Michael Hockman

My name is Michael Hockman, I’m a senior EE major at UW Tacoma.

My goal is to eventually get a job somewhere that utilizes my love of technical writing, especially diagrams and research papers. Where exactly that will take me is still up in the air!

I have a lot of experience building electrical components in the lab setting, but I don’t have much experience actually repairing things once they break. The closest I’ve come is figuring out why certain electrical components weren’t behaving the way I wanted them to while building something. I’d love to learn how to apply this experience to learn how to repair simple household electronics!

One of the projects I’m most proud of is designing and testing the tail light circuit for an older model Ford Thunderbird.

I tested the circuit on a DE2 board with certain lights corresponding to different sections of the Thunderbird tail lights. It included the left signal, right signal, and a hazard light.

I’m currently in a research group at UW Tacoma researching how to draw electrical power from trees. I mostly do coding, more specifically I use numerical methods to solve differential equations to find the temperature inside and on the surface of a tree. The details are a bit complicated, but essentially the temperature of the tree can be used as a generator for a small electrical device.

Autumn 2019 UW Tacoma Deans List

Winter 2020 UW Tacoma Deans List

Spring 2020 UW Tacoma Deans List

As you might have been able to tell from my profile picture, I love spending time with my dog Samson, a Shih Tzu Pomerian mix shown as a puppy in the picture below.

He is very energetic and likes to go on walks and play everyday, which makes it so I always get some exercise everyday.