California Baptist University

CBU receives $250,000 grant for high-tech green lab

RIVERSIDE (January 19, 2012) – California Baptist University's College of Engineering has received a grant of $250,000 from the W.M. Keck Foundation that will be used to purchase equipment and develop an advanced "green" computing, teaching and research laboratory.

The high-tech lab will feature field programmable gate array (FPGA) hardware and advanced robotics equipment.  FPGA are integrated circuits designed to be configured by the user, after manufacturing, for customized use.

Dr. Anthony Donaldson, founding dean of the College of Engineering, said the new "green" lab advances the university's growing engineering program.

"This grant will continue CBU's development of a first class engineering curriculum and solidify our relationship with an industry leader in compact high speed computing," Donaldson said.  "It enables our engineers, both faculty and staff, to have amazing scalable and computation power for advanced development in robotic sensors, bioinformatics and other applications."

Working in an FPGA applications laboratory, offers students the opportunity to develop real-world applications and products using equipment that addresses the demand for fast, energy-efficient and low-cost computing. Undergraduate engineering students will study topics such as bioinformatics, directed toward ongoing cancer research, as well as robotics, including the specialty areas of enhanced recognition, ethics-based decision-making and sensor interface development.  

Use of the laboratory, FPGA hardware and other equipment, and concepts and applications will be integrated into all four years of the undergraduate Electrical and Computer Engineering degree curriculum. Existing courses are being augmented and new laboratory equipment will be integrated into those classes in fall 2012.

Established in 2006, the CBU College of Engineering's enrollment has grown more than five-fold from its initial 53 students to 290 in fall 2011.