Degree project factory

For those studying engineering, a degree project usually forms the final component of the degree, often carried out in collaboration with industry.However, at the Ideon company Modelon, there are an unusually high number of students doing degree projects – and they often mean a lot to the company, which originated from the Department of Automatic Control. Modelon also works closely with researchers in computer science and maths (numerical analysis) at LTH. The company not only makes use of students, but also provides inspiration for new courses at LTH.

In the office on the top floor of Betahuset at Ideon , the degree project students are tightly packed into the open-plan space.

We meet associate senior lecturer Johan Åkesson from the Department of Automatic Control, who also works part-time at Modelon , and Professor Claus Führer, Department of Numerical Analysis, who primarily collaborates with the company through his students. They have co-supervised four or five degree projects at Modelon, and helped out with a few more.

They both emphasise the vitalisation that this collaboration offers for both parties.
“Modelon is provided with skilled labour, while the faculty gets an industrial perspective on its research, new ideas and activities”, Johan Åkesson points out.

“The way of supervising here is completely new to me”, admits Claus Führer. “It is an industrial approach, which I am now advocating at Mattehuset.”

He says that there is a tug-of-war between the company and the department (which both provide a supervisor); the friction increases the students’ dedication and energy.

“That way of working attracted me”, adds Sofia Gedda, who did her degree project at Modelon under the supervision of Johan Åkesson. “You learn a lot more than just the technology; you learn to integrate a number of other aspects.”

She recently completed her degree in Engineering Physics, specialising in Applied Mathematics. In her degree project at Modelon she developed algorithms for optimisation in the open source project JModelica.org.

“It was about applied mathematics; different parameters in an engine were to be calibrated. The great thing was that the results were applied at Modelon as soon as I had finished”, she says.
Most of the students doing degree projects at the company have studied engineering physics. Some have studied engineering mathematics, and there are a few from computer science. Two students from the BSc in Computer Science in Helsingborg have done their undergraduate degree projects there as well.

As a reward, some of the students get to go to conferences and present their projects. Otherwise, the work they do as part of their degrees is unpaid.

Christian Andersson did his degree project in autumn 2010 and was then employed on a temporary basis. After a work placement at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs in Boston he applied for a doctoral studentship at Lund University, where he now has ties to Numerical Analysis, the LCCC Linnaeus centre and Modelon.

“His international experience was a major reason why Christian got the job”, says Claus Führer.

Christian Andersson also studied engineering physics , first at KTH and then in Lund. His degree project at Modelon was about discontinuous systems that describe, for example, how a ball bounces or machinery parts move. At Mitsubishi his focus was vibrations in high-speed lifts. The calculations were made with the JModelica.org tool and were quite successful, he says.

He has also studied satellite orbits using the Modelica language and received praise for the work at a conference. Olof Troeng, winner of the 2010 Swedish Technology Championships , will develop the work further as his degree project at Mitsubishi in Boston.

“The Modelica language has been developed over the past 15 years by an international group of researchers and engineers, and research at the Department of Automatic Control has led the way. In particular, the research of Hilding Elmqvist, who now works at Dassault Systems, has been important. Modelica has developed into a piece of European technology, explains Johan Åkesson.
Sweden and Germany are important contributors, with expertise both at LTH and at LiTH in Linköping.

Daniel Andersson, MSc Engineering Physics specialising in Automatic Control, works on the application side of the language at Modelon. His degree project in autumn 2009 was about models for fuel cells and since then he has worked on optimising the models for combustion engines.
The collaboration has even led to a university course in the subject – Simulation Tools, developed by Claus Führer and run a few times. At the Department of Automatic Control, a project course is offered where one topic is controlling balancing robots. The course is arranged in collaboration with Dassault. “It’s excellent”, guarantees Daniel Andersson.

One student who recently started his degree project at the company is Jon Sten, who is developing support for ‘graphic editing’, a more user-friendly way to manage the models. In that role he works with both students and staff who are developing the model language. They also go out for a meal a few times a semester to socialise.

Professor Görel Hedin from the Department of Computer Science is another researcher who is involved in JModelica.org. “Her research on compiler technology has been crucial to our project”, says Johan Åkesson.

MATS NYGREN