Joshua Carl, Ph.D.
Associate Professor | Milwaukee School of Engineering
Milwaukee, WI, UNITED STATES
Dr. Joshua Carl is an expert in the modeling and simulation of cyber-physical systems.
Education, Licensure and Certification (3)
Ph.D.: Electrical Engineering, Vanderbilt University 2016
M.S.: Electrical Engineering, Vanderbilt University 2012
B.S.: Computer Engineering, Milwaukee School of Engineering 2005
Biography
Dr. Joshua Carl is an Associate Professor in the Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering department and has been a faculty member at MSOE since 2015. He is an expert in embedded systems, cyber-physical systems, dynamic systems modeling, and numerical integration methods. Dr. Carl also has industry consulting experience at Digital Design Corporation/Advanced Network Devices and at Johnson Controls.
Areas of Expertise (5)
Numerical Integration
Parallel Computation
Modeling and Simulation of Cyber-Physical Systems
Embedded Systems
High Performance Computing
Affiliations (2)
- American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) : Member
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) : Member
Media Appearances (1)
Dr. Joshua Carl
MSOE News
2019-09-16
Ever since Dr. Joshua Carl began his teaching career at MSOE in 2015, he says he’s tried to regularly place himself in the shoes of his students. “It’s easy as a professor to forget where the students are both in terms of their knowledge and what else is going on in their lives,” he said. “I really try to be careful and keep a focus on how to get the students from where they are now to where they need to go.”
Event and Speaking Appearances (1)
Model Predictive Control for HVAC and Central Plant Modeling at Johnson Controls
MSOE EECS Faculty Lecture Series May 2017
Teaching Areas (3)
Basic Programming
I regularly teach classes in C/C++.
Digital Design and VHDL
Digital design is another of my main focus areas.
Embedded Systems
I regularly teach classes in embedded systems.
Patents (1)
Building Management System with Supervisory Fault Detection Layer
20220035357
2022 A method for detecting faults in a building management system (BMS) is shown. The method includes receiving time series data characterizing an operating performance of one or more BMS devices. The method further includes processing the time series data using multiple different fault detection methods to generate multiple fault detection results. The method includes providing the multiple fault detection results as outputs from the multiple different fault detection methods. The method includes applying the multiple fault detection results as inputs to a neural network that determines whether the multiple fault detection results are indicative of a fault condition in the BMS.
Research Grants (3)
Exploration of Combined Embedded Systems Courses for Computer and Electrical Engineering
MSOE Summer Development Grant $5,000
2020 Collaborators: Adam Livingston (PI) and Kerry Widder and Joshua Carl
Infusing Mobile Studio Pedagogy into a Semester-Based Electrical Engineering Curriculum
MSOE Summer Development Grant $8,000
2020 Collaborators: Cory Prust (PI), Jennifer Bonniwell, Brian Faulkner, Steve Holland, Richard Kelnhofer, Luke Weber and Joshua Carl
A Case Study of Embedded Microcontrollers as a Parallel Computing Platform
MSOE Summer Development Grant $8000
2018
Selected Publications (7)
Cross-functional, Multi-organizational STEM Camp Partnership: Teaching Technology and Human-Centered Design in a Project-Based Curriculumre indicative of a fault condition in the BMS.
ASEE Annual Conference & ExpositionCarl, J. D., & LaPointe, A., & Miller, C., & Prust, C. J., & Taylor, E.
2024 Summer STEM camps are one of the methods used to introduce middle and high school students to topics and careers in STEM. Frequently, these camps are produced and run by a single academic institution. This paper presents a novel partnership between four different organizations that included a nonprofit community organization, technical university, professional sports team, and major technology company that came together to develop and run a STEM camp for minority middle and high school students. The STEM camp content was split between design and technical topics and was designed to meet the individual goals of each member of the partnership. This paper describes the camp development and activities, the relationships and interactions between the partnering organizations, and presents key takeaways from multiple years of running the camp.
A Review of Electronic Engineering Logbooks Throughout the Electrical En-gineering Curriculum
ASEE Annual Conference & ExpositionHolland, S.S., Bonniwell, J.L., Carl, J.D.
2018 Successful engineers must be well versed in communication skills, particularly with respect to written documentation in engineering logbooks. Such logs provide technical records that facilitate the day-to-day work of individual engineers, as well as enable continuity when projects are transferred to other engineers. Due to changes in technology and patent law, as well as the promise of simple archiving and sharing of technical work, many practicing engineers have moved away from traditional bound paper engineering notebooks and have embraced electronic documentation methods. This work details the experiences of junior electrical engineering faculty members implementing electronic engineering logbooks in their courses at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. While the current literature contains some discussion of electronic logbook usage in single courses, this paper takes a broader view by reviewing the use of electronic logbooks in courses that span all aspects of the electrical engineering undergraduate curriculum, from freshman to senior year. With this diverse set of courses, the lab assignments range from prescriptive step-by-step procedures to openended design projects. Each faculty member has been teaching for less than six years and joined academia with several years of industry experience. This work shares their experiences and observations on the advantages and disadvantages of electronic notebooks learned through implementation in their courses. Though this paper is primarily focused on electronic notebook usage in the electrical engineering program, the general observations are applicable to a broad range of engineering disciplines.
An Approach to Parallel Simulation of Ordinary Differential Equations
Journal of Software Engineering and ApplicationsCarl, J.D. and Biswas, G.
2016 Cyber-physical systems (CPS) represent a class of complex engineered systems where functionality and behavior emerge through the interaction between the computational and physical domains. Simulation provides design engineers with quick and accurate feedback on the behaviors generated by their designs. However, as systems become more complex, simulating their behaviors becomes computation all complex. But, most modern simulation environments still execute on a single thread, which does not take advantage of the processing power available on modern multi-core CPUs. This paper investigates methods to partition and simulate differential equation-based models of cyber-physical systems using multiple threads on multi-core CPUs that can share data across threads. We describe model partitioning methods using fixed step and variable step numerical integration methods that consider the multi-layer cache structure of these CPUs to avoid simulation performance degradation due to cache conflicts. We study the effectiveness of each parallel simulation algorithm by calculating the relative speedup compared to a serial simulation applied to a series of large electric circuit models. We also develop a series of guidelines for maximizing performance when developing parallel simulation software intended for use on multi-core CPUs.
An approach to parallelizing the simulation of complicated modelica models
SCS Summer Simulation Multi-ConferenceCarl, J.D., Biswas, G., Neema, S., Bapty, T.
2014 Designing embedded systems has become a complex and expensive task, and simulation and other analysis tools are taking on a bigger role in the overall design process. In an effort to speed up the design process, we present an algorithm for reducing the simulation time of large, complex models by creating a parallel schedule from a flattened set of equations that collectively capture the system behavior. The developed approach is applied to a multi-core desktop processor to determine the estimated speedup in a set of subsystem models.
Modeling And Simulation Semantics For Building Large-Scale Multi-Domain Embedded Systems
Conference: 27th Conference on Modelling and SimulationCarl, J.D., Lattman, Z., Biswas, G.
2013 This paper discusses a set of semantic constraints that have to be applied for multi-domain modeling of complex, embedded systems. In particular, using the Hybrid Bond Graph (HBG) modeling language, we analyze issues that deal with consistent causality assignments across model reconfigurations using hybrid switching junctions, and the complementarity of the electrical and mechanical domains by imposing additional constraints in the modeling environment. A case study of a Reverse Osmosis system developed at NASA JSC illustrates the effectiveness of our approach.
Fault Isolation for Spacecraft Systems: An Application to a Power Distribution Testbed
Conference: Fault Detection, Supervision and Safety of Technical ProcessesCarl, J.D., Mack, D.L., Tantawy, A., Biswas, G., Koutsoukos, X.D.
2012 Modern electrical power disribution systems play a critical role in system operations. Therefore, early fault detection and isolation is essential to maintaining system safety and avoiding catastrophic failures. This paper discusses a fault isolation scheme based on a qualitative fault signature-based isolation mechanism that applies to abrupt, incipient and intermittent faults in the system. We discuss the isolation algorithms for a combination of these faults, and demonstrate their performance on a set of test cases generated from a NASA Ames spacecraft power distribution testbed. Our results show good isolation accuracy with 103 out of 134 faulty scenarios isolated correctly. Most of the isolation errors can be attributed to errors in the detection scheme.
Detection and Estimation of Multiple Fault Profiles Using Generalized Likelihood Ratio Tests: A Case Study
16th IFAC Symposium on System IdentificationCarl, J.D., Tantawy, A., Biswas, G., Koutsoukos, X.D.
2012 Aircraft and spacecraft electrical power distribution systems are critical to overall system operation, but these systems may experience faults. Early fault detection makes it easier for system operators to respond and avoid catastrophic failures. This paper discusses a fault detection scheme based on a tunable generalized likelihood algorithm. We discuss the detector algorithm, and then demonstrate its performance on test data generated from a spacecraft power distribution testbed at NASA Ames. Our results show high detection accuracy and low false alarm rates.
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