Successful Engineering Education Requires Applied Industry Projects

Abstract

In this talk we present non-traditional, radical university arrangements that we implemented in the College of Engineering and Computer Science at FAU to create an Entrepreneurial University. To produce successful engineers our thesis is that they should be involved in the applied industry projects. This “re-conceptualization” involves non-traditional, often radical university arrangements. We will present our entrepreneurial, research, and innovation strategy The backbone of our new concept is the NSF-sponsored Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Advanced Knowledge Enablement with 45 industry members, a more than 50 applied research projects. The university has created a Research Park with more than 20 high-tech companies and an incubator with more than 30 start-up companies. In the main part of the talk we present several successful projects by our faculty and students that resulted in creating start-up companies, patent inventions, and successful products and services.

Biography

Prof. Borko Furht is a professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science (CEECS) at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) in Boca Raton, Florida. He is also Director of the NSF-sponsored Industry/University Cooperative Research Center on Advanced Knowledge Enablement at FAU. From 2010 to 2013, he served as Chair of the CEECS Department, and from 2002-2009 as Chair of Computer Science and Engineering Department at FAU. From 2006-2008, he was also Senior Assistant Vice President for Engineering and Technology at FAU. Before joining FAU, he was a vice president of research and a senior director of development at Modcomp (Ft. Lauderdale), a computer company of Daimler Benz, Germany, a professor at University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, and a senior researcher in the Institute Boris Kidric-Vinca, Yugoslavia. Professor Furht received Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Belgrade. His current research is in multimedia systems, multimedia big data, video coding and compression, 3D video and image systems, wireless multimedia, cloud computing, and social networks. He has been presently Principal Investigator and Co-PI of several multiyear, multimillion dollar projects. He received total funding of $30 million from government agencies including NSF, NIH, Department of Navy, DoD, and NASA, and private industries including IBM, Google, Apple, LexisNexis, Motorola, Emerson, and others. He is the author of numerous books and articles in the areas of multimedia, computer architecture, real-time computing, and operating systems. He has more than 100 US and international patents and patents applications and 12 essential patents for the new VVC/H.266 video coding standard. He is a founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Multimedia Tools and Applications (Springer), and he co-founded Journal of Big Data (Springer). He has received several technical and publishing awards, and has consulted many high-tech companies including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, General Electric, JPL, NASA, Honeywell, and RCA. In 2024 he received President’s Award for Career Achievement at FAU. He has given many invited talks, keynote lectures, seminars, and tutorials. He served as Chairman and Director on the Board of Directors of several high-tech companies and as an expert witness for Cisco, Qualcomm, Adobe, and Bell Canada. He is presently Special Advisor for Technology and Innovations for the United Nations Global Millennium Development Foundation. He is a member of Academia Europaea.