As technology pushes forwarded, one laboratory at West Virginia University is staying up to date, in part, thanks to an $8,333 award from the University of Minnesota to revitalize electric power engineering education.

The project, entitled “A nationwide consortium of universities to revitalize electric power engineering education by state-of-the-art laboratories,” will help renovate WVU’s College of Engineering and Mineral Resources power systems lab. During the next three years, next-generation electric drives will be installed in the lab to help undergraduate students apply theory from their curriculum through hands-on learning experiences. The drive experiments can control the small scale motors using computers and teach essential concepts without having to work with large scale machines.

“The goal of the project is to make the electric machines course interesting to students as the labs give visualization and make it easier to grasp difficult concepts,” said Dr. Sarika Khushalani-Solanki, the principal investigator and an assistant professor in the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

This project is beneficial to undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in basic and advanced machines and drives courses.

Dr. Muhammad Choudhry, an electrical engineering professor, will also be working on this project.

-WVU-

cam/02/24/11

CONTACT: Mary Dillon, College of Engineering and Mineral Resources
304-293-4086; mary.dillon@mail.wvu.edu

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