Computer Engineering Commons^™

Benefits Of Considering More Than Temperature Acceleration For Gan Hemt Life Testing, Ronald A. Coutu Jr., Robert A. Lake, Bradley D. Christiansen, Eric R. Heller, Christopher A. Bozada, Brian S. Poling, Glen D. Via, James P. Theimer, Stephen E. Tetlak, Ramakrishna Vetury, Jeffrey B. Shealy

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

The purpose of this work was to investigate the validity of Arrhenius accelerated-life testing when applied to gallium nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistors (HEMT) lifetime assessments, where the standard assumption is that only critical stressor is temperature, which is derived from operating power, device channel-case, thermal resistance, and baseplate temperature. We found that power or temperature alone could not explain difference in observed degradation, and that accelerated life tests employed by industry can benefit by considering the impact of accelerating factors besides temperature. Specifically, we found that the voltage used to reach a desired power dissipation is important, and …

Metrics, Software Engineering, Small Systems – The Future Of Systems Development, William L. Honig

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this talk I will introduce the importance of metrics, or measures, and the role they play in the development of high quality computer systems. I will review some key mega trends in computer science over the last three decades and then explain why I believe the trend to small networked systems, along with metrics and software engineering will define the future of high technology computer based systems.

I first learned about metrics at the Bell System where everything was measured. Metrics can be understood easily if you think of them as measures, for example of calories or salt in …

Explorable 3d Model Of Scu Campus, Benjamin Giglione

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

My project is an interactive 3D model of SCU campus, which prospective students and their parents can explore without actually having to make the journey to campus. The architecture of the university is made traversable by running under Unreal Engine 4 which is a 3D game development framework that supports the Oculus Rift. The Oculus Rift is a virtual reality headset, which enhances the immersive experience for users of the SCU campus application. It accomplishes this by displaying the rendered images in immersive 3D right in front of their faces, and tracking their head motion and moving the viewpoint in …

Preprocessing Techniques To Support Event Detection Data Fusion On Social Media Data, Brandon T. Davis

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on collection and preprocessing of streaming social media feeds for metadata as well as the visual and textual information. Today, news media has been the main source of immediate news events, large and small. However, the information conveyed on these news sources is delayed due to the lack of proximity and general knowledge of the event. Such news have started relying on social media sources for initial knowledge of these events. Previous works focused on captured textual data from social media as a data source to detect events. This preprocessing framework postures to facilitate the data fusion …

Curipilot, Gregory Cusack, Karan Daryanani, Nathaniel Tucker

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

The drone industry has rapidly grown over the last three years and many large companies have determined that the phenomenon is worth investing in. Recently, Intel has shown interest in this growing industry. Intel developed a next generation processor to be used in drones in addition to investing in the Chinese drone hardware company, Yuneec. Contracted by Intel, the CuriPilot team laid the foundation for linking the hardware and software layers of Intel's drone technology by designing the stabilization control system for the next generation of processors and drones. The CuriPilot team built a foundation for future drone development and …

Looma Lesson Planner, Elise Herrmannsfeldt, Suparna Jasuja, Kate Lassalle-Klein, Roshan Ramankutty

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Looma Lesson Planner is a web application that allows its users, experienced educators, to select, organize, and present existing classroom materials and educational content in the format of a custom-made lesson plan. Looma, an all-in-one computer developed by non-profit organization VillageTech Solutions, is designed for school teachers in rural Nepal, India. It provides them with basic access to textbooks, activities, and digital media that may be relevant in meeting Nepal's curriculum requirements. However, Looma did not initially include a simple interface for teachers to connect many different forms of content together into cohesive, custom lesson plans.

Our application presents and …

Rsl Rover, Patrick Barone, Giovanni Briggs, Aaron Burns, Hesham Naja, Zoe Demertzis

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

The goal of this project was to design and implement an unmanned vehicle that can assess the air quality and general state of a post-fire environment. To do this, we equipped Santa Clara University's Polaris 6x6 Ranger with appropriate sensors and cameras to determine how safe the environment is for humans to enter. We also used GPS and laser scans to generate a 3D map that operators can use to define certain zones as particularly dangerous. Finally, we incorporated partially-autonomous sensing capabilities that will allow the operator to easily drive the vehicle. The result was a rugged, advanced, and intuitive …

Fixthecity: Local Government Complaint Management System, Amanpreet Dhoor, Kevin Ta, Melissa Portillo

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

For a large city, such as San Jose, it can be difficult to keep track of all of the city property that needs fixing. One way to remedy this would be to increase citizen involvement by creating an easy way for citizens to report problems. The current method for doing this is either to call the problem in or to navigate through department webpages to fill out a form. The city also has an app called San Jose Clean, through which people can report graffiti by taking a photo with their phone, but graffiti is the only problem it deals …

Boip: Interactivity Platform, Tyler Kung, Nicholas Pulido

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

For this project, we have implemented an integrated interactive platform tailored for students and professors. Classes at Santa Clara University come in a variety of sizes and styles, with multiple professors teaching multiple students. These professors have different teaching methods that have to cater to students' different learning styles. One of the main features of our platform is a chat room where professors can collect information from their students. Students are able to ask questions about said topic or answer the professor's posted questions about the topic as well as other students' questions. With our platform, we hope to increase …

The New Grid, Vincente Ciancio, Andrew Dobbins, Steven Sanz

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The New Grid seeks to provide mobile users with an additional method for off-grid communication, or communication without connection to Internet infrastructure. The motivation for this project was to find another alternative to Internet-dependent communication. Current Internet infrastructure is antiquated; it is expensive to maintain and expand, it has numerous vulnerabilities and high-impact points of failure, and can be rendered unusable for lengthy periods of time by natural disasters or other catastrophes. This current grid will eventually need to be replaced by a more modern, scalable, and adaptive infrastructure. The results of the projects research showed that implementing a library …

Trusnet: Peer-To-Peer Cryptographic Authentication, Adrian Bedard, Jonathan Bedard

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Originally, the Internet was meant as a general purpose communication protocol, transferring primarily text documents between interested parties. Over time, documents expanded to include pictures, videos and even web pages. Increasingly, the Internet is being used to transfer a new kind of data which it was never designed for. In most ways, this new data type fits in naturally to the Internet, taking advantage of the near limit-less expanse of the protocol. Hardware protocols, unlike previous data types, provide a unique set security problem. Much like financial data, hardware protocols extended across the Internet must be protected with authentication. Currently, …

Uniform: The Form Validation Language, Sawyer Novak, Reid Palmquist, Douglas Parker

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Digital forms are becoming increasingly more prevalent but the ease of creation is not. Web Forms are difficult to produce and validate. This design project seeks to simplify this process. This project is comprised of two parts: a logical programming language (Uniform) and a web application.

Uniform is a language that allows its users to define logical relationships between web elements and apply simple rules to individual inputs to both validate the form and manipulate its components depending on user input. Uniform provides an extra layer of abstraction to complex coding.

The web app implements Uniform to provide business-level programmers …

Smart Photos, Daniel Hernandez, Angela Laar, Jaelin Mccreary

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Recent technological leaps have been a great catalyst for changing how people interact with the world around us. Specifically, the field of Augmented Reality has led to many software and hardware advances that have formed a digital intermediary between humans and their environment. As of now, Augmented Reality is available to the select few with the means of obtaining Google Glass, Oculus Rifts, and other relatively expensive platforms. Be that as it may, the tech industry's current goal has been integration of this technology into the public's smartphones and everyday devices. One inhibitor of this goal is the difficulty of …

Saguarotrack, Christine Rohacz, Kirk Iserman

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

In an increasingly connected world, many employees work remotely and go out into the field to solve an issue. It is important for their employers to be able to keep track of where their employees are to ensure accountability and quick response times in emergency situations. SaguaroTrack is a new solution to this issue that combines a mobile device application with a Web interface to allow employers to easily account for their mobile workforce. SaguaroTrack will display the location data sent by the mobile device on an easy to understand map to increase the efficiency of response time to customer …

Enhancing Student Usability Of 3d Bioprinting, Andrew Chang, Sabrina Cismas

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

3D bioprinting is an emerging technology that is changing the face of tissue engineering through the ability to print cells, scaffolding and matrix materials, and other bioactive reagents. 3D bioprinters are a culmination of various scientific and engineering disciplines with respect to their operation and bioprints, and as such, offer a prime case study on the convergence of the technical fields in research. In order to capitalize on this fact and make 3D bioprinting more accessible for interdisciplinary education applications, we sought to translate 3D bioprinting into the classroom environment as a tool for education. In collaboration with SE3D Education, …

Pcb Prototyping, Kasey Chun, Dylan Hack, Ilja Medan, Michael Rudolf, Ryan Sidley

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

In today’s world, Printed Circuit Boards, also known as PCBs, are part of our daily lives. However, it is currently difficult for students in university classes or hobbyists to quickly produce custom made PCBs since no system exists where every step in the production process is on one platform. There are four main steps that go into manufacturing a PCB once it is fully designed which are: milling, solder dispensing, component placement, and a reflow process. The goal will be to create various toolheads and place them onto a single platform allowing the user to perform the aforementioned production processes. …

Mobile Glaucoma Detection Application, Ryan Lowe, Samuel Holeman

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Glaucoma is a debilitating optical degeneration disease that can lead to vision loss and eventually blindness. Given its asymptomatic nature, most people with Glaucoma aren’t even aware that they have the disease. As a result, the disease is often left untreated until it is too late. Detecting the presence of Glaucoma is one of the most important steps in treating Glaucoma, but is unfortunately also the most difficult to enforce. The Mobile Glaucoma Detection application aims to reduce the growing number of individuals who are unaware that they have Glaucoma by providing a simple detection mechanism to notify users if …

Lucem: A Legal Research Tool, Jagjoth Bhullar, Nathan Lam, Kenneth Pham, Adithya Prabhakaran, Albert Joseph Santillano

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The legal research industry is currently dominated by two main corporations: WestLaw and LexisNexis. These companies hold a monopoly on the majority of pertinent case law and as a result law firms and law schools are forced to use these systems. However, these systems are incredibly expensive and use antiquated forms of informational retrieval that have suppressed innovation in the field of legal research. Lucem is a web-based legal research tool that attempts to provide an innovative solution that is easily accessible and intuitive for those wishing to obtain legal information. In creating this product we have leveraged our technical …

Engineering Submission Portal, August Beyer, Jonathan Sofer, Joseph Villanueva

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

One of the requirements for all engineering students at Santa Clara University is to complete a senior design project. The senior design project is a year-long group project (with team sizes of typically 2-4 people) in which students work with faculty advisors to develop a product, idea, or applied research in the field of their study. This work is structured through the senior design class in which students receive information about the due dates and formats of their deliverables. Currently, senior design projects are submitted on printed paper. This method is unreliable as papers may become lost or unorganized resulting …

Vector Based Handwriting Analysis, Arman Elahi, Alex Mcafee, Kameron Tinsley

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The purpose of this design project was to develop a system capable of analyzing vectors significantly faster and more accurately than other systems available. These vectors were exceedingly large in both size and dimension and were resolved efficiently through the use of parallel programming. We then be implemented our own system to create a vector-based handwriting analysis authentication system that can be used in lieu of a conventional password. This was developed using the highly flexible Android kernel in order to emphasize portability. The final system worked well in the context of normal user interactions but was not as successful …

Enqueue, Michael Brikov, Phillip Nguyen

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

The vast majority of engineering programs at any university contain courses with laboratory components. With the ever-increasing number of incoming college students joining the School of Engineering at Santa Clara University, classes and labs are becoming more and more crowded. This is a growing concern, especially in Computer Science and Engineering labs where there is often only one teaching assistant to provide instructions and help to an entire laboratory of programmers.

Live, Samuel Kujovich, Griffin Cook, Tyler Selewicz

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Music streaming applications that do not require listeners to actually own the music they listen to are quickly become the most popular and most cost effective way to listen to music. These applications however are limited in their capabilities for playlist collaboration, specifically for real time collaboration. When an app does provide a way for users to collaborate on playlists, the users must be friends who have explicitly granted each other access to edit playlists. Our solution aims to improve on existing applications by allowing users to collaborate on music playlists in real time based on their immediate location.

Live …

Tunable Split-Ring Resonators Using Germanium Telluride, C. H. Kodama, Ronald A. Coutu Jr.

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

We demonstrate terahertz (THz) split-ring resonator (SRR) designs with incorporated germanium telluride (GeTe) thin films. GeTe is a chalcogenide that undergoes a nonvolatile phase change from the amorphous to crystalline state at approximately 200 degrees C, depending on the film thickness and stoichiometry. The phase change also causes a drop in the material’s resistivity by six orders of magnitude. In this study, two GeTe-incorporated SRR designs were investigated. The first was an SRR made entirely out of GeTe and the second was a gold SRR structure with a GeTe film incorporated into the gap region of the split ring. These …

Mums: Mobile Urinalysis For Maternal Screening, Blair Koeneman, Amy Miller, Joe Neumeyer, Jake Prince

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

Pregnant women in low-income communities often lack access to the necessary healthcare for successful births. This is frequently due to the high costs of medical care, the remote location of patients, and the infrequency of primary care medical visits. To address this inequity, we have created a mobile application and imaging unit that allows for the low-cost implementation of urinalysis testing, which will aid in the detection of warning signs for prenatal health risks. From a single photo taken with a tablet camera, our application digitizes the results of a standard urinalysis test strip, displays the test results, and tracks …

Scale Up Bayesian Network Learning, Xiannian Fan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bayesian networks are widely used graphical models which represent uncertain relations between the random variables in a domain compactly and intuitively. The first step of applying Bayesian networks to real-word problems is typically building the network structure. Optimal structure learning via score-and-search has become an active research topic in recent years. In this context, a scoring function is used to measure the goodness of fit of a structure to given data, and the goal is to find the structure which optimizes the scoring function. The problem has been viewed as a shortest path problem, and has been shown to be …

Planly, Alberto Diaz-Tostado, Amy Nguyen Tran

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Individuals currently live in a society that revolves around productivity. People from managers to students are bombarded with numerous tasks and daunting deadlines, making it extremely difficult to stay organized. In addition, these individuals also have multiple commitments in their lives, adding to the stress of keeping up with their already busy schedules. Currently, people are faced with a variety of organization methods. However, the two tools most people resort to, e-mail and notepad, have become more burdensome than helpful as the organization challenges have increased. In addition, current project management solutions are targeted towards large enterprises and not accessible …

Scheduling Internet Of Things Applications In Cloud Computing, Husnu S. Narman, Shohrab Hossain, Mohammed Atiquzzaman, Haiying Shen

Computer Sciences and Electrical Engineering Faculty Research

Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the greatest technology revolutions in the history. Due to IoT potential, daily objects will be consciously worked in harmony with optimized performances. However, today, technology is not ready to fully bring its power to our daily life because of huge data analysis requirements in instant time. On the other hand, the powerful data management of cloud computing gives IoT an opportunity to make the revolution in our life. However, the traditional cloud computing server schedulers are not ready to provide services to IoT because IoT consists of a number of heterogeneous devices and …

Observr, Nikhil Ahuja, Jacob Copus, Justin Cellona, Annie Liu, Lucas Toohey, Matt Twohig

Computer Engineering

According to Superdata Digital Market Research, investors have poured more than $6 billion into the virtual reality market in the last three years, mostly to catalyze application development for virtual reality gaming. In the last decade, watching live streams of other gamers playing video games has skyrocketed, with the world’s largest esports streaming platform Twitch.tv receiving 53 million unique visitors daily. ObserVR intends to package these technologies and change the way users watch multiple 2D video streams in an immersive 3D environment. By accessing our service, a user can embed URLs for existing video streams through our online application and …

Slo Dancing, Ryan Moelter, Audrey Bruscia, Matthew Smith

Computer Engineering

No abstract provided.

Duck Watch: A Smart System For Public Lap Pools, Daniel Griffith, Jill Thetford

Computer Engineering

This paper presents Duck Watch, a proof of concept for a smart swimming pool. With our system, a swimmer will be able to log on to our website prior to leaving his or her house to help them decide if the conditions are favorable to go to a public lap swimming pool. Our system will inform the user of a number of environmental factors such as water temperature, exterior temperature, and humidity, as well as whether or not there are any open lanes currently.