At Olin, we focus a lot of our curriculum on hands-on projects that facilitate multi-modal learning for our students. A natural facility for projects that involve mechanical design is the machine shop -- a place where students can build, break, and experiment for coursework and research. The Olin Advanced Computing Lab (ACL) and the Olin Embedded Computing Lab (ECL) form the foundation of our computing analogue of the machine shop.

The Embedded Computing Lab provides a wide range -- both computationally and physically -- of computational devices. These devices might be considered "embedded devices" in some sense, however, a more accurate term might be a "smooth-spectrum" computing laboratory.

The ECL provides and purchases equipment as necessary and requested by students and faculty at Olin College. The current inventory includes microcontrollers, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), digital signal processors (DSPs), and a variety of compatible peripherals, development kits, software tools, and workstations.

Much of the work done with ECL resources comes from some of our electrical and computer engineering professors, including Mark L. Chang, Bradley Minch, and Gill Pratt. More information about them can be found on their respective web pages.

If you have any questions regarding the ECL, please contact Prof. Mark L. Chang [mark . chang @ olin . edu].