Hewlett-Packard Company -- HP -- has agreed to establish a comprehensive partnership with Yale that will bring together leading engineers and scientists at both institutions to collaborate on research in a number of disciplines, especially engineering. HP also will provide state-of- the-art computer and monitoring equipment to make Yale's engineering teaching laboratories among the best-equipped in the nation, according to D. Allan Bromley, dean of engineering. The research and equipment support total about $2 million thus far.
HP also has begun on-campus recruiting, with the first interview of 108 graduate and undergraduate students in engineering and the School of Management completed last February.
In announcing the HP partnership, Dean Bromley said: "The engineer of the 21st century will need to work with a much wider perspective and a more sophisticated intellectual tool kit than did previous generations of engineers. As the boundaries of traditional engineering disciplines blur, the demand for engineers who can call upon a range of talents and experiences will increase. Yale is prepared to meet the challenge of training the next generation of engineering leaders and looks forward to a partnership with HP in that mission."
Dean Bromley emphasized that engineering has established "strong synergistic relationships with Yale's Schools of Management, Medicine, Forestry and Environmental Studies and Law. And we are designing and implementing new curricula in both our undergraduate and graduate engineering programs that will build upon these relationships to give Yale students the breadth of background necessary for leadership in the next century.
"We are delighted that Hewlett-Packard, one of the world's foremost technology companies, has agreed to this relationship with the Yale Faculty of Engineering," he said.
The announcement of the Hewlett-Packard Engineering Initiative at Yale follows three other recent major announcements about the expansion of the University's engineering programs: the creation of a major new program in biomedical engineering and the establishment of two endowed faculty positions in engineering -- the David and Lucile Packard Chair in Electrical Engineering, to be filled by a leading researcher in computer engineering, and the Frederick W. Beinecke Chair in Engineering. Mr. Packard, who died in March, was a cofounder in 1939 of Hewlett-Packard Company, a leading global manufacturer of computing, communications and measurement products and services, which now has more than 100,000 employees and an annual revenue of $31.5 billion.
Under the leadership of Joel Birnbaum, director of HP laboratories and senior vice president of research and development, the computer firm has endorsed Yale's plan to establish the engineering design studio concept, which will give students hands-on design experience. "This plan embodies the concept of a laboratory without walls, utilizing the latest in HP computational and network capabilities," said Dean Bromley. "The design studio erases the stereotype of the tedious laboratory, dissolves stultifying disciplinary boundaries and engages the student in exploration and creative activities."
In addition to the equipment grant, Yale is expanding its research collaboration with HP in the areas of magneto resistance, telemedicine, teleconferencing, data compression, engineering of high-performance computer networks, computer security and portable data monitoring. The collaborations, 22 of which already are underway, will be interdisciplinary across a number of scientific fields, including mathematics, computer science, medicine and environmental studies as well as engineering.
The HP equipment grant includes 21 Precision Architecture RISC workstations and 52 Vectra personal computers, all made by HP, plus several servers that will make it possible to link the computers into high- speed networks. The grant also includes advanced laser printers, and scanners and plotters for engineering design and analysis, said Martin Ewing, director of the Science and Engineering Computing Facility.
Most of the personal computers will be used at the Morse Teaching Lab in Becton Engineering Center, where they will be connected with oscilloscopes and other instruments to form 10 design studios, called HP Design Instrumentation Modules. Five additional HPDIM studios will give students hands-on design experience in the chemical and mechanical engineering laboratories as well as in a new biomedical engineering lab that is planned.
Mr. Ewing said the design studios will enable students to collect data under computer control, and then to transmit the data to other computers for analysis, including their own personal computers in Yale's residential colleges. The HP instrumentation grant also will make it possible to create a student media center for graphic design and creation of World Wide Web pages. That media center will be used heavily by students enrolled in "The Digital Information Age," a popular course in which 500 freshman are enrolled this semester, mostly non-engineering majors.
Finally, the HP grant will outfit an advanced electronic classroom, which will mark the first time Yale faculty have had a facility for hands-on teaching with Unix and Windows NT. HP Omnibook laptop computers will also be provided to faculty for preparing and presenting lectures, Mr. Ewing said.
During the last 20 years, HP has built a strong relationship with Yale through a variety of initiatives, Dean Bromley noted. For example, a grant of HP workstations was instrumental in establishing the Center for Computational Ecology used for environmental research. Other departments to benefit from equipment grants have included applied physics, electrical engineering and computer science as well as the School of Medicine.
"The Hewlett-Packard Initiative gives us an opportunity not only to meet our core needs but also to design and implement a technical plan for engineering education well into the next century," Dean Bromley said. "Students will learn by building, by interfacing sensors to microcontrollers, and by assembling circuitry and design software. They can participate in all aspects of the design process, from simulation through prototype."