Andrew L. Kun

by Frank Hludik

It is a pleasure to welcome Dr. Andrew L. Kun to the ECE Department and introduce him to our alumni and friends. Hopefully, after reading this short article you will get to know Andrew a little better. First of all, getting to know Andrew is real easy. He always greets you with a pleasant smile and a glad-to-see-you welcome. Andrew has many interests from engineering, to sports, politics, teaching, research, family, and current events. It’s always uplifting to have a conversation (or debate) with Andrew because of his honest, positive, and can-do attitude.

Andrew was born in Szeged, Hungary in 1968. At that time Andrew’s parents lived in Subotica, Yugoslavia, but they choose a hospital in Szeged (which was across the nearby Hungarian border) because of the facilities. His father was a professor in the economics department at the University of Subotica and his mother chose to spend her time caring for her family at home. His father’s fields of interest were operations research and the scientific method. Andrew’s father retired from teaching in 1998 and his parents moved to the US shortly thereafter.

Andrew had a pleasant childhood growing up in Yugoslavia. His family often went on vacations to Slovenia and other European citiesregions. Andrew attended a special academic high school where he specialized in physics. He recalls that there were tough entrance requirements to gain entrance admission to that high school. There were only fifty students in the physics track. He said that there was little emphasis placed on athletics and much emphasis placed on academics. He always felt that because of his academic load he did not have enough time to play on an athletic team. In his native country, local and school athletic teams were sponsored primarily by professional sports teams, which are known in the US as farm teams. Athletics on those "farm" teams was taken very seriously. Andrew did enjoy playing sports with his neighborhood friends after, of course, his homework was completed.

Andrew speaks perfect English; you can’t even detect an accent. He grew up in the bilingual community of Subotica speaking Hungarian and Serbo-Croatian, and started learning English in the fourth grade. But when I first spoke with him I couldn’t believe that he was not born and raised in the US. After high school Andrew joined the Yugoslavian army to fulfill his military commitment. All men in Yugoslavia must serve at least one year in the army by age twenty-seven. He was assigned to a communication unit and was trained to operate radar equipment. This one yearone year in the army was difficult - he remembers that just about everyone kept a calendar with the count of days until they would be discharged.

After his army obligations, he entered the electrical engineering department at the University of Novi Sad. The electrical engineering program at Novi Sad (and a number of other European universities) is somewhat different from those at US universities. The EE program focuses on math, physics, and EE topics;, no general education courses are required. General education topics are covered in the high school years, allowing the college years to concentrate on the major’s technical subjects. He feels that there was a much greater emphasis on acquiring theoretical math, science, and engineering skills than at US universities. He spent three years studying for his engineering degree when signs of an escalating war and impending draft prompted him to move to the US. His cousin helped him obtain a visa to enter the US and settle in the Worcester, MA area. He took classes at WPI and Worcester State College for one semester, then transferred to UNH to complete his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He selected UNH because of the support he received in transferring his college credits from Novi Sad. He remembers that Chairman Dr. John Pokoski was very helpful in making the transition to UNH. As ann UNH undergraduate he maintained a 4.0 GPA in electrical engineering.

At UNH he earned his MSEE degree working with Dr. Miller in the ECE Robotics Laboratory. His master’s thesis was titled "Design and Implementation of Hierarchical Control Hardware for a Biped Robot." In 1997 Andrew earned his Ph.D. degree also working with Dr. Miller. His dissertation was titled "A Sensory-Based Adaptive Walking Control Algorithm for Variable Speed Biped Robot Gaits." It was from his experiences in the ECE Robotics Laboratory that he acquired his interests in adaptive learning algorithms (neural networks), real-time control systems, and digital signal processing.

After graduating from UNH Andrew joined Falmouth Scientific, Inc., in Cataumet, MA. He worked on developing new oceanographic instrumentation. He was involved in design and implementation issues from system level design, through hardware design to embedded programming. The instruments operated in the ocean for several months without being serviced, using only battery power. They collected data on ocean currents, directional wave spectra, water temperature, and water conductivity. In the fall of 1999 Andrew joined the ECE Department as a vVisiting pProfessor. He taught sophomore and senior/graduate courses in digital design and digital signal processing. He also joined the Consolidated Advanced Technologies (CATlab) for Law Enforcement Program at UNH.

Andrew’s primary research interests lie in the area of real-time systems that have an immediate impact on the quality of life. This includes such topics as mobile robotics, supervised learning algorithms, digital signal processing, and speech recognition. He is currently heading up the development of the software system architecture for the CATlab project. This includes the speech recognition subsystems and the Component Object Model (COM) interfaces. He would like to build an interdisciplinary team with other CEPS faculty and students who have common research interests.

He is also very interested in further improving the high quality of education we offer in the ECE Department. He would like to develop new courses in digital signal processing, robotics, and speech recognition at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Because of the interdisciplinary nature of robotics, Andrew thinks that it is a great educational tool. Robotics encompasses many topics such as: the development of advanced software algorithms, including digital signal processing and machine learning; embedded microprocessor development and real-time operating systems; a wide variety of sensor systems; wireless remote networks; mechanical systems; etc. Robotics provides students with scientific and engineering challenges as well as an opportunity to improve their teamwork skills.

What does a new "single" assistant professor doue for recreation? You might think what recreation? With proposals to write, project deadlines to meet, new courses to prepare, committees meetings to attend, and conference tracks to organize, Andrew is busy these days. Well, he does find time to play on faculty/staff teams, get in some tennis, go on- and off-road biking, and enjoy the fine NH beaches. Notice I said "single" assistant professor. When I asked Andrew if he had a girlfriend he smiled and said, "not yet;, my career isn my first priority right now." I am sure that "not yet" will change quickly and Andrew will have two priorities. Check out Andrew’s web site at http://www.ece.unh.edu/people/faculty/a_kun.htm, he, he is as nice as his smile. On behalf ofthethethebehalf of the faculty the faculty and staff of the ECE Department ­ Welcome Andrew!