News and Events

Gordon Harling will discuss his work as president and CEO of CMC Microsystems on Friday, Oct. 21, hosted by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

CMC Microsystems is a not-for-profit organization accelerating research and innovation in Canada. Founded in 1984, it works to lower barriers to technology adoption by creating and sharing platform technologies.

The University of Windsor announced a local partnership to advance agricultural research, development, and innovation in the Windsor-Essex region Thursday during the Canadian Greenhouse Conference (CGC).

The University of Windsor and Horteca — a joint venture of greenhouse operator JEM Farms and Ecoation, developers of pest management and yield forecasting platforms — will establish and operate a two-acre fully operational innovation greenhouse for research, proof-of-concept designs, and partnership opportunities with industry and community partners.

Under the banner “Agriculture at UWindsor” (AgUWin), the space will provide access to prime growing and technical environments for researchers and industry, with the ability to field test the deployment of upcoming technologies in a cost-effective, secure, and safe environment.

A fourth-year course for students of mechanical engineering draws in disciplines of electrical engineering and computer science to deliver a unique learning experience.

Professor Jalal Ahamed requires students in his Mechatronics class to develop small-scale working robots to solve a real-world engineering problem. The students challenge themselves to create something inventive, interesting, and creative — and they deliver.

“The open-ended aspect of the projects actively engages them to be innovative and to connect theories with real-world engineering problem-solving,” Dr. Ahamed says.

Mechanical systems are at the core of the course; he instructs students to make them more precise, smart, and autonomous via the integration of electronics and programming.

To build a robot that interacts, navigates, and

Hiram Walker & Sons faced a challenge on its production line, and a team of UWindsor engineering students helped develop a solution.

The problem was that the distillery’s managers and operators were unable to properly monitor production. If the line stopped at any particular point, adjacent operators did not know why, because they were unable to see over walls or through machines.

The company’s production manager had seen software used in other industries to address these challenges and wondered whether it could apply in his plant.

Enter electrical and computer engineering students Jake Blythe, Zachary Azar, and Eric Pillon. Blythe had worked a co-op placement at Hiram Walker and suggested this venture to his classmates as their fourth-year capstone project.

Under the direction of professor Rashid Rashidzadeh, the team licensed software typically used in the automotive sector and refashioned it to meet the needs of distillery production.

The new application enables managers, supervisors, and line operators to see different functions along the line. Managers might see up-to-date and historical data from their offices without having to go out to the line to see what the problem is. Line operators now can determine issues in real-time.