School of Engineering

Don L. Millard
Clinical Professor
Director, Academy of Electronic Media http://www.academy.rpi.edu/~millard/

Department Affiliation:

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Department of Electrical, Computer, & Systems Engineering

Education:

Ph.D., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Electrical Engineering

B.S., Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Electrical Engineering

Background:

Millard currently leads the Academy of Electronic Media, which specializes in the development and use of engaging interactive electronic media. During his 22 years at Rensselaer, he has served as a faculty member of the Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering Department; held several roles with the Center for Integrated Electronics, including five years as director; served as technical director of the Design and Manufacturing Institute, and served as senior project manager for the Center for Manufacturing Productivity and Technology Transfer.

Prior to joining the university, Millard spent two years as a biomedical engineer at Veteran's Administration Hospital in Albany, N.Y. and two years as a designer at Electronics for Medicine, in Sudbury, Mass. The owner of DLM Consulting since 1981, Millard holds a patent for the development of a laser-induced, plasma-based "Non-Contact Electrical Pathway," which is used to perform electrical testing of fine-pitch electrical components.

Research Interests:

Millard's research includes the development of electronic media, information technology, semiconductor fabrication, electronics design and manufacturing, electrical testing methodologies, and non-destructive solder joint inspection and evaluation.

He has been actively involved in the development of multimedia authoring tools and the integration of digital media for nearly 20 years and has produced a variety of electronic multimedia-based presentations involving the use of video, music, and interactivity. He also has authored a variety of multimedia-oriented lecture materials for use in courses involving electronic instrumentation and electronics design and manufacturing.

Millard has served as a principle investigator on a number of National Science Foundation (NSF) grants, most recently as director of a Combined Curriculum and Laboratory Instrumentation (CCLI) project that developed web-based materials and technologies for use in electrical engineering education. The project's Web site, located at http://www.academy.rpi.edu/projects/ccli/, now receives over one million hits per year. He has also been a co-principal investigator for the multimedia-based Interactive Learning Modules (ILM) project and the Electronics Agile Manufacturing Research Institute, both of which were jointly sponsored by the NSF and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).