Essay on Nicholas Kirsch

During high school was when Nicholas Kirsch started figuring out that the Electrical Engineering route was for him.  At first he wanted to be a doctor but that didn’t last.  When he started working with an engineer dealing with circuits, logics, and computer systems. He found out that he wanted to go into engineering so he picked biomedical engineering.  It turned out that the University of Wisconsin didn’t offer that major but power systems were very popular during this time and he decided to look into it.  He was also working in a research lab around this time and it was here that he finally figured out exactly what he wanted to do.  Outside his area of interest his favorite class in school was “African Story Teller.”  This class told stories from the African American point of view and he thought it was very interesting.

        Nicholas Kirsch attended the University of Wisconsin and Drexel University.  He received his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin in 2003, his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications from Drexel University in 2006, and his Doctorate degree in Electrical Engineering from Drexel University in 2009.  In graduate school he worked with wireless communications and has been teaching these type of course for 6 years now.  Nicholas is also a member of IEEE, Eta Kappa Nu, and AAAS.  IEEE is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and he is the advisor of this group.  Eta Kappa Nu is the National Honor Society for Electrical and Computer Engineers, and AAAS is The American Association for the Advancement of Science.

        Nicholas is involved many research areas including Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications systems, wireless ad hoc networking, cognitive radio, and polymer antennas.  Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications use multiple transmit and multiple receiver antennas and this significantly improves channel capacity.  Channel capacity is the highest rate obtainable for information to be transmitted over a channel.  A wireless ad hoc networking is when you use a network that doesn’t rely on a router or access points.  Nicholas uses something called wireless sensor networks and with this he can monitor physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound, pressure.  For example, he has used it to detect cell phone signals and find out how many people are in a room so that the room can be properly cooled or heated.  A cognitive radio is a radio that is designed to use the best wireless channels available.  Professor Kirsch wants to use these to be able to control power and spectrum sensing.  Spectrum sensing is where you detect unused spectrum and share it.  He is also working with antennas because he wants to improve their performance.  He is always asking questions like which materials help with boosting performance?  Where should the antenna be placed to obtain the best performance?   For example in a cell phone you want the antenna to be amazing so that your calls won’t get dropped but there are always some constraints that can hold you back.  You are always battling between performance and constraints so he wants to find a solution to this problem.  You can test antennas in something called an anechoic chamber.  An anechoic chamber is a room designed to completely absorb reflections of either sound or electromagnetic waves so there are no interferences.