Jeremiah Bauer

December 1999

Job Title: Systems Electrical Engineer
Employer: Realityworks



Job Description:
I work in the Research and Development Department at Realityworks, a company that provides hands-on educational products such as the Baby Think It Over® infant simulator and the NICoteen® addiction simulator. I am responsible for all of the electronics design, including prototyping, component selection, schematic creation, PCB layout and sourcing, and some of the subsequent testing. I am also responsible for finding new technologies or tools and getting up to speed on them so that they can be used in future products. Because of the small size of our company and group, am also heavily involved in planning, gathering customer requirements, and supporting products in production.


UWP Experience:
I am very pleased with my UWP education, especially after interacting with engineers from other schools that lack some of the practical hands-on skills and experience that we got at UWP. The professors were always very concerned that students got as much as they could out of their classes, and they put in some crazy hours to ensure they were around when people had questions about projects or homework. Almost everybody knew everyone else, and it wasn't uncommon to find half a class working together in the labs to figure out a problem or get a project to work. And the classes I took were quite relevant to the work I have done since graduation.


TYPICAL WORK DAY:
I work from around 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. There isn't really a "typical" day. I usually spend an hour or two in meetings (project, planning, or brainstorming). I generally try to get most of the distracting tasks out of the way in the morning - meeting with team members, reviewing issues in production, contacting consultants or suppliers, etc. The afternoons are typically my most productive from a design point of view, especially after most of my coworkers leave for the day. I usually save the most concentration-demanding tasks for evenings, and it isn't uncommon for me to work past midnight on fun tasks such as PCB layouts or playing around with new development kits.


Sample Project Description:
My favorite project to date was the RealCare® Baby II development. We brainstormed a number of things we wanted the new infant simulator to do and spent months trying to implement the features. We had to eliminate some of them because of physical constraints, such as a temperature sensor because of the dampening effect of the thermal mass of the Baby. But we were able to integrate a wireless RFID system, flash-based microcontrollers, new motion and rough handling sensors, and a number of improvements to the mechanical design as well.

My role in this project was managing the project from concept to product introduction, integrating parts of the design completed by consultants, creating and sourcing the electronics, helping debug software/hardware issues, and overseeing product safety compliance testing.


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Other Comments:
A sound understanding of math and physics is important for making it through a 4-year engineering program. After that, though, the ability to problem solve, interact with people, and think outside the box becomes critical.