The present paper summarizes some of the software and hardware tools developed in the Creativity Laboratory (CL) of the Center for Valorization and Transfer of Competencies (CVTC) for the training of Ph.D. students and to facilitate their “University-Industry” cooperation. Students and teachers develop software and testing tools using NI LabVIEW (National Instruments – Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Engineering Workbench) and specific educational hardware (myDAQ, NI-ELVIS, USB SMU, etc.) from NI and Keysight Technologies. Step-by-step development and easy graphical Programming in LabVIEW facilitate development and comparatively test Energy Harvesting devices to power IoT systems in CVTC collaboration with STEINEL company. In this way, Ph.D. students develop their capacity to use Virtual Instrumentation in their research tasks and develop intelligent testing systems sound in selecting of necessary components for in-room power of IoT devices by Energy Harvesting systems.

This paper evaluates the status quo of modern society and identifies the neglect of humanism as the root cause of many of today’s global challenges. Note that “smart cities” are not excluded from this indictment. The “Ptolemaic Universe” offers a means to restore our symbiosis with the environment. The ReSeT model is proposed as a tool to analyze the Ptolemaic Universe. Using ReSeT: Homo Sapiens becomes dependent on AI resulting in Homo Digitalis, with further evolution in concert with AI resulting in Homo Digitus. All of these stages are then analyzed in the context of global trusted dependability (GTD). The wellness domain, provides the design specification framework for Homo Digitus’ human-centered and resilient “smart city” ecosystem. This ultimately leads to a better world of increased wellness for Homo Hominus, with better smart cities emphasizing education and science, promoting wisdom and common sense, and rejecting violence. In summary, humanity has generated diverse social structures with erratic outcomes. On the other hand, technology provides a successful foundation for modern society especially in the Pandemic Era. However, technology’s contributions are generally not publicly acknowledged. The paper concludes with several initiatives designed to establish a trusted and resilient society.

The sudden onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 caused schools to close their campuses and switch to online classes for the Spring term with very little notice. Many institutions continued to hold online courses for the balance of 2020. This mixed methods study is a snapshot of what technologies, methods, and course delivery tools were employed to teach engineering courses online in Spring 2020. The study included 40 professors and lecturers from 35 institutions and 25 countries. A 27-question survey regarding how the educators coped with the sudden change from in-person to online teaching was created and uploaded to Survey Monkey. Of particular interest were hands-on engineering lab courses and the equipment students used to remotely complete the lab experiments. The results indicate that Zoom and Moodle were the most popular course delivery tools among those that participated in the study. Many institutions used more than one course delivery technology. Arduino “shield compatible” (not actual Arduino) development kits from several manufacturers were the most popular type of hardware used in hands-on engineering lab courses.

In this paper we introduce a model of cooperation between High School-University-Industry sustained by activities and results obtained in “Cypress – National Instruments Club” started at “Transilvania” University of Brasov – Romania. This strategic collaboration between High School-University-Industry was become necessary because technology is evolving at a rate that is quickly outpacing traditional engineering teaching methods. New methods such as hands-on learning labs, industry-centric curriculum, permanent updating of facilities, and using new adaptive learning software are being adopted. “Transilvania” University is targeting education at the industries of the future rather than industries of the past and for this reason we must apply the same strategies inside the high school in order to well prepare the children’s, future students and the new engineers.

New Powerful Technologies enable fast development and increase the speed of information dissemination. When this is combined with the exponential growth of internet connectivity, it offers new challenges in Engineering Education. In view of this new paradigm, professors in universities together with students at many levels (high school, bachelor, master etc.), must act as one to strengthen their alliance with industry. In our Creativity Laboratory at the "Transylvania" University we formed a new and original alliance with Cypress Semiconductor and National Instruments to promote and develop applications using these powerful technologies. We involve all levels of education from high schools to the master degree based on this idea: Powerful Technologies Together for Engineering Education (PTT for EE). We believe that the marriage of PSoC programmable system-on-chip families, with a huge variety of data acquisition systems such as the LabVIEW graphical programming system, myDAQ, and myRIO along with Vizic Technologies new smart intelligent graphics processor units enable a compelling pedagogy to add color, visual, and touch interfacing to any application or project.

This paper describes an “exponentially innovative” educational approach opening a gate to so called Massive on Line Open Service (MOOS) as the next phase of Massive on Line Open Laboratories (MOOL), in which students can study and conduct cost efficient experimentations in the privacy of their homes 24/7/365. The T-shaped educational platform is based on service science and the Internet of Things (IoT). The approach is illustrated by a pilot curriculum developed at the University of New Hampshire and being introduced to different parts of the World. Because of its accessibility, affordability, scalability and commercial merits, the methodology is a viable candidate to address The Grand Challenge in education.

represents a growing category of "transatlantic professors" defining the role of academia

As part of an engineering capstone design course, a team of five students designed and built a controller for a robotic arm supplied as a technical platform by NASA. Control hardware and development environment tools were provided by Cypress Semiconductor forming a cooperative triad between NASA, Cypress and Michigan State University to fully sponsor this project. The arm uses a mixture of servomotors and DC motors, which require different control signals. Most microcontrollers would require a number of peripheral devices to generate the analog signals needed by the DC motors and the pulse-width modulated signals to drive the servomotors. The Cypress Programmable System-on- a-Chip (PSoC), however, provided a unique and manageable single-chip solution This paper gives a high-level overview of the project and of how the PSoC was configured for this application.

Efforts related to development of innovative, mixed-signal system design, teaching materials and methodology are presented that focus on the co-design of performance-optimized modules for signal sensing, control, actuation, and communication in embedded systems.The methods developed to assess the quality and degree of assimilation by students of the key course concepts are also presented.Cypress Semiconductor's PSoC TM mixed-signal architecture was used to illustrate the concepts covered by the developed materials.