Alexander Keller at Freescale

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While members of HEVT traveled to Austin for Winter Workshop, one team member was going back to his old stompping grounds. Alexander Keller , a senior electrical engineer on the team, had a co-op at Freescale, a platinum level sponsor of the EcoCar2 competition, during the fall 2012 semester.

"I really enjoyed working at Freescale and living in Austin," said Alexander."I worked on the Linux Windowing system called Wayland and learned a lot."

Alexander (left) at Enchanted Rock

Some of the work Alexander did at Freescale included helping code the event handling for Wayland. An example  of event handling is when you click your mouse on the computer, there is an "event" that is triggered and Wayland has to be able to respond to the event. Alexander helped write the code that tells Wayland what to do with the event so the application will work correctly.

"I never knew what Wayland was, so it was really cool to learn about the software and work with it. I also learned that Freescale creates chips that go into Kindle e-readers, aviation info-tainment and Garmin GPS products."

Alexander not only learned a lot about Freescale but about Austin and Texas ways of life. He even purchased a genuine cowboy hat, which he learned is just called a hat in Texas. Alexander lived in downtown Austin where he became a huge tex-mex and BBQ fan.

"The food in Austin is awesome. My favorite restaurants were Chuy's, Torchee's Tacos and Rudy's Barbeque. Also the food trucks right across from Freescale's building were good too," Alexander commented.

In addition to his "hat" purchase Alexander went Skeet shooting. "I like Skeet shooting, but I'm not very good at it," Alexander said.

In Year 1 Alexander was also known as HEVT's Freescale guy. His work on our Freescale board, that will be integrated into the dashboard of our vehicle, is in great working condition. In addition, his presentation for the Year 1 Freescale sponsor award won first place.

We are definitely happy to have Alexander back on the team this semester! Comment below to welcome him back!