Computer engineering lecturer brings expertise in embedded systems and computer architecture to Iowa State
The offices of Durham hall are nothing new to Swamy Ponpandi. The new lecturer of computer engineering has been hard at work at Iowa State for years as a PhD student, but this year he returned as faculty.
Ponpandi will be teaching core computer engineering classes, as well as continuing to contribute to his research and the research of other faculty.
“I have studied embedded systems-related challenges like energy or power savings a lot over the years, but I’m also trying to get into security. The computer engineering faculty here are well known for information assurance and other security-related research, so there’s a strong foundation already in place,” Ponpandi says. “In the future, I’d like to be working on how to avoid security attacks from a hardware point of view.”
During his time as a student in higher education, his studies in engineering were diverse. Ponpandi earned his bachelors in electrical engineering as well as his masters in computer science in India before coming to South Dakota to study electrical engineering again at the School of Mines.
“Moving around in several different areas of engineering helped me while I was working on my PhD, because embedded systems is a mixture of several different areas in engineering,” he says.
Following his time in South Dakota, Ponpandi worked on the design and verification of chips and integrated circuits for Compaq computer corporation, which is now a part of HP. He then taught as a lecturer in computer engineering at the School of Mines before coming to Iowa State for his PhD.
Ponpandi says his interest in computers started early in his life thanks to the specialized equipment his father worked with as a physicist. “In India, it was difficult to have access to technology, especially computers. Because of where my father worked, I had the privilege to use the first computers that weren’t available to anyone else around.”
When he isn’t teaching or doing research, Ponpandi enjoys keeping up with the world of physics as well as gardening vegetables like tomatoes and beans in his backyard. “Ames is a very good place to live, so I’m happy to be continuing here. More than that, Iowa State is a very good technological institute, so I’m quite pleased to have a position here in engineering.”