Don Lewis Millard, Ph.D.

education - research - art @ rensselaer polytechnic institute

Director, Academy of Electronic Media
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Email: millard@rpi.edu
Phone: (518) 276-6527

Personal Server: http://dlm.academy.rpi.edu/

NSF Curriculum Vitae

Current Courses:

Electric Circuits

Introduction to Engineering Design

Electronics and Instrumentation

HCI Implementation - Flash

Background:

Dr. Millard currently directs the Academy of Electronic Media, which specializes in the development and use of engaging interactive electronic media. During his many years at Rensselaer (since 1981), he has served as a faculty member of the Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering Department; held several roles with the Center for Integrated Electronics, including five years as the director; served as assistant director of the Design and Manufacturing Institute, and served as senior project manager for the Center for Manufacturing Productivity and Technology Transfer. He is currently teaching Circuits, Electronics, Engineering Design and Multimedia Development courses.

Prior to joining the university, Millard spent two years as a biomedical engineer at Veteran's Administration Hospital in Albany, NY; two years involved with cardiac monitor design at Electronics for Medicine, in Sudbury, MA. The owner of DLM Consulting since 1981, Millard holds a patent for the development of a laser-induced, plasma-based "Non-Contact Electrical Pathway," which is used to perform electrical testing of ultra fine-pitch electrical components.

He has been voted Professor of the Year on two occasions, was selected as RHA Professor of the Month and was recently chosen by his students as the Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Professor. The author of numerous technical papers, presentations, and book contributions, Millard has received such distinguished awards as the 2003 Premier Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware, and the Best Paper Award of the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology Society (CPMT) International Electronic Manufacturing Technology Symposium.

He has served as a reviewer for such publications as IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging, and Manufacturing Technology and the Digital Technical Journal of Digital Equipment Corporation. Millard also has served as an editor for the Metals Subpanel Symposium of the Defense Manufacturing Conference (DMC) and the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) Center for Advanced Interconnect Science and Technology (CAIST).

Research Areas:

Dr. Don Lewis Millard is the director of the Mobile Studio project and the co-developer of the Mobile Studio project's IOBoard. In 1999 he started thinking about a way to enable students to perform experiments anytime, anyplace - experiments that use an oscilloscope, function generator, digital control, and some form of power supply. He started the Mobile Studio project by looking at commercially available solutions, which were prohibitively expensive, and he wanted to involve students in bringing the project‛s vision to reality. Jason Coutermarsh, then a student at Rensselaer, joined the project in the summer of 2004 and developed a complete functional input/output board (IOBoard) hardware/software prototype. With the support of several technology companies and the National Science Foundation, the Mobile Studio Project is now being utilized to enhance science, math, engineering and technology education in institutions around the world.

His general research interests include the development of electronic media, information technology, electronics design and manufacturing, electrical testing methodologies, semiconductor fabrication, and non-destructive solder joint inspection and evaluation. He has directed and managed many electronics design and manufacturing oriented research efforts funded by NSF, DARPA, DOD, NASA, NY State and a wide variety of industrial/commercial sponsors.

He has been actively involved in the development of multimedia authoring tools and the integration of digital media for more than 20 years and has produced a variety of electronic multimedia-based presentations involving the use of video, music, and interactivity - most recently winning the Premier Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware. He also has authored a variety of multimedia-oriented lecture materials for use in courses involving electronic instrumentation and electronics design and manufacturing.

Millard serves as a principal investigator on a number of NSF grants, most recently directing an award-winning CCLI project that developed numerous materials and technologies for use in electrical engineering education. He was a key contributor to the multimedia-based Interactive Learning Modules (ILM) project and the Electronics Agile Manufacturing Research Institute, both of which were jointly sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Selected Publications:

Millard, D., Chouikha, M., Berry, F., "Improving Student Intuition via Rensselaer‛s New Mobile Studio Pedagogy", ASEE 2007 Annual Conference, Honolulu, HW, June 2007.

Millard, D. L., Grab Students Attention with Multimedia - How to make the most of educational presentation software, ASEE Prism Feature Article, December 1998.

Millard, D.L., Sanderson, A.C., Jennings, W.J., Wong, A., Patel, A., Brubaker, Perala, M., Krawczyk, T., and Slattery, D., "Interactive Learning Modules for Electrical and Computer Engineering", IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, March 1997.

Kalukin, A., Sankaran, V., Chartrand, B., Millard, D., Kraft, R., Embrechts, M., "An Improved Method for Inspection of Solder Joints Using X-ray Laminography and X-ray Microtomography," IEMT Symposium, Austin, TX., October 1996, pp. 438-445

Gutmann, R., Millard, D., "Future Packaging of Integrated Circuit Chips - An Opportunity for Agility in the Electronics Sector," 4th Annual Agile Manufacturing Enterprise Forum, March 1995, Atlanta, GA.

Millard, D., Block, R., Umstadter, K., "Laser Induced Plasma-based, Non-contact Electrical Testing of Functional Hardware," 11th IEEE/CPMT International Electronics Manufacturing Technology Symposium, September 16-18, 1991. *Best Paper Award (Reprinted in IEEE Transactions).