AI-ready Healthcare Podcast - A Conversation with Dr. Purang Abolmaesumi

AI-ready Healthcare Podcast – A Conversation with Dr. Purang Abolmaesumi

Dr. Purang Abolmaesumi, a professor in the ECE Department, has been featured on the AI Ready Healthcare Podcast, a podcast that invites fellow researchers to talk about the translational aspects of AI research into clinical care.

In this episode, Dr. Abomaesumi highlights the journey that he has gone through over the last two decades to build towards a UBC-partnered Intelligent Network for Pont-of-Care Ultrasound – IN-PoCUS, serving rural regions and First Nations communities in British Columbia.

Tune in to listen to the episode here!

You can find additional information on IN-PoCUS here: https://www.digitalsupercluster.ca/projects/intelligent-network-for-point-of-care-ultrasound/

Rui Xi – Alumni Perspectives

Rui Xi is a current PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UBC. He has previously earned a B.Eng in Software Engineering from Sun Yat-sen University, as well as an MASc in ECE at UBC. Much of his Master’s research focused on the security of blockchain applications and finding ways apps can be made safer for users. For this reason Rui developed GoHigh, a fully-automated tool that replaces low-level functions in smart contracts to prevent users from having their money stolen by hackers.

ECE has had the opportunity to interview Rui about his work and his experience in ECE! Keep reading to learn more!

Congratulations on completing your Master’s! Can you tell us a bit about the research topic you chose?

My research focuses on the security of blockchain applications. Every time I talk about my research topic with new friends, they always ask the same questions: How do I earn money from blockchain? Which crypto should I invest in? My answer is a smile. Just a smile. Investing money in the blockchain is really a gamble that needs courage. First, the crypto price goes up and down; second, you don’t know whether and when your life savings are gone due to a bug in your crypto wallet application. This kind of application, together with blockchain gaming applications, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), and Decentralized Finance Exchanges (DEXs), has a universal name, called “smart contracts”.

My work is about finding bugs in smart contracts and fixing them. However, this is a tough job since hundreds of thousands of contracts have been deployed to the Ethereum blockchain after it was created in 2016 and the number is still increasing by 10,000 daily. To relieve this burden, I designed and implemented an automated tool, GoHigh , to do the bug-fixing jobs with very little human effort.

What are some possible future impacts of this research?

The blockchain world is like the wild west – scams, Ponzi schemes, rug pulls, and hacks happen every day. My research (and hopefully, along with my future research) is bringing order to it. The tool, GoHigh, is my very first step. It fixes a specific category of smart contract vulnerability (termed low-level functions) and thus prevents hackers from exploiting this vulnerability to steal your money.

A safer blockchain world also attracts new users. Just imagine that you can exchange your Canadian Dollar for U.S. Dollars almost instantly without paying any bank processing fees. Blockchain is a good platform to do this. With GoHigh and other security work on blockchain, it is promising that it will become a safe, convenient, and globally-recognized payment method.

How did you get started studying this topic?

It dates back to my undergrad study. I took a blockchain 101 course at that time and soon, I was amazed by how powerful the Bitcoin blockchain is. Almost at the same time, the Ethereum blockchain was released and it allowed everyone to publish their own smart contracts, which greatly extended the use cases of the blockchain. However, the more I learn about it the more problems I find with the Ethereum blockchain, especially in its security. And so I started working on this topic.

If you could go back in time and meet yourself at the start of your Master’s, what is some advice you would give your past self?

Plan For the Worst, Hope For the Best. We all faced a global pandemic of COVID over the last few years. I faced all kinds of difficulties like many of us did: waiting for months to get a travel visa, booking a flight that might cancel randomly, earning a living with a limited source of funds while paying the tuition fees, etc. I was not prepared at that time and so I pulled through a tough time.

Now I learned the importance of discipline. Plan for both research and spending ahead of time, don’t rush to submit a paper at the last second of the deadline, and don’t spend every cent on your credit card. Most importantly, never give up hope. A quote I find inspiring is: “Until the day when God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words — ‘Wait and hope. ‘”

Why did you choose ECE?

ECE has an incredible faculty and a diverse environment. My professors are always willing to help, no matter the coursework or the research they are doing outside of the classroom. Even though some of the professors you may have are not in your area of research, they can still provide valuable advice from their own experience. Just don’t hesitate to reach out!

What do you like to do outside of work and research?

I make cocktails. I picked up bartending during my quarantine time. My favorite is a Negroni, a strong cocktail made with gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari. It tastes like herbs and licorice in the beginning, but the sweet and fruitful notes spark immediately if you overcome the bitterness.

What do you hope to accomplish after your PhD program? Where do you hope to be in 10 years time?

Your question reminded me of when I was writing my personal statement for the application to UBC. I wrote that my future work could push the boundary of human knowledge and I would keep working on this after my PhD program. I regret it now. Any technology, without being used to help people, is meaningless to human beings. I hope that, in 10 years after my graduation, at least 1% of the population worldwide can benefit from my work directly or indirectly.

To learn more about Rui’s work or to get in touch with him, feel free to reach out at xirui801@ece.ubc.ca.

2022 UBC Applied Science Dean’s Faculty Awards for Service – Carol Jaeger

We are excited to announce that ECE faculty member Dr. Carol Jaeger is being honoured with a Dean’s Faculty Award for Excellence in Service for her exceptional contributions to the UBC Applied Science community! Please join us in congratulating Dr. Jaeger on this wonderful accomplishment!

Exemplifying the Faculty’s commitments to lead by example, embrace ambiguity and act with intention, Prof. Jaeger is a tireless advocate for high quality education and a champion of excellence in engineering in particular. Serving as an ECE Professor of Teaching, and as the Applied Science Associate Dean, Academic —as well as various UBC Vancouver Senate roles—she has overseen curriculum design, active learning methods, engineering accreditation, and delivery of first-year engineering programs.

She has also been instrumental in advancing ECE’s academic mission, including strong support for accreditation and recruiting educational leadership faculty members.

Highly regarded as a policy and practice expert, mentor and role model across the university community, Prof. Jaeger’s contributions have greatly benefitted the ECE and APSC community —including her exceptional efforts to create support systems for faculty to pivot into virtual learning environments and optimize students’ learning experience during the pandemic.

For the full story on all of the 2022 Dean’s Faculty Awards for Service, please visit: https://apsc.ubc.ca/news/2022/2022-ubc-applied-science-deans-faculty-awards-for-service

ECE Research Team Receives Distinguished Paper Award at ICSME 2022!

We are excited to announce that Prof. Julia Rubin and ECE undergraduate students Evelien Boerstra and John Ahn have received a Distinguished Paper Award for their paper titled “Stronger Together: On Combining Relationships in Architectural Recovery Approaches” at this year’s prestigious ICSME Conference (International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution).

The paper focuses on the topic of architectural recovery and microservice-based application development. It continues a line of work that investigates approaches of transforming legacy cloud-based software into recently-becoming-popular microservice-based architectures. To learn more about this and other work being done in Dr. Julia Rubin’s group, please visit: https://people.ece.ubc.ca/mjulia/

Congratulations Dr. Rubin, Evelien, and John for this accomplishment!

Student Perspectives – Zitao Chen, Public Scholars Initiative

“Being a public scholar means the opportunity to broaden my PhD experience and to engage in research that would contribute to the public good. This includes building closer connections with the community such as sharing my research with the general audience, bridging the divide between academia and industry, and seeking avenues to transfer academic progress into practical solutions that can benefit the community at large.”

RESEARCH DESCRIPTION

Machine learning (ML) has achieved remarkable performance in many tasks like image classification, and already seen great prospects in many real-world applications. ML can facilitate precision medicine to empower clinical decision making, maneuver the driving vehicle without human intervention. On the other hand, existing ML technology is also brittle and prone to failure that could entail critical consequence: (1) a hardware mistake can translate to a software failure that causes an ML model to exhibit unexpected behavior, such as misclassifying a stop sign as a speed limit sign; (2) the ML model can also be easily fooled by the inputs that have been tampered with; and (3) struggle to provide both high quality of service and strong privacy protection when the model is trained on sensitive data. This engenders serious concern on the trustworthiness of ML. My research concentrates on three prominent challenges (reliability, security and privacy) in trustworthy ML and advocates a multi-faceted solution to improve the reliability, security and privacy of ML to fully deliver the promise of benefits of ML.

WHAT DOES BEING A PUBLIC SCHOLAR MEAN TO YOU?

Being a public scholar, to me, means the opportunity to broaden my PhD experience and to engage in research that would contribute to the public good. This includes building closer connections with the community such as sharing my research with the general audience, bridging the divide between academia and industry, and seeking avenues to transfer academic progress into practical solutions that can benefit the community at large.

IN WHAT WAYS DO YOU THINK THE PHD EXPERIENCE CAN BE RE-IMAGINED WITH THE PUBLIC SCHOLARS INITIATIVE?

The Public Scholars Initiative encourages students to go beyond traditional disciplinary boundary and rethink how our research can make an impact to the community. It also provides a valuable avenue to foster potential inter-disciplinary collaboration among fellow public scholars.

HOW DO YOU ENVISION CONNECTING YOUR PHD WORK WITH BROADER CAREER POSSIBILITIES?

My PhD work has great potential in strengthening existing machine learning technology to become more reliable, secure and private. My research on improving the reliability of machine learning to ensure the system’s correct functioning under the presence of hardware mistake has been adopted by Intel in their deep learning toolkit, which can be used to deliver ML solutions that are reliable against hardware mistake. I will continue to establish close tie with industry partners in my PhD study, which will ultimately create broader career opportunities.

HOW DOES YOUR RESEARCH ENGAGE WITH THE LARGER COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL PARTNERS?

Organizations that aim to delivering machine learning (ML) solutions with high reliability, strong security and/or privacy could potentially adopt my research to improve their products. For example, Intel has incorporated my research work into their deep learning toolkit, which can be used to deliver ML solutions with high reliability and low cost, which would eventually benefit numerous potential users.

HOW DO YOU HOPE YOUR WORK CAN MAKE A CONTRIBUTION TO THE “PUBLIC GOOD”?

My research focuses on three major challenges (reliability, security and privacy) in existing machine learning (ML) technology, all of which could potentially lead to highly undesirable consequences concerned with the public good. An ML product built without reliability or security in mind could be a potential safety risk to the users in domains like autonomous driving; while unregulated use of personal data in training ML models may lead to privacy infringement of the citizens. I hope that with my persistent endeavour, my work can be realized in more real-world ML products to overcome the above challenges and fully realize their potential to serve the users for good.

WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO PURSUE A GRADUATE DEGREE?

Graduate school provides me a unique opportunity to explore different scientific challenges, and dedicate my effort to contributing new knowledge that would advance the progress of the field. This challenging and rewarding experience is something that I aspire for and hence I decided to go to graduate school.

WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO COME TO BRITISH COLUMBIA AND STUDY AT UBC?

UBC is a vibrant research community and provides numerous support to ensure the students can succeed in their pursuit of knowledge. At UBC, I also have the opportunity to work with a group of excellent researchers and gain tremendous mentorship from my advisor (Prof. Karthik Pattabiraman). Hence, I believe UBC is an ideal place for me to continue my study.

Read the original article here!

UBC Solar – Student Team Perspectives

UBC Solar is a student-led design team comprised of students from a variety of faculties, including engineering (and our own ECE department!), business, and science. The team aims to promote clean energy and sustainable automotive solutions through the development of electric solar-powered racecars. UBC Solar uses their design to compete in the Formula Sun Grand Prix and American Solar Challenge. In the 2022, UBC Solar placed 9th in the Formula Sun Grand Prix and will next be participating in the 2024 competition.

ECE has had the opportunity to interview the UBC Solar team! Keep reading to learn more about what the team does, and ways ECE students can participate!

What does your team do if you could sum it up in a few sentences? Give us your elevator pitch!

UBC Solar is a student-led engineering design team dedicated to designing, manufacturing, and racing solar-powered cars. We compete in the Formula Sun Grand Prix and American Solar Challenge, where teams from across North America race over 2,000 miles across the United States while harnessing energy only from the sun.

What specifically are ECE students involved in on your team? In other words, what can an ECE student expect to be working on by joining the team/why would an ECE student want to join?

At UBC Solar, ECE students are presented with a plethora of learning opportunities. Our electrical teams are what makes our cars move – members gain experience with industry standard tools and skills which are directly translatable to their future careers. Skills include PCB Design using Altium, software/firmware construction, power electronics design, and more!

Why did you choose to join this team?

I personally decided to join UBC Solar to have a supplemental learning experience beyond the typical classroom environment. I had heard from many of my peers that design teams were a great way to spend weekends and time between studying in a busy engineering degree. Boy, were they right!

How does being part of a student team enhance your experience at UBC and in the ECE department?

The academic experience is enhanced by being able to interact more intimately with different departments at UBC, including ECE! With much of the work we do on the team, we are able to reach out to professors and lab staff in the ECE department for assistance, whether that be to borrow equipment or ask questions about design. This has always been and will continue to be a valuable resource for the team.

I feel as though I have gained just as much valuable knowledge through UBC Solar as I have through my academics. The learning experience on the team has given a deep understanding of how to apply the concepts learned in class with skills that are directly applicable to real-world problems. Furthermore, the team has given me opportunities to develop myself professionally, as there are countless interactions with industry sponsors, UBC faculty, and other design teams.

Is there something you have learned that you wished you had known when you first began your undergrad program? What advice would you give your younger self?

Join a design team! I did not join Solar until my 2^nd year of my undergrad, and looking back I wish I had joined sooner. The sheer amount you learn by being immersed in the project is amazing, and I can not stress enough to any young engineering student how enriching this experience can be.

Do you feel that your experience on the team is helping you prepare for life after university/in your career? How so?

Yes! As I’ve mentioned, there are countless technical skills learned on the team that are directly transferrable to future careers. Furthermore, the team not only designs and manufactures a (super cool) Solar Car, but teaches skills relevant to professionalism and being in the workforce as well. Solar operates similar to a small startup, where we have weekly all-hands meetings to discuss accomplishments and deliverables related to the project, as well as smaller sub-team meetings which are more focused on design. The team also maintains relationships with its sponsors, including industry contacts, individual donors, and UBC staff.

What would you say to someone who is considering joining your team? Why would you recommend someone to join?

Please apply! There are opportunities aplenty on the team for anyone to have a meaningful experience. We love having new members on the team, one of my personal favourite days of the year is our first day with new recruits. Finally, if not Solar, please join another design team – there are plenty of great ones at UBC!

How can others join the team or get in touch with you if they are interested in learning more?

For those interested in learning more, reach us through email at manager@ubcsolar.com or through Instagram @ubcsolar. We love chatting, so please reach out!

What is one funny or random thing about your team that would make someone laugh or unexpectedly say “Wow that’s cool!”?

There is a theoretical speed at which the Solar Car can run forever! As we charge from the sun, we can discharge the same amount of power through our motor and chase the sun.

ECE Professor David Michelson to Chair Working Group Spanning International Telecommunications Organizations

ince the earliest days of telecommunications, international bodies have been in place to resolve disputes, recommend best practices, and develop technical standards. For example, the International Telegraph Union was formed in 1865 to standardize telegraph equipment, establish the Morse code as the international telegraph alphabet, and ensure privacy of communication.

In 1932, the union broadened to include radio communications and telephony, and the name changed to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). In 1949, it became a specialized agency of the United Nations, and now has a membership that includes 193 countries and about 900 businesses, academic institutions, and international and regional organizations, the ITU promotes the shared global use of the radio spectrum, facilitates international cooperation in assigning satellite orbits, develops worldwide technical standards, and supports improvements to telecommunication infrastructure in the developing world. The Study Groups of the ITU Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) bring together researchers to resolve technical questions arising from world and regional radiocommunication conferences, advances in radiocommunication technology or spectrum management, and changes in radio usage or operation.

In 1922, the Union Radio Scientifique Internationale/International Union of Radio Science (URSI) was formed to coordinate international foundational research concerning electromagnetic waves, such as radio propagation and atmospheric interference, antenna design, etc. URSI continues to encourage and promote international activity in radio science and its applications, and the adoption of common measurement methods and instruments. URSI also coordinates studies of the scientific aspects of telecommunications using electromagnetic waves.

Cooperating to Address Complexity

ITU and URSI have always cooperated, with URSI being ITU’s primary scientific partner. Now, with wireless technologies become increasingly complex and urgent demand for wireless spectrum, the work of the ITU-R Study Groups in helping to resolve questions raised at World Radiocommunication Conferences and other meetings has greatly increased. ITU and URSI are looking to make more researchers and research consortia aware of these questions and encourage them to work together to contribute research results that will help resolve them.

To accomplish this ambitious goal, URSI and ITU have turned to UBC Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor David Michelson. He will lead an Inter-Union Working Group mandated to more effectively engage the global community of researchers addressing development, standardization, and deployment of next-generation wireless communications, including 5G and 6G cellular networks. During the next year, the new working group will consult with stakeholders within the URSI, ITU, and relevant member communities as it prepares its initial strategic plan. The working group will present the plan for approval by the URSI Council at the next URSI General Assembly and Scientific Symposium in Sapporo, Japan in August 2023.

As Michelson says. “By helping ITU-R to engage a broader community of researchers, the new Working Group can accelerate progress in resolving issues relevant to wireless communications system design. For the Rogers-UBC 5G Hub, the Group’s represents a significant opportunity to support the spectrum regulatory activities underpinning the wireless industry and participate in activities that have traditionally been dominated by government labs.”

Professor Michelson leads research sponsored by the UBC-Rogers Partnership on the use of 5G in smart transportation networks, and serves as Chair of the IEEE’s Mobile Radio Standards Committee and as a Member of the Steering Committee of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)-sponsored NextG Channel Model Alliance. Given his extensive experience on the both the research and applications sides of radio science, he will no doubt flourish in his new historic role.

About the URSI-ITU Inter-Union Working Group

URSI representatives to the URSI-ITU Inter-Union Working Group chaired by Prof. Michelson include Prof. Sana Salous of Durham University (UK), Prof. Carlo Riva of Politecnico di Milano (Italy), Prof. Terje Tjelta of the University of Oslo (Norway), and Dr. Ivica Stevanovic of the Federal Office of Communications (Switzerland). ITU-R representatives include Sergio Buonomo, the Chief of the Study Group Department at the Radiocommunication Bureau (BR) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Carol Wilson, Chairman of Study Group 3 (SG3) – Radiowave Propagation and David Botha, Counsellor of Study Group 3. Other ITU-R Study Group Chairs and Counsellors will be invited to participate as required.

Read the original article.

Welcome Back, ECE!

Welcome back to ECE to all of our new and returning students! Get in touch with us at help@ece.ubc.ca if you have questions, and we look forward to working with you throughout the term!

UBC Bionics – Student Team Perspectives

UBC Bionics was first formed in 2018 to create a space where students could apply all the skills they learned in class, and further develop their hands-on experience in the advancement of bionics. The group is an undergraduate engineering design team that aims to foster an environment that is readily accessible to students and provide a space for them to apply, strengthen, and hone their technical skills. They take pride in providing a very hands-on learning experience for all of their members, with support and guidance from senior leads.

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering was fortunate to connect with the Bionics team to discuss their accomplishments, how students can get involved, and some of the exciting work coming up this year!

Hi UBC Bionics! Tell us a bit about your team! How many students do you have, what do they do, and where are they from?

Our team currently has about 40 students, reaching all areas of STEM, including a plethora of engineering, computer science, biology, and chemistry students. We even have students from Sauder, and are open to applicants from all academic backgrounds! Since we operate with a top-down approach, we are able to take on a good number of 1st and 2nd year students who will then be trained and mentored by upper-year students.

ECE students on the UBC Bionics team are involved in a variety of tasks depending on which subteam they join. The Electrical subteam works on circuit design using CAD software, testing and doing plenty of hands-on work. The Embedded Software subteam works on system design, management and prioritization of tasks within our bionic arm, GRASP. ECE students joining the team can expect to gain a lot of experience in a team project setting, applying their technical skills in circuit design, learning new software programs, and relating ECE course content more speciﬁcally to bionics.

Why did you choose to join UBC Bionics in the first place?

We chose to join the team mainly because of the projects involved and its alignment with industry and research. A lot of other design teams do not have the same biology and technical integrations that you get with the bionics ﬁeld. Being able to work with both sides and being involved in a relatively new team was also a signiﬁcant factor in our applications to UBC Bionics.

As a part of the team you get to work on a lot of project development and get to see your impact on the project design clearly. You get a lot of practical experience building diﬀerent aspects and can perform a lot of physical testing as prototypes come together. It is a great way to get into more complex work without the full risk or stress of employment/career and you gain a lot of experience, as well as a positive environment to learn in. It’s also a lot of fun and a great community.

Is there something you have learned that you wished you had known when you ﬁrst began your undergrad program? What advice would you give your younger self?

We have a list of diﬀerent things we wished we had known before we started, as well as advice we would give to our younger selves:

Explore your interests and try diﬀerent technologies, environments, or more broadly research and/or industry
To join design teams earlier to get a sense of how diﬀerent engineering programs work together to complete a project, even if it feels like a long shot
Just try things! Explore it even if it’s outside of your comfort zone.
Don’t be afraid to explore new topics
Be a little stupid, but not over the top
For designing software: Get hung up on the best way, rather than to go with the best solution and see how far it takes you. It doesn’t have to be the best solution the ﬁrst time.
The dumber the question the more important you ask!

Have there been any accomplishments that you and your team are most proud of?

One of our biggest accomplishments was the creation of our ﬁrst prototype of GRASP. Being able to design, print, and test circuit boards as well as seeing everything connect to modules in the arm was an incredible achievement.

For the embedded team, setting up the pipeline communications in the system was a major step in our progress but Raestro is probably the achievement our sub team is most proud of. Raestro is an open source library that we have published on crates.io which controls the motors used in our bionic arm. We’re proud to report that as of August 6th, 2022, it has received 333 downloads.

What is one thing about your team that would make someone laugh or impress them?

One of the coolest parts of our team is our access to opportunities outside of the APSC/UBC space. We have a research subteam that works in collaboration with research labs at UBC and gives students the chance to experience working in academia and network with professionals. Our access to information from APSC and EDT has led to an invitation to the ASEE 2022 annual conference on integrating equity, diversity, and inclusion into our team’s culture-that was a really great chance to network and meet others in the industry and discuss issues that we face in STEM! Of course, there’s a lot of community outreach as well that we can accomplish as a team–we make an eﬀort to attend Open Houses and collaborate with other youth programs on workshops that introduce engineering to younger and even prospective students.

On a sillier note though, for our ﬁrst prototype of the arm we were able to successfully get Netflix and Minecraft running on the graphical user interface (GUI). To explore functional near-infrared spectroscopy (FNIR) from the electrical side, we modeled it using Minecraft redstone mode. We have also made Excel spreadsheets to decide on team lunch options!

Do you feel that your experience on the team is helping you prepare for life after university/in your career? How so?

Deﬁnitely! When applying for CO-OP positions and other jobs, we have been able to carry over practical experience we gained from the design team. We’ve also been able to experience working in a cross-disciplinary team and have networked with individuals in the ﬁeld. Lastly, working in an environment that requires some self-learning has helped us apply new techniques for our learning and use that knowledge during project development.

Awesome! Thanks for taking the time to talk with us! To wrap up, how can others join the team or get in touch with you if they are interested in learning more?

Applicants can ﬁnd more information about our team at ubcbionics.com or on our social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, & Twitter) at @ubcbionicsteam. Interested individuals can also reach out to us at ubcbionicsteam@gmail.com with any inquiries! Our team is active in the UBC and APSC community, and can often be found at Imagine Day, as well as at Open Houses.

UBC Formula – Student Team Perspectives

Founded in 1991, UBC Formula is a student organization that designs, builds, and races a Formula-style race car in the annual Formula SAE competition in Michigan. Each team member contributes their skills in a specialized area such as powertrain, chassis, suspension, electronics, controls, or dynamics. After 27 years of innovation and accomplishments, UBC Formula strives to continue its vision of helping students develop their engineering skills.

ECE has had the opportunity to interview the UBC Formula team! Keep reading to learn more about the team and their work!

What does your team do if you could sum it up in a few sentences? Give us your elevator pitch!

The purpose of design teams is to elevate students’ education by immersing them in a structured organization that resembles real life employment. Students have a large amount of freedom to apply concepts learned in class and take projects through the entire engineering design cycle.

Formula UBC designs, builds, tests, and races a new single-seat race car each year. The team participates in an annual student competition put on by the Society of Automotive Engineers. Every May, the team brings our car down to Michigan and competes against approximately 120 international teams. The competition is not solely focused on racing but rather takes a holistic approach to developing a race car. We are judged on a business presentation as well as the car cost, design, efficiency and a series of performance metrics including cornering ability, acceleration and drivability.

To place well in competition, Formula UBC Racing works year-round to prepare a car for competition. Approximately 60 members across 10 sub-teams use a variety of information sources to design a car, starting as early as June. Throughout the year, students take parts or entire subsystems through all the stages of design. It begins with problem definition and concept generation, simulations and iteration, manufacturing, and testing if applicable, before finally implementing the design.

What specifically are ECE students involved in on your team? In other words, what can an ECE student expect to be working on by joining the team/why would an ECE student want to join?

ECE students are involved in sensor integration, data acquisition, vehicle wiring harnesses, power distribution, and driver-controlled pneumatic systems like paddle shifting and opening/closing the rear wing for the Drag Reduction System (DRS). Anything from a tire temperature sensor to a brake light can be designed by students on the team. Integration into the vehicle and the design process for any individual part often requires inter-disciplinary team communication to make good design justifications like how to mount new parts in CAD so nothing interferes once the parts go on the car. ECE students can expect to learn about most of the electrical modules, sensors, and interconnecting harnessing on the car and in doing this they will be able to learn skills like making a wiring harness, implementing CAN bus communication, C- based STM32 microcontroller firmware, and PCB design in Altium. In addition to learning new skills, you will be in a student-led environment and surrounded by people who have similar interests so it’s a great place to make friends and have the opportunity to work on projects together.

Have there been any accomplishments that you and your team are most proud of? What are they?

Our team is very proud to have achieved 18th in the AutoX competition and 11th fastest in Acceleration. As of May this year, we are the fastest team in Canada. We are also proud to have placed in design finals last year in 2021.

How does being part of a student team enhance your experience at UBC and in the ECE department?

Being a part of a student team allows you the opportunity and budget to work on a complex project and learn skills that you may not get through your coursework. The team also teaches what good communication and leadership looks like, while building critical thinking skills when unexpected problems arise at the last minute. The student team has also provided a strong community to spend time with outside of work hours.

How can others join the team or get in touch with you if they are interested in learning more?

You can reach out to Formula UBC social media on Facebook, Instagram, or contact info on our website: formulaubc.com.