Brain Drain

For decades now the US has been the place for the best and brightest from other countries to study.  I sizable chunk decide to stay especially in engineering.  As a result when various companies and the US gov decided they needed more engineers they simply imported them.

God forbid we

1. actually pay and treat engineers like they are professionals
2. give them something to do other than shuffle paper work and dodge management

And yet some people still lamented the lack of native born engineers graduating from our schools.  Some were so blind as to wonder why so few were graduating.

Well it’s time to start paying the bill…

India’s Space Program

A large chunk of our imported engineers come from India.  Often they come here because opportunities are limited in India for people born to the wrong caste.  So the people that can get to the US come over, study engineering, and stay.  But it is harder and harder for them to get jobs in Aerospace since most of the Aerospace companies have chosen to pursue defense work.

Now India has started its own space program while the US program slowly decays.  A number of those Indian engineers that stayed here are asking if there are jobs in their home country working on the space program.

The economy in the US is tanking making jobs harder to come by.  The US space program and surrounding Aerospace industry is less welcoming than it used to be.  And many would like to go home if they can find good job opportunities.

Reverse Brain Drain

The emerging space programs of China and India are a serious threat to the US technological superiority.  It may be years before the programs show a string of years with real funding and enthusiasm at home.  However, once those programs are established a much larger percentage of those foreign born engineers that come here to study will go back home when they are finished.

We will have fewer engineers in the coming years.  Without something inspirational to bring native US kids back into engineering it will only get worse.  I’ve complained about the pay and nature of the business where companies lay off large numbers of people every time their sales hiccup for a quarter but that’s not really the problem.

We can’t keep expecting to drain the brains of India and China

The problem is a lack of inspiration and vision.  As India and China demonstrate space programs that are a point of national pride they will become a more and more appealing career prospect.   As such it will become harder and harder to keep young foreign born engineers from going back to their country of origin.  However, the US lacks any serious goal for aspiring engineers to tackle.

There are inspirations out there, just no one with vision AND money

I’m a fan of space exploration and I think serious exploration - not just toy cars on Mars - would inspire.  But so would serious nano-tech, artificial intelligence, robotics (like Honda’s Asimo), alternative energy, and several other fields.

Instead we have risk averse companies who have reduced their R&D to incremental improvement shops.  The gov is just as risk averse and every satellite/R&D program is just 1 baby step better than the last.  In Aerospace the holy grail is propulsion.  In propulsion we’ve barely invented the wheel let alone an automobile.  Until the X-Prize was won almost no company spent any money on even incrementally better propulsion.  Even today the total dollar amount is a pittance.

If we want to continue to lead the world in technology (and by extension the world economy) then we need to get serious.  We need to choose 1 or 2 major project that can change everything - like alternative energy, Sci-Fi style propulsion, etc.  We need to get serious about real basic scientific research and serious engineering R&D.  You don’t make great leaps forward with risk averse baby steps.

Thankfully there’s at least DARPA, if only we could get about 1000 more of those going…

Here’s the article that inspired this rant:

Source Article

I find the Bode plot to be one of the most useful tools in all of Classical controls.  This is probably no surprise to anyone who works in the field.  Many of its uses are obvious.  However, I always wondered if there were a way to determine stability from the Bode plot.  After giving it some thought I assumed there was no way to determine if the pole had a positive or negative real part.  However, the Google group for controls has a topic on determining stability from the Bode plot.  Here’s the link.

My controls education…

During my time in Masters school I was given lots of simple models for which I was asked to design controllers. As an undergrad I was given several examples of systems to develop simple rigid body models for and then design a controller. All in all, when I graduated I found my education with regard to system modeling to be lacking.
My undergrad is in Mechanical Engineering and we did plenty of rigid body models of multiple degree of freedom systems. My Dynamics class was probably my best with regard to system modeling. However, this completely ignores the modeling of complex sensors and actuators.

An education in modeling

Modeling is largely a matter of judgement. Judgement based on experience but also based on performance. In LaserCom applications we are attempting to control line of sight (LOS) pointing to less than 10 micro-radian level with milli-radian (or larger) level disturbances at high frequencies. As a result we have to model not only 1st order effects but 2nd and 3rd order effects. If we were attempting to control the LOS to a milli-radian level or hundreds of micro-radians then 1st order effects would be adequate.

My controls education recommendation

My recommendation would be to scrap the typical undergrad controls course and turn it into a semester long project. The projects would start with an assessment of desired system performance. That performance becomes a way to derive requirements. The requirements become a means of determining whether the model needs to include 1st, 2nd or 3rd order effects. Actuators and sensors are modeled in successive stages of complexity. After the system, sensor, and actuator models are created then a full plant model can be formed - it will probably be at least 6th order.
The full plant model can then be approximated in order to design a controller. Then that controller can be tested against the approximate plant and the full plant. Root locus, pole placement, and PID controllers can be explored during this design phase.
Obviously the design of the controller will benefit from open loop, closed loop, and disturbance rejection bode plots. Stability can be assessed using the Routh stability criteria, Nyquist, Nichols, etc.

Once the controller performs well on the full plant quantization, saturation, etc can be explored.

At the end of the semester the students have the tools and they’ve used the tools.

I earned my Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering in 1997.  My Master in Electrical Engineering in 2005.  While earning these degrees I attended 4 schools.  I have a couple of observations…

First Observation: Get Rid of Tests and Finals

Tests and finals are part of every level of education.  They don’t belong in Engineering education. 

The main thing a test grades is a student’s ability to accurately complete an arbitrary problem with very limited resources, no collaboration, and too little time to properly check your work.  Which of these skills is important after you leave school?

Some will argue that tests are the only way to assess a student’s individual ability.  I will admit that I don’t have an entirely adequate replacement.  In my mind that doesn’t justify all the downsides that come with testing.

There are few if any real world situations where your ability to solve an arbitrary problem in 15 minutes or less is important let alone critical.  In fact, the really good engineers that I know do their work thoroughly, double check it thoroughly, and for difficult design or analytical problems they seek out another engineer to double check their work or at least their assumptions.

Second Observation: Good designs are the result of collaboration

Few real world systems are designed by a single person.  Complex systems are tackled by large groups of people working in collaboration.  Student engineers need to learn how to work in teams.  More importantly student engineers need to learn how to quickly, succinctly, and clearly present complex questions and results in Word, PowerPoint, and MathCad documents.

Succinct presentations are a critical skill.  Succinct presentations help you, as an engineer, clarify your thoughts and boil down the issue to the key issue.  I can’t count the number of meetings I’ve sat through that should have been 15 minutes but an hour and a half later we’re still talking about some minor detail on the 3rd slide in the presentation.

More to follow…