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College of Engineering news

Zhaohui Liang works on a control unit
September 4, 2024

In the back yard, autonomous lawn mowers on the horizon

Set it and forget it. That’s the wish of every homeowner who’s trying to fit mowing the lawn into an already busy weekend. It’s also the logic driving (pun intended)…

PhD student Jiahao Zhao
September 3, 2024

New antenna design thwarts attempts to sidetrack or steal sensitive information

By blocking “backdoor” access, an antenna developed by University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers may enable both military personnel and ordinary citizens to keep their communications more private and secure. Called a…

Communications satellite
July 1, 2024

Through years of hard work, a promising new ‘low-work-function’ cathode material is poised to fill vacuum electronics

A multi-year collaboration between electrical and materials science engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has resulted in a promising new electron emission cathode material, a key component in modern vacuum…

Kangwook Lee
May 6, 2024

Through his CAREER award, Kangwook Lee is looking for ways to make AI more adaptable

The reason generative artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT or Gemini can fix computer code in just seconds, compose a sonnet in the style of Shakespeare, or explain the physics of…

Student Ben Levy makes an adjustment to his haptic glove
April 29, 2024

Undergrad’s ambitious research project produces novel haptic glove design

As a high school student in the San Francisco Bay Area during COVID pandemic lockdowns, Ben Levy had a lot of free time on his hands while being stuck at…

Students discuss a low-frequency magnetic beacon
April 15, 2024

There’s no substitute for real engineering: In underwater localization class, design students aim for new technology

When Joe Berg, a senior in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was deciding which classes to take for the fall semester 2023, one offering caught his…

Qin lab in front of test flight plane
April 15, 2024

UW-Madison engineers make 3D printing breakthrough in race to in-space manufacturing

In the end, Rayne Wolf could hardly bear to look at the monitor attached to the microscope she and her labmates had set up in a hangar at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood…

Kangwook Lee talking with students
April 9, 2024

Data ethics course teaches undergrads how to reduce bias in AI

Large language models like ChatGPT and other forms of artificial intelligence are quickly reshaping the world. But in many cases, these systems are imposing a viewpoint based on the biases…

PhD student Jack West and Assistant Professor Kassem Fawaz use Instagram’s vision model
April 2, 2024

Popular social media mobile apps extract data from photos on your phone, introducing both bias and errors

Digital privacy and security engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that both TikTok and Instagram extract different levels of personal and demographic data from user images, but can…

Qiaomin Xie
April 1, 2024

Xie hopes to advance reinforcement learning with NSF CAREER Award

As requests flood a data center, the computer network must match those requests to servers in a way that balances completing each job quickly with managing overall system performance. Qiaomin…