Engineering
Projects
Starting in November
2010, I've been working as a Design Engineer in the
Signals and Train Control Engineering Department at the
Toronto Transit Commission. In our group, we design
new and maintain the current signalling system on the
Toronto subway system (i.e. the traffic lights for the
subway trains) to ensure that passengers can get
efficiently from one station to the next safely. We are
currently installing a new CBTC signalling system on the
Yonge-University-Spadina Line from Alstom Transport -
Alstom URBALIS CBTC.
Our group is currently in the midst of serveral
new and exciting projects.
Thales
Rail Signalling Solutions
From December 2006 to
October 2010, I worked as a Software Analyst (Junior,
Intermediate, Senior) at Thales Rail Signalling Solutions
(TRSS) in Toronto. TRSS builds the hardware and
software used to automated urban rail systems around the
world (i.e. driverless subway / metro systems) under the
brand name of SelTrac CBTC (Communications Based Train
Control). I worked on the Automatic Speed Control
(ASC) module, the software that controls the train to
drive automatically from one station to the next while
adhering to the speed limit, ensuring a smooth ride for
passengers (jerk limits), and stopping accurately and
consistenly in stations (± 30 cm).
Excerpt from my Farewell
Email:
I will always be
thankful for the opportunity to work on the ASC and to
deliver it to "revenue ready state" for several
projects since it allowed me to combine my hobby with
my favourite topic in electrical engineering undergrad
- control theory.
My references projects
are listed below:
 |
Canada Line Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 19.2 km, 16 Stations, Automated Depot |
 |
Dubai Metro - Red Line Dubai, United Arab Emirates 52.1 km, 29 Stations |
 |
Busan-Gimhae LRT Busan, Gyeongsangham-Do, South Korea 23.92 km, 21 Stations, Automated Depot |
 |
Dulles Airport People
Mover (Aerotrain) Dulles, Virgina, United States of America (Washington DC Area) 6.08 km, 4 Stations |
In September 2004, I
enrolled in the Masters of Applied Science (M.A.Sc.)
programme in the Energy Systems Group (also known as the
Power and Control Systems Group) in the Edward S. Roger's
Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at U
of T.
My masters thesis was supervised by Professor Francis
Dawson. My thesis involved designing a hybrid fuel
cell - battery powered forklift. It included a
software simulation program in MATLAB of the hybrid system
and also a small scale hardware prototype.
I successfully defended my thesis in September 2006 and
completed my Masters in October 2006. I also had the
privilege of presenting my research findings at two
conferences - internally within U of T at Connections
2006, University of Toronto ECE Graduate Symposium in June
2006 and also internationally at the 2007 European Power
Electronics Conference in Aalborg Denmark.
My Masters programme at U
of T gave me invaluable experience in hardware design,
project planning, teaching (through being a teaching
assistant and through presenting at conferences), and in
problem solving.
SPONSORS
Natural
Sciences and Engineering Research Council (2005-2006)
Postgraduate Scholarship M (PGS M)
(About 900 Masters science & engineering Students in
Canada receive this scholarship each year)
Government
of Ontario Graduate Research Scholarship (2004-2005)
(About 3000 Masters and Doctoral Students in ALL disciplines
in Ontario receive this scholarship each year)
Saft Power Systems and the
University of Toronto (2004-2006)
CONFERENCES
International
EPE 2007 - 12th European
Conference on Power Electronics and Applications
2 - 5 September 2007, Aalborg, Denmark
Paper Title: "A software simulation
program for a hybrid fuel cell - battery power supply
for an electric forklift"
Domestic
Connections 2006 - University
of Toronto Electrical and Computer Engineering Graduate
Symposium
9 June 2006, Toronto, Canada
Presentation Title: "A Hybrid Fuel Cell – Battery
Power Supply"
THESIS
Title: "A software simulation
program for a hybrid fuel cell - battery power supply for an
electric forklift"
A paper copy of the thesis is
available at the Engineering and Computer Science Library in
the Sanford Fleming Building at the University of Toronto.
To my surprise, I also found
an entry for the thesis on Google
Books Canada:
Here's
the QR code to the link:
| Title | A hybrid fuel cell-battery power supply for an electric forklift |
| Author | Edward W. Chan |
| Publisher | University of Toronto (Canada), 2006 |
| ISBN | 0494211202, 9780494211205 |
| Length | 149 pages |
4th YEAR DESIGN PROJECT
GENERIC WIRELESS RF USB INTERFACE
This design project will
involve designing, building, and testing a Generic
Wireless Radio Frequency (RF) Universal Serial Bus (USB)
Interface. USB is an industry standard that provides
a simple and low cost mechanism to connect many different
peripherals to a computer via cable. Current
wireless technology involves specialized adapters and some
also use infrared transmission technology that requires
line of sight. The goal of this design project is to
improve upon current USB and wireless technology by fusing
them together into one integrated product, a Generic
Wireless RF USB Interface. This interface would
allow almost any currently available wired USB device to
connect wirelessly to a computer without relying on line
of sight.
The interface will replace an existing wired
connection between a USB device and the computer with a
wireless RF connection. The wireless connection will
be implemented with a pair of wireless RF transceivers and
micro-controllers. One USB device would be plugged
into one transceiver – micro-controller pair and the other
transceiver – micro-controller pair would be connected to
the computer.
The requirements for this interface are as follows: it
must be generic to work with most current wired USB
peripherals that facilitate human input, e.g. mouse,
keyboard, and it must also be self-powered and transparent
to the end user, i.e. no operating system driver
modifications necessary and remain plug and play
compliant.
This was a team project,
I was responsible for the hardware and RF design.
Aloha Award for Innovation,
Team-work and Proper Execution for ECE 496Y, The 4th Year
Design Project, The Generic Wireless RF USB Interface by
Edward Chan and Frank Liu, supervised by Professor Khoman
Phang. The value of this award is $10,000 that was
split evenly between Edward and Frank. Comments on the
project given by the awards committee: "We think they have
satisfied the criteria for solving a REAL problem with good
creativity. Their project is very well executed and
has very good commercialization potential."
NSERC SUMMER
STUDENTSHIP
In the summer of 2001, I
had the privilege of receiving an NSERC Undergraduate
Summer Research Award to work Professor Francis Dawson in
the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the
University of Toronto. I spent the summer
researching, creating a MATLAB simulation, and a small
hardware prototype of a piezo-electric transformer
circuit.
SPONSORS
Natural
Sciences and Engineering Research Council
(Summer 2001)
Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA)
University of Toronto
P.Eng.
After graduating from U
of T, I had intended to apply for my Professional
Engineer (P.Eng.) licence as soon as I was
eligble. However I didn`t get around to it until I
started working at the Toronto Transit Commission.
I filled in my application form, including my record of
experience and submitted it in February 2011. The
earliest time I could write the Profession Practice Exam
(PPE), a law and ethics exam was in August 2011. I
got my test results in October 2011. The PEO then
contacted my references in November 2011 to confirm my
work experience history. I finally received notice
from Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) that I had met
all the requirements for the licence in March
2012.
Links:
Professional
Engineers of Ontario
Case
Studies for the PPE from the University of Waterloo
The Iron Ring Stamp
"Ritual
of the calling of an engineer /
Rite d'engagement de l'ingénieur"
Canada Post issued a
stamp commemorating the 75th anniversary of the iron
ring ceremony which welcomes graduating engineers into
the profession on the 25th of April 2000. The iron ring is presented
to all engineers who are about to graduate from an
undergraduate engineering degree in Canada. The
iron ring is worn on the little finger of the engineer's
working hand.
A brief summary of the
iron ring and its history is reprinted below from the
1999-2000 undergraduate admissions booklet from the
Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, University
of Toronto:
"More than a symbol of a
hard-earned degree, the Iron Ring represents the
engineer's responsibility to society. In 1925,
H.E.T. Haultain (I guess the Haultain building is named
after him), a professor in Civil Engineering at the
University of Toronto, wrote to Rudyard Kipling (a nobel
prize for literature winner and author of "The Jungle
Book") and asked him to devise a ceremony incorporating a
statement of ethics for young engineers. Since that
time, students graduating from U of T Engineering have
received the Iron Ring in this ceremony as a reminder of
the moral and societal obligations of the engineer.
This tradition is shared by all engineering schools in
Canada."
The source for the above image is
<http://www.canadapost.ca/CPC2/phil/stamp/images/006stamp.jpg>
obtained December 30 2000.
The stamp was designed
by Darrell Freemen in a tête bêche format
(i.e. the stamp and the inverse of it form the image of
a complete iron ring). The stamp depicts the iron
ring with images of Canadian Engineering
Accomplishments: the pacemaker (biomedical, chemical,
electrical, mechanical, materials), the High Level
Bridge at Lethbridge, Alberta (civil), the world's
largest microwave transmission network (electrical,
computer), and the industrial installations of Polymer
in Sarnia, Ontario (chemical, mineral). If you
look closely at the math formulae behind the factory
scene, I think that it is the formula for the arc length
of a parametrized equation (MAT 197S!).