David Fawcett

Professor David Fawcett holds Master's degrees in Computer Science & Computer Control Systems (MSECE) and Electrical Engineering (MSEE, BSEE) all from Wayne State. He worked at Ford Motor Co. for 32 years and held various Engineering/CAE/CAD/ and Management positions in his Ford career. While at Ford Engineering staff he was one of the four-man team that introduced computer graphics to Ford. Many others got involved and this work led to software known as PDGS and EDGS which was used for body surface design (PDGS) and Electrical Wiring design (EDGS). PDGS and EDGS were used for over 30 years by Ford. David Fawcett also developed software for visualizations and error checking for Finite Element meshes which allowed an entire car body to be analyzed.  At the Ford Electronics Division, he helped introduce CAD, CAE, and Expert Systems to aid the interface between design and manufacturing. During the “Ford 2000” restructuring, starting in 1995, he was Operations Research & KBE Manager and helped bring Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) into being. After his early retirement from Ford in 2000, he consulted for several years, and also joined the faculty of LTU in 2001. He has been teaching at LTU mostly as an Adjunct for 21 years. During that he was a full-time Senior Lecturer/Lecturer for the 2016 and 2017 terms. Professor Fawcett has taught Data Structures, C++ (CSI & CS II), Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering, Computer Animation, and two graduate-level courses which he developed, Introduction to Algorithms, and Cryptography. Professor Fawcett has written many applications and teaching tools in diverse areas of computer science and engineering including Digital Signal Processing for voice, Fuzzy Logic, Neural Nets, Data Structures, Source Code Management, Complexity Analysis, Symbolic Mathematics, Rubik’s Cube Solver and more. Professor Fawcett has presented papers and has been published in the SAE Journal, Design Automation, Audio Engineering Society, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and other publications. He is also a trained musician and world traveler and finds a strong correlation between music and mathematics.