Good Universities for Embedded Systems Research

Sorry, I guess there are none. I was looking forward to reading the answers. I seem to remember this question coming up before. You might do a search on this newsgroup and see if anything comes up. I really expected there would be at least a few current opinions.

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Scott
Validated Software
Lafayette, CO

York Uni used to do a lot of work on Ada but that may have depended on an individual (was it Prof Pyle).

Martyn Thomas and Praxis who do real time secure sofwtare are in Bath but whether they have links with a university, I do not know. But it does suggest that if you find a company that does the sort of thing you are interested in, you could ask them

I haven't been looking at all the posts here because of all the spam, so this response is a bit late.

After being incredibly lucky in my rather random choice of a thesis advisor (for my Masters degree), I decided that the most important thing to getting a PhD, and even perhaps a Masters degree, is the thesis advisor; your choice of school becomes secondary if you've found "the one" advisor for you.

I suggest you get down to your University library, and start going through the journals. Note the name(s) of the folk who are doing the work that interest you. Note how many articles each one publishes, and how many let their grad students ride on their fame (or ride on their grad student's fame). Lots of substantive articles will suggest energy, interest, and good funding. Use this to get a short list.

Once you have a short list, I'd suggest that you contact not only the profs on it to check their interest level in you, but that you contact their grad students to try to get a feel for how good of a person the prospective thesis advisor is for his/her grad students.

Note that calling or emailing prospective advisors to say "I am a fan of your work and I want to be your student" should go a long way to making them enthusiastic about _you_, so don't be shy about revealing your reasons for getting in touch. I'm guessing here, but having an application show up blind at the registrar's office isn't going to carry as much weight as having an application show up with a note from one of the faculty.

Keep in mind that in many places (certainly the US) a grad student is, to some extent, at the mercy of his/her thesis advisor -- your advisor can push you on or hold you back to a great extent, and in most schools there's not much to keep a malicious advisor from really jerking you around. So you want to have a good feel for what the person is like. This is why I suggest you talk to the prospects students, discretely, and try to get an idea of what your experience will be.

Once you've selected a short-list of advisors, the choice of schools should be obvious...

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www.wescottdesign.com

Hi Devendra,

Take a look at some of the research going on in the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory

A number of their groups would seem to cover the areas you are interested in.

This laboratory has a very long track record of industrial involvement. You'll find many of the academic staff are founders/directors of some very well known companies all with their roots in the laboratory.

You might also like to look at the School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester. The Advanced Processor Technologies group may be of particular relevance.

Bristol University has a strong track record, although perhaps with more of a hardware emphasis. They have a long record of industrial involvement (David May, founder of Inmos and more recently XMOS is professor). The Bristol area is second only the Cambridge area in hi-tech start-up activity.

HTH,

Jeremy

If you are interested in medical applications, maybe Case Western University. Their engineering dept. also works on other things.

Here's their news page-

Robotics Energy Biomedical Engineering

Embedded systems is just so broad a term. Maybe you need to think about what in particular you are interested in studying. For example, wind turbine control, Advanced Prosthetic research, robotic vehicles.

I'll also sing some praises for my alma mater, University of Dayton. Signal and image processing, control, and communications research for application to robotics, aerospace, and medical systems.

Ed

I should have read closer. I missed that you wanted PhD programs. In the US, you may look first at MIT. Ed

Thanks a lot everyone! As I am finding out, there is lot of work involved in choosing the right universities. It is correct, as it was pointed out, that in American universities, the student is very tightly "knit" with his/her adviser. So, it is scary to be going to a place where there is only one faculty working in my area of interest. I have known people who have undergone the trauma when his adviser went on a sabbatical. or quit altogether.

I am not sure how it works in Europe, meaning the funding for the research. Does it come via a project signed up by the professor (as is the case in US).

Also, I was specifically looking for hard-real time embedded systems (Medical devices, aerospace, automotive). As I am finding out, there are very very few places where I could get both hands-on knowledge and theoretical depth.

A very good place seems to be UIUC (US) or CMU (US). UPC Catalunya (Spain), I was told was good, but I really cant find any information on their funding levels, and research in this particular area.

Any good places in Canada, the home of Bombardier?

Devendra

[%X]

We see these requests for recommendations of good Universities quite often. However, I don't see anyone asking about Apprenticeships in these areas. The modern apprenticeship is very worthwhile training and means that a company is funding the further education of the apprentice as well as providing on- the-job training across a range of departments. That way apprentices get a feel for the way a company works as well as getting good experience and training in the subject of choice.

So why do youngsters with aspirations to engineering not consider apprenticeships?

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Paul E. Bennett...............
Forth based HIDECS Consultancy
Mob: +44 (0)7811-639972
Tel: +44 (0)1235-510979
Going Forth Safely ..... EBA. www.electric-boat-association.org.uk..
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Lui Sha works in this area at UIUC. Funding for the types of projects you are interested in doesn't appear to be a problem here. Actually, funding in general isn't a problem here. Note that I am a 4th year Ph.D. student in the CS department at UIUC and have had the pleasure of working with all three members of the real-time faculty, Lui Sha included.

---Matthew Hicks

Paul E Bennett escreveu: [snipped]

If the problem is like I see here, it is because the youngsters want to do a term project in embedded and then go to jobs fair to get a position in banking or 'business consulting' and continue the education with an MBA. . .

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Cesar Rabak
GNU/Linux User 52247.
Get counted: http://counter.li.org/

Because when you then want to _change_ companies, the HR person whose job it is to throw out 99 of 100 resumes has one less reason to throw out yours.

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www.wescottdesign.com

In the UK, most PhDs in this field are funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Council. They'll pay fees and a maintenance grant if you are ordinarily resident in the UK and fees only for non-resident EU nationals. Each university department has a number of EPSRC studentships, which they can award as they see fit. See

for more information.

There are variants on this, including collaborative funding of doctorates. You can also find out about these on the EPSRC website.

HTH,

Jeremy

The question was about places for PhD research!

This is the classic British confusion between education and training, which has done so much damage to our University system over the past 30 years.

Both are a good thing, but they are not the *same* thing. A PhD is primarily education, an apprenticeship is primarily training.

Some engineering companies combine apprenticeships with sponsorship for a bachelors degree, thus getting the best of both worlds. I imagine it could happen for a PhD as well, although I've never met anyone who has done this.

Jeremy

As one who went through the apprenticeship route I can testify that changing companies, once indentured and completed the apprenticeship, is never usually that much of a problem.

As for doing Phd courses from within the apprenticeship, a couple of the apprentices I have has the pleasure of mentoring are doing just that.

--
********************************************************************
Paul E. Bennett...............
Forth based HIDECS Consultancy
Mob: +44 (0)7811-639972
Tel: +44 (0)1235-510979
Going Forth Safely ..... EBA. www.electric-boat-association.org.uk..
********************************************************************

All I can say is that things are far different here in the US. I know a few people who've worked their way to an "engineer" position without a university degree. They've got 0% chance of moving to an equivalent position an another company. Without a "BS" on your resume, it goes straight into the bin. That's even true at the companies where they currently work: nobody could come into their position from the outside without a degree.

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Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! I like the way ONLY
                                  at               their mouths move ...  They
                               visi.com            look like DYING OYSTERS

Have you read all the comp.risks archive? It's a lot, but much of it is applicable to reliabllity, and I think it would be very instructive.

Embedded systems seems to be 'hidden' as much in terms of not being a flashy degree area for universities as well as the systems being inside and part of other products. I might suggest looking at schools that do research in things that contain embedded systems. Robotics is the first thing that comes to mind (though perhaps I'm biased, I do a lot of reading about robotics, so don't hesitate to look into other areas such as aerospace/avionics). For robotics I've heard a lot about CMU and (of course) MIT in the US (I have no clue about Europe). I don't know if either would be your best choice, but no doubt you could do a lot worse.

Are there actual degree programs in embedded systems thesedays? I suppose you can get a PhD in whatever you can get a school and advisor to approve of, but I'm thinking of Bachelor's degrees. Perhaps the closest degree program I've heard of is Mechatronics which is a mixture of EE, ME and IT/embedded, and includes robotics but also more mundane electromechanical/computer-controlled devices. And of course your choice of school does not neccesarily need to offer such a degree program.

Nohau UK has a non-commercial entity called the Nohau Academy (you can Google it) Within the Nohau Academy we list all of the Universities in the UK that we believe are offering Embedded Electronics courses. Universities that offer Embedded courses provide us with their details and we list them. There is also a map of the UK showing the location all of the universities. This is a free service that we maintain.

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Kevin Pope
Nohau UK Ltd.
main site: http://www.nohau.co.uk
Online Store: http://shopnohau.co.uk

Hello Again,

It's nice to see so many people responding. There was a very interesting reply by Paul E. Bennett, where he referred to embedded systems "training" and lack of people interested in it.

Well, for my case, there are two very strong reasons:

(1). From my professional work experience (Model-based design Engineer, three years, Delphi Automotive Systems), "training" is very specific to the technology at hand, and the problem that is being addressed. So, in short, training does not give me enough insight, nor theoretical knowledge, that I will require to develop solutions to related, but not the same problem instances. So, if I trained for automotive embedded software, I doubt if I will be able to work on stuff, like, full authority digital engine controllers. A PhD essentially helps develop the approach to solve a problem at hand, rather than being tied to a very specific instance of it: theoretical knowledge, skills, analysis and so on.

(2). I am an international student in US, so, for me to find even an internship (or apprenticeship), I would need to demonstrate my skills levels, and convince any company that I am worth the legal hassle. My case, inspite of all the professional exposure, and the awards and certificates, falls flat in the face of companies like GE, where they won't look at my resume if it does not have those magical letters "PhD".

I am also taking this opportunity to pose another question: So, does the way HR screen resumes, essentially looking for "tags" or "keywords" help them get the right person? I am not sure. I have seen lot of positions where my skills were a good match, but my keywords weren't. Does this approach not encourage an entirely different skills set of beefing up your resume to include all the keywords for the position? I am not speaking as a loser here, I have a job! I know tonnes of people who have the right resume but aren't a fit to the job, even by the most lax standards that could be invented.

Yeah, I agree with the opinion of mixing the right kind of internship with formal education. It should work wonders. I will be looking for internships, and I hope that I will find a few when I need them!

As for my PhD, I am following up with a faculty from some universities. Definitely, it is very hard to find a match: right mix of theoretical analysis with hands-on skill development for a PhD course.

Thanks for your opinions,

Devendra Rai