I'm Chris Giebink, associate professor of
electrical engineering in Penn State's
College of Engineering. Electrical
Engineering is the study and application
of the technologies of electricity, from
materials to the system level, from
hardware to signal processing, from radio
waves to optics. Electrical Engineering
students complete coursework such as
signal processing, electronic circuits,
and devices in electromagnetics. They can choose from a wide array of technical
courses including power distribution and
power systems, electro-optics,
communications networks, image processing and computer vision, control systems,
antenna design, environmental sentencing, and more. Electrical engineers design and
develop electrical and electronic
equipment and systems, control systems,
telecommunication systems, and much more. Many electrical engineering graduates
also go on to graduate school or to work
in virtually all government agencies and
laboratories. Penn State electrical
engineers have countless career paths
including biomedical research,
environmental sensing, renewable energy
and power systems, transportation,
communication, artificial intelligence
and cybersecurity, computer vision and
big data analytics, including financial
and other sectors. Almost every field
imaginable in the modern world requires
some level of Electrical Engineering.
Penn State's Department of Electrical
Engineering, established in 1893, not only
emphasizes crucial fundamentals but also
enables students to adapt across broad
interests. Students should choose
Electrical Engineering because it's so
much more than just power lines and
printed circuit boards. It goes from
quantum optics to the interface between
biology, electronic circuits to mapping
the neural circuits in the brain. It's an
enormously broad, probably the most
diverse branch of engineering, and so if
you're looking for an opportunity to
solve big problems in the world
electrical engineering is a good place
to start. Probably the thing that I love
most about being an electrical engineer
is that people who don't understand it
everything seems like magic. You're just
connecting wires to chips and suddenly
you have something that works. So the
ability to be able to dissect that and
see what's really going on it's such a cool
skill to have even if it's not the
specific thing that you're working on
day to day. I knew electrical engineering
was right for me probably in my first
electrical engineering course. There's a
lab component to it and we were able to
build a speaker. It wasn't pretty and it
didn't go very loud but it was really
cool to see a final project that I
completed from start to finish. One thing
I really love about Electrical
Engineering is being able to jump to
software and know how to code something and then jump to the hardware and be
able to build a circuit and watch it
work and come to life.
My major is really unique because it has
a lot of applications that you wouldn't
think of. For instance we do space
weather stuff, telecommunications, as well
as all sorts of sensors. You need
electricity going through it. An
electrical engineer has to touch it at
some point. Personally I'm working for a
video company and one of the big things
we're looking at is that ultra-low
latency live-streaming, being able to see
live events on any kind of device in the
world, whether it's a phone or a tablet
or a computer. That's one of the
personal things that I get to work on
and I see it as something that's going
to radically change how video
distribution is done.
NASA Orion will be sending humans to
Mars in 2032 and as a engineer who is
supporting that project I will
ultimately be making history in that my
electronics will be actually sending
humans to Mars. The thought of being able
to for the rest of my life just solve
problems that come up, figure out ways to
help people. Through my education, I've
been just equipped to be a professional
problem solver and that's awesome to me. I want to give back to the world,
especially my home country in Zambia.
They've had recent issues of power and
electricity outages lately and part of
the reason why I've chosen to become an
electrical engineer is to be able to
help them get back on their feet.
Solar power is something huge that
Zambia can capitalize on and I want to
be able to give back to not only the
local area here or the local area in
Zambia but the world as a whole. One of
the best things about working in
the electrical engineering department
is the breath of collaborative
opportunities that we have. There are
people that are working at an enormous
range of different problems and you end
up finding new opportunities and new problems to solve.
 
you
