The world of Electrical Engineering

Drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), are pilotless and non-crewed aircraft that are capable of flying either by remote control or through the use of on-board computers, in other words, drones are flying robots which have been getting a lot of attention recently.

Some people claim that drones are taking over the world, because we cannot stop finding new ways to make good use of them. Listed down below are some interesting facts and videos that have caught my attention in the past few months:

• Chinese power: a company named DJI has had an impressive growth streak since its founding in 2006, having generated around a billion dollars in revenue in 2015. Currently, DJI is the leader in the commercial drone space and manufactures 70% of all the civilian drones in the whole world.

• Delivery drones by Amazon, Google and Facebook: picture this, you order something online and 30 minutes later your doorbell rings, you open the door and the delivery guy is there. He hands you a document to sign for your package, you sign it and collect your package, satisfied. The delivery guy flies away… because it is a drone.

• Drone invasion: the number of drones in our society keeps increasing very rapidly and is becoming a concern for some. During the holiday season last year, the FAA predicted that over a million drones were sold. Will it get out of control? In the video down below you will see some of the advantages drones have in our society and how it can improve our safety and wellbeing.

• Drones used to drop drugs in prison yards: criminals have used these machines to smuggle drugs into prison yards. In Canada, a drone was spotted by guards dropping a mysterious package somewhere in the prison yard, but neither the drone or package was found. In Dublin, a drone carrying drugs crashed into an overhead wire installed after a 1973 prison break. Similar successful and unsuccessful deliveries have been reported by prisons all around the world.

Since I began having lectures in IST, I realized that it is a lot different than high school, one major difference that I have noticed immediately is that most of my classes have at least a 100 students, some even have more.

Another big contrast is the way teachers plan and give their lectures, they give a lot of information out in just one class which makes it difficult to keep up sometimes. In addition to this we also need to read and prepare our lab projects, not only for digital systems, but also for Porfólio MEEC, which takes up a lot of time.

As you can see down below, the Alameda Campus has a lot of different areas which allows students, researchers, faculty and staff to develop extracurricular activities, in a real university atmosphere.

From the many buildings that exist here, I have classes in 3 of them. In the Central Building (1) is where most of my classes are, such as Algebra, Calculus and Digital Systems; I have Chemistry in the south tower (20) and sometimes in the Chemical Engineering Building (21); and last but not least, in the north tower (5), more precisely in the Electrical Engineering Building (6) , I have my lab projects for Digital Systems and Portfólio MEEC.

As you may already know I am studying Electrical and Computer Engineering at the university IST, in Lisbon. This is my first semester, so I currently have 5 subjects:

• Chemistry– which provides the student with the capability of understanding the relations between chemical structure and the properties of different materials;
• Differential and Integral Calculus I– which gives the students basic knowledge in mathematical analysis, sequences, differential and integral calculus real functions of one real variable;
• Linear Algebra– this offers a better understanding of the basics in Linear Algebra, for example the knowledge of vector spaces, linear transformations, Euclidean spaces, eigenvalues and eigenvectors;
• Digital Systems– allows students to understand the operation of basic memory elements, work with registers, counters, basic timing issues, including timing constraints, propagation delays, and much more;
• Portfólio MEEC– helps students develop behavioural competences as teamwork, oral and written communication, international languages and cultures, integration into companies, and gives us an idea of what jobs we could have in the future.

My name is Stella Silva, I am an 18 year old college student, studying at the university IST, in Lisbon. The course that I am taking is called Electrical and Computer Engineering, which covers a wide range of intervention areas, such as computers, telecommunications, electronics, control and energy. The world of Engineering really fascinates me and makes me want to learn more about it.

So far it has been a good experience… It´s all very different, many changes are happening in my life right now. Overall, I hope that this will help me grow as a person and become more independent; sure living alone has its ups and downs, such as everything in life does, however, we need to be grateful and appreciate the things we have in our life right now.

I want to make this blog something special, something different and creative! I want to share with you not only my academic journey, but also my interests, hobbies and other things that are going through my mind. I want to write about my different passions and have other people share their interests and opinions.