By Tom Henderson
Small Times Senior Writer
HOUGHTON, Mich., July 18, 2001 — Engineering professors at Michigan Technological University (MTU) are designing what they say is the country’s first Web-based master of engineering program in small tech and hope to have the first courses online by fall 2002.
Carl Friedrich, associate professor of mechanical
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| Carl Friedrich, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Michigan Tech, runs this micromechanical machining workstation to machine a cochlear implant. |
The program is being planned in conjunction with the Engineering Research Center (ERC) in wireless microsystems that the NSF already funds. The ERC is based at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, with partnering schools including Michigan Tech and Michigan State University in East Lansing.
A prototype introductory course, “An Introduction to MEMS,” will be taught in the fall on this campus in the heart of the Keweenaw Peninsula, in the far north of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, as well as at U-M and MSU.
The Master of Engineering in Integrated Microsystems program will be offered once NSF funding — expected to be in the $300,000 to $400,000 range — is in place.
The Web course, which they say will be the first of its kind in the nation, will be aimed at engineers already in the workplace who want to develop expertise in MEMS and microsystems.
When the ERC was announced last year, the NSF said a major component would be education. Programs to reach out to students from kindergarten through high school are already under way. This new initiative expands the small tech education mission to the adult, working population.
The master’s program will be in conjunction with MSU and U-M, with MTU taking the lead in developing it, says Friedrich. He says that the bulk of the course work will come out of U-M.
“It’s not designed to lead to a Ph.D., it’s aimed at practitioners, someone already in industry who wants to learn MEMS,” says Friedrich.
Details are still being worked out, but applicants will likely be required to have a bachelor’s degree in engineering. According to Robert Warrington, dean of engineering at MTU, costs will be in line with per-credit costs for on-campus courses, which he says are currently running about $160 an hour. He says a modest surcharge will be added to cover the costs of delivering services via the Web.
“The price could drop, for example, depending on if a company wanted to enroll 10 students,” said Warrington.
Students would have the option of taking individual classes or getting a master’s degree. Friedrich says there will be three or four core classes and perhaps another six or seven electives.
“The goal is to bring online at least two courses a year and we’ll probably do it quicker than that. We’ll have a three-year proposal in to NSF, so we’ll have all the courses online by 2005.”
Courses will include:
- Advanced MEMS design and analysis;
- Advanced MEMS fabrication techniques;
- Wireless communications;
- Optical MEMS;
- New MEMS materials, such as diamond coatings, and biocompatible polymers;
- Biological, chemical and fluidic MEMS.
THE LOUISIANA CONNECTION
MTU’s MEMS work has a connection to Louisiana Tech University, far removed from the crystal-clear summer air and relentless winters of Houghton (240 inches of snow fell last winter in Houghton, and the all-time record for the Keweenaw Peninsula is 390 inches, in 1978-79).
Warrington was head of mechanical and industrial engineering there from 1983-1994, and founder and director of its Institute for Micromanufacturing from 1991-1997, when he left to become dean at MTU.
Since assuming the MTU post, Warrington has steadily beefed up its presence in MEMS, which had been minimal. “There had been a lot of research in nanotechnology here, but there had been little or nothing in microsystem technology,” says Warrington.
He first lured Friedrich, a specialist in micromachining techniques, from Louisiana Tech, and since then has been gradually adding experts in MEMS in a variety of disciplines.
“The expectation was I’d help jump-start the development of microsystems research on campus. Be an instigator of things,” says Friedrich. “We wanted to cut what should be a 10-year timetable for establishing a microsystems program down to five.”
Last year, Paul Engstrom, a scientist at Motorola, joined the electrical and computer engineering department and Miguel Levy joined the material engineering and physics departments after post-doctorate work at Columbia. And this fall, Peter Moran also joins the material engineering and physics departments, coming over from the University of Wisconsin.
Warrington says he tried but failed to recruit an expert in thermal fluidics.
“Because of the opportunities in this area, we’re looking to build the faculty, but the supply and demand is a bit out of sync,” says Warrington. There’s more demand than supply, but that’s beginning to change. We’ll just have to try to get someone [in thermal fluidics], again.”
“We’ve almost reached critical mass,” says Friedrich. “We’re not quite there, but are close, to being a major program in microsystems.”
MTU is far enough along to have been named as one of the three schools in the prestigious ERC in wireless microsystems that started last fall.
U-M, with its national reputation in silicon-based MEMS, was named the lead school. MSU’s forte is poly-diamond films, with potential applications in packaging, wireless interfaces and sensors.
MTU’s core strength, based on technology and processes developed by Friedrich and Warrington at Louisiana Tech, is micromachining technology.
The ERC will develop products in two areas — cochlear implants and environmental sensing — and MTU will provide the modeling and micromachining for prototypes. Its micromachining will also be used in packaging and in fluidic and electrical connectors, says Friedrich.
Warrington has high aspirations for MTU, more so considering its lack of a MEMS presence just a few years ago. “We’ve got a great facility here,” he says. “What I’d like to see is for us to continue to grow with a very interdisciplinary approach, both across colleges and across departments.
“You’d like to be named in the top five or top 10 of schools doing work in this area. That takes time. Getting some endowed chairs would help. But that [ranking] is certainly something we’d like to see here in the future.”
Warrington said the department will also be increasing its ties to the private sector, doing contract R&D, for example.
“We’ll be doing that routinely. We’ve been doing a little bit, small projects for private companies, but most of it so far is federal research.”
LATER THIS WEEK: The Keweenaw Nanoscience Center moves into an incubator facility in tiny Lake Linden, a town that nearly died when the mines closed. Founder Frank Underdown Jr. tells about trying to start a nano business way off the beaten track, far from venture capital and 600 miles from Detroit and its major hub airport.
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CONTACT THE AUTHOR:
Tom Henderson at [email protected] or call 734.528.6292.