Dr.Vishwanathan is currently working as Associate Professor-ECE at K.Ramakrishnan College of Engineering, Trichy. With nearly 10+ years of total industrial experience in the VLSI (Analog/RF IC) design field, he holds a Phd in Microelectronics design field from EPFL, Switzerland. His core research/project activities are circuit and systems design for biomedical applications, hardware prototyping of electronics systems, hardware programming (HDL, FPGA or similar) for AI/DL applications. He constantly works towards promoting and aiding students in their technical projects, core companies, start-up ideas. 

K.Ramakrishnan College of Engineering

What latest programs do you offer and what makes it best for the students to opt?

“High tech courses generating skilled manpower”

The new subjects introduced in the department of ECE are Speech processing, Image/Video processing, and CMOS Analog and Digital VLSI design courses. Highly connected to hardware industry expectations such as Next gen hardware like Embedded FPGA, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) ASIC, Neural processing units or hardware accelerator designs, these courses help students outperform in many competitions. The skill-set gained by students will be applied to latest, future technologies like AI, ML hardware. 

What will you say are the best practices in the course you’re offering?

“New technical and technological learning advances”

We follow the practice of training students familiarized with hardware (Embedded FPGA or DSP) and its related coding (HDL) right from second/third semester itself with special focus on technical projects. This gives a lot of time for students to equip themselves and target core career options in the Electronics industry. We offer practical core industry projects during each semester where students work with the latest electronics hardware like high speed FPGA, embedded microcontrollers, National Instruments acquisition cards etc. Also, mini technical project competitions, technical support for AICTE initiatives like Hackathon India, support for start-up projects, new idea incubation support etc. are organized regularly. 

How does the program ensure that students are being prepared for the future?

“Practical learning approaches and industrial integrations”

The new subjects offered are created considering the latest innovations happening in speech processing (Speech recognition domain), image processing (biomedical, intelligent vehicle/driving), VLSI (Embedded co-processing high speed FPGA). The subjects offered also target next gen AI, ML applications spanning all technological sectors. Industry oriented projects for students, industry internships and technical workshops and training sessions help build a practical and advanced approach towards teaching-learning process. Students are prepared and skilled sufficiently for current as well as future industrial directions.

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How is the faculty trained to deliver this program to the students? 

“Specialized recruiting and training sessions”

The Department of ECE takes multiple steps to deliver this program efficiently to students as well as training faculty with latest updates in the field. Recruiting faculty with good research (Phd/ME) experience in signal processing and VLSI domains is a protocol. Special focus is also being given for cross-domain research work in latest fields like deep learning, AI, ML. Encouraging faculties to take courses and workshops related to latest applications in the above fields to strengthen their knowledge and skills. 

What are the types of projects students are working on through this program? 

“Multiple hardware and skilled based projects”

Microcontroller based hardware like low-cost biometric recognition, Smart robot used within the department, IOT based smart waste management system are a few projects we make the students work in. Apart from this various mini hardware prototypes using sensors and wireless chips for proximity sensing, image illusion, Bluetooth based voice recognition devices etc. are a part of students learning in industry and real practical world.

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What are the benefits and career options after pursuing this course?

“Professional Research and Engineering”

The students have the opportunity to either take higher studies and do PG/Phd in the above subjects. All the subjects introduced have good potential for a research career. Industrial opportunities also exist for students to become software/hardware engineers in the given domains. Few specific career options are as HDL (Verilog, VHDL) Engineers, FPGA based digital design engineers, Speech and Image processing developers with AI/ML orientation etc.