News Archives

U.S. Department of Energy grant awards up to $8 million to University of Minnesota
2009-10

U of M's Wind Energy Consortium researchers received an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant of up to $8 million
from the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE). Local activities will focus on a new 2.3 megawatt Siemens turbine to be built at the
University of Minnesota Outreach Research and Education UMore Park. The 80-acre park is an experimental facility where
industry specialist and U researchers will drastically reduce time from concept to implementation of a real-life wind farm.
ECE faculty Mihailo Jovanovic, Mostafa Kaveh, and Ned Mohan will participate as part of the core research team. For more,
go to it.umn.edu/index.php and www.safl.umn.edu/announcements_wind_grant.html.

Professor Riedel received NSF CAREER Award
2009-10
Professor Marc Riedel received the prestigious National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award. His proposal title is “Computing with Things Small, Wet, and Random–Design Automation for Digital Computation with Nanoscale Technologies and Biological Processes.”

Professor Oh received funding award
2009-09-25
Professor Sang-Hyun Oh received the Doctoral New Investigator Award from the American Chemistry Society’s Petroleum Research Fund. This award provides financial support toward research for two years.
 

Science magazine publishes article by the Norris group in  CEMS and Prof. Sang-Hyun Oh and ECE student Nathan
Lindquist about patterning ultrasmooth metals for plasmonics and metamaterials  
2009-08-14
Science magazine published an article by Professor Sang-Hyun Oh (top left) and ECE PhD student Nathan Lindquist (left), in collaboration with Professor David Norris and PhD student Prashant Nagpal in CEMS, that describes a simple andreproducible technique to create ultrasmooth patterned metals for applications in plasmonics and metamaterials. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/325/5940/594
 

Professor Ted Brekken received NSF CAREER Award
2009-08-14
Assistant Professor Ted Brekken (ECE PhD '05), Oregon State University, Corvallis, Ore., received the National Science Foundation (NFS) CAREER Award in Advancing Grid Integration of Diverse Renewable Energy Sources. (Ned Mohan, Advisor)

University of Minnesota Institute of Technology to hold Alumni event in Bay Area
2009-07-10
Bay Area Alumni Gathering in August
Please join us for the Second Annual Bay Area Alumni Gathering hosted by the University of Minnesota Institute of Technology, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Thursday, Aug. 13 at the Computer History Museum, 1401 N. Shoreline Boulevard, Mountain View, CA.
For more information go to http://it.umn.edu/alumni/2009_bayarea.html

ECE Professor Ned Mohan receives IEEE's 2010 Undergraduate Teaching Award
2009-07-07
ECE Professor Ned Mohan was named the recipient of the IEEE 2010 Undergraduate Teaching Award. This award is one of IEEE's most prestigious honors and is being presented to Professor Mohan "for pioneering and disseminating, worldwide, a novel integrated electric energy systems curriculum for undergraduates, supported by textbooks and laboratories, and for outstanding classroom teaching. For more information about the award and past recipients, go to http://www.ieee.org/portal/pages/about/awards/sums/ungrad.html

ECE Professor Anand Gopinath publishes new book
2009-06-23
ECE Professor Anand Gopinath is a co-author of the newly published book "High-Speed Electronics and Optoelectronics: Devices and Circuits." Together with Sheila Prasad, Professor Emeritus of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Northeastern University, and Hermann Schumacher, Professor and Director of the Competence Center on Integrated Circuits in Communications, Institute of Electron Devices and Circuits, University of Ulm, Gopinath covers semiconductor materials and physics, electronic devices, optimization and parameter extraction of circuit models, optoelectronics, and building blocks for high-speed analog circuits in the book published by Cambridge University Press.

Former ECE Professor Stephen Case dies in plane crash
2009-06-18
Former University of Minnesota Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering faculty member and founder of CyberOptics Steven Case died in a plane crash in Crystal, Minn., Tuesday night. Steve was an outstanding faculty member and made tremendous contributions to ECE teaching and research missions.
"Steve was a highly respected researcher, a popular teacher and a wonderful colleague," says ECE Department Head David Lilja. "His founding of CyberOptics is an excellent example of how University-developed research can move successfully into the commercial market place."
Steve remained a stong supporter of the University serving as an adjunct faculty member and, most recently, as a member of the department's Industrial Advisory Council. His contributions to research in optics and to Minnesota's entrepreneurial community, and his friendship will be greatly missed. To read more, visit the Institute of Technology site at http://blog.lib.umn.edu/itcomm/news/2009/06/in_memoriam_steven_case.html

University of Minnesota Solar Car Team Places First
2009-06-08
The team of the University of Minnesota Solar Car - Centauraus - took home the gold at the 2009 Formula Sun Grand Prix, a three-day race, at Motor Sport Ranch in Cresson, Tex., with 487 total laps, besting second and third place University of Kentucky and Northwestern
.
Centaurus, an eighth generation solar car for the University team, took 30,000 - 45,000 hours to build, weighs 600 pounds, and accommodates a 6-foot, 180-pound person. The car is capable of traveling 80 miles per hour, but the race speed was limited to 65 miles per hour. Adem Ruden, Crew Chief, has posted detailed information about the Solar Vehicle Project on a blog site http://svp.umn.edu

ECE graduate student Juyul Lee awarded a KUSCO-KSEA scholarship
2009-06-02
ECE graduate student Juyul Lee (Professor Nihar Jindal, advisor) was named a recipient of the KUSCO-KSEA Scholarship which recognizes outstanding graduate students who have excelled in the field of science and engineering as well as in extracurricular activities including community services, and who have demonstrated a potential for becoming leaders in the scientific community for closer cooperation between the US and Korea. Student recipients will receive their awards during a ceremony held in Raleigh, NC in July.

Electrical Engineering Professor Paul Cartwright dies at 93
2009-06-01
Paul Cartwright, a long-time professor of electrical and computer engineering and former Institute of Technology assistant dean for student affairs, died of cancer on May 31, 2009. He was 93.
During his 37 years at the University, Cartwright's major interest was to foster the success of Institute of Technology undergraduate students. He introduced major changes in student counseling activities; increased the student retention rate by providing innovative tutoring programs; helped to advance effective engineering-related student organizations; developed an "IT House" dormitory program; and developed many other imaginative programs that increased the graduation rate of engineering students.

ECE Ph.D. student Yun Sang Park awarded University of Minnesota Interdisciplinary Fellowship
2009-05-14
ECE Ph.D. student Yun Sang Park was awarded a University of Minnesota Graduate School Interdisciplinary Fellowship. His advisors are ECE Professor Keshab Parhi and Biomedical Engineering Professor Tay Netoff. Park's research is housed in the Institute of Translational Neuroscience (ITN), one of the interdisciplinary centers and institutes at the University. The fellowship provides a unique study opportunity for the best doctoral student whose research and scholarly interests complement those of one of the University-wide, interdisciplinary research centers or institutes. Recipients of the fellowship, in 2009-2010, will receive a stipend for the academic year, plus full tuition. Eligible recipients also are covered by comprehensive health insurance, including subsidized dependent and dental care.

ECE graduate student Xiaofeng Yao selected as a finalist for Best Student Presentation Award at IEEE Intermag Conference
2009-05-14
ECE graduate student Xiaofeng Yao was selected as one of five finalists for the Best Student Presentation Award at IEEE International Magnetic Conference (INTERMAG) 2009 for her paper "Unique spin torque transfer switching in magnetic tunnel junctions with composite free layer." This paper reports work done with her advisor, ECE Professor Jian-Ping Wang, and collaborators.

Jian-Ping Wang promoted to Professor
2009-05-12
The Board of Regents announced today that Jian-Ping Wang has been promoted to Professor. Jian-Ping received his Ph.D.in Physics in 1995 from Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; his M.S. in Physics in 1992 from Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China; and his B.S. in Physics in 1989 from Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China. Currently, his research interests include Nanomagnetism and Quantum Spintronics with a focus on searching, fundamentally understanding, and fabricating novel magnetic materials and quantum spintronic devices.

Chris Kim promoted to Associate Professor
2009-05-12
The Board of Regents announced today that Chris Kim has been promoted to Associate Professor. Chris received his Ph.D., EE, in 2004, from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind.; his M.S., BME, in 2000, from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea; and his B.S., EE, in 1998, from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. Currently, his research focuses on the cooperative field of circuit/device and circuit/architecture design for high performance, low-power VLSI systems in the nanometer regime.

ECE Ph.D. candidate Nathan Lindquist receives Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship
2009-05-06
ECE Ph.D. candidate Nathan Lindquist (Professor Sang-Hyun Oh, advisor) has been awarded the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship from the University of Minnesota Graduate School. The purpose of the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship program is to give outstanding final-year Ph.D. candidates who are making timely progress toward the degree an opportunity to complete their thesis research in the final year. Recipients of the fellowship, in 2009-2010, will receive a stipend of $22,500 for the academic year, plus full tuition for thesis credits. Eligible recipients also are covered by comprehensive health insurance, including subsidized dependent coverage and dental care.

2009 Leonard G. Abraham Prize for Best Paper awarded to ECE graduate student Niranjay Ravidran and ECE Professor Nihar Jindal
2009-05-04
ECE graduate student Niranjay Ravindran and ECE Professor Nihar Jindal were awarded the 2009 Leonard G. Abraham Prize for best paper for the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications. The award is given to the best paper that appeared in the journal during the previous year. Niranjay and Professor Jindal will be receiving the award at ICC in June in Dresden, Germany.

ECE graduate student Eric Severson receives a 2009 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Award
2009-04-13
ECE graduate student Eric Severson was selected to receive a 2009 National Science Foundation (NSF) award. This award is based on his abilities and accomplishments as well as his potential to contribute to strengthening the vitality of the U.S. science and engineering enterprise. Eric also is the recipient of a 2009 NDSEG Fellowship Award.

Professor Ahmed Tewfik elected Vice President for Technical Directions of IEEE Signal Processing Society
2009-04-13
ECE Professor Ahmed Tewfik was elected Vice President for Technical Directions of the IEEE Signal Processing Society for 2010-2012. Professor Tewfik will join Professor Mos Kaveh on the Society's Executive Committee on Jan. 1, 2010. Professor Kaveh will serve as the Society's President during 2010-2011.

Professor Guillermo Sapiro invited to present at Abel Lectures in Oslo, Norway
2009-04-06
His Magesty King Harald of Norway will present the 2009 Abel Prize to Professor Mikhail Gromov, Institute des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques, France, on May 19 in Olso, Norway. The following day, on May 20, ECE Professor Guillermo Sapiro will present the Science Lecture at the University of Oslo as part of a series of four lectures which will begin with Gromov's presention. Professor Sapiro will be reviewing the mathematics behind Professor Gromov's impact on image and shape analysis. The Abel Prize is considered by the mathematics community to be the "Nobel of Math." As is stated on the Abel Prize Web site, Professor Gromov "played a decisive role in the creation of modern global Riemannian geometry. In addition, Gromov discovered the geometry of discrete groups and solved several outstanding problems. His geometrical approach rendered complicated combinatorial arguments much more natural and powerful."

EURASIP announces JASP award for Professor Georgios Giannakis, Paul Anghel, Ph.D. (EE, '05), and Zhengdao Wang
2009-04-06
ECE Professor Georgios B. Giannakis, Paul A. Anghel, Ph.D. (EE, '05); and Zhengdao Wang, Ph.D., were named recipients of the 2004-2007 Journal of Advances in Signal Processing (JASP) Best Paper Award for "Generalized Multicarrier CDMA: Unification and Linear Equalization." The article appeared in JASP, Volume 2005, pages 743-756. The award will be presented at the 17th EUSIPCO Conference in Glasgow, Scotland in August.

ECE Professor Paul Imbertson named ECE Professor of the Year
2009-04-03
For an unprecedented eighth time, ECE Professor Paul Imbertson has been named the ECE Professor of the Year by the Institute of Technology (IT) Student Board. This recognition is based on an annual poll of IT undergraduate students.

ECE Graduate student Eric Severson receives 2009 NDSEG Fellowship
2009-04-01
ECE Graduate student Eric Severson was selected to receive a 2009 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship. His application was selected by the Army Research Office from more than 2,000 submitted applications received this year. The NDSEG Fellowship is sponsored and funded by the Department of Defense and administered by the American Society for Engineering Education. NDSEG selections are made by the Air Force Research Laboratory/Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Office of Naval Research, the Army Research Office and the Department of Defense High Performance Computing Modernization Program Office.

Professor Massoud Amin addresses Congressional committee about Modernizing the Electric Grid
2009-03-26
ECE Professor Massoud Amin provided testimony about modernizing the electric grid on Thursday, March 26, to the Congressional Research & Development Caucus Committee. Professor Amin is the University of Minnesota's Center for the Development of Technological Leadership Director.

Professor Ahmed Tewfik provides expertise in Project Lead the Way
2009-03-26
ECE Professor Ahmed Tewfik is working with Edina School District eighth grade students as part of Project Lead the Way. He will be giving a series of presentations about the use of logic gates in technology. The students also will have hands-on experience with logic circuit snap kits.

In remembrance: Junping Zhou, Ph.D., (EE, '91)
2009-03-20
Former ECE graduate, Junping Zhou, Ph.D. (EE, '91) died Feb. 23. She was a student of ECE Professor Anand Gopinath. She is survived by her husband Haozhe Dong, Ph.D, (EE, '94), also a student of Professor Gopinath, and her two children, Connie and Jason. Through her career, she was a Senior Engineer at Cray Research, Inc.; a Senior Design Engineer at Agere/VTC; a Senior Mixed Signal IC Design Engineer at Mathstar, Inc.; and a Senior Mixed Signal IC Design Engineer at Micron Technology, Inc.

In remembrance: Robert M. Sauders, Ph.D., graduate of EE
2009-03-20
Robert M. Saunders, Ph.D., was born in Canada, raised and educated in Minnesota, and received his BSEE and MS from the University of Minnesota. After serving in the Navy during WWII, he joined the University of California, Berkeley, where he served for 18 years, four years as the Chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering. In 1964, he moved to University of California, Irvine, to organize the School of Engineering and served as Dean of Engineering until 1973. He continued as Professor of Electrical Engineering. In 1971, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Among Dr. Saunders many awards was the 1990 IEEE Haraden Pratt Award for distinguished service in extending IEEE leadership in the educational and professional communities, and as a founder and early Chairman of the American Association of Engineering Societies.

Professor Ned Mohan represents IT at Arizona Minne-College for U of M Alumni
2009-03-13
Professor Ned Mohan recently represented the Institute of Technology at the Arizona Minne-College organized by University of Minnesota in Scottsdale, Ariz. on March 7. (http://www.alumni.umn.edu./Arizona_Minne-College.html) His presentation was "Electricity from Renewables: Research in the Generation, Storage and Efficient End-Use of Wind and Solar Power."

Professor Massoud Amin: Electrical Grid expert for media, MIT Conference and Congressional briefings
2009-03-09
Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Massoud Amin has been in high demand as an electrical grid media expert: WCCO-AM (Morning Show with Dave Lee, Jan. 27); Minnesota Public Radio (In the Loop, Jan. 31) Radio K (Minnesota Notbook, Feb. 1); and WJON-AM (Jay Caldwell Show, Feb. 3). Professor Amin provided a keynote address at the annual MIT Energy Conference in Cambridge, Mass.,"The Smart Grid: Opportunities and Challenges" on Friday, March 6. On March 26, he will give a Congressional Staffer Briefing - "Towards a Stronger and Smarter Grid" on behalf of IEEE and ASME. Earlier, on Dec. 9, he served on a Congressional panel: "Tomorrow's Infrastructure: Researching Sustainable Solutions."

Professor Sang-Hyun Oh and Dr. Moses Rodriguez of Mayo Clinic receive Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics research grant
2009-03-09
University of Minnesota Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Sang-Hyun Oh and Mayo Clinic physician Moses Rodriguez were awarded more than $1 million in a research grant from Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics for their development of a nano-device to measure binding strength of antibodies on the surface of cells. The technique could impact multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injuries. Their research title is "High-Resolution Nano-LAMP Microarrays to Measure the Binding Strength of Therapeutic Human Natural Auto-Antibodies on Target Cell-Surface Antigens." Five other research teams also received awards; total money awarded was $5.4 million.
"These six projects reflect some of the best science and scienctific minds in Minnesota. All of these projects have a strong likelihood of succeeding and advancing to the bioscience marketplace," says Eric Wieben, Ph.D., Partnership program director at Mayo Clinic. To learn more about the Partnership, go to www.minnesotapartnership.info.

Ph.D. Student Qunzeng Liu and Professor Sachin Sapatnakar win Best Paper Award from ISPD
2009-03-09
Electrical and Computer Engineering Ph.D. student Qunzeng Liu and Professor Sachin S. Sapatnakar, Liu's advisor, have won the Best Paper Award for "Synthesizing a Representative Critical Path for Post-Silicon Delay Prediction" from the International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD). The award will be presented during this year's opening session at ISPD's international symposium in San Diego. This symposium provides a high-quality forum for the exchange of ideas and results in critical areas related to the physical design of VLSI systems. The symposium's scope includes all aspects of physical design, from interactions with behavior- and logic-level synthesis, to back-end performance analysis and verification.

Assoc. Prof. Ali Abdi ('01) receives 2008 New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame Innovators Award
2009-02-25
Associate Professor Ali Abdi (ECE, '01), New Jersey Science and Technology University, received the 2008 New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame Innovators Award for his work on underwater acoustic communication using particle velocity channels for data communications. His work eventually will allow multiple users and underwater vehicles and instruments to communicate information and data faster and more reliably in complex underwater environments. The National Science Foundation supported this research. (Professor Mostafa Kaveh, advisor)
Established in 1987, the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame selects awardees based on the following criteria: importance of the problem solved by the invention, novelty of the invention, contribution to the advancement of state-of-the-art commercial impact, and utilitarian or socioeconomic impact. The inventor must complete a substantial portion of the work in New Jersey, or be a New Jersey resident while working on the project.

IBM Fellowships awarded to Pranav Agarwal and John Keane
2009-02-19
ECE Ph.D. candidate Pranav Agarwal (Professor Murti Salapaka, advisor) was awarded an IBM Fellowship and Ph.D candidate John Keane (Professor Chris Kim, advisor) received a continuing IBM Fellowship.
The IMB Ph.D. Fellowship Award is an intensely competitive program which honors exceptional Ph.D. students in many academic disciplines and areas of study, for example: computer science and engineering, electrical and mechanical engineering, physical sciences (including chemistry, material sciences, and physics), mathematical sciences (including optimization, business sciences (including financial services, communication, and learning/knowledge), and service sciences, management, and engineering.

2008 AGU Fall Meeting Outstanding Student Paper Award
2009-02-16
Paola Passalacgua, ECE Ph.D. candidate, received the 2008 Fall Meeting Outstanding Student Paper Award from the American Geophysical Union-Hydrology Section for her paper "River network extraction from LIDAR using backward-in-time diffusion?" (Professor Guillermo Sapiro, advisor)

Liuqing Yang (’04) receives NSF CAREER award
2009-02-13
Liuqing Yang ('04), Assistant Professor, University of Florida, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was selected to receive the National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award. This highly competitive five-year award is the NSF's most prestigious program to support the early career development of promising young researchers. Prof. Yang's research interests are in the area of communications and signal processing. Professor Georgios B. Giannakis was Liuqing Yang's ECE advisor.

Mark Lundstrom (EE, ’73; MS,’74) elected to National Academy of Engineering
2009-02-12
Mark S. Lundstrom (EE,'73; MS,'74), (Ph.D., '80, Purdue University), Don and Carol Scifres Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind., was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for leadership in microelectronics and nanonelectronics through research, innovative education and unique applications of cyberinfrastructure. Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to engineers. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to "engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature, and to the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education."

ECE Ph.D.Student Kasaeng Kim receives bronze medal in 15th Samsung Electronics Humantech Thesis Prize competition
2009-02-11
ECE Ph.D. student Hasaeng Kim (Professor Rhonda R. Franklin, advisor) received the bronze medal in the 15th Samsung Electronics Humantech Thesis Prize competition for his thesis paper, "Wire-Bond Free Technique for Right-Angle Coplanar Waveguide Bend Structures." The award comes with a cash prize of about $2,000.

ECE Ph.D. candidate Nathan Lindquist published in Royal Society of Chemistry journal
2009-02-10
A recent paper by ECE Ph.D. student Nathan Lindquist (Professor Sang-Hyun Oh, advisor) about nanoscale surface plasmon resonance biosensor array was featured as a front cover article in "Lab on a Chip" journal from the Royal Society of Chemistry. In this work, Nathan and co-authors Antoine Lesuffleur, Hyungsoon Im and Sang-Hyun Oh presented surface plasmon resonance sensor microarray with the largest number of pixels ever used for simultaneous detection. Their work also was highlighted in the "Hot Article" section of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Two professors received 3M Non-Tenured faculty grant renewals
2009-02-09
Professors Chris Kim and Sang-Hyun Oh have received renewals for 2009 on their 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Grants. They also have been invited to present a poster at 3M Science and Engineering Faculty Day.

ECE Building Statue Update – Monday, Feb 2
2009-02-02
The electricity is out in portions of the EE/CSci Building.
Robert E. Rice ECE Student Services Center staff will move temporarily to 6-119 beginning Wednesday. Escort services to damaged areas are only available until 4 p.m. each day. Anyone wishing to enter undamaged areas after 4 p.m., must sign in. The building will be locked at 9 p.m.

ECE water damage room status
2009-02-01
The EE/CSci building sustained major water damage Thursday night, Jan. 29. Classrooms, labs and offices have been affected. Below is a list of ECE classes that have been moved or cancelled.

An Information Desk is located on the third floor - south entrance to the building. Updated information will be available on the ECE website and through e-mail. ECE Administrative offices will be moved temporarily to sixth floor. The Rice Student Services Center will be closed Monday. It may be open on Tuesday. Contact student service center staff by e-mail.

ECE Classes moved or cancelled
2009-02-01
The following classes are held in the EE/CSci building where water damage has occurred. Students should receive an email from the instructor or TA as to whether the lab will be cancelled or moved to another location.

Room EE/CS 3-130: EE4951W
Room EE/CS 3-136: EE2002, EE3006
Room EE/CS 3-144: EE3101, EE3102
Room EE/CS 3-146: EE4703
Room EE/CS 2-127: Used for TA office hours
Room EE/CS 2-158: EE5613, EE5622
Room EE/CS 2-178: EE2301

Building closed Friday, Jan. 30, 2009
2009-01-30
Due to unforeseen circumstances the building has been closed. No one will be allowed to enter the building, except for faculty and staff, who are allowed to come in and assess any damages. Some classes in this building have been canceled.

Xinmiao Zhang receives NSF CAREER award
2009-01-26
Xinmiao Zhang ('05), Schroeder Assistant Professor, Case Western Reserve University Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, was selected to receive the National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award. This highly competitive five-year award is the NSF's most prestigious program to support the early career development of promising young researchers. The title of Professor Zhang's project is "Soft-decision Reed-Solomon Decoding." Professor Keshab Parhi was Xinmiao Zhang's ECE advisor.

Student team wins 2009 DAC/ISSC award for chip design project
2009-01-26
Students John Keane (ECE Ph.D. Candidate), Shrinivas Venkatraman (MA ECE'07) and Paulo Butzen (international student visitor in 2007) have won the 2009 DAC/ISSCC Student Design Contest for their chip design project titled "A Fully-Automated Process Characterization Macro for Gate Dielectric Breakdown." This award includes a cash prize of $2,000, travel assistance for the student authors to attend the award ceremony at the Design Automation Conference (DAC), and an invitation to an on-site presentation at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC.) (Professor Chris Kim, advisor)

Omicron Chapter of Eta Kappa Nu receives 2007-2008 Outstanding Chapter Award
2009-01-23
University of Minnesota's Omicron Chapter of Eta Kappa Nu received the 2007-2008 Outstanding Chapter Award. This is an award of great distinction and recognizes the chapter for its activities of service to others. (Professor Joey Talghader, advisor) Omicron is one of 18 chapters to be honored in the U.S.

Professor Randal Victora edits special edition of flagship IEEE publication
2009-01-09
"Advances in Magnet Data Storage Technologies" was the subject of the November issue of "Proceedings of the IEEE", co-edited by Professor Randall Victora, University of Minnesota Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). "Proceedings" is the flagship journal of the IEEE, which is the leading organization for electrical engineers with more than 300,000 members worldwide. The issue contained ten articles of which three were written by University of Minnesota professors. Professor Victora, with his recently graduated Ph.D. student Xiao Shen, described work on Exchange Coupled Composite Media and ECE Professor Jian-Ping Wang described recent advances in FePt magnetic nanoparticles. A third article was written by Computer Science Professor D.H.C. Du on storage systems.

White House honors 2007 early career scientists and engineers
2008-12-30
Shengli Zhou, Ph.D. graduate (Professor Georgios Giannakis, advisor) of University of Minnesota, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, received one of the 2007 Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, the nation's highest honor for professionals at the outset of their independent scientific research careers. In a ceremony at the White House on Dec. 19, Dr. John H. Marburger III, Science Advisor to the President and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy honored the sixty-seven researchers selected.

Sen. Klobuchar honors AES students for saving energy and fighting global warming
2008-12-19
In a reception Thursday, Dec. 18 at the University of Minnesota, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Senator Amy Klobuchar presented a 2008 Carbon Buster Award of Excellence to ECE's Applied Environmental Solutions (AES) team (Professor Paul Imbertson, advisor) for their work to convert a 1970s car to an electric car. ECE students Steve Peichel and Adam Malovrh, AES president and vice president, respectively, spoke briefly and presented their winning video to an audience of nearly 50 faculty, staff and visitors.

Featured guest speaker, Arctic explorer Will Steger, provided information about global warming and the critical need for each person to make a commitment to reducing his or her carbon footprint.

Former ECE Ph.D. student receives NIH Salzman Memorial Award
2008-11-24
Dr. Alberto Bartesaghi, 2005 ECE Ph.D. graduate, received the 2008 Norman P. Salzman Memorial Award in Virology for his work on "Molecular architecture of native HIV-1 gp120 trimers" (and Dr. Sriram Subramaniam, the director of his lab, the corresponding Mentor Award). This is a National Institutes of Health (NIH) award given to junior scientists and their mentors. This recognition highlights Bartesaghi's outstanding contributions in the computational techniques for structural determination of various viral components involved in neutralization and cellular entry of SIV and HIV.

Two ECE Faculty elected as IEEE Fellows
2008-11-13
ECE Faculty Jaijeet Roychowdhury and Nikos Sidiropoulos were elected Fellows by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Board of Directors.
Professor Roychowdhury was honored for his contributions to simulation and automated macromodelling of integrated circuits. Adjunct Associate Professor Sidiropoulos was honored for his contributions to signal processing for communications. Currently, Professor Sidiropoulos is a faculty member at Technical University of Crete in Greece but continues his association with ECE as an adjunct professor.
The grade of IEEE Fellow is awarded to recognize extraordinary accomplishments in one of the IEEE fields of interest. The total number of IEEE Fellows selected in any one year is limited to no more than one-tenth of one percent of the total IEEE membership.

Collegiate Inventors Competition recognizes top student inventors
2008-11-06
University of Minnesota Electrical and Computer Engineering graduates Patrick Delaney (May '08), Matthew Beckler (CE May '08), and current student Caleb Braff, are one of twelve finalist teams in the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation's 2008 Collegiate Inventors Competition. They have been awarded a $2000 finalist prize for their Solar LED Lighting Innovation low powered economical device that provides many hours of light to areas without electricity.
The ECE team, whose advisor is Professor Paul Imbertson, will be competing for the grand prize of $25,000 during Global Entrepreneurship Week (Nov. 17-23) at the Kauffman Foundation headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri.
Other finalist teams represent Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California at Berkeley, University of Texas at Dallas, Harvard Medical School, University of Michigan, and Virginia Commonwealth University.
Abbott Fund, the philanthropic foundation of the global health care company Abbott, and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) are the competition sponsors.

ECE student wins MASS 2008 best paper award
2008-10-03
ECE graduate student Shuo Guo has won the best paper award at the Fifth IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad-hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS 2008) for her paper, "On Accurate and Efficient Statistical Counting in Sensor-Based Surveillance Systems," by Shuo Guo, Tian He, Mohamed Mokbel, John A. Stankovic, and Tarek F. Abdelzaher. This paper reports work done with her advisor, Professor Tian He
(from the Computer Science Department)and colleagues. The award comes with a plaque and $500.

ECE student receives Tau Beta Pi scholarship
2008-05-07
EE student Mithun Suresh has won a Tau Beta Pi senior-level scholarship for 2008-2009. These competitive scholarships are awarded based on "high scholarship, campus leadership and service, and promise of future contributions to the engineering profession." All winners are members of Tau Beta Pi, the national engineering honor society.

ECE students receive 2008-2009 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships
2008-05-05
ECE Ph.D. students Shahrouz Takyar (advisor: Tryphon Georgiou) and Sanjay Vijay Kumar (advisor: Sachin Sapatnekar) have been selected to receive Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships for 2008-2009. The purpose of the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (DDF) program is to give outstanding final-year Ph.D. candidates an opportunity to complete their dissertations within the upcoming academic year by devoting full-time effort to the research and writing of the dissertation. Candidates are nominated by their Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) to an all-University competition. Further information about the program is available at the Graduate School's Fellowships for Currently Enrolled Students page.

ECE students win prizes at Undergraduate Research Symposium
2008-04-29
EE seniors Eric Severson and Dominic Hogan won First and Third Prize, respectively, from the Minnesota Chapter of Sigma Xi (http://www.sigmaxi.org/chapters/web/index.php?chapter_id=80) for the posters they presented at the annual Undergraduate Research Symposium (http://www.research.umn.edu/undergraduate/2008symposium/) held on Friday, April 18, 2008, in the Coffman Memorial Union Great Hall. Their senior honors project, were highly rated by ten faculty reviewers for excellence in their scientific efforts and their ability to communicate their work to a wide audience. Professor Ramesh Harjani served as the faculty advisor for both projects. Sigma Xi is an international research society that promotes and honors scientific achievement. Additional information about the symposium, which included 271 posters, is available at the 2008 Undergraduate Symposium Web site.

Professor Mohan receives IEEE PES educator award
2008-04-23
Professor Ned Mohan mohan has been selected the 2008 recipient of the Outstanding Power Engineering Educator Award from the IEEE Power Engineering Society (PES) (http://www.ieee.org/portal/site/pes/menuitem.bfd2bcf5a5608058fb2275875bac26c8/index.jsp?&pName=pes_home). This highly competitive award recognizes Professor Mohan's outstanding contributions and leadership to power engineering education.

ECE student receives award for outstanding service
2008-04-18
EE senior Patrick Delaney has been selected for the 2008 Paul A. Cartwright/IT Alumni Society (http://www.it.umn.edu/alumni/itas/) Award for Outstanding Service. Patrick has worked with Professor Paul Imbertson on a long-term renewable energy project focused in Nicaragua, and has helped establish other projects and curricula centered around renewable energy in developing nations. His work was noted as standing out from typical technology projects in going beyond the design process to deal with human needs and community structures. The award will be presented at IT's Commencement Ceremony on Friday, May 9. More information about Patrick and his renewable energy projects is available at the Bright New Ideas (http://www.brightnewideas.org/) organization Web site.

Professor Cherkassky receives Microsoft Research Award
2008-04-02
Professor Vladimir Cherkassky has received the A. Richard Newton Breakthrough Research Award (http://research.microsoft.com/ur/us/fundingopps/rfps/ARichardNewtonAwards.aspx) from Microsoft Research (http://research.microsoft.com/). This memorial award serves as a tribute to the accomplishments of A. Richard Newton, who was a professor and dean of the College of Engineering (http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/) at UC Berkeley (http://www.berkeley.edu/). Professor Cherkassky received one of only ten awards made to universities worldwide in recognition of "breakthrough research that will potentially have a profound impact on the research community and society as a whole." The title of his project is, "Non-Inductive Methodlogies for Learning with Sparse Heterogeneous Data."
(http://research.microsoft.com/ur/us/fundingopps/rfps/ARichardNewtonAwards.aspx.)

U of M teams up with Xcel Energy in groundbreaking wind-to-battery project
2008-04-01
Xcel Energy (http://www.xcelenergy.com/), in partnership with the University of Minnesota, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (http://www.nrel.gov/) and the Great Plains Institute (http://www.gpisd.net/), will soon begin testing a cutting-edge technology to store wind energy in batteries.

The research partners will test a one-megawatt battery storage technology to demonstrate its ability to store wind energy and move it to the electricity grid when needed. Fully charged, the battery could power 500 homes for six and one-half hours. Xcel Energy will purchase a sodium-sulfur battery from NGK Insulators, Ltd. (http://www.ngk.co.jp/english) that will be an integral part of the project.
(http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/news_details.php?release=080229_3790&page=UMNN)

Professor Leger receives Taylor Distinguished Service Award
2008-03-28
Professor Jim Leger has received the George W. Taylor Distinguished Service Award (http://www.itdean.umn.edu/faculty/awards/taylor_service.html) for 2008. This annual award recognizes outstanding service contributions to the Institute of Technology. The award particularly notes Professor Leger's dedication to the college's undergraduate students through his long service as Directory of the IT Lower Division Advising Program.

ECE student team wins 2nd place of Phase 1 of 2007 SRC/SIA IC Design Challenge
2008-03-16
A University of Minnesota team led by Professor Ramesh Harjani has been selected as the 2nd place winner of Phase 1 of the 2007-2008 SRC/SIA IC Design Challenge (http://www.src.org/ICcontest/Default.asp). The team, consisting of graduate students Martin Sturm and Jackson Harvey and senior honors student Dominic Hogan, has developed a batteryless system for a blood monitoring RFID device. Forty-seven teams from 28 universities had been selected to participate in this contest. Winners receive a cash prize and will have their designs fabricated by Jazz Semiconductorhttp://www.jazzsemi.com/ using their 180 nm SiGe technology. The first place winner was a team led by Professor Byunghoo Jung from Purdue University (https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECE/). Professor Jung is an alumnus of the University of Minnesota. ECE department (http://www1.umn.edu/twincities/index.php) and is one of Professor Harjani's former students.

Professor Giannakis elected EURASIP Fellow
2008-03-13
Professor Georgios Giannaki, the ADC Chair in Wireless Telecommunications, has been elected a Fellow of the European Association for Signal and Image Processing (EURASIP) (http://www.eurasip.org/) in recognition of his many years of important contributions to the field of signal processing. A select group of at most five signal processing researchers per year are elevated to Fellow, the Association's most prestigious honor. The Fellowship Award will be presented at the next EUSIPCO conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, August 25-29, 2008.

Professor Sapatnekar selected Distinguished McKnight University Professor
2008-03-10
Professor Sachin Sapatnekar has been selected a Distinguished McKnight University Professor (http://www.grad.umn.edu/Faculty-Staff/mcknight/distinguished.html). As described by the Graduate School (http://www.grad.umn.edu/), "the goal of the Distinguished McKnight University Professorship program is to honor and reward the University of Minnesota's (http://www1.umn.edu/twincities/index.php) highest-achieving faculty who recently have attained full professor status — especially those whose careers have developed at the University, whose intellectual work and reputation are identified with Minnesota, and whose work has brought great renown and prestige to the University of Minnesota."

This highly competitive university-wide award includes the title Distinguished McKnight University Professor, which the recipient holds for as long as they remain at the University of Minnesota, plus an unrestricted research grant.

In Memoriam: Joseph M. Juran
2008-03-03
Alumnus Joseph M. Juran (B.E.E. '24) died February 28, 2008, at the age of 103. Juran is often referred to as the father of modern day Quality Management and traveled the world to teach others how to improve quality. Juran named the Pareto principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle) which states that, for many events, 80 percent of the effects comes from 20 percent of the causes. In 1979, at the age of 75, Juran founded the Juran Institute, Inc. (JII) http://www.juran.com/, an organization aimed at providing research and pragmatic solutions for improving business performance. Juran's contributions also established the University of Minnesota's Juran Center for Leadership Quality (http://www.csom.umn.edu/Page5309.aspx), a repository for past developments in the field of leadership in quality, as well as a generator of new research, new ideas, and new scholars.

Professor Amin receives University teaching award
2008-02-27
Professor Massoud Amin has been chosen to receive one of this year's awards for Outstanding Contributions to Postbaccalaureate, Graduate, and Professional Education. This award is given annually by the University of Minnesota Senate Committee (http://www1.umn.edu/usenate/committees/scep.html) on Educational Policy to a select group of faculty members to recognize their contributions to undergraduate and/or graduate education. As part of the award, Professor Amin will be inducted into the University's Academy of Distinguished Teachers (http://www.adt.umn.edu). He will join Professors Leger, Mohan, and Wollenberg, who were previously inducted into the Academy.

Professor Imbertson named ECE Professor of the Year
2008-02-24
Professor Paul Imbertson has been named the ECE Professor of the Year by the IT Student Board (ITSB) (http://www.tc.umn.edu/~itsb/). This recognition is based on an annual poll of IT (http://it.umn.edu/index.php) undergraduate students. This is the seventh time Professor Imbertson has received this award.

ECE Ph.D. student awarded IBM Ph.D. Fellowship
2008-02-18
Electrical and Computer Engineering Ph.D. student John Keane (advisor: Chris Kim)has been awarded an IBM Ph.D. Fellowship for 2008-2009 (http://www304.ibm.com/jct09002c/university/scholars/ur/awards/fellowship/). The recipients of this highly competitive award are selected from among several hundred nominations submitted from throughout the world. As such, it recognizes both the nominee's outstanding research potential, as well as the quality of the department and the university.

Professor Judy receives IEEE Magnetics Society 2008 Achievement Award
2008-02-15
Professor Jack Judy has received the IEEE Magnetics Society (http://www.ieeemagnetics.org/) 2008 Achievement Award for "contributions to the understanding and improvement of thin films for magnetic recording." This is the highest award given by the Magnetics Society and recognizes Professor Judy's lifelong professional achievements and pioneering work in magnetic recording technology. The award consists of a diploma with citation and a cash prize.
(http://www.ieeemagnetics.org/newpages/PDFs/Newsletter_Jan_08_final.pdf)

Professors Oh and Kim receive 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Grants
2008-02-14
Professors Sang-Hyun Oh http://www.ece.umn.edu/directory.shtml?userID=sang and Chris Kim have both won 3Mhttp://www.3m.com/ Non-Tenured Faculty Grant awards to support their research on bio-/nano-sensors and low-power techniques for wireless sensor applications, respectively. Twenty-five awards were selected this year by 3M researchers to further basic research in the physical and/or biological science areas.

ECE Ph.D. student receives Samsung Electronics HTP
2008-02-13
ECE graduate student Tony Tae-Hyoung Kim (advisor: Chris Kim) won the bronze medal in the 14th Samsung Electronics Humantech Thesis Prize (http://www.samsung.com/us/) competition. The title of his work is, "A 0.23V 4.3µW 64kb 8T SRAM with Vmin Lowering Techniques and Deep Sleep Mode." The award was one of several selected from more than 800 applicants from about 80 institutions worldwide who presented their research to the technical committee. The award includes a cash prize of $3,150 and travel support to attend the award ceremony.

Professor Mohan organizes workshop on curricular reform in electric energy systems
2008-02-12
Professor Ned Mohan and his colleagues, Professors Bill Robbins, Bruce Wollenbergh, Paul Imbertson, and Tom Posbergh, organized an Office of Naval Research (http://www.onr.navy.mil/)-sponsored faculty workshop in Napa, California on 2008 February 7-9 to discuss curricular reform in electric energy systems with an emphasis on renewables/storage, reliable delivery, and efficient end use. The workshop was attended by approximately 150 active participants, including 35 ECE department heads and 20 representatives from industry, utilities, and federal agencies.
(http://www.ece.umn.edu/groups/power/)

Professor Jindal receives NSF CAREER Award
2008-01-31
Professor Nihar Jindal has been selected to receive the National Science Foundationhttp://www.nsf.gov/ Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) (http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5262) award. This highly competitive five-year award is the NSF's most prestigious program to support the early career development of promising young researchers. The title of Professor Jindal's project is, "Exploring the Design and Fundamental Limits of Wireless Spatial Networks".

Professor Kim named 2008-2010 McKnight Land-Grant Professor
2008-01-15
Professor Chris Kim has been awarded a McKnight Land-Grant Professorship for 2008-2010 to recognize his work in "Design for reliability: making future generation chips resilient to aging." This university-wide award is made by the Graduate School (http://www.grad.umn.edu/) and the Office of the Provost to the university's most promising junior faculty members. The winners are chosen for their potential for important contributions to their field, past achievements, and the significance of their research.
(http://www.grad.umn.edu/faculty-staff/mcknight/land_grant.html)

ECE students selected as 45th DAC/ISSCC Student Design Contest winners
2008-01-06
ECE students Tony Tae-Hyoung Kim and Randy Persaud (advisor: Chris H. Kim have been selected as winners of the 2008 DAC/ISSCC Student Design Contest (http://www.dac.com/45th/studcon.html) for their paper entitled, "Silicon Odometer: An On-Chip Reliability Monitor for Measuring Frequency Degradation of Digital Circuits." This award includes a cash prize of $2,000, travel assistance for the authors to attend the award ceremony at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) (http://www.dac.com/45th/index.aspx), and an invitation to an on-site presentation at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) (http://www.isscc.org/isscc/).

ECE alumnus receives IEEE SPS best paper award
2008-01-06
The paper, "On downlink beamforming with greedy user selection: performance analysis and a simple new algorithm," which appeared in the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/sps/tsp/), vol. 53, no. 10, pp. 3857-3868, October, 2005, co-authored by Goran Dimic and Nikos Sidiropoulos, has received a 2007 Best Paper Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society (http://www.ieee.org/web/societies/home/sps_moved.html). The award (cash and certificate) will be presented at the 2008 International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP2008) (http://www.icassp2008.org/) in Las Vegas in April, 2008. Dr. Dimic received his Ph.D. in 2004 from the University of Minnesota ECE department working with Professor Sidiropoulos. Dr. Dimic is now with the Institute Mihailo Pupin (http://www.imp.bg.ac.yu/) in Belgrade, Serbia. Professor Sidiropoulos is with the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering at the Technical University of Crete (http://www.tuc.gr/), and continues as an adjunct faculty member at Minnesota.

Professor Sobelman selected as a 2008 IEEE CASS Distinguished Lecturer
2007-12-31
Professor Gerald Sobelman has been selected to serve as a Distinguished Lecturer for 2008-2009 by the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/icss/). Distinguished Lecturers are selected from nominations of individuals who are well-known educators in the field of circuits and systems. They are invited by local chapters to lecture at chapter meetings. Additional information about this program is available at the CASS Distinguished Lecturer Program (http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/icss/dlp.php) page.

ECE alumnus Earl Bakken honored for contributions to medical device industry
2007-12-28
October 1957 is remembered as the start of the Space Age, but that month also witnessed the birth of a new era in medicine. As the Soviet satellite Sputnik sailed overhead, a power blackout in Minneapolis led University alumnus Earl Bakken to invent a tiny metal box that sparked a revolution: the first wearable cardiac pacemaker.

Earlier this month Bakken, an electrical engineer who graduated in 1948, received the first honorary Doctor of Medicine degree from the University in recognition of his contributions. Last week, at a symposium in his honor, he recounted the tale of the pacemaker's genesis.
(http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/Feature_Stories/The_Bakken_pacemaker_turns_50.html)

ECE students win awards at the 2007 LifeScience Alley Conference
2007-12-11
ECE Ph.D. students Xiaofeng Yao, Yuanpeng Li (advisor: Jian-Ping Wang, and Hyungsoon Im (advisor: Sang-Hyun Oh and CEMS (http://www.cems.umn.edu/) student Marlene Castro (advisor: Wei-Shou Hu), received 'The College of Biological Science Award' with their poster "Construction of a Magnetic Biosensor for Pathogen Detection" at the 6th Annual LifeScience Alley (http://www.lifesciencealleyconference.org/) Conference and Expo in St. Paul, Minnesota. Another ECE team, Nathan Lindquist and Antoine Lesuffleur (advisor: Sang-Hyun Oh), received 'The Health Science Award' with their poster entitled "Nanostructured SPR sensors for systems biology." Each team received a $500 cash prize.

Professors Campbell and Cherkassky elected IEEE Fellows
2007-11-15
Professor Steve Campbell has been elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) (http://www.ieee.org/portal/site) "for contributions to deeply scaled CMOS devices." Professor Vladimir Cherkassky was also elected a Fellow, "for contributions to and leadership in statistical learning and neural networks."

The grade of Fellow is awarded by the IEEE Board of Directors to recognize extraordinary accomplishment in one of the fields of interest of the IEEE. The total number of Fellows selected in any one year is limited to no more than one-tenth of one percent of the total IEEE membership.

Professor Mohan gives keynote address at power systems conference
2007-11-07
Professor Ned Mohan gave a keynote address on November 6, 2007 at MIPSYCON (http://www.cce.umn.edu/conferences/mpsc/index.html). This conference, which is in its 43rd year, is the premier power systems conference in the Upper Midwest. The topic of his presentation was, "Reforming the National Undergraduate Curriculum in Electric Energy Systems." This work is sponsored by the ONR (http://www.onr.navy.mil/), the EPRI (http://my.epri.com/portal/server.pt?), and the AEP (http://www.aep.com/) company. A copy of his presentation can be downloaded from the Power Systems Engineering group website.

ECE graduate student wins TECHCON 2007 best paper award
2007-09-21
ECE graduate student Mahmoud Reza Ahmadi won the Best in Session award at the 2007 Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) (http://www.src.org/Default.asp) TECHCON conference in the area of Digital and High Speed Circuit Design for his paper, "A Generalized Partial Response Receiver for High Speed Serial Links." Ahmadi's co-authors on this paper were ECE professors Jaekyun Moon and Ramesh Harjani .

ECE graduate student authors one of top five papers at 2007 American Control Conference
2007-07-31
The paper, "On using the streamwise traveling waves for variance suppression in channel flows," by ECE graduate student Rashad Moarref and Professor Mihailo Jovanovic was selected as one of the top five student papers presented at the 2007 American Control Conference (ACC 2007) (http://www.a2c2.org/conferences/acc2007/). ACC is one of the major conferences in the area of control engineering and was held July 11-14, 2007, in New York City. The authors were awarded a plaque at the conference award ceremony.

ECE student wins CrownCom 2007 Best Student Paper award
2007-07-18
The paper, "Distributed Scheduling and Resource Allocation for Cognitive OFDMA Radios," co-authored by ECE graduate student Juan-Andres Bazerque and his advisor, Georgios B. Giannakis has won the Best Student Paper award at the Second International Conference on Cognitive Radio Oriented Wireless Networks and Communications (CrownCom 2007) (http://www.crowncom.org/2007/). A plaque and a monetary award will be presented at the conference's opening ceremony in Orlando, Florida.

Student thesis receives Honorary Mention at conference
2007-07-17
Gustavo Brown, an M.S. student at the Universidad de la República (http://www.universidad.edu.uy/index.php), Uruguay, who was co-advised by Professor Guillermo Sapiro of the ECE Department and Dr. Gadiel Seroussi of Hewlett-Packard Labs (http://www.hpl.hp.com/), has received an Honorary Mention for his M.S. thesis, "Universal Simulation of Textures," at the Conferencia Latinoamericana de Informática (http://www.clei2007.org/) 2007. M.S. theses produced south of Mexico annually compete for this prestigious award. Gustavo Brown spent a year at the University of Minnesota working in Professor Sapiro's lab.

Professor Mohan organizes workshop on curricular reform in electric energy systems
2007-07-02
Professor Ned Mohan and his colleagues, Professors Bill Robbins, Bruce Wollenberg, Paul Imbertson, and Tom Posbergh, held an ONR (http://www.onr.navy.mil//EPRI) (http://my.epri.com/portal/server.pt?/AEP) (http://www.aep.com/)-sponsored workshop at the University of Minnesota on 2007 June 18-22. The workshop included faculty members from 40 universities from across the country. This workshop was sponsored by the ONR grant, "Center for Reforming Undergraduate Education in Electric Energy Systems – A Critical Infrastructure for National Security," with substantial additional support from the EPRI and the AEP company. The goal of this workshop was to proactively disseminate educational material and approaches developed at the University of Minnesota for teaching power systems topics to 175 universities nationwide. (http://www.ece.umn.edu/groups/power/.)

ECE student and Professor Roychowdhury win DAC 2007 Best Paper Award
2007-06-11
The paper, "Interdependent Latch Setup/Hold Time Characterization via Euler-Newton Curve Tracing on State-Transition Equations," by ECE graduate student Shweta Srivastava and Professor Jaijeet Roychowdhury, has been selected for a Best Paper award from the 44th annual Design Automation Conference (DAC) (http://www.dac.com/46th/index.aspx), held in San Diego, June 4-8, 2007.


ECE student and Professor Sapiro win paper award
2007-06-11
The paper, "New Possibilities with Sobolev Active Contours," co-authored by Ganesh Sundaramoorthi, Anthony Yezzi, Andrea C. Mennucci, and Professor Guillermo Sapiro, received the "Best Numerical Paper-Project Award" (for graduate students) at the International Conference on Scale Space and Variational Methods in Computer Vision (http://ssvm07.ciram.unibo.it/ssvm07_public/), in Ischia, Italy, May-June, 2007. Guillermo Sapiro is a Professor in the ECE department at the University of Minnesota and Anthony Yezzi is currently on the ECE faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology (http://www.gatech.edu/), received his Ph.D. in EE from the University of Minnesota.

Professor Kim receives IBM Faculty Partnership Award
2007-06-07
Professor Chris Kim has received an IBM Faculty Partnership Award for a second year to support his work on "Power and Performance Management Techniques for Aging Tolerance." The objective of this project is to investigate adaptive techniques to mitigate the impact of device again on circuit performance. The IBM Faculty Awards program is a competitive worldwide program that enhances collaboration between faculty at leading universities and IBM researchers. Professor Kim was nominated for this award by Kent Ching-Te Chuang in the VLSI Design Department at (http://www.watson.ibm.com/index.shtml).

Professor Amin elected IIIA Fellow
2007-05-17
Professor Massoud Amin) has been elected a Fellow of the Institute for Infrastructure and Information Assurance (IIIA) (http://www.jmu.edu/iiia/), "for contributions to homeland security, scholarly achievements in infrastructure protection and information assurance, effective leadership, and commitment to teaching and mentoring university students." The grade of Fellow is awarded to only a few (2-4) highly distinguished researchers per year by the IIIA Board of Directors to recognize extraordinary contributions and leadership in infrastructure and/or information assurance. In addition to serving as a member of the ECE faculty, Professor Amin is also the director of the Center for the Development of Technological Leadership (http://www.cdtl.umn.edu/).

Four ECE seniors win national design contest
2007-05-10
Four ECE seniors — Ziyad Aljarboua, Arvind Gururajan, John Aiton, and Ryan Westphal — recently entered their senior design project, "System for the Evaluation of Respiratory Function", in the IEEE 7th Annual Student Design Contest (http://ieee.rit.edu/sdc7/). This contest, which was held at Rochester Institute of Technology (http://ieee.rit.edu/), Rochester, New York, was sponsored by Region 1 of the IEEE (http://www.ieee.org/portal/site) and Fairchild Semiconductor (http://www.fairchildsemi.com/). Out of 50 teams who entered the competition, 19 were selected to present their projects for judging. The Minnesota team's project was voted Most Marketable Product by the contest participants. They received a plaque and cash prize.

Professor Imbertson named ECE Professor of the Year
2007-04-26
Professor Paul Imbertson has been named the ECE Professor of the Year by the IT Student Board (ITSB) (http://www.tc.umn.edu/~itsb/). This recognition is based on an annual poll of IT undergraduate students. This is the sixth time Professor Imbertson has received this award.

Professor Kiehl to lead effort to use biology to advance quantum physics and electronics
2007-04-06
Professor Rick Kiehl will lead a six-university effort that will use biological strategies to construct arrays of nanoparticles and will systematically characterize the resulting quantum electronic systems. This work will be supported by the Army Research Office under the highly competitive DoD Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI).(http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/news_details.php?release=070319_3208&page=UMNN)

Professor Kaveh to serve as President-elect of IEEE Signal Processing Society
2007-04-06
Professor Mos Kaveh has been elected to serve as the President-elect of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (http://www.ieee.org/web/societies/home/sps_moved.html) for 2008-2009. After his two-year term in this position, he will become President of the Society for 2010-2011. The President-elect also serves as a member of the Society's Board of Governors and the Executive Committee, and chairs the Society's Long-Range Planning Committee.

Professor Leger receives Taylor Teaching Award
2007-03-30
Professor Jim Leger has received the George W. Taylor (http://www.itdean.umn.edu/faculty/awards/taylor_teaching.html/) IT Alumni Society (http://www.it.umn.edu/alumni/itas/) Award for Distinguished Teaching for 2007. This annual award recognizes outstanding contributions to undergraduate and/or graduate teaching by a member of the Institute of Technology Faculty (http://it.umn.edu/index.php).

ECE alumnus receives ACM Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award
2007-03-29
ECE Department alumnus Dr. Haifeng Qian has received the 2006 ACM Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award in Electronic Design Automation (http://www.sigda.org/opda.html) for his dissertation, "Stochastic and Hybrid Linear Equation Solvers and their Applications in VLSI Design Automation". This award recognizes that the dissertation's contributions for solving large-scale linear algebra problems are "innovative, substantial, and of long-term impact". This award is presented annually by the Association for Computing Machinery (http://www.acm.org/) to the author of the best doctoral dissertation in computer science and engineering in the area of electronic design automation. Dr. Qian is currently working at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center (http://www.watson.ibm.com/index.shtml).

ECE alumni receive ONR Young Investigator Awards
2007-03-27
ECE Department alumni Liuqing Yang (M.S. '02, Ph.D. '04) and Shengli Zhou (Ph.D. '02) have been selected as winners in the 2007 Office of Naval Research (http://www.onr.navy.mil/) Young Investigator Program. This award recognizes the best researchers who are supported by the Office of Naval Research. Only 33 winners were selected from 214 submitted proposals. Yang is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Floridahttp://www.ufl.edu/. Zhou is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Connecticut. Both were advised by Professor Georgios Giannakis during their time at the University of Minnesota.

Professors Mohan and Wollenberg receive University teaching awards
2007-03-01
Professor Ned Mohan has been chosen to receive one of this year's Horace T. Morse – University of Minnesota Alumni Association Awards for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education. Also, Professor Bruce Wollenberg has been chosen to receive one of this year's awards for Outstanding Contributions to Postbaccalaureate, Graduate, and Professional Education.

These awards are given annually by the University of Minnesota Senate Committee on Educational Policy (http://www1.umn.edu/usenate/committees/scep.html) to a select group of faculty members to recognize their contributions to undergraduate and graduate education, respectively. As part of the award, Professors Mohan and Wollenberg will be inducted into the University's Academy of Distinguished Teachers (http://www.adt.umn.edu/). They join Professor Leger, who received the Morse-Alumni award last year.

Two ECE Ph.D. students receive Samsung Electronics HTP
2007-02-21
ECE graduate students Hyungsoon Im (advisor: Sang-Hyun Oh) and Jaehyuk Choi (advisor: Euisik Yoon) received gold prizes from the 13th Samsung Electronics Humantech Thesis Prize (http://www.samsung.com/us/) competition. Hyungsoon's proposal was based on his previous work at KAIST (http://www.kaist.ac.kr/) on "A Dielectric Modulated Field Effect Transistor with Vertical Nanogap for Biosensor Applications", and Jaehyuk's work was on "A Spatial-Temporal Multi-Resolution CMOS Image Sensor with Adaptive Frame Rates for Moving Objects in the Region-of-interest" with Professor Yoon. Each gold award was one of several selected from more than 800 applicants from about 80 institutions worldwide who presented their research to the technical committee. Each gold prize winner received recognition and a cash prize of ?7 million (KRW), which is approximately $7,500 (USD).

Professor Jovanovic receives NSF CAREER Award
2007-02-21
Professor Mihailo Jovanovic has been selected to receive the National Science Foundation (http://www.nsf.gov/) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) (http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5262) award. This highly competitive five-year award is the NSF's most prestigious program to support the early career development of promising young researchers. The title of Professor Jovanovic's project is, "Enabling Methods for Modeling and Control of Transitional and Turbulent Wall-Bounded Shear Flows".

Professor Sapiro elected editor-in-chief of new SIAM journal
2007-02-12
Professor Guillermo Sapiro has been elected to be the first editor-in-chief of the new SIAM Journal on Imaging Sciences from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. This journal is a new addition to the prestigious collection of SIAM Journals. It will start accepting papers around March-April of 2007.

Former ECE professor elected to National Academy of Engineering
2007-02-09
Professor Steve Chou of Princeton University (http://www.ee.princeton.edu/) has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (http://www.nae.edu/nae/naehome.nsf) for "contributions to nanoscale patterning and to the scaling of electronic, photonic, magnetic, and biological devices." Professor Chou started much of his significant work while as a faculty member at the University of Minnesota in the ECE Department. (http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=02092007)

Professor Mohan organizes workshop on curricular reform in electric energy systems
2007-02-08
Professor Ned Mohan and his colleagues organized an ONR/NSF/EPRI-sponsored workshop in Santa Fe, NM on 2007 February 2-3. It was attended by approximately 125 faculty, industry leaders, and representatives of the ONR, the NSF, and the EPRI. The objective of this meeting was to disseminate nationwide the educational material developed at the University of Minnesota in the field of electric energy systems.
(http://www.grad.umn.edu/faculty-staff/mcknight/land_grant.html)

Professor Jindal named 2007-2009 McKnight Land-Grant Professor
2007-01-10
Professor Nihar Jindal has been awarded a McKnight Land-Grant Professorship for 2007-2009. This university-wide award is made by the Graduate School and the Office of the Provost to the university's most promising junior faculty members. The winners are chosen for their potential for important contributions to their field, past achievements, and the significance of their research.

ECE graduate student and Professor Sobelman win Best Paper Award
2006-11-30
Graduate student Qingquan Zhang, Professor Gerald Sobelman, and Professor Tian He (from the Computer Science Department) won the best paper award for their paper, entitled "Gradient-Driven Target Acquisition in Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks", at the International Conference on Mobile Ad-hoc and Sensor Networks (MSN) (http://www.comp.polyu.edu.hk/conference/msn06/), being held in Hong Kong on 2006 December 13-15.

Professor Luo elected IEEE Fellow
2006-11-20
Professor Zhi-Quan (Tom) Luo has been elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) (http://www.ieee.org/portal/site) "for contributions to modern optimization and its applications in signal processing and digital communications."

The grade of Fellow is awarded by the IEEE Board of Directors to recognize extraordinary accomplishment in one of the fields of interest of the IEEE. The total number of Fellows selected in any one year is limited to no more than one-tenth of one percent of the total IEEE membership.

Professor Leger delivers invited plenary talk with Nobel Prize winners
2006-10-27
Professor Jim Leger recently gave a plenary talk together with Nobel laureates Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and Wolfgang Ketterle at the European Optical Society (http://www.europeanopticalsociety.org/) Annual Meeting in Paris, France. He was selected to represent the group in micro-optics, optical MEMS, and diffractive optics in recognition of his substantial contributions to the field.

Professor Giannakis selected as a 2007 IEEE SPS Distinguished Lecturer
2006-10-21
Professor Georgios Giannakis has been selected to serve as an IEEE SPS Distinguished Lecturer for the term 2007 January 1 through 2008 December 31. Distinguished Lecturers are selected from nominations of individuals who are well-known educators in the field of signal processing. They are invited by local chapters to lecture at chapter meetings.

Professor Mohan organizes renewable energy workshop
2006-10-14
Professor Ned Mohan organized an annual workshop on "Renewable Energy for Minnesota" on 2006 October 12th, at the University of Minnesota in the McNamara Alumni Center. It was very well attended by a good mix of participants. The focus was on renewable energy (primarily electric) and conservation. Funding for this workshop was provided in part by a grant from Xcel Energy. (http://www.signalprocessingsociety.org)

ECE Department news now available as Web feed
2006-10-01
In our ongoing efforts to improve the ECE Department Web site, we are proud to announce that the department news is now available as a Web feed. You can now receive the latest department news stories without always having to visit the ECE Web site. For more information on Web feeds and how you can get started using them, please visit our Web feeds help page (http://www.ece.umn.edu/feeds/help.shtml).

Professor Campbell to lead new Center for Nanostructured Applications
2006-09-28
Professor Steve Campbell has been named the director of the new Center for Nanostructured ApplicationsThe mission of this university-wide initiative is to increase the local, national, and international visibility of the University of Minnesota in nano-scale science and engineering. The new center is aimed at integrating the University of Minnesota's strengths in fundamental and applied research in nano-scale science and engineering and making Minnesota a leader in applications of nanotechnology. (http://www.it.umn.edu/news/archives/06_10nanoinitiative.html)

New Center for Reforming Undergraduate Education in Electric Energy Systems
2006-08-29
Professor Ned Mohan, along with his co-PIs Bill Robbins, Bruce Wollenberg, Paul Imbertson, and Tom Posbergh, recently received a 5-year, $1.23M grant from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to establish the new Center for Reforming Undergraduate Education in Electric Energy Systems, which has been recognized as a critical infrastructure for national security. The mission of the new center, which will be located in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota, is outreach and proactive training of ECE faculty throughout the nation. This training will be based on the educational material previously developed by Professor Mohan and his colleagues partially through funding from the NSF, NASA, and the ONR. Further information about the center and its activities can be found at the Power Systems Engineering group Web site (http://www.ece.umn.edu/groups/power/).

Professor Stadler named 2006 McKnight Fellow
2006-08-24
Professor Beth Stadler has been named a 2006 University of Minnesota McKnight Presidential Fellow. This university-wide program, which provides research funds for three years, is targeted at the most promising faculty who have been newly granted tenure and promotion to associate professor. It recognizes their accomplishments and supports their ongoing research and scholarship. Candidates are considered for these awards at the end of the regular promotion and tenure review process each year.

College of Continuing Education announces P.E. refresher courses
2006-08-06
The University of Minnesota's College of Continuing Education has announced a series of P.E. Refresher Courses to prepare engineers for both the Fundamentals of Engineering Examination and the Minnesota Professional Engineer Examination. You can download the announcement brochure (Microsoft Word document), or you can visit the P.E. Refresher Course Web page (http://www.cce.umn.edu/conferences/perefresher/) for more information and to register.

Professors Wang and Victora win INSIC Technical Achievement Award
2006-07-19
Professors Jian-Ping Wang and Randy Victora, together with their graduate students Xiao Shen and Weikang Shen, won the 2006 Information Storage Industry Consortium (INSIC) (http://www.insic.org/) Technical Achievement Award for "pioneering work in the conception and experimental confirmation of exchange-coupled composite recording media." The award is accompanied by a $1500 prize.

Receiving this award makes the University of Minnesota the only university to receive this award three times — Professor Jae Moon previously received it in 1997 and Professors Victora and Jack Judy received it in 2001. Professor Victora now becomes only the second professor to receive the award twice, along with H. Neal Bertram of UCSD (http://www.ucsd.edu/portal/site/ucsd)

Professor Kim receives IBM Faculty Partnership Award
2006-07-06
Professor Chris Kim has received an IBM Faculty Partnership Award to support his work on "Analysis, Measurement, and Design Techniques for NBTI Tolerance." NBTI is one of the major aging mechanisms of nanoscale transistors that can eventually lead to chip failure. The IBM Faculty Awards program is a competitive worldwide program that enhances collaboration between faculty at leading universities and IBM researchers. Professor Kim was nominated for this award by Kent Ching-Te Chuang in the VLSI Design Department at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center (http://www.watson.ibm.com/index.shtml)

Alumnus Dr. Peter Herczfeld receives Pioneer Award from IEEE Microwave Society
2006-06-25
Professor Peter Herczfeld, from Drexel University, was awarded the Pioneer Award at the 2006 International Microwave Symposium (http://www.ims2006.org/) by the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (http://mtt.org/index.html). Dr. Herczfeld received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1967.

U of M ranks second in nanotech industrial outreach
2006-05-31
The University of Minnesota ranks second among U.S. universities in industrial outreach in nanotechnology and microtechnology, according to the results of a survey published recently in the May/June 2006 issue of the nanotechnology trade publication Small Times. The University was also rated ninth in nanotech research, making it the highest-ranking Big 10 universities in these categories.

The University of Minnesota was specifically recognized for work in the University's Nanofabrication Center (http://www.nfc.umn.edu/), Characterization Facility (http://www.charfac.umn.edu/), and the Particle Technology Laboratory. "The University of Minnesota is pleased to be recognized as a leading institution for nanotechnology," said Steve Campbell, professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of the Nanofabrication Center.

For the full story, see the UMNnews news release, or listen to the University of Minnesota Moment (http://blog.lib.umn.edu/urelate/radio/) radio spot: fully produced version | raw audio version.

Professor Cohen demonstrates IR mode-selective chemistry
2006-05-23
Professor Phil Cohen, along with his postdoctoral associate, Zhihen Liu, and colleagues at Vanderbilt University (http://www.vanderbilt.edu/) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (http://www.ornl.gov/) have recently demonstrated using laser light instead of heat to remove hydrogen atoms from the surface of a silicon wafer. It should now be possible to dramatically lower the temperature at which Si and SiGe are grown. This unprecedented achievement was reported in the 2006 May 19 issue of Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/).

"Tech Tune-Up" Nano-VLSI course to be held June 26-28
2006-05-01
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is hosting the "Tech Tune-Up: Nano-VLSI Design" course at the University of Minnesota on 2006 June 26-28. This year's Tech Tune-Up will focus on the applications and problem areas associated with the very near-future nano-VLSI generation. Topics that will be covered during the three day course include:

    * Advanced digital CMOS circuit design
    * Advanced CAD for analog, RF, and mixed-signal systems
    * Digital design, verification, and applications
    * Architectural design issues for reliable computing
    * Current FPGA architectures and CAD
    * Tolerating process variations through design and CAD in sub-100 nm circuits
    * Nanoscale CMOS (<100 nm) analog interface design
    * Process issues for nanoscale CMOS

 Professor Mohan teaches power systems to 800
2006-05-01
Professor Ned Mohan taught an Internet-based short course called "Teaching Power Systems with an Integrated Software Laboratory" on 2006 April 28 to 800 participants from all over the world. This short course was sponsored by a grant from the NSF and the local Twin Cities chapter of the IEEE-PES (http://www.ieee.org/portal/site/pes/menuitem.bfd2bcf5a5608058fb2275875bac26c8/index.jsp?&pName=pes_home). The on-demand videos are now on the Power Systems Engineering (http://www.ece.umn.edu/groups/power/) group website and can be viewed any time up to three months after the date of the short course by using the password ps2006.

ECE alumnus Dr. Yunqian Ma receives INNS Young Investigator Award
2006-04-26
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering alumnus Dr. Yunqian Ma (Ph.D.E.E. 2003) has received the International Neural Network Society (INNS) (http://www.inns.org/) Young Investigator Award for 2006. This award is chosen by the INNS Board of Governors to recognize individuals who have made outstanding contributions in the field of neural networks. Dr. Ma, who was advised during his Ph.D. research by Professor Vladimir Cherkassky, is currently with Honeywell Labs, where he works on video surveillance and security applications.

Professor Campbell awarded IT Distinguished Professorship
2006-04-03
Professor Steve Campbell has been awarded an IT Distinguished Professorship. This award is given to a select group of IT faculty to recognize their contributions to research, teaching, and service in both their professions and to the Institute of Technology. Professor Campbell's research is in the area of fabrication of micro- and nano-systems. Some of his most significant research contributions over the years include:

    * His work on nanoparticle fabrication (e.g., single crystal silicon nanoparticles).
    * His pioneering research in the development of the low-leakage high-K dielectric materials that are essential for next-generation low-power circuit designs.
    * His work on the modeling of flow dynamics during the rapid thermal processing stage of wafer fabrication.

Some of his major educational contributions include authorship of a widely used textbook on microelectronic fabrication, and his work on developing a novel NSF-sponsored program for technical education in collaboration with local technical colleges. In addition to his role as a professor in the ECE Department, he serves as the director of the NFC (http://www.nfc.umn.edu/), and has run the Nano coordination Office for the past three years.

Professors Ernie and Sapiro receive Taylor Awards
2006-03-30
Professor Doug Ernie has received the 2006 Taylor Service Award (http://www.itdean.umn.edu/faculty/awards/taylor_service.html) for his pioneering service to the continued development of the UNITE distributed learning program, growing it from a live 4-channel analog broadcast TV system to today's wider network, employing delivery techniques that use streaming video. In addition, he has made major contributions to the use of technology-enhanced learning throughout the university, served as interim director of the CDTL (http://www.cdtl.umn.edu/), and been active in the UROP (http://www.research.umn.edu/undergraduate//) and REU (http://www.ece.umn.edu/groups/nsfreu/) undergraduate research programs.

Professor Guillermo Sapiro has received the 2006 Taylor Research Award (http://www.itdean.umn.edu/faculty/awards/taylor_research.html) for his contributions to the area of image processing and computer vision. For example, his research has gone beyond planet Earth (his lossless image compression technique is used by the Mars rovers to transmit images from the surface of the Red Planet), and his image inpainting work has been incorporated into Adobe® Photoshop®. Other research contributions include the application of mathematical analysis to imaging HIV, and compression and analysis of digital elevation maps.

Professor Leger to receive Morse–Alumni Teaching Award
2006-03-05
Professor Jim Leger has been chosen to receive one of this year's Horace T. Morse – University of Minnesota Alumni Association Awards for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education. This award is given annually by the University of Minnesota Senate's Educational Policy Committee (http://www1.umn.edu/usenate/) to a select group of faculty members to recognize their contributions to undergraduate education. As part of the award, Professor Leger will be inducted into the University's Academy of Distinguished Teachers (http://www.adt.umn.edu/).

Professor Amin appointed to ORNL Committee
2006-03-01
Professor Massoud Amin, H. W. Sweatt Chair in Technological Leadership, ECE professor, and Director of the CDTL (http://www.cdtl.umn.edu/), has been appointed as a member of the scientific advisory committee for the Computational Sciences and Engineering Division (http://computing.ornl.gov/cse_home/) of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) (http://www.ornl.gov/) for January 2006-May 2010. Professor Amin also serves on several panels and boards, including the National Academy of Engineering's (http://www.nae.edu/nae/naehome.nsf) Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment (BICE) (http://www7.nationalacademies.org/bice/), the Critical Infrastructure Protection Roundtable at the National Academy of Sciences/Engineering, the NAS/NAE Committee on Enhancing the Robustness and Resilience of Future Electrical Transmission and Distribution in the United States to Terrorist Attack (http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/projectview.aspx?key=BEES-J-04-03-A), and several advisory and review panels at the NSF, DHS, OSTP, EPRI, and the National Academies. He has given numerous presentations on science and technology policy, such as the vulnerability of the energy network and power grid to a pandemic flu outbreak (http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/).

ECE alumnus Dr. Gary Glover elected to NAE
2006-02-16
Dr. Gary H. Glover, Professor of Radiology and Director of the Radiological Sciences Laboratory (http://rsl.stanford.edu/) at Stanford University, was recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) (http://www.nae.edu/nae/naehome.nsf) "for research and engineering in the development of computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging." Election to the NAE is one of the highest professional honors awarded to engineers. Dr. Glover received his B.S. (1964), M.S. (1965), and Ph.D. (1969) degrees, all in Electrical Engineering, from the University of Minnesota.

Professor Drayton in "True Stories of Women Engineers"
2006-02-16
Professor Rhonda Drayton is featured in the newly-released book, Changing Our World: True Stories of Women Engineers. The book is being released during National Engineers Week through the Extraordinary Women Engineers Project Coalition (http://www.engineeringwomen.org/). It is intended to "provide inspiration and encouragement for young women to pursue careers in engineering." (http://www.conveyinc.com/ewep/pdf/08_telecomm.pdf)

ECE graduate student receives MRS Student Research Gold Award
2006-01-27
Graduate student Chad Barry received a student travel award and a research gold award from the Materials Research Society (MRS) http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/index.asp for his work with Professor Heiko Jacobs on "Directed Assembly of Nanomaterials on Topographically Patterned Substrates." The travel award was one of 24 selected from more than 400 applicants to present their research at the conference. Subsequently, 6 were selected for the gold award after their presentations. The award consists of recognition and presentation of a plaque at the MRS awards ceremony, a year's free MRS membership, and travel cost reimbursement.

ECE graduate student wins RWS 2006 Best Student Paper award
2006-01-24
The paper entitled "Distributed Trellis Coded Modulation for Multi-Source Cooperative Networks", co-authored by Renqui Wang, W. Zhao, and G. B. Giannakis, won the best student paper award at the IEEE Radio Wireless Symposium in San Diego, CA, January 17-19, 2006. (http://www.rawcon.org/rws2006/)

Workshop on renewable energy organized by Professor Mohan
2006-01-03
News story photo
The third annual workshop on renewable energy prospects in Minnesota was held Dec. 9. Organized and hosted by Professor Ned Mohan, the highly successful workshop featured a broad range of speakers and was attended by nearly 300 participants. (http://www.ece.umn.edu/groups/wind/)

Tech Talk to feature Professor Harjani
2005-12-19
The University of Minnesota's Tech Talk television program will feature Professor Ramesh Harjani talking about wireless communication. You can watch the program in the Twin Cities on TPT Minnesota Channel 17 on Sunday, Dec. 25 at 9:00 p.m. (http://www.techtalk.umn.edu/episodes/season4/406.shtml)

Professor Thomas Misa joins ECE and Babbage Institute
2005-11-23
Thomas Misa, associate professor of history at the Illinois Institute of Technology, has been selected as the new director of the Charles Babbage Institute, effective 2006 July 1. Misa will hold concurrent appointments as Engineering Research Associates (http://www.ieee.org/portal/site) (ERA) Chair in the History of Technology, as a faculty member in the Program in the History of Science and Technology, and as a professor of history of science and technology within the ECE Department. (http://www.it.umn.edu/news/misa.html)

Professors Harjani and Lilja elected IEEE Fellows
2005-11-14
Professor Ramesh Harjani has been elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) "for contributions to the design and computer-aided design (CAD) of analog and radio frequency circuits." Professor David Lilja also was elected a Fellow, "for contributions to statistical methodologies for performance assessment of computing systems."

The grade of Fellow (http://www.ieee.org/web/membership/fellows/) is awarded by the IEEE Board of Directors to recognize extraordinary accomplishment in one of the fields of interest of the IEEE. The total number of Fellows selected in any one year is limited to no more than one-tenth of one percent of the total IEEE membership.

National Academy of Engineering inducts Professor Wollenberg
2005-10-21
NAE induction ceremony
Professor Bruce Wollenberg was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) (http://www.nae.edu/nae/naehome.nsf) by W. A. Wulf, President of NAE and NAE Board Chair Craig R. Barrett, Chairman of the Board, Intel Corporation.

Professor Drayton appointed to CICMT Advisory Board
2005-10-07
Professor Rhonda Franklin Drayton (http://www.ece.umn.edu/directory.shtml?userID=drayton) has been appointed to the Advisory Board of the Ceramic Interconnect and Ceramic Microsystems Technology (CICMT) Conference (http://www.imaps.org/ceramics/index.htm.) This conference is co-sponsored by the ACerS (American Ceramic Society) (http://www.ceramics.org/) and IMAPS (International Microelectronics and Packaging Society) (http://www.imaps.org/) organizations. These groups are dedicated to improving the industry's knowledge of ceramic technology for electronics and microsystems.