Oh, The People You'll Know: Joseph van Belleghem

Joseph van Belleghem has a lot of mechanical design experience from his time in MechSE, but his real passion lies in signal processing and controls. With his minor in electrical engineering, Joseph is pursuing this passion as the signal processing lead for Alma’s Talking Dogs – an RSO on campus that aims to enhance communication between dogs and people. The organization is essentially making an electroencephalogram (commonly called an EEG) that reads a dog’s brainwaves and sends the information to a bandpass filter to eliminate any noise. This data is then run through a machine learning algorithm that will identify what brainwave frequencies mean to the dog. Joseph is leading the design of a PCB (printed circuit board) that will act as the noise-reducing bandpass filter.

Joseph is also the mechanical lead for the Eco Illini team. The Eco Illini is a prototype supermileage vehicle team that runs in two competitions each spring. They compete in the Shell Eco-Marathon competition with their electric car and in SAE Supermileage with their gas engine car. As the mechanical lead, Joseph is in charge of all the cars’ mechanical components, from the steering to the gas engine to the electronic component packaging.

While Joseph already seems to have his hands full, he is also a member of the Illini Powerlifting club. He enjoys weightlifting and, before the coronavirus hit, was training for a club meet he planned to attend this spring. In his free time, he also enjoys playing guitar and writing music.

While Joseph still has another year before graduation, he hopes to go into industry after he earns his bachelor’s degree – pursuing his passion and working on control systems and dynamics after graduation.