Professor Jeffrey Schiano

Vitae

His research interests in control system applications span three areas: nuclear resonance, neural network controllers, and microelectromechanical systems. In the first area, he is investigating how feedback control concepts can be used to improve magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) spectroscopy. Since NQR provides a means for detecting and identifying explosives, his work in NQR control is of interest to the US Army and other government agencies. His study of nuclear resonance control involves analytical modeling, control design and experimental testing. He has received funding from the United States Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratories to design and construct a spectrometer at Penn State that will serve as a controls testbed for nuclear resonance. In December 1996, Phillips Petroleum Corporation donated a superconducting magnet that will be used with the testbed spectrometer to generate magnetic resonance images. In his second area of interest, the use of neural networks in feedback control systems, his emphasis is on the development of on-line tuning algorithms for neural network controllers. The spectrometer/imager provides a means for evaluating neural network control designs. Jeff Schiano has also organized a microelectromechanical systems research group in the Department of Electrical Engineering. His focus within the group is on the development of feedback control systems that enable electron tunneling based transducers to provide high sensitivity measurements of linear acceleration and angular velocity.

Since coming to Penn State, Jeff Schiano has taught both graduate and undergraduate courses in control systems engineering. He has expanded the undergraduate control laboratory facilities by securing funds for new laboratory benches and developing additional control testbeds. He also obtained funding from the Leonhard Center to develop a new method in undergraduate control laboratory instruction that would allow students to perform control experiments at home using Lego components and simple instrumentation. In order to expose students to electrical engineering, he has developed a one credit Freshman course, Adventures in Electrical Engineering, that introduces students to the field of electrical engineering through a series of lectures and laboratory experiments. In the last year he has developed a new four credit junior level course in linear systems analysis as part of the ongoing undergraduate curriculum renovation in electrical engineering.

Jeff Schiano is co-organizer of the Seventh Annual Workshop on Advances in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Engineering, that will be held in San Antonio, Texas in May 1998. This workshop sponsored by the Magnetic Resonance Engineering Study Group of the Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine is intended to identify areas of NMR that can benefit by engineering advances, and to foster interdisciplinary discussion among groups with a common interest of developing NMR instrumentation. The eighth annual workshop is scheduled to be held at Penn State in May 1999.