our educational approach is personal, fostering a culture of collaboration that’s as driven by student-to-student connections as by our world-class faculty and advanced research opportunities. Our students work closely with faculty pioneering new power and energy systems to enable a clean energy future and next-generation autonomous technologies that will revolutionize efficiency, improve safety, and enable new capabilities that were previously unthinkable.
Hands-on Experience
Our engineering degree programs emphasize hands-on experience with a curriculum that integrates active laboratory experience with a curriculum that embeds engineering design into each year, culminating in team-based, interdisciplinary senior design projects with real-world applications. Through this dynamic approach, students continuously develop the practical skills and engineering know-how that leading employers and graduate schools are seeking.
Our facilities feature abundant and sophisticated lab space to master hands-on skills in ECE, such as our new semiconductor education facility, developed in collaboration with GlobalFoundries, to provide students with unparalleled education relevant for today’s Engineers.
Interdisciplinary Opportunities
As an interdisciplinary research center, CREATE exists at the nexus of cutting-edge research and advanced technologies that will enable resilient and responsive power and energy systems, as well as data-driven feedback control solutions. Our team includes faculty who are leading researchers in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Environmental Studies, and Natural Resources.
Areas of Focus
Power and Energy Systems
Students focusing on power and energy systems will gain a comprehensive understanding of electric energy generation, transmission, distribution, and storage. In their courses, students will work with renewable and traditional energy sources, focusing on integrating these into the power grid, with particular attention to electrification and decarbonization. High voltage electronics (e.g., inverters), photovoltaics and wind energy, energy storage technologies like advanced batteries and electric vehicles, and the design of microgrids are key topics. Additionally, power and energy courses explore and analyze smart grid technologies, which underpin the ongoing clean energy transition and is assisted by a growing set of physics-based mechanistic and data-driven machine-learning (ML) computational, and automation technologies.
- Associated Faculty Members: Mads R. Almassalkhi, Samuel Chevalier, and Amritanshu Pandey
Autonomous Systems
Students focusing on autonomous systems will gain an understanding of the theory and practice of making man-made systems autonomous so they can be operated as intended with minimal human intervention. Courses in this area deal with modeling of dynamical systems, machine learning, selection and use of actuators and sensors, designing and analyzing algorithms (estimation, localization, real-time control, motion planning) to allow autonomous agents to operate intelligently, coding up these algorithms on microprocessors, and robotics. Example applications are robotic manipulators, autonomous vehicles, drones, and aircraft/spacecraft flight controls.
- Associated Faculty Members: Hamid Ossareh, Luis Duffaut Espinosa
