NEW MEXICO: NMSU professor tackling capacity issues of communication infrastructure and need for engineers
David Mitchell is tackling two of society’s biggest problems with one ambitious project. The New Mexico State University assistant professor is researching technological methods to increase the world’s rapidly increasing need for expanded communications capacity. At the same time, he hopes to inspire the next generation of students to pursue STEM fields and address the world’s emerging technological needs.
Mitchell, assistant professor in the Klipsch School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, recently received the NSF Faculty Early Career Development award. The CAREER award is one of the most prestigious NSF awards and aims to support early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in teaching and research.
“As a society we have a big data problem, in the sense that we are generating data much faster than our communications infrastructure can support. For example, we’re expected to generate more data as a society in the next three years than we have done in the past 30 years. People are generating lots of data in ways that we haven’t ever done before: things like smart homes, connected cars, wearable technologies. All those devices are driving this big data problem,” said Mitchell, adding “It’s expected by 2024 there will be 3.6 devices per person on the planet connected to the internet. It’s just a huge number of devices that are all generating, consuming and sharing data.”