Public Affairs

AUK Holds the 3rd Annual Electrical & Computer Engineering Exhibition 2015 (ECEE'15)

11th Jan 2016 | by the Department of PR & Marketing

AUK held the 3rd Annual Electrical & Computer Engineering Exhibition 2015 (ECEE'15), in which alumni and students presented and demonstrated projects to compete for the Best Project Award, as well as the Students Choice Award. The event was organized by the AUK Electrical & Computer Engineering Department, along with student teams from the AUK-IEEE Student Branch (IEEESB).

The exhibition was inaugurated by Dr. Esmaeili, Chair of the Organizing Committee, and was followed by presentations and demonstrations of projects by students and professionals. The keynote speech entitled, 'Project Management: What, Why and How?' was delivered by Mr. Bassam Hamady, Chief Resident Engineer at SSH. The speech was followed by three presentations given by representative engineers Mr. Haider Al-Mosawi, Mr. Ahmad Marafi & Mr. Hashem Bahbahani, from Sirdab Lab, and Coded respectively.

Following the presentations, Dr. Issam Damaj, Chair of the ECE Department announced the formation of the ECE Department Technical Teams which fall under the AUK IEEE Student Branch. A total of eight teams were formed, each is dedicated towards a specific technical interest. Each team is supervised by an Engineering faculty member and serves as a capstone design project incubator for junior and senior students. The team-based structure facilitates technical discussions, activities, and ideas specific to each team's scope of interest.

Among the proceedings of the exhibition were sessions from Dr. Abdulrahman Abdulazim from IET Kuwait Local Community and Dr. Feda Al-Shahwan from the IEEE Kuwait Chapter, in addition to a seminar from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Seminar Series 2015 (ECESS'15) given by AUK Adjunct Professor, Dr Stacey Al-Ghawas,.

Towards the end of the event, the judging panel, comprised of Dr. Ashraf Zaher, Associate Professor of Computer Engineering and Dr. Jibran Yousafzai, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering selected Project Leap as the winner of the Best Project Award. HTCC: Haskell to Handel-C Hardware Compiler came as the winner of the Student Choice Award that was voted for by the students.

AUK President, Professor Dr. Nizar Hamzeh, Dean of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Rawda Awwad, and the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department Chair Dr. Issam Damaj presented the awards to the participants and winners in each of the project categories.

"I would like to congratulate the winning project teams and all their fellow participators for a job well-done," said Dr. Damaj "ECEE'15 provided a unique and exciting opportunity to encourage undergraduate research, cross-collaboration, and social networking among students, alumni, and professionals in the field."

A new addition to the ECEE exhibition this year was an off-campus tour to ALARGAN International Real State Company, one of the leading real estate companies in Kuwait. The title of the tour was "Let's Think Green in Buildings" and included a visit to ALARGAN green building, the first LEED Platinum certified project in Kuwait. During the visit, ECE faculty members and students were given the chance to tour the different sections of premises and explore the environmental solutions employed in the project. The tour also included a presentation from Mr. Khaled K. Al Mashaan, Vice Chairman and CEO of the company and another presentation from the head of the IT Department. At the end of the tour, certificates were awarded to participating students.

Dr. Seyed Esmaeili, Head of the (ECEE'15) Organizing Committee, said: "We are proud of our students who continue for the third year running to present high-quality capstone projects. We continue on our activity of organizing the ECE Seminar Series, which is tailored to support our 'ABET Student Outcomes' outside the classroom, and continue to be of interest to faculty members and other professionals. In addition, the ECE Department will continue its collaboration with universities as well as companies in both the local and private sectors"

About the Winning Projects:

Project Leap:

Team: Muhammad Haq and Adnan Merish

Supervisor: Dr. Mohammed El-Abd

Project Leap is a smart city solution that employs modern and dynamic approaches to enhance the quality of life in cities. With a futuristic look to technology, modern cities need to have human-like mechanisms that allow systems or subsystems to analyze data and make optimal decisions through utilizing Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The term 'leap' signifies sudden change, which relates with the project's purpose and title, Project Leap, implying a change in the city. The project proposes a parking system, traffic system, smart house, streetlight system, monitoring system and a mosque, all of which address the aspect of smart living, smart environment, smart governance, and smart mobility.

HTCC: Haskell to Handel-C Hardware Compiler:

Team: Ahmad Ablak

Supervisor: Dr. I. Damaj

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are widely used reconfigurable computing (RC) systems. FPGAs have become very popular in research and industrial applications in different fields, such as, security, signal processing etc. Recently, there has been considerable focus on the development of high-level synthesis (HLS) and rapid prototyping hardware/software co-design tools. The targets of co-design tools are high design productivity, simplicity, reduced time-to-prototype, correctness, to name a few. HTCC is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that is capable of compiling a subset of Haskell to Handel-C, in addition to, automatically generating VHDL, Verilog, EDIF, and SystemC. The design of HTCC compiler includes lexical, syntax and semantic analyzers. The compiler is generated from ANTLR tool by providing a subset of Haskell grammar. HTCC successfully connects to external tools, such as, DK Design Suite, Altera Quartus, and ModelSim. The developed compiler targets an Altera DE2-70 Board with its CYCLONE II FPGA and an Altera DE4 Board with its STRATIX IV FPGA. The targeted area of application is cryptography.

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering strives to provide high-quality engineering education centered around the key principles of liberal arts, specifically, lifelong-learning, critical thinking, and effective communication. The department prepares students to become successful engineers, and be able to contribute effectively to their profession and community.

Released by the Office of Public Affairs on the 11th January 2016

Photography by the Office of Public Affairs (C) 2016

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