Peer Legacy for ECE495: Vertically Integrated Project (VIP)

All students who are taking/have previously taken ECE495 VIP are welcome to use this page to leave comments/give advice to future students.

Note:ECE 495 is used for all new undergraduate courses, regardless of level.

• I took ECE 495 as a VIP research project, and it was an extremely rewarding experience. If you are interested in research, then this is definitely a good way to go for senior year. The projects are pretty much geared to solving open-ended problems which is different from other courses, where you already kinda know how to approach the solution before you begin solving the problem, and so I found it much more akin to real research. Be warned though; if you are taking this class to get an easy A and intend to slack off

a)you are wasting valuable research time

b)they will know at the end that you slacked off because there is a final presentation very similar to a grad prelim:)Dlamba 14:38, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

• I took VIP for 1 credit as ECE 495U in Fall 2008. It was far superior to EPICS, which I had taken prior, and I would recommend any ECE student to consider joining a research team whose work he/she finds interesting. I worked alongside about 4 or 5 other undergraduates, under the supervision of one professor and one graduate student. The first 8 weeks we all learned the ropes of how to use an electromagnetic radiation modeling software by the name of 4NEC2 - [1] . Then during the final 8 weeks, each student was able to come up with their own mini-research project. I decided to investigate the properties of fractal antennas - building models of fractal antennas of various geometrics - e.g. Koch triangle, Koch rectangle, 1D fractal tree, 3D fractal tree - and analyzing their antenna performance properties in 4NEC2 (e.g. bandwith, SWR, S11). It was really quite interesting and as a student who was just taking ECE 311 at the time, I definitely learned a lot about both fractals and antennas! - rscheidt

• The Vertically Integrated Projects, or [[VIP, course is basically a bunch of different projects sponsored by various professors in several fields of ECE. Instead of an undergrad having to run around, talk to different professors, try to find a project he likes, getting the professor to go through all the administrative stuff of getting credit for research, etc., they simply take professors with active projects, stick them in a room with students, see what matches happen, and take care of the administrative work under the umbrella of an established course. Brilliant. This is a great way to get elbow deep in technical research projects and have a real engineering experience. --Mike Mitchell

• I recommend VIP to student who wants to know what they can really do as an electrical engineering student. I took EPICS one semester before VIP. VIP is more technical and more related to the ECE. In EPICS, I worked with students from different majors and different classifications. It took a long time for me to work with my teammates. In VIP, a lot of professors do teach undergraduate classes so they know what tasks they should send. They know better of how to help students. Students in the team had the same classes. It is easy for students to help each other too. VIP is time-consuming. Spending one night before the class will not help at all. I haven’t heard any VIP teams try to bring their project to the senior design project. That might be a good idea. At least in my team, the professor does want to do it sometime later.--pan11

• I took a 2 credit ECE495 - VIP this semester and was working on improvising algorithms to program on Graphic Processing Units (GPGPU team). Anybody interesting in programming should definitely consider joining this team. they teach you parallel processing and one can process upto 4 times faster than a CPU processor. --Hersh Lalwani 16:55, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

• I'm on the Wireless Sensor Networks team and it's my favorite course this semester. Anyone interested in embedded systems should sign up for this team because for once you leave most of theory behind actually get down to making a project. For a EE, this is a rare privilege. Also, it's always fun when you don't have intensive exams for a course. --Vineet

• I am currently taking ECE495 (VIP) and I am on the Wireless Sensors Team. The main purpose of this team is to show you how to use a microcontroller, and interface it to several other devices. You will start out with homeworks which are supposed to help teach you the useful parts of a micro controller, then you break up into groups where you get to choose your project, design and implement it. Most companies are very impressed when i talk to them about this class. TAKE IT!! -- Willie Haywood
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