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Careers: Sensing for Health and Safety

Environment | Agriculture | Infrastructure | Personal Health

There’s a lot going on in the world around us, both at the planetary scale and the microscopic. Tools to keep track of it all have grown incredibly sensitive, giving us satellites to monitor the symptoms of climate change, embedded computers to tell us about our health and our home, and sensing devices to  monitor crops, detect problems in infrastructure, ensure safe air and water.

In ECE, we are probing the brain to treat complex diseases like Parkinson’s, we are sending some of the most sensitive antennas and sensors into space on NASA missions, we are monitoring the soil for effective agriculture, and putting tiny sensing devices on drones and unmanned vehicles to give us a remote look at dangerous areas.

Related Undegraduate Courses:

  • Intro to MEMS
  • Solid-State Device Lab
  • Advanced Embedded Systems
  • Integrated Microsystems Lab
Soil moisture data is just as important to NASA engineers as it is to local farmers. For example, Prof. Mingyan Liu uses this data to monitor climate patterns and predict landslides. 
Tiny electrodes and LEDS work to eavesdrop on neural activity, stimulating the mind’s circuitry and helping us map how it works.