Kelvin T. Erickson is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla. He has taught university courses in factory automation and PLC programming since 1991. He has taught short courses on PLC programming for engineers, technicians, and maintenance workers.
Dr. Erickson teaches two one-semester courses that cover programmable logic controllers. The first semester emphasizes ladder logic programming and has approximately 40 enrolled juniors or seniors each semester. The second semester course covers the other programming languages, communication, and a class-wide project. This course is taken by approximately 20 seniors each year.
Dr. Erickson received his BSEE from the University of Missouri-Rolla in 1978 and completed his MS EE from the same institution in 1979. Upon graduation, he joined Fisher Controls International, Inc. as a design engineer. During his tenure at Fisher Controls, he took a two-year leave of absence to complete his PhD EE at Iowa State University, receiving it in 1983. He continued to work at Fisher Controls until 1986 when he joined the faculty of the University of Missouri-Rolla. In 1997, he spent a sabbatical working for Magnum Technologies, a consulting firm, programming PLCs.
He co-authored Plantwide Process Control with John Hedrick which was published in 1999 by Wiley and Sons. His current research interests are in manufacturing and process control.
