Wyoming began as a state of eclectic individuals all in search of land and the chance to build their lives. With a wide array of students and professors from different states and countries, all with unique stories and interests, the University of Wyoming is similar.
One such international professor is electrical and computer engineering professor Suresh S. Muknahallipatna.
Muknahallipatna received his masters and bachelors in engineering at the University of Bangalore, India, and in 1995 moved to Wyoming to earn his doctorate in electrical engineering.
Muknahallipatna has been drawn to Wyoming since his high school days.
“One of my childhood friends had come here to do his masters so I knew about the University of Wyoming,” he said. “The second thing is that one of my high school teachers had talked to me about Yellowstone and so I knew a lot about the state of Wyoming.”
Muknahallipatna was also accepted at a New York school, but opted for Wyoming instead because of high crime rates in the Empire State.
He began his career at UW as a temporary professor in 1995 and worked his way up to full-fledged professor by 2010.
When asked why he chose to pursue a career at UW, Muknahallpatna said he was impressed by the opportunity to interact with students.
“The one on one relationship with the students makes a big difference. I also get the opportunity to pick the top performing undergraduate students and encourage them to get into research, whereas in a bigger school especially at the undergraduate level you would not be able to do those kind of things,” Muknahallipatna said.
Muknahallipatna’s favorite class to teach is objectory intent programming with numerical methods in linear algebra since it’s the first taste of programming for some students. Another favorite is a class created by himself and electrical and computer engineering professor Robert Kubichek, called design experience with devices. Designed to be interactive, the freshman course has only 10 to 15 minute lectures and doesn’t require an electrical engineering background.
Muknahallipatna and Kubichek also worked together to make a research program four years ago for undergraduate students that offers a diverse array of research topics in medicine and technology. The program currently has 14 participants, half of whom are female.
When he’s not teaching, reading, or playing racquetball, Muknahallipatna has a number of research interests of his own, including medical image segmentation, augmented reality devices for use in the medical field, the modern power grid and high performance computing and visualization in climate research.
“Why I wanted to do research in the medical field is based on some of my own personal experience going through a few surgeries where I noticed how the surgeon was doing certain activities. I thought I could actually improve those activities,” Muknahallipatna said.
One way he is conducting research in the medical field is to enhance the abilities of surgeons is through the use of augmented reality.
“One of the research projects we have done is using the augmented reality device where the surgeon can wear that and see the environment around them, and the surgeon can place the image wherever they want,” Muknahallipatna said.
