URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Spring_2016_Melissa-McCarthy

The lab-sized municipal pipeline structure he built is strung with thousands of sensors, draped in fiber-optic wire, and connected to a sensing system, which processes data collected by the distributed sensors.

URI is slated to break ground on a new engineering complex on the Kingston campus in 2016, and Wei hopes the new complex will be the next test site to apply his work with sensor technology and the reflex tree. “I’m very excited about this technology and all the achievement we have already done to this point, and about the future of the field,” Wei says. Though one of his feet is planted firmly in the lab, Wei happily keeps his other foot in the classroom, teaching electrical engineering at URI. He acknowledges, however, that teaching in a field like electrical engineering, where technology is changing by the minute, is not an easy task. Wei says he and his colleagues strive to give their students the solid foundation of an education on which they can build to adapt with the changing technology they will face in their lives. “Physics and math seldom change, but you have to realize everything else is changing,” Wei says. “What we can do is teach students how to think so they may be able to keep up with the trends.” For Wei this change is exciting, “I just like what I’m doing,” he says. “I like to see things happen that we used to think were not possible.”

Layers of city schematics for sensor technology.

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Spring | 2016 Page 35