News 2022

In early 2020, Marko Jovanovic was a second-year electrical engineering student looking for a co-op opportunity. He began working with professor Mitra Mirhassani as a research assistant using artificial intelligence to analyze hardware cybersecurity devices, which led him to co-author with a graduate student a research paper and sparked his interest in machine learning.

With friends Iliana Meco, Evan Stanely, and Ishan Kumar, Jovanovic founded the UWindsor AI Club in December 2020. Started as a way to rally engineering students to learn more about artificial intelligence through projects and presentations, the club has grown to more than 100 members from a range of disciplines. It hosts events with speakers from large tech companies such as Microsoft and Google discussing the capabilities of AI and its future in business.

Hiram Walker & Sons faced a challenge on its production line, and a team of UWindsor engineering students helped develop a solution.

The problem was that the distillery’s managers and operators were unable to properly monitor production. If the line stopped at any particular point, adjacent operators did not know why, because they were unable to see over walls or through machines.

The company’s production manager had seen software used in other industries to address these challenges and wondered whether it could apply in his plant.

Enter electrical and computer engineering students Jake Blythe, Zachary Azar, and Eric Pillon. Blythe had worked a co-op placement at Hiram Walker and suggested this venture to his classmates as their fourth-year capstone project.

Under the direction of professor Rashid Rashidzadeh, the team licensed software typically used in the automotive sector and refashioned it to meet the needs of distillery production.

The new application enables managers, supervisors, and line operators to see different functions along the line. Managers might see up-to-date and historical data from their offices without having to go out to the line to see what the problem is. Line operators now can determine issues in real-time.

A UWindsor engineering professor has joined forces with Ford Motor Co. of Canada and auto parts manufacturer NUCAP Industries on a $1.14 million research project to develop an environmentally friendly brake rotor that would last the lifetime of your car.

Xueyuan Nie is developing a cost-effective coating technology to make brake rotors resistant to corrosion and reduce emissions from wear. Ford proposes to one day use the rotors on its line of electric vehicles, making those vehicles even greener by eliminating the pollution caused by braking.

"This project will assist auto manufacturers and parts suppliers to get closer to producing real emission-free vehicles, towards the goal of electromobility for everyone," Dr. Nie said.