PIs: Krishnan Ramu, Professor - Electrical Engineering, Praveen Vijayraghavan, Instructor - Electrical Engineering

Project Goals or Needs Addressed: "…we wanted to create a multidisciplinary (engineering team) that can work with business teams and with students from different disciplines across the university …so that they can reflect the social, economic, and the business context of the society itself… address problems of infrastructure that are facing the nation."
Project Grants and Expenditures: $25,000 (year 6), $25,000 (year 7), $9000 (year 8), graduate assistants



Read more about the Virtual Corporation, objectives and structure (Web site)

Personal Electric Rapid Transit System Corporation
(PERTS Web site)

Distributed Information Systems Corporation
(DISC Web site)
 


Two virtual corporations were created: the Personal Electric Rapid Transit System, and the Distributed Information Systems Corporation. Students are tasked with solving realistic problems and gain real-world product development experience while in school. They work in laboratories to develop mock solutions.

The project is vertically integrated: undergraduate students communicated their processes with graduate students using Web tools. Project staff documented design approaches, business approaches, and research approaches.