Labs & Facilities (by Department)

Room: EB 230  
Contact: Jim Pankow, Wentai Luo 

Modeling lab, grad student space

Room: EB 202H 
Contact: Samantha Hartzell

We are particularly interested in the impacts of vegetation on the movement of water, carbon, and energy between the land surface and atmosphere, and vice versa. We study the ways in which plants have altered their hydraulic and photosynthetic strategies to survive in water-limited ecosystems, and what this means for the future of natural and agroecosystems impacted by climate change. Some examples of our research are green roof vegetation and hydrology, plant hydraulic redistribution, and dynamical systems modeling of agroecosystems.

Room: EB 130 
Contact: Annette Dietz

Fluid Mechanics and hydraulics classes lab

Room: EB 260 
Contact: Arash Khosravifar, Diane Moug

Equipment for liquefaction susceptibility and cyclic behavior of these soils.

Room: EB301F 
Contact: David Yang

Our research lab aims to improve the sustainability and resilience of civil infrastructure systems. To fulfill this goal, key research areas include (a) infrastructure risk and resilience quantification under extreme events, (b) AI-assisted life-cycle asset management, and (c) risk-informed infrastructure adaptation to climate change.

Key skills needed: Coding experience (preferably Python); basic knowledge about probability and statistics; GIS experience (optional); Data processing and analysis (optional).

Room: EB 265 
Contact: Arash Khosravifar, Diane Moug

Prep space for field research.

Room: SRTC B2-32 
Contact: Thomas Schumacher

Our diverse team develops tools to examine the condition of existing structures such as buildings and bridges-similar to a medical doctor assessing and monitoring a person's health. We do this non-destructively using techniques such as vibration-monitoring, ultrasonic testing, and radar testing. We also put sensors on structures to measure changes over time. Our goal is to use the information these techniques provide to help prolong the life of a structure as much as possible while maintaining safety. The ultimate goal is to avoid replacement of an existing structure if possible to save resources and minimize emissions.

Key skills needed: Enthusiasm about sustainable civil engineering; curiosity and willingness to learn; willingness to work in a laboratory or real world setting to collect data; some coding experience (MATLAB or Python) are a plus.

Room: EB 225 
Contact: Annette Dietz

Process rain water captured on EB roof to be used in first floor restrooms. 

Room: EB 270 
Contact: Arash Khosravifar, Diane Moug, Annette Dietz

Used in Soil Mechanics labs fall and spring terms, as well as ENVE core junior labs all three terms. Plane surveying equipment and lab sessions

Room: EB 210 
Contact: Gwynn Johnson

Transformation and transport of heavy metals and other contaminants in soil, surface water, sediment, and groundwater systems; treatment of stormwater and wastewater.

Room: EB 220 
Contact: Scott Wells

The Computational Imaging Lab at Portland State University designs next generation cameras and imaging algorithms. We are a diverse team of individuals with expertise in image sensors, optics, signal processing, algorithm design, computer vision and machine learning.

Room: FAB 135-01
Contact: Sayan Bandyapadhyay

Our research lies broadly in the areas of algorithms and optimization. Most real-life optimization problems are computationally hard in nature and heuristic algorithms are employed in most applications. Although these heuristics are time efficient and work well for some inputs, they cannot assure good quality solutions on every input instance. To address this issue, we design approximation algorithms, which guarantee good bounds on the quality of the solutions on all inputs. Many problems have the nature that they are not only hard to solve optimally, but also hard to approximate even if we could afford to use any reasonable amount of time. Accordingly, our research philosophy is to explore the solvability of such problems in terms of approximation. Following are some topics of our interest. 
 

• Clustering and covering problems, facility location
• Algorithmic fairness
• Low-rank approximation and dimensionality reduction
• Capacitated set cover
• Approximability of NP-hard problems
• Fixed-parameter Tractability

Room: FAB 135-05 
Contact: Atul Ingle

The Computational Imaging Lab at Portland State University designs next generation cameras and vision algorithms for challenging conditions: imaging in extremely dark or extremely bright environments, imaging high resolution 3D structures from long distances, and imaging through poor visibility like smoke and fog. We envision a future where such cameras will improve everyone’s quality of life: computer vision systems for autonomous cars that make drivers and pedestrians safer, high-precision cameras for surgical robots, and image sensors that improve accuracy of medical diagnoses.

Key skills needed: We are looking for candidates who are not necessarily experts but are eager to learn more about computational imaging algorithms and camera sensors. Applicants should have some programming experience (e.g. Python, C++), strong verbal and written communication and time management skills. We especially encourage students belonging to historically under-served groups to apply. These groups include (but are not limited to) women, students with disabilities, socio-economically disadvantaged groups, and first-generation college students.

Contact: Bruce Irvin

Capstone is the culminating experience for Computer Science undergraduate students at Portland State University. The Capstone lab serves as a collaboration space as students design and implement new software to benefit non-profits, governments, schools, for-profit companies, organizations and individuals in our community. Teams of 6-8 students collaborate with sponsors who meet with the students regularly to provide input and feedback as each project develops.

Room: FAB 135-04 
Contact: Primal Pappachan

DIPr Lab studies problems on the intersection of data management and privacy, aiming to enhance user control and data privacy. Specifically, I work on policy-aware data processing to create data management systems that are fast, scalable, transparent, secure, and privacy-preserving. You can explore the ongoing projects on the lab website. As an undergraduate researcher, you'll collaborate with the PI to identify and tackle meaningful problems in computer science. You'll gain hands-on experience in reading research papers, building software prototypes, conducting experiments, writing research papers, and presenting your findings to diverse audiences. For more details on lab expectations and policies, visit the lab wiki.

Key skills needed: Basic knowledge of databases, comfortable with programming, curiosity for research

Room: FAB 70-07
Contact: Bart Massey

Research and development lab for open hardware / open source projects. Lab has facilities for working on hardware and embedded projects, including test and measurement equipment, construction tools and components, and structured workspace.

Room: FAB 135-02
Contact: Ameeta Agrawal

Room: FAB 115-05
Contact: Ehsan Aryafar

Contact: Shravas Rao

UMRP students will work on a project related to computational complexity theory. Possibilities for the specific subfield include query complexity, which studies the number of queries to bits of the input needed to solve a computational problem, coding theory, which studies the amount of redundancy needed to add to a message to send it through a noisy channel, or matrix rigidity, which studies how many entries of a matrix need to be changed to make it low in rank. Any choice will involve research based on mathematical proofs.

Key skills needed: Linear algebra, comfort with mathematical proofs

Contact: Joshua Mendez

Two projects are currently available in my lab: 1) Mars is a dry, dusty place. As humans plan for crewed missions to the red planet, we must understand the effects of dust--regolith--on the engineering systems that will keep crews alive and productive. As noted in NASA's Mars Science Goals, Objectives, Investigations, and Priorities, we need to quantify how dust influences the electrical properties of surfaces on which it accumulates (in particular circuit boards). Additionally, because regolith can itself be electrified through frictional interactions with surfaces ("static electricity"), we need to explore whether such charging could lead to electrostatic discharge (ESD) hazards in Mars' low pressure CO2 atmosphere. This project will use the Mars Atmospheric Simulator in the Environmental Testing Lab to quantify the electrification and discharge of Martian regolith simulants as they interacts with a variety of synthetic materials under simulated Martian conditions.

Key skills needed:  Any of the following: General purpose programming (Python, C++), circuit board design, PCB manufacture, mechanical CAD, machining, barista experience.

Room: FAB 60-17 
Contact: Malgorzata Chrzanowska-Jeske 

One of the labs main projects focuses on exciting 3D VLSI technology that enables easier integration of memory, analog, digital, RF, optical, MEMS, BioMEMS, sensors, and possibly bio-systems into one small package. From analysis of tiny carbon nanotube constructs to exploring the challenges of process and environment in current CMOS and future nanotechnologies, the lab is taking the important steps toward more compact and complex devices.

Contact: epl@pdx.edu

The Electronics Prototyping Lab (EPL) is a lab for rapidly prototyping electronics projects. The EPL hosts workshops, has a student store with components and supplies, rents lockers, hosts industry workshops and talks, and has a ton of equipment for you to use in your work either for classes or for your independent ideas.

Room: FAB 70-06  
Contact: Garrison Greenwood

The purpose of this lab is to investigate how hardware can self-adapt, via autonomous reconfiguration, to compensate for failures or a changing operational environment. The methods used rely heavily on the use of evolutionary algorithms, which emulate natural selection as found in nature, to modify reconfigurable hardware. The emphasis of current work is to explore reconfiguration as a fault recovery method for autonomous hardware.

Room: FAB 60-06 
Contact: Branimir Pejcinovic

The goal of the IC Design and Test Laboratory is to foster innovative research and education in the area of integrated circuit design and test. Our lab is dedicated to two main research areas: a) high-frequency/high-speed measurements, and b) device and materials characterization, modeling and design. State-of-the-art equipment is available, including VNA-s, TDR-s, automated noise measurements, semiconductor parameter analyzer, pulsed-DC, probe stations for on-wafer measurements, and others. We cover frequencies up to 40 GHz, and in collaboration with the Terahertz Lab, we have extended that to 700 GHz. Device characterization and modeling projects, including examination of InSb and SiGe transistors, use these measurements in conjunction with software such as TCAD, Keysight IC-CAP and ADS, Tektronix IConnect, among others.

Room: FAB 70-09  
Contact: Marek Perkowski
 

In the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory we design and program mobile, stationary and humanoid robots on levels of mechanical, electrical and software design. Many of our robots have new types of controllers. Theoretical research is dedicated to applying machine learning and data analysis algorithms to solve practical problems in electrical and computer engineering, especially in Data Mining, robot vision, robot motion, robot theatre  and human-robot interface (such as emotion recognition). The laboratory is also involved in the research on quantum and reversible computing as well as nano-technologies such as quantum dots and memristors. In a related research we develop new quantum algorithms, for instance those used in robotics, thus defining a new research area of “Quantum Robotics”. Of laboratory interests are also highly parallel robotics algorithms on GPU platform and emulation of problem-solving architectures with FPGAs and VELOCE emulator from Mentor.

Room: FAB 25-04 
Contact: Jonathan Bird
 
This laboratory focuses on investigating novel magnetomechanical devices for energy conversion applications.

The current research focus is on:

• Designing magnetically geared electric machines for wind and ocean renewable power generation applications.
• Electrical machines for transportation applications
• Computational electromagnetic modelling

Key skills needed: Interest in magnetics. Project involves dynamic modelling of a variable stiffness test setup (for resonant ocean power generation). Experience with 3-D printing would be a plus. Willingness to learn and not give up.

Room: FAB 60-24, 25-01  
Contact: Martin Siderius

The mission of the NEAR-Lab is to develop knowledge of electromagnetic and acoustic wave scattering and propagation phenomenon in order to devise and evaluate advanced signal processing techniques.  Applications are in the areas of radar, sonar, and biomedical.

Room: EB 91 
Contact: Andrew Greenberg

The Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS) is an open source, interdisciplinary student aerospace project. We have four main projects: amateur rockets, liquid fuel rocket engines, CubeSats, and satellite ground stations. With three generations of rockets, a working rocket engine test stand, two satellites send to low earth orbit, and two working satellite ground stations, PSAS is your opportunity to get hands-on experience in aerospace and interdisciplinary systems engineering. All majors and years are welcome. See https://www.pdxaerospace.org/ for more information and how to get involved.

PSAS runs the "MCECS Aerospace Lab" located in EB 91, where students work on the mechanical, electrical, and software projects for PSAS. Resources include a small liquid fuel engine test stand, satellite hardware-in-the-loop simulation and test equipment, surface mount electronics assembly, test, and repair, and light construction work.

Key skills needed: ECE: ECAD and/or C firmware development. ME: MCAD and thermal/fluids classes. CS: Python and embedded Linux.

Room: FAB 20-00 
Contact: Bob Bass

Distributed energy resource aggregation, distribution system modeling, electric vehicle charging impacts on distribution systems, grid service dispatch using aggregated DER, volt/VAr control and conservation voltage regulation within distribution feeders.

Key skills needed: Scripting (python), RaspPi experience

Conact: George McDonald

The Spacecraft Remote Sensing Lab uses instrumentation on NASA spacecraft to understand the properties of planetary atmospheres and surface-atmosphere interactions. Our focus is on using infrared spectrometers, optical cameras, and in-situ meteorological sensing. We are currently developing corrections for and carrying out a re-analysis of observations by the Dawn spacecraft’s Visual and Infrared Spectrometer, and supporting operations for Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z and Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) instruments.

Room: FAB 60-06 
Contact: Branimir Pejcinovic

The Terahertz (THz) Lab was established to measure and characterize the behavior of semiconductor devices and exotic materials in the high GHz to low THz frequency regime. The facility contains a CM Summit 12000B probe station, a 40 GHz VNA with Virginia Diodes 700 GHz extenders, a Picometrix T-Ray system, and various support instrumentation, along with computation workspaces.

Room: FAB 60-01 
Contact: ECE Department

The Tektronix Circuit Design & Testing Lab is the largest teaching lab facility in the ECE Department and supports both the analog circuit courses and microprocessor design classes. The lab has thirty-three test benches, each of which is equipped with a basic set of test and measurement instruments. Each station also includes a single board computer for embedded systems development.

Room: FAB 60-10  
Contact: Christof Teuscher

The Teuscher Lab seeks to study, rethink, model, and design the implementation of computations in living and non-living systems. An understanding of the phenomena provides a basis for better, smarter, and more robust computing paradigms, architectures, devices, algorithms, languages, and systems for applications such as embedded systems and biomolecular engineering. We are interested in bold, visionary, and transformational solutions to complex and critical problems needed for the medium- and long-term sustainability of the technological future of all computing disciplines.

Room: FAB 25-01  
Contact: John Lipor

The Trillium Lab focus is on the design and analysis of machine learning algorithms, with an emphasis on adaptive and sequential methods aimed at solving problems in environmental sensing. Applications range from air and water pollution monitoring to geothermal energy prospecting. 

Room: FAB 89-01  
Contact: Xiaoyu Song

The research objective of the verification lab is to explore modeling and validation techniques for reliable cyber-physical systems. Various modeling methods of characterizing complex systems are harnessed. We focus on both dynamic and static verification methods towards establishing the correctness of safety-critical system designs in industry.

Room: FAB 85-04  
Contact: Fu Li

With over $400,000 in equipment and cash donations from Tektronix an other companies, the VIP Lab provides invaluable research opportunities to students and faculty. The equipment includes a Motion Picture Expert Group (MPEG) portable analyzer, MPEG transport stream monitors, MPEG test systems, picture quality analysis systems, and a real-time spectrum analyzer.

Room: EB 565 
Contact: Alex Hunt

Robotics and 3D Printing classes

Rooms: EB 590 & 595 
Contact: Alex Hunt

The Agile and Adaptive Robotics lab is interested in uncovering mechanisms of how animals achieve agile and adaptive control and applying these discoveries across a variety of fields.

By studying and developing models and controllers that mimic the structure and function of animal abilities, we work to discover how the wide range of adaptability that is seen in animal locomotion and movement is achieved.

These models and controllers have potentially significant impacts in a variety of fields including physical therapy and rehabilitation, diagnosis and treatment of diseases, and robotic and artificially controlled systems.

Room: EB 460
Contact: Yi Xia

Dr. Xia's area of research is focused on development and implementation of first-principles-based methods and machine learning approaches to simulate dynamics of phonons and electrons, and application of such to solve materials problems. Research topics include heat/charge transport phenomena, anharmonic lattice dynamics, electron-phonon interactions, and structural phase transition in thermal management, energy storage and converting materials, covering high-entropy alloys, thermoelectrics, and lithium-ion batteries.

Room: FAB 83B 
Contact: David Turcic

The controls research lab does research in the areas of feedback control, high speed dynamics, and mechatronics. Projects range from industrial automation to modeling and optimizing sports equipment to autonomous navigation. Current research projects include modeling and validation of high strain rate nonlinear collisions, and autonomous indoor navigation for industrial automation.

Room: EB 575
Contact: Elliott Gall

The Healthy Buildings Research Laboratory (HBRL) conducts research to improve the sustainability of built environments. Core areas focus on human-building interactions, including the intersection of indoor and urban environmental quality, human exposure to air pollution, of building energy use.

The HBRL houses extensive facilities for both fundamental research and applied measurements. This includes equipment for both laboratory and field use under these five fundamental categories:

• Indoor environmental quality measurement and data logging capabilities
• Computational resources for building energy, internal/external CFD and urban climate modeling
• Energy performance measurements & logging for equipment and buildings
• Fundamental thermal property (conductivity, emissivity, reflectivity, and transmissivity) characterization of building materials
• Infrared instruments for envelope thermal performance and moisture assessments

Rooms: EB 145 & 150

Contact: Greg Falgren

This lab provides support for various faculty research, student projects and academic courses. The Instrumentation and equipment for research and lab experiments are built in the lab by faculty, students and MME's Development Engineer.

The MME Manufacturing Lab provides support for various faculty research, student projects, and academic courses. The Instrumentation and equipment for research and lab experiments are built in the shop by faculty, students, and MME's Development Engineer Greg Fahlgren.

Students are introduced to the lab in their sophomore year when they take ME 240, Survey of Manufacturing Process. During their senior year, students use the lab to build their mini-projects and to fabricate their capstone projects. Every other year, a course in CNC programming is offered. 

Equipment

• Conventional Lathes and Milling Machines
• 2 and 3 axis CNC Milling Machines and CNC Lathe
• Brake and Shear (Sheet Metal capability)
• Welding (Mig, Tig and Acetylene torch)
• Plastic Injection Molding
• Precision Surface Grinding
• 3D Printing Rapid Prototyping Machine
• Laser Cutter (60 and 400 Watts)
• CNC Programming (Master Cam X9)
• Plasma Cutter

Manufacturing Lab Materials Store

The Manufacturing Lab contains a supply of materials, such as Multipurpose Aluminum (various thickness/width/length), etc., that students may purchase for use. These materials are not tied to a specific class; they are simply available to save students a trip to the store.

You can purchase materials through the Materials Store Purchase Request Form. The Materials Store is only open to MCECS students.

Mechanical Engineering Laboratory Team (MELT)

The Mechanical Engineering Laboratory Team (MELT) is a group of MME students who seek to develop their ability in manufacturing, assembly, instrumentation, and testing of mechanical and electromechanical systems. Students in MELT also support the educational and research mission of the department. The goal of MELT is to create a mutually beneficial collaboration between students and the MME faculty and staff responsible for the operation of the MME shop and MME instructional and research laboratories.

Request Assistance: MELT Technicians are available to support students for various course-related projects and prototypes. With the MELT Technician's supervision and expertise, students may learn to use the equipment, such as the 3D Printer, Laser Cutter, CNC (or Conventional) Mill or Lathe, Welding, etc.  

You can purchase MELT Manufacturing services through Cashnet. Payment is due the same day the service is completed.

Room: EB 475
Contact: Jun Jiao

The bioengineering lab aims to integrate nanomaterials into biomedical applications. Currently, structural variations of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes coated with alumina are being studied for efficiency of antigen delivery to dendritic cells (immune cells) as a therapeutic vaccine against cancer.

In collaboration with ATI specialty alloys, coloration defects in zirconium sponge are being investigated. Advanced techniques for computationally refining images gathered with in situ observation of metal oxide phase transformations using the transmission electron microscope are also being enhanced.

Nanoparticulate adjuvants and delivery systems towards new generation vaccines are being investigated, in collaboration with OHSU. In addition, photocatalytic materials and reactors are being developed for the  optimization of semiconductor quantum yield.

Room: EB 580 
Contact: Derek Tretheway

Research in the Microscale Laboratory focuses on fundamental fluid  mechanics at the microscale, novel materials for microfluidic devices, optical and fluid manipulation of cells, and non-Newtonian fluid mechanics.

Research projects have included velocity measurements at the moving contact line with unprecedented resolution, the development of microfluidic channels with porous silk structures, the study of single cells optically trapped in microfluidic flows, the passive separation of fluids and particles from the increased effects of surfaceforces at the microscale, and rheological studies of polymer solutions.

Rooms: EB 550 & 560
Contact: Jun Jiao

Dr. Jun Jiao’s nanofabrication lab is focused on the synthesis and characterization of nanomaterials including carbon nanotubes (CNTS), graphene, ceramic coatings, and supported bimetallic nanoparticles. These materials are then used in the design and  fabrication of devices for engineering applications. 

Room: EB 465
Contact: Sung Yi

The microelectronics industry is one of the most important industries and electronic packaging and assembly technology is one of the key  technologies to make such industry feasible. Nao-electronic packaging research lab is focused on the development of critical technologies used in the designing, testing, and fabrication for electronic devices and  systems.

Room: EB 470 
Contact: Ilke Celik

Dr. Celik's research interests are developing sustainability concepts for infrastructure systems and consist of computational and experimental works. More recently, she has focused on developing sustainable energy storage systems integrated with emerging redox battery systems and assessing their sustainability trade-offs. Also, Celik has been generating ideas on incorporating transparent PV technologies with urban agricultural systems to promote nature-inspired solar panels to decentralize city energy production and food supply. 

Room: EB 585
Contact: Luke Zhu

Dr. Zhu is deeply engrossed in the field of turbulence, leveraging Computational Fluid Dynamics as his main investigative tool. His research direction encompass: heat transfer and air pollutant dispersion in urban environments,  bio-inspired strategies for turbulent drag reduction, and the dynamics of large wind farms.

Rooms: 
Wind Energy Lab EB 115 
Turbulence Lab EB 520 
Contact: Raúl Bayoán Cal

At Portland State University, the Wind Energy and Turbulence Lab targets to answer questions dealing with fluids in the turbulent regime. A large portion of the efforts has been placed in understanding flows pertaining to wind energy, volcanic eruptions and forests to name a few.

Elucidating mechanisms in the interactions between the flow and these systems allows for the possibility of answering relevant questions as well as understanding these systems as a whole. Flow are scaled and studied in a wind tunnel setting via the use of laser-based techniques.