UW's E-Wheels Program Introduces Undergraduates to Power Electronics

In Spring 2004, Dr. Giri Venkataramanan of UW began pilot development of “E-Wheels,” a new program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison designed to expose freshman and sophomore level university students to power electronics. The project is structured as a summer opportunity for college students, providing hands-on experience on a bicycle. The bicycle, a readily accessible everyday object for people with a wide variety of age groups and backgrounds, is used as a learning vehicle to hone their mathematical, scientific and engineering skills in a hands-on fashion. During the program, students design and build an electric drive system for their own bicycles. The project will be offered for six students during the coming summer and expanded further in the coming years. The female student currently participating in the pilot project has already applied to graduate program in power electronics. The male student who participated in the project has joined a CPES industry sponsor to work in the field of power electronics. A related follow-up project proposes to expand the program for outreach to K-12 educators. Dr. Giri Venkataramanan is part of a team led by the Wisconsin Center for Education Research that has submitted a proposal to NSF aimed at this. The component related to this project involves the development of a science, mathematics, engineering and technology (SMET) Capstone clinic. In the SMET clinic, high school educators will team with engineering faculty, undergraduate and graduate students participating in a hands-on manner to develop instructional practices for SMET capstone research projects. The clinic will be held at the university campus during the summer and will last for 6 to 8 weeks. The clinic itself will focus on a specific Capstone engineering experience for the participants and will also use the bicycle as the vehicle for inquiry.