Electrical Engineering Department

This is the Third in a 5 part blog post series about every single department we have at Discovery Park.

UNT's College of Engineering at Discovery Park has 5 departments, each significantly different from the other, but with a few similarities.

1. Materials Science and Engineering
2. Computer Science and Engineering
3. Electrical Engineering
4. Engineering Technology
5. Mechanical and Energy Engineering

As the name implies, Electrical Engineering has everything to do with electricity. Elements of Physics and Chemistry are also applied in this field, as well as computer science, digital logic, mathematics, and even Understanding the Human Community. OK so that one is just thrown in there by the University as a requirement to graduate, but it's all part of a well rounded education I guess. An EE Degree plan has you sitting at about 15 hours per semester. In case you're not familiar with semester hours, here's a brief summary - each class you take represents a certain number of hours. 12 hours of classes in one semester is considered full time. I believe 19 hours is the max any student is allowed to take. Most classes are three hours - that is - you'll be spending about 3 hours in that class every week, not including homework time. A Physics class though, for example, is 4 hours - 1 extra hour for the lab.

Look at how much fun they're having!!!

Anyway, with a degree in EE, you could find yourself working at any minor or major engineering firm, tech company, design company, the government, work in electronic systems in computers, household appliances, televisions, communications equipment, automobiles, airplanes, missiles, sub munitions, satellites and even space shuttles. Electrical Engineers are the guys who gave us calculators, wireless internet, cell phones, (HD/3D)TVs, etc. This requires understanding of electronic circuits, measurement systems, digital and analog signal processing, control systems, computer-aided design, microprocessors, video and image processing, and wireless communication (Source). Master's degrees are also highly encouraged.

So come out here and get your EE degree. The EE department is ABET accredited, by the way, so you can legally call yourself a full on Engineer. That title is reserved by law for only those who deserve it!

Also, in case you need any more encouragement, EEs make anywhere from 82-$160K a year. And your job prospects are great too! Worried about the economy? Don't be, in Electrical Engineering.

Computer Science and Engineering

This is the Second in a 5 part blog post series about every single department we have at Discovery Park.

UNT's College of Engineering at Discovery Park has 5 departments, each significantly different from the other, but with a few similarities.

1. Materials Science and Engineering
2. Computer Science and Engineering
3. Electrical Engineering
4. Engineering Technology
5. Mechanical and Energy Engineering

Today's post will be about Computer Science and Engineering (CSE). This is my department, and I live here. I spend 20-30 hours here every week. Don't get me wrong, I love it. Never do something for that many hours if you hate it, believe me. That wisdom can be held true to just about any topic. The reason I'm in Computer Science and IT is because I love it. This semester, a lot of that time is spent working and doing homework. Studying at Discovery Park is much better than studying at home, in my opinion. There are plenty of tables set up and each have their own plug outlet for myself and friends/teammates.

CSE has several research wings and computer labs. One of the most popular being our LARC lab. That's Laboratory of Recreational Computing. What they do is game programming. It's headed by a man named Dr. Parberry and was founded in 1993. UNT's LARC was the first lab to offer courses in game programming in the United States and still remains competitive as it ranks in the Princeton Review's top 50 schools in game programming out of the 500 game programming schools out there. The alumni are consistently successful as Activision's recent "Call of Duty: Black Ops" team consisted of the LARC's very own Cesar Stastny as the Director of Technology.

Lookie Lookie you can see the LARC lab live!

On top of gaming, CSE has a million other opportunities. You could expect to be working at any tech company big or small. In IT I learn different languages ranging from Java(+JSP), C++, PHP, PERL, Bash scripting, MySQL, etc. Computer Science touches on some of these languages but delves into Assembly language, software engineering, algorithm and software design, etc. Computer Engineering degree goes into similar studies but focuses more on the hardware side of things including the parts inside a computer, game system, airplane, or war machine. The possibilities are indeed quite endless in engineering.

Regardless of your degree, the computer science department also houses the UNT Robotics Society, which I blogged about in this post. In robotics you could be learning more about C++ or even BASIC Stamp, and LabView. Again, there's a million things to do in engineering.

Materials Science Department

This is the First in a 5 part blog post series about every single department we have at Discovery Park.
UNT's College of Engineering at Discovery Park has 5 departments, each significantly different from the other, but with a few similarities.

1. Materials Science and Engineering
2. Computer Science and Engineering
3. Electrical Engineering
4. Engineering Technology
5. Mechanical and Energy Engineering

Today's post will be about Materials Science and Engineering. This department offers a four year Bachelor's in Science degree in Materials Science and Engineering, as well as Masters and Doctorates' degrees in Materials Science and Engineering.

I recently got to roam around this department's millions of dollars worth of equipment. In fact, I was giving a tour to a few high school students and the Materials guys were kind enough to demonstrate a few of their machines for us. Research fields in this department span a huge amount of topics ranging from nanotechnology, applications of nano-scale research in materials, medical materials in prosthetic limbs, material coatings to be used in hospital operating environments, materials used in the United States Air Force aircraft, and much much more. It's one of the hardest departments for me to describe while giving tours, but also one of the most fun. The machinery used is something you would expect to see out of a movie like Iron Man or iRobot, or at local corporate giants such as Raytheon, Bell Helicopters, Lockheed Martin, and so on. They range from Electron Scanning Microscopes, to Dual Ion Beam Microscopes, to a LEAP - Local Electrode Atom-Probe - machine:

This LEAP machine pictured out of Discovery Park is one out of only 5 in the United States. You can see on the right hand side of the picture a blurry depiction of an atom being rendered in 3-D

The order of operations goes something like this; use the Electron Scanning Microscope to seek out a piece of material you would like to examine. You can examine a material at X300,000 zoom, and see things at a level that light based microscopes cannot see. Then you can use a laser powered Ion Beam to cut a piece of the material out at a level so precise, it would be the equivalent of shooting a bull's-eye with an archery set from an airplane at 35,000 feet. Then, if that weren't enough for you (and nothing is ever enough for engineers), you take that material over to this LEAP - Local Electrode Atom-Probe - machine, and you can "scan" the atom and you are presented with a 3-D view of the object and all its properties. There are millions of combinations of applications of these machines, but this is just one example.

And this LEAP machine pictured out of Discovery Park is one out of only 5 in the United States.

With a degree in Materials Science, jobs are available in small and large companies in research, development, manufacturing, marketing, and materials design and structures. You might work in such industries as aerospace, appliance, automotive, biomedical, communication, computer, construction, forensics, manufacturing, microelectronics, nanotechnology, nuclear, oil and gas, power generation, shipbuilding, or sports.