Faculty Profiles

Schurgers studies a variety of topics related to embedded systems and robotics, with a focus on undergraduate course development, active learning and research experiences for undergraduate students. He has been involved in the campus maker movement, including the creation of maker spaces, as well the development of hands-on project courses for both undergraduates and high school students. In terms of research, he works on systems-related aspects of embedded, wireless and underwater applications. He also co-directs Engineers for Exploration, a program in which undergraduates tackle real-world engineering design challenges in exploration and conservation, and create technologies in collaboration with ecologists, archaeologists and other scientists. Projects are student-led, involve extensive local field testing, as well as support of field deployments abroad.

Capsule Bio:

Schurgers received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of California Los Angeles in 2002, and his undergraduate engineering degree from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium in 1997. He was a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and joined UC San Diego in 2003 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. From 2011 to 2017, he was a researcher, instructor and development engineer at the Qualcomm Institute (QI) at UC San Diego. In 2017, Schurgers became a Teaching Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC San Diego. In 2017, he received a Fulbright US Scholar Award to teach project-based courses in the Kyrgyz Republic.