Medalist combines interests in electronics and music

If not for the advice of a sharp-eyed registrar at Thompson-Rivers University, Colter McQuay might have never studied engineering. But now the 23-year-old Kamloops native is not only graduating this month with a joint degree in electrical engineering and computer music, he is also the winner of the IEEE Victoria Section Gold Medal in Electrical Engineering for having the highest GPA in his graduating class.

“Originally my plans were to study science,” McQuay recalls. However, “Knowing my family, a TRU registrar’s clerk saw my application and suggested I might enjoy engineering. The idea of being able to create whatever I envisioned was exactly what I had always wanted, so engineering seemed like a good fit.”

After completing his first year at TRU, McQuay transferred to UVic, where he received an entrance scholarship into the engineering program.

“I’ve always been fascinated by electronics,” says McQuay. “When I was young I would spend hours taking apart gadgets we had lying around our house. I never knew how to put them back together, but I was sure good at getting them apart. I went into electrical engineering so that I would know how these devices worked and how to design them.”

Since 2006 he has been studying electrical engineering with a signal processing specialization. “My passion lies within the audio field. I love making music, listening to music, anything to do with music; so I found myself drawn toward the signal processing world.”
With this specialization he has spent the last three years focusing on audio and image processing in addition to using computers to compose music.

“While I was in high school I discovered a computer program in which I could compose my own music,” says McQuay. “I did it for hours in a makeshift studio in my basement bedroom. After a summer construction job I built a small recording studio in my basement using a design I had made for my technical writing cl#8299; it was a fun project.”

McQuay completed his first co-op placement at the UVic computer help desk and has been working there part time ever since. For his last three co-op placements, he researched GPU (graphics processing unit) -based computational electromagnetic algorithms for Dr. Poman So (electrical and computer engineering). He presented a paper for So’s research team at an international conference at the University of Colorado in 2010 and later co-authored a journal paper with So and one of his grad students.

In addition to the IEEE medal, McQuay is the recipient of the 2009 and 2010 NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Awards. An NSERC post-graduate research award in addition to the UVic President’s Research Scholarship will help fund his UVic post-graduate studies in the fall.

In September, McQuay will be involved in computer-music-based research with Dr. Peter Driessen (music, computer science, electrical and computer engineering), building an audio processing unit that takes input signals and combines dynamic surround sound reverberation to make music sound as if in it’s in a space. As McQuay explains it, it will allow an audio engineer to place a sound anywhere in a particular space.

But that’s in the fall. There won’t be any studying or working this summer for McQuay.

“I’ve been really busy for the last three years working part time and going to school, and this summer I just want to relax,” McQuay comments. “I’m taking time off to write music and hopefully I’ll have enough material in the fall to put on my own show.”

To listen to a sample of McQuay’s music visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbrRCzgKAHk