Introduction to Electric Circuits

Richard C. Dorf, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Davis, teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in electrical engineering in the fields of circuits and control systems. He earned a PhD in electrical engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, an MS from the University of Colorado, and a BS from Clarkson University. Highly concerned with the discipline of electrical engineering and its wide value to social and economic needs, he has written and lectured internationally on the contributions and advances in electrical engineering.

Professor Dorf has extensive experience with education and industry and is professionally active in the fields of robotics, automation, electric circuits, and communications. He has served as a visiting professor at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the University of California at Berkeley.

A Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and the American Society for Engineering Education, Dr. Dorf is widely know to the profession for his Modern Control Systems, eleventh edition (Prentice Hall, 2008) and The International Encyclopedia of Robotics (Wiley, 1988). Dr. Dorf is also the coauthor of Circuits, Devices and Systems (with Ralph Smith), fifth edition (Wiley, 1992). Dr. Dorf edited the widely used Electrical Engineering Handbook, third edition (CRC Pres and IEEE press), published in 2008. His latest work is Technology Ventures, third edition (McGraw-Hill 2010).

James A. Svoboda is an associate professor electrical and computer engineering at Clarkson University, where he teaches courses on topics such as circuits, electronics, and computer programming. He earned a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, an MS from the University of Colorado, and a BS from General Motors Institute.

Sophomore circuits is one of Professor Svoboda's favorite courses. He has taught this course to 5,500 undergraduates at Clarkson University over the past 30 years. In 1986, he received Clarkson University's Distinguished Teaching Award.

Professor Svoboda has written several research papers describing the advantages of using nullors to model electric circuits for computer analysis. He is interested in the way technology affects engineering education and has developed several software packages for use in Sophomore Circuits.