Solar Challenge Solar Team Eindhoven wins World Solar Challenge

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1 Magazine of e.t.s.v. Thor and the department of Electrical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology 24 December 2013 Solar Challenge Solar Team Eindhoven wins World Solar Challenge Internships abroad in three countries Autonomous Quadcopters Valedictory lecture Paul van den Bosch

2 I Editorial Connecthor Volume 6, issue 4 - December 2013 Connecthor is published by e.t.s.v. Thor and the department of Electrical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology. Connecthor is published quarterly with a circulation of 1200 copies and is free for all members of e.t.s.v. Thor and employees of the department of Electrical Engineering. Editors in chief: Femke Verheggen Martijn van Beurden Layout editors: Lulu Chan Anjo Peeters Edgar van Megen Editors: Manon Eijsvogel Georgios Exarchakos Pauline van Gelder Jerom de Haan Esmee Huismans Suzanne Kuijlaars Fer Radstake Elles Raaijmakers Rianne Sanders Bart Smolders Harold Vervoort Cover: Solar Team Eindhoven with Stella. Photo by Bart van Overbeeke Photography Printer: Jafra drukwerkservice Editorial correspondence: Connecthor Eindhoven University of Technology Potentiaal Den Dolech 2, P.O. Box MB Eindhoven (040) or (040) , connecthor@tue.nl Web: Advertisers: Page 6: Page 18: Page 28: Back cover: Brunel AME Thales VanDerLande Deadline copy next issue: 3 January 2014 Copyright Connecthor 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any way without prior written permission of the editorial board. Looking back on the year 2013, it has definitely been a good year for our department, with a great number of new students and a lot of awards and recognitions for the department. In this Connecthor we bring you up to date with some of the highlights of the past period. One of the major highlights was of course that the Solar Team Eindhoven, participating in the World Solar Challenge 2013, has won the competition for solar-powered family cars. The team and its car Stella, the world s first solar powered family car, is the winner of the Cruiser class. In this edition you will find the personal experience of our proud dean Ton Backx who was present in Australia during the race. You might have noticed it when you opened this edition: Connector has changed to a new layout, more English articles than before, and as of next year we will introduce special editions. Also, the Connecthor editorial board has a new member, Rianne Sanders. We are very pleased that Rianne has joined us and we are convinced that she will be an asset to the Connecthor editorial board. Looking ahead, a lot will change for our department in Alfons Bruekers, who is currently Managing Director for the Applied Physics and Mechanical Engineering departments, will be appointed at the Electrical Engineering Department and at the same time will continue to manage the Applied Physics department. As such, he will be responsible for the so-called Flux Departments. And of course we will move to the Flux building next year. This will undoubtedly give us much inspiration for new articles in the 2014 editions of the Connecthor. Of course we warmly welcome suggestions and ideas for future editions and you can contact us via connecthor@tue.nl. We wish you and your family Happy Holidays and a successful and healthy 2014! The Connecthor editorial board Disclaimer The editor reserves the right to shorten and otherwise edit the articles. The views and opinions expressed in the articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of e.t.s.v. Thor or the department of Electrical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology. 02 connecthor

3 ContentI 14 World Solar Challenge Read more about the performance of Stella in Australia on page 14. Open Dagen De Open Dagen van oktober zijn zeer goed bezocht. Ontdek hier meer over op pagina Redactioneel 4 Board Issues 7 From the President 8 Introducing News 11 Avans students say Hello! 12 News on education EE & AU 14 World Solar Challenge 16 Distortion in power networks 18 Being part of success is motivating 19 IEEE Day great success 19 IEEEXtreme Internship Canada 22 Photo page 24 Creating autonomous quadcopters 26 Interning in Singapore op de Open Dagen 28 Thales Nederland: een interview 30 Examencommissie en instellingstoets 32 PhD activity of the EES group 33 The lay of Hlöð 36 Afscheid Paul van den Bosch 38 Future laptop light-connected 40 Internship in Graz 42 Puzzle 43 Can we trust time travel records? 27 Internships Three students wrote about their internships abroad. Read their experiences on pages 20, 26 and IEEE Day For the annual IEEE Day, various pies were baked, ranging from good to even better, for the Baking Contest. Read more on page 19. Autonomous quadcopters Interested in reading about quadcopters getting more and more autonomous? Check out this article on page 24. December

4 IDepartment Board Issues By: Ton Koonen We are approaching the end of the year, and that is always a good moment to look backwards and also ahead. In the Board of the EE department, my role is to monitor and facilitate the research activities in our department. Looking back, we have done very well in the past year. A lot of new activities have been started, and also a lot have been concluded successfully. A myriad of research projects is running, in a wide range of fields. To go into the details of each project is of course far beyond the scope of this short story. In general, we were quite successful in executing projects as well as in acquiring new ones. It has become quite noticeable that in these difficult economic tides, industry is cutting back on research, and needs to focus on their short-term market interests. Hence our role in looking further ahead and providing our industry with nice new ideas is highly appreciated. On the other hand, however, our government is seriously reducing the funding for research. The Dutch aardgasbaten are expiring, and new funding sources have to be found. When we propose research projects in the Dutch research programmes, industrial partners are often requested to participate. They have to contribute not only in-kind (e.g. by participating in advisory meetings of the project) but also by contributing real money. And that has become quite scarce in their economic struggles The Dutch government is trying to streamline the interaction between academic research and industrial innovation by means of the Topsectoren-beleid in which large parts of the government s funding money are concentrated. This process is not running smoothly yet, amongst others being hampered by the own contribution which the industrials have to bring in. The Board of our university has recognized these issues, and has introduced the Impulse programme by which some TU/e funding was made available to overcome the temporary dip in the governmental funding. The TU/e funding is meant for creating a number of PhD positions, which have to be matched by at least an equal number of PhD positions funded by industrial partners in a new joint research programme. The Impulse programme is getting shape now, and some nice programmes with major industrial partners such as NXP, KEMA, and Philips together with the Maxima Medisch Centrum are being set up. Another major source of funding for our research activities is provided by the European Commission. The 7th Framework Programme (FP7) in total had a funding budget of about 53 billion in the period , with 8.1 billion in its final year This is spread out over a number of sub-programmes, the major one (2/3 of the budget) being the Cooperation programme addressing joint R&D between academics and industrials. FP7 also encompasses the Ideas programme for individual grants for groundbreaking research (led by the European Research Council), and the People programme for mobility actions (e.g. the Marie Curie actions). As a department, we have been quite successful in FP7, with numerous projects in the Cooperation programme and also some successes in the Ideas programme (1 ERC Starting Grant, 2 ERC Advanced Grants) and the People programme (Marie Curie grants). The EC-funded projects offer an international platform for research cooperation, they thus widen the scope of our research and give a good visibility of our results. Moreover, the EC funding also covers a large part of our overhead costs, which is especially welcome in view of the diminishing income from our government. External funding, also for our permanent staff, is becoming crucial to keep the operations in our EE department running! The FP7 is coming to a close this year. Luckily, the EC has already prepared an even larger programme, the HORIZON 2020 programme, with a budget of about 70 billion over the 04 connecthor

5 DepartmentI period , and which will follow up on the FP7 closely. The H2020 programme is putting a larger emphasis on the big societal challenges which urgently need solutions from R&D activities. It has three main themes: Excellent Science (budget 24 billion ): for individual research grants (ERC), cooperative research (Future and Emerging Technologies, FET), career development of researchers (Marie Curie etc.), and world-class research infrastructures) Competitive Industries (17 B ): for promoting industrial capabilities in Key Enabling Technologies (KETs; 5.9 B ) including micro- and nano-electronics and photonics; and for support for innovation by small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). Tackling Societal Challenges (31 B ): for meeting the political priorities formulated in the Europe 2020 strategy, encompassing the climate change, the ageing of our society, food safety and security, and affordable sustainable energy, smart green transport, and secure, inclusive and innovative societies. When comparing with the FP7 programme, the Ideas and People parts are now grouped in the Excellent Science theme, and the Cooperation part in the Competitive Industries and Tackling Societal Challenges themes. The H2020 funding rules will differ from the FP7 ones, e.g. being academics we can get 100% funding rate; but there also is a single 25% flat overhead rate. Industrials get 100% funding for research too, but 70% for innovation. There will be more emphasis on public-private partnerships. H2020 aims to transform Europe into the Innovation Union, and thus to position Europe better in the globally very competitive scene. Given the three themes along which the research in our EE department is organized, Connected World, Care and Cure, and Smart Sustainable Society, we make a great fit to many of the Societal Challenges formulated in the H2020 programme. The formal adoption of the H2020 programme by the EU Council is expected in November/December this year. The first Calls for Proposals are planned to appear on December 11, and the deadline for submitting project proposals likely will be around April More information can be found via the EC site eu/research/horizon2020/index_en.cfm, or via the Dutch Agentschap NL site horizon-2020 On November 12, there is a start event in the RAI Amsterdam for getting more in-depth information. There is much to be gained for maintaining and extending our research activities, so let s get ready to get involved in Horizon 2020! Ton Koonen Oct. 25, 2013 December

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7 AssociationI From the President By: Esmee Huismans Changes, they occur everywhere and every day. The main change within Thor was that there is a new board. The board now consists of six students, instead of the four students it consisted of last year. Since the change of boards, I am the new president. I have the honor to write this column for this year. I will start with properly introducing myself. My name is Esmee Huismans and I am the third female president Thor has seen. I live in Eindhoven and I grew up in Oss. I am 20 years old and I really enjoy being important for our association. We have had the opportunity to be the board for some time now. Three months have gone by, with us as the Thor board. Now I am used to being president. It was a big change for me. People expect you to know a lot of things and give them information about everything which happens in our association. In the beginning, that was difficult, but I had the support from my fellow board members. As the board you have several obligations, some you might like, others you might not. But the experience of being part of the board in general is most important. A thing that never changes within Thor is that the new board has to formulate several focus points. These points are related to things which happen during the coming year or have happened in the past. A major change which occurred within the TU/e, is the Bachelor College. Therefore one of our points was Bachelor College and making sure Thor offers something for the new students. Giving them the opportunity to develop themselves through several activities like workshops, excursions but also making sure there is enough time to socialize. One thing you are expected to do during your year as board is to organize activities. Taking care of your members by offering them something. We will offer them a place where they can enjoy themselves and keep on learning. Thor is a place with unity. We want to preserve and strengthen this aspect during the year. We are glad to see that there are more students attending both studies, Electrical Engineering and Automotive, and that we have quite a few international members. However the greatest change our association has seen in a while has yet to come. In the beginning of the year 2015 we will move to a new building. This will be the building Flux. Unfortunately, we will have less space, therefore we will have to reduce our size. We have to work closely with for example the boards of our master associations and take the different opinions from our members into account. To make everything go as smooth as possible collaboration is extremely important. Keeping up the communication and improving it. Even though the actual move does not take place in the year that I am president. The progress towards this event is also really important. Nobody likes major changes and this is a major change. Luckily we work with people who want the best for Thor. So I am positive that we will turn this into a great change for our association. Changes, they occur everywhere and every day. Whether big or small, positive or negative, what matters is how you handle these changes. Most important is that you have the right people around to handle them as they come along. Veel Gedonder! Esmee Huismans President der e.t.s.v. Thor December

8 IDepartment Introducing... Hello, everyone! I am Hailong Jiao. I just joined the Electronic Systems group as an assistant professor in September I spent five years in Hong Kong and received my PhD degree in Electronic and Computer Engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in December, My major research area is low power and variations-tolerant VLSI circuit design. I have experience in multi-threshold voltage circuit design, power gating, power distribution network reliability analysis, low power and robust SRAM circuit design, and device/ circuit co-design. I also have great interests in 3D integration, emerging devices, and design for manufacturability. If you are also interested in circuit design or have any good ideas about research, feel free to contact me. You can also track my updated news at my personal webpage: nl/~hjiao/. Dear all, Let me take this opportunity to introduce myself. I am Jeroen Tegenbosch, 36 years old and I live in Helmond with my girlfriend and two daughters. I recently started as a project manager in the group Electromechanics & Power Electronics (EPE) headed by prof.dr. Elena Lomonova. My initial focus is initiating, coordinating and supporting European funded projects that fit the group s strategy. I could describe the first couple of weeks with just one word; fantastic. It is really a privilege to work in an environment consisting of young researchers with (literally) a lot of energy to drive forward. Before I joined EPE, I worked at Philips for almost 12 years. I started within the Research department (read: invent) and ended up at the Innovation lab (read: implement), both with a strong focus on the TV business. Within these departments, I occupied several positions and ended up as project manager. I am absolutely confident that this experience will help me in being an added value for my current position at the TU/e. In my spare time I like to exercise sports, spend time with friends and family, and enjoy life as much as possible. 08 connecthor

9 DepartmentI Hi, my name is Bart Nelissen and in June of this year I joined TU/e Innovation Lab as a Business Developer with a focus on Health. In this role I can support researchers in the valorization of their research by promoting collaborative research projects with industry, patenting and licensing of university technology and setting up new spin-off companies. I can also provide input in proposals for funding where a valorization strategy is required. I did a PhD in Organic Chemistry at the Radboud University in Nijmegen and then moved to the University of York (UK) where I lead a number of Drug Discovery project from very early stages up to preclinical development over a period of eight years. Whilst doing this I became more and more interested in commercializing university based research and decided to pursue a career in this field. For the last four years I have been working at the University of Antwerp in Belgium where I was responsible for valorization of research in the biomedical domain, working mainly with researchers of the Faculties of Pharmacy and Medicine. I am looking forward to working with the researchers in this Faculty and if you have any ideas on Health applications based on your research but don t know how to go about realizing this you can always contact me for support. A big Hello to everyone! This Ali Al-Rawi! I was born in Baghdad, Iraq on September 11th, I m an electrical engineer, as I gained my BSEE in University of Baghdad, Iraq, and Applied Science University, Amman, Jordan, in In 2009, I got enrolled at Chalmers University of Technology, Electrical Engineering. Since 2011 I was conducting a one year research project in which I have developed a wideband MIMO antenna. The project was a collaboration between Chalmers and industrial partners. The work was a real success, and I am really happy about it. The work resulted in multiple publications in which I authored and co-authored. In addition, the work has been patent protected. Now, I am a PhD at the TU/e, Electrical Engineering, Electromagnetics group, and I am filled with happiness to join the group s research activities. I am working on the mm-wave integrated antenna system with electronic beam alignment for point to point communication links (INTEGRANT). Therefore, I am very eager to achieve excellent work. I also like to do sport for example, football, swimming, badminton, and jogging. In my free time, I enjoy meeting up with my friends and do some activities such as watching a movie, wandering around, playing a game, etc. Therefore, I will be happy to have more friends since I am new in town. Your friend Ali December

10 I News Farewell Paul Tiel Groenestege On Thursday, August 22, 2013 Paul Tiel Groenestege had his Farewell reception. During his reception he received a Volunteers Medal from the city of Eindhoven. Best bachelor student Manuel van Rijn has been nominated for an excellence grant from the TU/e. He is one of the ten best bachelor students of For 47 years, he was a staff member of Personnel and Organization service and for more than 7 years he was working at the Electrical Engineering Department. We wish him and his family all the best in the future. Kivi Niria prize Yan Shi Yan Shi, who got her PhD cum laude in the ECO group in May 2013 and now works at Genexis, has won the KIvI NIRIA Telecom Prize 2013, on September 26, for her PhD work on Converged Optical In-Home Networks. The Prize is a yearly award for the best PhD work in the Netherlands in the area of telecommunications. Vlaai from the Rector On September 24, the Rector Magnificus of Eindhoven University of Technology treated the Department of Electrical Engineering to vlaai on the occasion of reaching the milestone of 150 first-year students. Educational award for Prof. Baltus On the second day of September the new academic year started with a beautiful opening. At the opening, the educational awards for best bachelor and master lecturer were presented. This year a professor from our own faculty won one of these; Professor dr. ir. Peter Baltus received the award for best master lecturer of the year. Students liked his lectures very much, since the slides always contain a little bit of humor to get the students attention. He uses the clickers to check the foreknowledge of the students and to check whether the lecture material is clear to them. But the most important reason he was honored with the award is his incredible enthusiasm. Or like his students described him: dedicated, intelligent, enthusiastic, and a little bit crazy. The editorial board of the Connecthor would like to congratulate prof. Baltus with his award. Dag beste lezers, hier een groet vanuit het zonnige Boulder, Colorado! Onlangs kreeg ik (red. Joop aan den Toorn) te horen dat ik de Connecthorvlaai heb gewonnen indien ik een kleine bijdrage wilde leveren in de vorm van een stukje over de government shutdown in Amerika die me ongevraagd werd toebedeeld. Zoals jullie misschien weten vindt mijn stage plaats bij het National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Wat de relevantie van het woord National hierin is kan je vast wel raden: NIST is al een paar weken gesloten omdat men in het Congress ruzie maakt over de financiering van hun overheidsprogramma s. Eigenlijk begon de shutdown vrij onverwacht. Het is namelijk elk jaar zo dat de Democraten en Republikeinen het niet eens zijn over hoe en welke programma s er precies worden gefinancierd. Ook is het gebruikelijk dat ze beiden geen millimeter toegeven tot op het allerlaatste moment, althans, zo werd mij verteld. Dit jaar echter kon de extreem rechtste Republikeinse Tea Party de nieuwe wetten over medische zorg, ook wel ObamaCare genoemd, niet verkroppen hetgeen uiteindelijk resulteerde in het deels sluiten van de overheidsinstanties. Waarom dit twee weken lang moest duren is omdat Amerikaanse politici het veel belangrijker vinden elkaar daarna de schuld te geven in plaats van naar een oplossing te werken, zoals kleuters dat ook graag doen. Voor mij betekende dit dat ik samen met mijn non-essential collega s bij NIST vier uur de tijd had om apparatuur uit te schakelen en een autoreply in te stellen. Omdat de beveiliging van NIST belachelijk strikt is kon ik letterlijk niet bij mijn data om thuis verder te werken. Er zat derhalve niets anders op dan me te vermaken met hiken, motorrijden en uitgaan, heel vervelend. Als je hier rond vraagt aan mensen wat ze er nou precies van vinden krijg je zonder uitzondering een antwoord met een zucht. Laatst nog zag ik een opiniepeiling waarin de waardering van het Congress door de bevolking lager stond dan spruitjes en zelfs lager dan die voor de band Nickelback, ik bedoel maar. In deze regio werkt ongeveer 24% van de bevolking in een lab voor de overheid, maar indirect hebben ook veel cateraars, aannemers en andere partijen weinig te doen gehad. Vandaag echter kreeg ik de blijde boodschap: we moeten weer aan de slag! Verder wil ik nog even kwijt dat ik langer bezig was een vlaai te vinden dan dit stukje te schrijven omdat Amerikanen de vlaai nog niet helemaal snappen. Zoals je kunt zien is het ze bijna gelukt er een te maken. 10 connecthor

11 Varia I Avans students say Hello! By: Roel van Uden and Maikel van de Schans Let us introduce ourselves, we are Roel van Uden and Maikel van de Schans. We both attend Avans University as bachelor software development students and have recently started our graduation project with the Electro Optical Communications (ECO) group of the Electrical Engineering department at TU/e. The goal of the project is to decrease the offline processing time of an existing digital signal processing solution for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) optical transmission systems. The project is an assignment for Dr. Chigo Okonkwo and is supervised by Dr. Georgios Exarchakos. Our educational background focuses on technologies required to develop desktop and mobile software, such as database technologies and user-interface design. So in comparison, the goal of decreasing offline processing time requires a vastly different mindset and technological expertise. In contrast to a typical bachelor software development graduation project, we have been provided with the freedom to research and act independently. This freedom provides both a challenge and, in comparison, a much higher work pressure, but also provides us with the challenge we were actively seeking for. Dealing with the ultimate goal of a reduced offline processing time, we set out to learn about the existing platform and used technologies. The most significant challenge we have been facing was the fact that our education does not focus on a mathematical background, which has forced us to go through a rather severe mathematical crash course to achieve something that would resemble a basic understanding of existing computational code. Though, this lack of thorough understanding did provide an opportunity for improvement. Instead of seeing a logical flow of mathematical expressions, we have been seeing a flow that makes little sense in terms of processor optimization and have been achieving considerable improvements by restructuring the existing code flow with the just-in-time compiler in mind. Continuing with the restructured platform, we aim for changes and new technologies to further reduce offline processing time. We have chosen to use a divide-and-conquer strategy by rewriting the networking architecture to reduce networking overhead and allow for parallel computation and data acquisition, the implementation of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), and a distributedcomputing platform. The required knowledge for the implementation of these technologies is applicable to our future as software developers, as the expectations of an enduser continue to shift away from traditional desktop software in favor of web-based solutions capable of serving millions on concurrent users in real-time. We are looking forward to see what we can do to push both ourselves and the digital signal processing solution to the limits. December

12 IDepartment News on education EE & AU By: Jan Vleeshouwers This academic year, the number of 1st-year students in the bachelor studies of Electrical Engineering and Automotive has increased again, to 111 EE-students and 42 AU-students. Since we exceeded the 150 students, the university board treated us to vlaai, just like two years ago. For the Electrical Engineering program, we have most certainly left behind a prolonged period of low influx, with about 75 new students each year. This period started in the 1990 s and reached an all-time low of 50 in But we are still far away from the peak years of the 1980 s, when numbers exceeded 250. For Automotive, we do not have a long history to compare to. Starting with 30 students in 2011, the numbers are growing, but not as much as we hoped for. The current increase in influx is remarkable because of the overall decrease in the number of VWO-graduates with an appropriate diploma. The number of VWO-NT-graduates ( Nature & Technology ) will decrease even further in the coming years. We can point out several more or less probable causes for this growth despite the smaller pool of possible EE-students. A very obvious fact is the increasing number of foreign students, currently about 25% of the 1 st -year population. We count 17 nationalities, and, surprisingly, we also have some Dutch students who are more fluent in English than in Dutch. Other developments have been said to cause the growing influx, but they are more speculative. Most likely, there is a relationship with economic adversity, which we also saw in the 1980 s. Job prospects with an EE or AU master degree are still very good. In connection to this, possible cuts in financial support for students may also have caused students to decide to start studying immediately after finishing high-school. A final development that may have impact is the Bachelor College, which now entered its 2 nd year at TU Eindhoven. But it is probably a little too early to attribute causality to this 12 connecthor

13 DepartmentI new bachelor education design, because our colleagues in Delft and Twente experience a similar influx growth. Many generation 2012 students obtained their 1 st -year diploma The bachelor students Electrical Engineering and Automotive who started their studies in September 2012, have been successful in their first year: 23 of them have completed their 1 st -year program completely, and have obtained the Propedeutic diploma, 6 of them with distinction. This is 20% of those who started in September 2012 and 30% of those who reregistered this year. Although this may be a record, it is difficult to compare to previous years, because the faculty never paid much attention to 1 st -year diploma statistics. The official examination committee meeting for 1 st -year diplomas could just as well be in August as in September, as a result of which sometimes none of our 1 st year students formally received a P-diploma within the 1 st year. The graph shows numbers of diplomas for each academic year. The erratic ups and downs during the last 10 years are caused by this inconsistency in formally deciding about P-diplomas. Of course, the most prominent conclusion from the graph is that we are still nowhere near where we once were. There has been an official diploma ceremony for these students on Friday November 1 st. One student not allowed to continue the bachelor program As a result of the BSA-procedure, on August 28th six students pleaded their case in front of the examination committee. For various reasons, they did not succeed in completing 30 credits in their first year and had to convince the examination committee of the appropriateness of their choice to study Electrical Engineering or Automotive. One student was unable to do so, and as a consequence did not get permission to continue his Electrical Engineering study in Eindhoven. Looking back to what happened to the two students who addressed the examination last year, in August 2012, we may conclude that it is difficult to draw definite conclusions on the question if a student is qualified for a study. The student who convinced the examination committee about his qualifications, all but lived up to that; the student who could not convince the examination committee, switched to Electrical Engineering in Twente, and is currently doing well there. Electrical Engineering not involved in accreditation follow-up The university had a visit of the accreditation committee in the week of October 16 th. Instead of the well-known program accreditations, which the faculty of Electrical Engineering most recently went through in 2010, this year the Dutch accreditation organization NVAO accredits the university as a whole. In the past year, many preparations have been made for this visit, which culminated in a so-called Critical Self-study. The committee took a day to talk to several representatives of the university, students and teaching staff as well as management. In accordance to the institutional level of the accreditation, the topics were also much more abstract than in a program accreditation: the discussion was about the university view on education, how this view has been worked out in detail, how the university measures if its efforts are effective, how it organizes its activities for enhancement, and if its organizational structure is such that the university is in control. This buzz-word has shaped the preparations for the accreditation, and will probably do so as well for the follow-up. In the beginning of December, the committee will return to the university to study a couple of specific topics, which they consider possible weaknesses. Although it is not yet officially clear what the committee s plans are, it is unlikely that the focus will be on the education provided by the faculty of Electrical Engineering. December