Clemson's ‘Deep Orange’ program an innovative approach to education

Published: April 19, 2012

CU-ICAR student Josh Ekandem (left) demonstrates the Deep Orange 2 Human Machine Interface and center stack design at the 2011 Speciality Equipment Market Association show in Las Vegas. image by: Peter Hull

GREENVILLE — Clemson University Ph.D. candidate Josh Ekandem will spend his summer as an intern at the offices of Intel Corp. in Santa Clara, Calif. It’s a dream assignment for the School of Computing student, and one that demonstrates the range of impact of Clemson University’s Deep Orange automotive program.

Intel and the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR), where Deep Orange is based, are project partners. It was his exposure to Intel employees through the program that gave Ekandem the chance to work in Silicon Valley.

“I’ll be 15 minutes from Google and 15 minutes from Facebook,” Ekandem said. “Deep Orange was a real selling point. When Intel saw what I was working on they were very impressed with the project.”

Each year at CU-ICAR, students involved in Deep Orange create a vehicle prototype with a different market focus and technical objectives. The innovative project allows students to reshape thinking about automotive design and function.

But Deep Orange is far more than a groundbreaking design concept. It’s a whole new approach to teaching and learning. Deep Orange is a multidisciplinary collaboration that pulls in students from departments across the university. The experiences they gain are unique and set the stage for a career of innovation.

Ekandem said he “jumped at the chance” to work on Deep Orange when his academic adviser, Juan Gilbert, told him of the opportunity. His work on an “infotainment framework” for Deep Orange demonstrated to Intel he already had real-world experience developing in-car systems.

Collaboration with private sector and government partners is a cornerstone of the CU-ICAR program, and Deep Orange leaders collaborate with a wide spectrum of the automotive and motorsports industries.

Paul Venhovens, BMW Endowed Chair in Automotive Systems Integration at CU-ICAR, who leads Deep Orange, said the project makes Clemson’s students very attractive to the automotive industry.

Within Deep Orange, students, cross-disciplinary faculty and participating industry partners focus on producing a new vehicle prototype each year that incorporates market aspects, policies and product innovations.

The project encourages students to think, perform and act as true engineers while they learn.

It takes courage and willingness of the students and faculty to take risks and push the envelope to jointly tackle a large project, such as developing a vehicle from scratch, Venhovens said. The rewards, however, are tremendous, he said, and the outcome has the potential to shape the future of the automotive industry.

“Deep Orange is a teaching paradigm that transfers knowledge absorbed in a traditional classroom setting into knowledge attained in a design and engineering studio setting,” Venhovens said. “This creates the basis for new understanding that can only be realized experientially and reflectively.”

Deep Orange provides them with a unique skillset and creative mindset that makes the transition into their first jobs much easier.

Graduates of the two completed Deep Orange projects have all found jobs in the automotive industry — more than 50 percent of them in South Carolina.

Chris D’Amico, an automotive engineering student at CU-ICAR and project manager of Deep Orange 3, said he’s already found his dream job. The only problem is he expects to graduate from his “job” in August.

The program allows the students free rein to explore outside-the-box design and concepts, D’Amico said. For anyone who’s always wanted to engineer and design cars, Deep Orange is an opportunity for the students to really express themselves.

D’Amico hopes to work in product development after he graduates, helping design and produce next-generation vehicles. In short, he’s looking for a job similar to the one he has at CU-ICAR.

“I hope to find the company that can offer me the closest thing to this,” he said.

Deep Orange embodies the term “systems integration,” said Imtiaz Haque, executive director of the Carroll A. Campbell Jr. Graduate Engineering Center at CU-ICAR.

Systems integration balances multiple, often competing aspects, and requires understanding of market aspects; “brand DNA”; policies and interaction of various vehicle properties, including geometry, functions, weight, costs and manufacturing aspects.

This approach has helped position the Campbell center as a world-renowned systems engineering and integration model. Each Deep Orange vehicle goes against the grain of accepted vehicle technology design by eliminating the constraints of the “we’ve-always-done-it-that-way” mindset, Haque said.

Without these constraints, and by applying a systems engineering approach, researchers, students and industry partners are free to explore new technologies and ideas.

“It’s how we educate engineers of the future,” he said.

Mary Mossey, a human factors graduate student in Clemson’s psychology department, splits her time between the main campus and CU-ICAR.

Under adviser Johnell Brooks, Mossey studies the capabilities and limitations of the human within a system — in this case, an automobile. Specifically, she studies steering wheel design, visual reaction times and development of driving scenarios to rehabilitated older drivers.

Like Ekandem, Mossey interacts with private industry and collaborates on real-world projects.

“There isn’t a substitute for hands-on experience,” she said.

As for next steps, a Ph.D. wasn’t the game plan, she said. But her experience at CU-ICAR has prompted a rethink. She has until the fall to mull it over.

“If I graduate in August, I’ve no doubt I could find a job because of the experience I’ve had with Deep Orange,” she said.

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