News Archives

November 2014

Prof. Mihailo Jovanovic receives Distinguished Alumni Award from UCSB
Prof. Mihailo Jovanovic has received the Distinguished Alumni Award in recognition of outstanding scientific contributions to fluid dynamics, control and optimization. Prof. Jovanovic received his PhD in 2004 from the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
 

Prof. Rhonda Franklin Receives Sara Evans Award
Prof. Rhonda Franklin received the Sara Evans Faculty Woman Scholar/Leader in Science and Engineering Award on Friday, Oct. 17 for her success in developing hardware solutions for wireless communication methods and her contributions to the advancement of circuit designs and interconnect wiring technology that allows a large variety of signal types from voice, text, images, and video to travel with minimal distortion, for her consulting expertise that is sought by major corporations, and her commitment to teaching and learning.

 

October 2014

 

Ph.D. Candidate Tingting Xu wins IEM Best Student Poster Award
Ph.D. candidate Tingting Xu won the First Prize in 2014 IEM Student Poster Contest in the Neuroengineering Category. Her poster is titled "Classification of Borderline Personality Disorder based on Spectral Power of Resting-State fMRI". She is advised by Prof. Keshab Parhi and Mentored by Dr. Kathryn Cullen of Psychiatry Department.
 

Profs. Keshab Parhi and Chris Kim receive NSF/SRC STARSS research grant as part of $4 million, 10 University push to secure computer semiconductor circuitry, architecture and systems
The National Science Foundation (NSF) and Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC)announced nine research awards to 10 universities totaling nearly $4 million under a joint program focused on Secure, Trustworthy, Assured and Resilient Semiconductors and Systems (STARSS). Among them is the University of Minnesota with its “Design of secure and anti-counterfeit integrated circuits.” U of MN researchers Keshab Parhi (Principal Investigator) and Chris Kim (Co-Principal Investigator) will develop hierarchical approaches for authentication and obfuscation of chips.

In their abstract, Parhi and Kim write:"Hardware security, whether for attack or defense, differs from software, network, and data security in that attackers may find ways to physically tamper with devices without leaving a trace, and mislead the user to believe that the hardware is authentic and trustworthy.

Furthermore, the advent of new attack modes,illegal recycling, and hard-to-detect Trojans make hardware protection an increasinglychallenging task. Design of secure hardwareintegrated circuits requires novel approaches for authentication that are ideally based on  multiple layers of protection. This project  develops a novel framework for embedding heterogeneity and hierarchy in security and obfuscation at multiple layers into the design  of integrated circuits.

"The project uses a combination of server-based global authentication combined with local authentication of components from third-party vendors reduces communication with the server, thus reducing the communicationoverhead as well as error in authentication. The investigators explore new approaches toincreasing robustness of SRAM based physical unclonable functions (PUFs) by intentional voltage stress, and the tradeoffs in hierarchies of authentication. The project investigates techniques for obfuscation based on modifications of finite state machine (FSM)  state transition graphs, and obfuscation metricthat are developed and validated using data collected from test chips."http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=132795&org=NSF&from=news"Protecting our processors "Photon shuttling," the ability to mechanically transport photons demonstrated in Prof. Mo Li's Lab

 
Discovery is another step toward faster and more energy efficient optical devicesfor computation and communication
University of Minnesota electrical engineering researchers have developed a unique nanoscale device that for the  first time demonstrates mechanical transportation of light. The discovery could have major implications for creating faster and more efficient optical devices for computation and communication.
The research paper by University of Minnesota electrical and computer engineering assistant professor Mo Li (left center) and his graduate student Huan Li (bottom left) has been published online and will appear in the October issue of NatureNanotechnology. Researchers developed a novel  nanoscale device that can capture, measure and transport fundamental  particles of light, called photons. The tiny device is just .7 micrometers by 50 micrometer (about .00007 by .005  centimeters) and works almost like a  seesaw. On each side of the “seesaw benches,” researchers etched an array of holes, called photonic crystal cavities. These cavities capture photons that  streamed from a nearby source.

Prof. Vladimir Cherkassky to give talk at Medtronic Sumposium
Prof. Vladimir Cherkassky has been invitedto speak at Medtronic-sponsored “Big Data& Advanced Analytics Symposium,” Sept. 23& 24 in Minneapolis. His title is “Reliable Prediction of Epileptic Seizures from EEG Signal.”
 
Profs. Mo Li and Steve Koester team up to win Air Force Basic Research Initiative Grant
Prof. Mo Li (top left) and Prof. Steve Koester (bottom left) team up with researchers from other institutes to win a $3 million grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, as a part of the agency's highly competitive Basic Research Initiative program.
Their team is led by University of Wash-ington and includes Stanford University,Yale University and Carnegie Mellon University.
The title of the team's proposal is "2DHeterostructures for Integrated Nano-Optoelectronics". The period of the project is three years.
 

ECE Ph.D. Candidate Mustafijur Rahman received Best in Session Award at Techcon 2014
ECE graduate student Mustafijur Rahman received the Best in Session Award at  Techcon 2014 in Analog/RF Circuit Design for his paper "An Ultra Low Power Multiband WBAN Transmitter Using a Novel ILO Based Modulator" authored by Mustafijur and his  advisor Prof. Ramesh Harjani. Techcon  2014 is conducted by Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and was  held on September 8 and 9 at Austin, Texas.
 
 

ECE Prof. Nikos Sidiropoulos received second NSF/BIG DATA research award; also gave two plenaries at international venues
ECE Prof. Nikos Sidiropoulos, along with Prof. George Karypis (Computer Science  and Engineering) have received a $1.2 million grant for research about learning and education data analytics. This is the second NSF BIG DATA award the team has received. The project title is “Learning  Data Analytics: Providing Actionable Insights to Increase College Student Success.”

In addition, Prof. Sidiropoulos provided plenaries at EUSIPCO, Sep. 2, 2014, Lisbon, Portugal (“Tensor Decomposition  Theory and Algorithms in the Era of Big  Data'') and at ISWCS, Aug. 28, Barcelona,  Spain (“Frugal Sensing and Estimation over Wireless Networks'')

 

September 2014

ECE senior Tien Do awarded MHTA Scholarship
ECE senior Tien Do has been awarded the Minnesota High Tech Association(MHTA)  Award. For the past several years, MHTA has supported Minnesota college students with more than $60,000 in annual scholarship awards. During the past eight years, $300,000 in the form of nearly 80 STEM scholarships have been awarded.

Prof. Keshab Parhi's paper featured on cover of IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics
The paper “DREAM: Diabetic Retinopathy Analysis using Machine Learning” by former Ph.D. Student Sohini Roychowdhury(bottom left), Dr. Dara Koozekanani of Ophthalmology, and Prof. Keshab Parhi(top left) is featured on the cover of the Sept. 2014 issue of the IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics.

Prof. Joseph Talghader presents invited talk at International Micro/Nano Optical Engineering Conference
Prof. Joseph Talghader presented an invited talk in Changchun, China, on the “Ultimate Thermal Performance of Micromechanical Devices,” at the International Conference on Micro/Nano Optical Engineering in July, 2014

Former Prof. Robert P. Featherstone Dies
Robert P. Featherstone, 93, of Minneapolis, Minn. died in August 2014. He was an electrical engineer who worked at Twin Cities Central Engineering (currently United Technologies, Corp.) at the CERN Lab in Geneva, Switzerland, at FERMILab in Batavia, Ill., and at the University of Minnesota as Physics Professor and Center Engineering Professor. After retiring from his academic teaching career, he volunteered as a  Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Industrial Advisory  Board member
 To read more, click here.


Ph.D. student Patrick Quarterman receives Best Poster Award at TRMC 2014
Ph.D. student Patrick Quarterman received the Best Contributed Poster Award about his research effort to develop future heat  assisted magnetic recording media beyond 5 Terabit per square inch at the 25th Annual Magnetic Recording Conference (TMRC 2014) in Berkeley, Calif. The title of his poster was "Effects of embedded  hark mask patterning process on FePt HAMR media with ultra-small grain size." (Prof. Jian-Ping Wang, advisor)

University of Minnesota selected as site for IEEE2015 Magnetics Summer School
The University of Minnesota (UMN), College of Science and Engineering (CSE) has been selected as the site of the 2015 IEEE Magnetics Summer School, scheduled for June 14-19,2015. As one of the largest academic centers for magnetics research in North America, the UMN will offer more than 100 student participants learning and networking opportunities with world-renowned, local educators. Previous IEEE Magnetics Summer Schools have been in Brazil (2014), Italy (2013), and India (2012). The summer school is designed for graduate students who are members of the IEEE Magnetics Society and studying magnetism and related areas. It consists of lectures by international experts who cover fundamentals and advanced topics in magnetism and includes poster presentations by participating graduate students. Graduate student attendees must go through a selection process including being recommended by their advisors and by IEEE Magnetics members. Awardees are provided with free room and board and are reimbursed for most of the cost of transportation to/from the school. Students from all parts of the world are accepted. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Profs. Beth Stadler, chair, and Randall Victora co-chair, will lead this education event
For more information, click here.

August 2014

Prof. Massoud Amin writes invited article for National Geographic
Prof. Massoud Amin was invited by National Geographic to write an article about the 11th aniiversary of the Aug. 14, 2003 U.S. and Canadian blackout. To read the article, click here.
 

U of MN Faculty research fuels record 15 startups
The University of Minnesota has launched a record 15 startup companies based on discoveries and inventions by its researchers during the past year. These companies, which top the previous record of 14 companies in fiscal 2013, demonstrate the university’s commitment to bringing revolutionary discoveries to the market in key industries including medical technology and the environment.Two of the companies feature technology by electrical and computer engineering professor Dr. Jian-Ping Wang. St. Paul-based Zepto Life Technology centers on a portable, low-cost device Wang designed to quickly check a human sample for traces of more than 60 diseases or conditions ranging from malaria to cancer. Niron Magnetics, in Palo Alto, Calif., uses technology Wang developed for fabricating a powerful new type of permanent magnet. Niron will produce this magnet as an environmentally friendly replacement for
the expensive rare earth materials now used in motors, generators and wind turbines.To read more about U of MN startups, click here.
 

Prof. Jian-Ping Wang named one of the 2014 Titans of Technology by Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal
Prof. Jian-Ping Wang has been named one of the 2014 Titans of Technology honorees by the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal. Wang is being recognized as one of three Technology Inventors for his creation of breakthrough ideas, processes and products. The award will be presented at a luncheon event in Septmber to showcase the innovators, adopters, and executors impacting the techonology industry for the greater good.
 

CSE Solar Car finishes second in 2014 American Solar Challenge
The University of Minnesota Solar Vehicle Project team finished second overall in the 2014 American Solar Challenge, an eight-day, 1,700-mile race that started in Austin, Texas on July 21 and ended at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis today. For more

Former ECE Dept. Head, Prof. Emeritus Robert Collins dies
Prof. Emeritus Robert Collins, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Head (1964-69 and 1984-90), passed away in July, 2014. Collins held tenure with the department from 1963-1993. Prof. Collins was Department Head during the groundbreaking and building of Keller Hall, the current site of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). Collins participated in the ground breaking on Oct. 1, 1985; the building was completed in 1988. During the 1980s, he and other department heads were responsible for hiring new faculty in the emerging fields of signal processing, communications, VLSI, computer systems, microelectronics and controls. While Collins was department head, ECE enrollments reached 1,300 students, a near historic high. For 20 years prior, steady growth had preceded this milestone. During his tenure, Collins was a member of the Quantum Electronic and Optics Group in the 1970s researching particle sizing, semiconductor annealing with electron and laser beams, and laser interaction with solids. In the 1980s, Prof. Collins was a member of the Devices Research Group whose research included ultrasonic wave devices and microscopy; high speed, microwave and millimeter-wave devices and integrated circuits; three-dimensional integrated circuits; thin-film amorphous devices; complementary heterojunction insulated gate FETs; optoelectronic devices and circuits; silicon heterojunction devices; physics of heterojunctions; magnetic thin film devices; superlattice and quantum-well structures and devices, among others.Memorial services will be held in Washington, D.C., with burial in Pennsylvania.

July 2014

Prof. Rhonda Franklin receives Sara Evans Faculty Woman Scholar/Leader Award
Prof. Rhonda Franklin received the The Sara Evans Faculty Woman Scholar/ Leader Award. The award recognizeswomen faculty at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities who have achieved  significant national and international accomplishments and honors and who contribute as leaders on campus. Only two awards are given each year: one in science and engineering, and one in humanities.
 

University start up develops fast, accurate early disease detection
Through University of Minnesota’s Prof. Jian-Ping Wang‘s invented a biosensing device that quickly and accurately measures even a tiny quantity of a disease or health condition in a human sample.  In March, the U helped form a startup company called Zepto Life Technology, to make his invention portable, inexpensive and available across the world.For more go to: http://z.umn.edu/detectdisease

 

Prof. Mihailo Jovanovic receives Transdiciplinary Faculty Fellowship
Prof. Mihailo Jovanovic has received a Transdisciplinary Faculty Fellowship from the University of Minnesota Informatics Institute. This award positions recently promoted Associate Professors to provide leadership in trans- disciplinary collaborative projects at theinterface of informatics and an application area. Six U of M faculty from across two campuses and representing eight different departments and institutes were awarded fellowships. The support provided to Prof. Jovanovic will also benefit the College of Science and Engineering'sMnDRIVE Initiative on Robotics, Sensors, and Advanced Manufacturing.

U of MN Ph.D. student Sechul Park and Prof. Heiko Jacob's research cited in Nanowerks
The research of Ph.D Student Sechal Park, along with Prof. Heiko Jacobs of Technische Universisitat Ilmenau (formerly of University of Minnesota  College of Science and Engineering - ECE) and his Nanotechnology Group, was cited in the July 10  Web posting of Nanowerk. The article — "Self- assembly machines - a vision for the future of manufacturing" — discussed the research teams' proof-of-concept demonstrations testing new self- assembly concepts. The article was in response to
the publishing in the Web edition of Advanced Materials of the research teams' paper, "A First Implementation of an Automated Reel-to-Reel Fluidic Self-Assembly Machine." The paper  outlines the first example of a device to assemble and to distribute LEDs over large areas for solid state lighting applications. This reel-to-reel (RTR) fluidic self-assembly platform assembles and electrically connects semiconductor chips with a yield exceeding a 99 percent benchmark set by a robotic pick and place machine. To read more, go to http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=36474.php

Prof. Zhi-Quan Luo elected to Royal Society of Canada
Prof. Zhi-Quan (Tom) Luo has been elected to the Royal Soceity of Canada, the highest  honor for a scholar or artist in Canada.

Prof. Georgios Giannakis ro receive the 2015 IEEE Fourier Technical Field Award
Prof. Georgios Giannakis has been selected to receive the 2015 IEEE Fourier Technical Field Award (TFA) for his contributions to thetheory and practice of statistical signal processing and its applications to wirelesscommunications. The TFA award was established in 2013 and Prof. Giannakis is its first recipent.

Prof. Chris Kim receives funding award for MnDRIVE Transdiciplinary Research
Prof. Chris Kim has received a funding award for MnDRIVE Transdisciplinary Research. His project — "Design and Manufacture of Wearable, Printed, and Flexible Electronics for Treating Neurological Disorders" — was selected from among 61 proposals.

Prof. Ned Mohan to join Pres. Kaler's delegation to Norway
Prof. Ned Mohan has been invited to be a part of the delegation led by University of MinnesotaPresident Kaler during the president's trip to Norway this summer. The delegation will visit theUniversity of Olso, the University of Trondheim, and the University of Agder.

Paper written by ECE alumnus Bodhisatwa Sadhu (Ph.D.'12) cited as most downloaded by IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits
A paper written by ECE alumnus Bodhisatwa Sadhu (Ph.D. '12) was cited as the most down-loaded paper in IEEE Journal of Solid-State  Circuits in 2013. “A linearized, low-phase-noise  VCO-based 25-GHz PLL with automatic biasing”,  IEEE JSSC May 2013 was written by Sadhu  during his research work at the University of Minnesota done in collaboration with IBM. The paper was downloaded 2,810 times in 2013 and 3,173 to date.
Currently, Sadhu is employed by IBM T.J. Watson Research Lab. (Prof. Ramesh Harjani, former advisor)

June 2014

Ph.D. candidate Armin Zare selected as one of the four finalists forStudent Best Paper Award at American Control Conference
ECE Ph.D. candidate Armin Zare's paper titled  "Completion of partially known turbulent flow statistics" was selected as a finalist for the Best Student Paper Award at the 2014 American Control Conference (Portland, OR, June 4 - 6). This is the premier conference in the field of control engineering, organized annually and co-sponsored by eight societies that comprise the American Automatic Control Council.  (Prof. Mihailo Jovanovic, advisor)

Ph.D. student Hui Zhao receives Honorable Mention for her dissertation
Ph.D. Student Hui Zhao received an Honorable Mention in the 2014 Best Dissertation Awards at the University of Minnesota. (Prof. Jian-Ping Wang, advisor)

New Directions class offers engineers, physicists, and mathematicians chance to branch into new research directions
Prof. Tryphon Georgiou organized New Directions Short Course on "Topics in Control Theory" at the Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications This intensive three-week course is held at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus (May 27 - June 13, 2014) and it offers an opportunity for mathematicians, physicist, and engineers to branch into new research directions.Participants are able to delve deeply into a new area, learn about open problems, and meet potential collaborators. In addition, the course is an excellent lead-in for the 2015-2016 program year on "Control Theory and its Applications".

Eight ECE Graduate students are recipients of the 2014-2015 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship Award
Eight Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering graduate students have received the 2014-2015 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship Award. This award gives the University's most accomplished Ph.D. candidates an opportunity to devote full-time effort to dissertation research and writing during the fellowship year. The recipients include:
  • Xiaoshu Chen (Advisor: Prof. Sang-Hyun Oh)
  • Bongjin Kim (Advisor: Prof. Chris Kim)
  • Yingjie Lao (Advisor: Keshab Parhi)
  • Mortenza Mardani (Advisor: Prof. Georgios Giannakis)
  • Kyle Olson (Advisor: Prof. Joey Talghader)
  • Eric Severson (Advisor: Prof. Ned Mohan)
  • Ruoyu Sun (Advisor: Zhi-Quan Luo)
  • Bo Yuan (Advisor: Prof. Keshab Parhi)

Prof. Massoud Amin to give IEEE Webinar, June 11 at 1 p.m. ET
Prof. Massoud Amin will provide a free webinar titled “Technological Leadership,  Local to Global Strategy” on June 11 at 1 p.m. ET. To register, go to: http://smartgrid.ieee.org
 

Prof. Vladimir Charkasky gave talk at University of London
Prof. Vladimir Cherkassky was invited to speak at Royal Holloway, University of London on May 26. His  title is "From Big Data to Little Knowledge."

Prof. Beth Stadler speakers at IEEE InterMag Conference 2014
Prof. Beth Stadler was invited to speak at the IEEE International Magnetics Conference 2014 in Dresden, Germany, on "Magnetic Senor Arrays for One-Pass Two-DimensionalMagnetic Records." On her return trip, Stadler visited the CERN  Particle Accelerator in Switzerland. Her UMN research group is synthesizing optical modulators that may be included in the next round of sub-atomic collisions to begin in 2015. (Collaboration with ECE Prof. Anand  Gopinath and Physics Prof. Roger Rusack.)
 
Charles Babbage Institute receives two grants to explore the histories of women in the computer profession and LANL
Prof. Tom Misa, Director of the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, will oversee two history research grants. An Alfred P. Sloan grant will fund research into the historic era of women's surge into the computer profession. A Los Alamos National Laboratories' grant will fund research into the history of its prolific lab. 
 
Prof. Ned Mohan's book now available in Kazakh
Prof. Ned Mohan's book Power Electronics - a First Course is now availabel in the Kazahk language.

May 2014
 

ECE student John Tranter wins third place at the ICASSP 2014 Best Student Paper Awards
ECE student John Tranter won third place for "Blind Spectra Separation and Direction Finding  for Cognitive Radio Using Temporal Correltation-domain ESPRIT" with co-authors Nicholas D. Sidiropoulos, Xiao Fu, Wing-Kin Ma. For Tranter, an undergraduate senior, this is an award of note not often given to an undergraduate student. The honor was won at the recent 2014 ICASSP Conference.

April 2014

Prof. Randall Victora Received IEEE MagneticsSociety Achievement Award
Prof. Randall Victora will receive the IEEE  Magnetics Society Achievement Award on May 6 at the INTERMAG Conference in Dresden, Germany. The honor is awarded to Victora for his contributions to the theory and simulation of magnetic materials, particularly magnetic recording media.

Prof. Rhonda Franklin named to NSF Committee of Visitors to judge merit of proposals
Prof. Rhonda Franklin has been named to serve on the Committee of Visitors for the Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems for the Directorate for Engineering of the National Science Foundation. The committee provides NSF with their judgments on the quality and integrity of the merit review process, program operations and program–level technical and managerial matters pertaining to proposal decisions.

Prof. Beth Stadler receives research grant from MnDrive
Profs. Bethanie Stadler (ECE), Jamie Modian (Veterinary Clinical Science,) and Allison Hubel (ME) have been awarded a MnDrive grant for their project "Probing Internal Cancer Cell Mechanics via Magnetic Nanobots." 

Prof. Ned Mohan receives IEEE PES Nari Hingorani FACTS Award
Prof. Ned Mohan has been awarded the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) Nari Hingorani Flexible AC Transmission Systems(FACTS) Award. the award recognizes individuals who have made a major contribution to the state of the art of FACTS (Flexible AC Transmission System) technology and its applications. The IEEE definition of FACTS is: Alternating Current Transmission Systems incorporating power electronics-based and other static controllers to enhance controllability and power transfer capability. By this definition, the FACTS concept, in addition to the hardware, software and applications work carried out since its introduction, incorporates considerable prior work done on Static Var Compensators and other static Controllers. 
The IEEE Power & Energy Society sponsors twenty-eight society-level awards. All award recipients are selected through a competitive, vetted nomination process. The IEEE PES and PES Governing Board will recognize  Mohan at the Awards Dinner on July 29 at  the IEEE PES General Meeting in National   Harbor, MD (Washington, DC Metro Area).

Ph.D. Student Daniel Klemme Receives NSF Graduate Fellowship
First-year ECE Ph.D. student, Daniel Klemme,  has been awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Fellowship, which is one of the most prestigious national awards for graduate students. (Prof. Sang-Hyun Oh, Advior)

Profs. Oh and Wittenberg receive grant from MnDrive Initiative
Sang-Hyun Oh (PI, Associate Professor) (above left) and Nathan J. Wittenberg (co-PI, Research Assistant Professor) (below left) have been awarded an Exploratory Grant as part of the MnDrive Initiative in Robotics, Sensors and Advanced Manufacturing (RSAM). Their proposal is titled "Integrating Surface Plasmon Resonance with Nano-Topographic Control of Lipid Raft Formation." 

New Physics and Nano Building to hold Open House Thursday, Apr 24
The New University of Minnesota Physics and Nano building will hold an open house on Thursday, Apr. 24 featuring tours for the public. The building serves the  U's School of Physics and Astronomy and Minnesota Nano Center. In addition, it is the new home for faculty ranging from nanotechnology researchers studying the ultra tiny to cosmologists probing the origins of the universe.

March 2015

Ph.D. student Ashish Kumar Sahoo receives Best Paper presentation award at IEEE APEC
Ph.D. student Ashish Kumar Sahoo, has received the 2014 Best Paper presentation award at IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC) in Fort Worth, Texas, for “LCL Filter Design for Grid-Connected Inverters by Analytical Estimation of PWM Ripple Voltage.”  (Prof. Ned Mohan, advisor)

ECE undergrad John Tranter named one of the finalist for Best Paper award at IEEE ICASSP
ECE undergraduate student John Tranter was selected as a 2014 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP) Best Paper finalist (a rare distinction for undergrads). “Blind Spectra Separation and Direction Finding for Cognitive Radio Using Temporal Correlation-domain ESPRIT” is the title of the finalist paper by Tranter, visiting student Xiao Fu of China University-Hong Kong, and Profs. Ken Ma and Nikos Sidiropoulos (Tranter’s advisor.) Tranter also is an affiliate faculty in the 
U of MN Department of Music.

Two ECE students honored at IEEE Twin Cities Awards Banquet
Jeff Adolf won first place in the IEEE Twin Cities Section Student Paper Contest for his"Path Planning of a Rotary Crane for time Optimal Load Transfer." Jeff is a student member of IEEE Student Branch at the University of Minnesota and a senior doubl majoring in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Essam Elnashar (lower left) won the Outstanding Student Award for his efforts in the successful 2013 IEEE Region 4 Student Leadership Conference. Essam is the current Presidetn for the IEEE StudentBranch at the University of Minnesota and is a senior majoring in Electrical Engineering.

C-SPIN Develops spin materials that function well at room temperature
In the first steps toward commercialization, The Center for Spintronic Materials, Interfaces, and Novel Architectures (C-Spin) reports its researchers have developed materials for magnetic tunnel junctions, spin channels, and spin interfaces that can function well at room temperature, a key requirement for potential commercialization. For more, click here or visit C-SPIN homepage.

Prof. Paul Imbertson receives University of Minnesota Morse Alumni Award
Prof. Paul Imbertson received the Horace T. Morse University of Minnesota Alumni Association Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education. Each year since 1965, the Horace T. Morse - University of Minnesota Alumni Association Award  for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education (Morse Alumni Award) has been given to a select group of teachers who reflect the University's emphasis on the importance of high quality undergraduate education. 

Prof. Ned Mohan receives University of Minnesota Graduate and Professional Teaching Award
Prof. Ned Mohan has been awarded the University of Minnesota Graduate and Professional Teaching Award by the Senate Committee on Education Policy (SCEP). This honor bestows membership in the Academy of Distinquished Teachers and the title of "Distinguished University Teaching Professor." The award will be presented April 16.

Kyle Dukart receives John Tate Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising
Kyle Dukart, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Administrator and former Undergraduate Academic Advisor, has been awarded the University of Minnesota John Tate Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising.
For more 

Prof. Sachin Saptnekar Receives 2013 Semiconductor Industry Association University Research Award
Prof. Sachin Sapatnekar received the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) University Research Award for his "trailblazing work in the field of semicon-ductor research." This award, created in 1995, recognizes lifetime achievements. The Semiconductor Research Corporationmembers select the recipient. For more

 

ECE student wins silver in 2014 Acara Challenge
ECE Computer Engineering major Addah Kyarisiima won the Silver in the International Division for his project Tech-share which helps Ugandan students learn how to use the computer through a mobile computer lab.
For more___

Prof. Joseph Talghader's Report from Antarctic Research
It’s an honor and an exceptional opportunity to be invited to conduct research in Antarctica. It’s also a challenge for life and limb, creativity and ingenuity, as well as patience. Rapidly-changing weather can become life threatening, inhibiting travel and research plans. Prof. Joseph Talghader became involved in a technology called “optical borehole logging” because of his interest in the Antarctica and how optics might be used to advance knowledge in glaciology—more specifically how properties of optics could be used to determine the crystal properties of glacial ice. His research is funded by the National Science Foundation.(Illustration above: antarcticsun.usap.gov) Read more

Prof. Ned Mohan Elected to National Academy of Engineering
U of MN Pres. Eric Kaler (left) visited ECE to congratulate Prof. Ned Mohan (right) on Mohan's election as a member of the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to the integration of electronics into power systems and to innovations in power engineering education. More about Prof. Mohan       More NAE award information ....
 

Prof. Nikos Sidiropooulos Elected Fellow to European Association for Signal Processing (EURASIP)
Prof. Nikos Sidiropoulos has been elected a Fellow of the European Association for Signal Processing (EURASIP) for his contributions to tensor decomposition and signal processing for communications. Fewer than six Fellows are elected each year and the roster of fellowscurrently includes fewer than 30 in all. (Prof. Georgios Giannakis was elected in 2008.)
 

Prof. Ramesh Harjani joins ACE4S Advisory Committee
Prof. Ramesh Jarjani has accepted appointmen tto the ACE4S Advisory Committee, ATIC-SRC Center of Excellence for Energy-Efficient Electronic Systems (ACE4s) in the United Arab Emirates. Teh ATIC-SRC Center is a collaboration between the Semiconductor Research Corporation and Abu Dhabi-based Advanced Technology Investment Company. ACE4S is based in the city of Abu Dhabi and is jointly hosted at Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research (KU) and the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MI).

 

More information

 
February 2014

ECE student Taylor Trible featured on U of MN Home Page
In a special interview about how horizons broaden when pursuing a degree, go to the U of M Home Page for a feature about Taylor Trimble, ECE student who thought he was going into theater lighting and now pursues a career in programming and an opportunity to work at Nest Labs this spring.
 

Tingting Xu receives Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowship
Ph.D. student Tingting Xu, has been awarded an Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowship for the 2014-15 academic year. The award carries a stipend, tuition for up to 14 credits per semester, and health insurance.
(Prof. Keshab Parhi, advisor)

ECE Prof. Leger named senior deputy editor to Optics Express
Prof. Jim Leger has been named the Senior Deputy Editor of Optics Express. OpEx is the largest scientific journal devoted to the optical sciences, publishing more than 3000  peer-reviewed articles a year.
 

ECE Prof. Li receives CAREER Award
Assistant Professor Mo Li receives a five-year National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award to support his research on integrated photonics.
 

Prof. Jovanovic received the 2013 George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award
Prof. Mihailo Jovanovic received the 2013 George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award from the IEEE Control Systems Society for his paper with Bassam Bamieh, Partha Mitra,
and Stacy Patterson titled "Coherence in  Large-Scale Networks: Dimension-Dependent Limitations of Local Feedback". This prestigious award recognizes the best paper published in the IEEE Transactions
on Automatic Control during the two calendar years preceding the year of the award. The award was presented during the IEEE CSS Awards Ceremony at the 2013 IEEE Conferenceon Decision and Control (CDC) in Florence, Italy, Dec 10-13, 2013.
 

January 2014
 

U of MN Alumnus Shengli Zhou elected IEEE Fellow
Alumnus Shengli Zhou (Ph.D. '03), current University of Connecticut faculty member, has been elected as an IEEE Fellow for his contributions to wireless and underwater acoustic communications. (Prof. G.B. Giannakis, former advisor)

 

December 2013

Search for rare-earth-free magnet research renewed for Phase II with additional $2.5 million
Prof. Jian-Ping Wang leads a team effort on the FE16N2 rare-earth-free magnet research, which was recently renewed for Phase II with an additional $2.5 million research fund from DOE ARPA-E. DOE ARPA-E program directors and researchers from ORNL, AMC, IAP, and Georgia Tech gathered for a kickoff meeting on Nov. 22 at the University of Minnesota

Prof. Cherkassky to present lecture at NIH
Prof. Vladimir Cherkassky will present a lecture titled “From Big Data to Little Knowledge” to NIH Biomedical Computing Interest Group on Dec. 12, 2013. Cherkassky’s talk will focus on the methodological aspects of knowledge discovery via data-analytic modeling in life sciences and healthcare.
 

World's leading text in power systems operation now in third edition
Power Generation, Operation, and Control, Third Edition, is recognized as the standard reference in the field. With this third edition, authors Allen J. Wood, Bruce F. Wollenberg (left), and Gerald B. Sheble have thoroughly updated their text to reflect the enormous changes that have taken place in the electric power industry.

Prof. Amin provides articles and information to IEEE;interviewed by National Geographic and New Science
Prof. Massoud Amin provided articles and information to IEEE about the Smart Grid’s security, safety and privacy; modernizing the Grid (in a 6-part series); and providing power backups during hurricanes.

He also spoke with National Geographic about power backups during hurricanes and with Live Science about the Montreal electrical arc-flash fireball.

Ph.D. student Severson receives Best Paper Award at IEEE IECON Conference
Ph.D. student Eric Severson received the Best Session Presentation Award from IEEE IECON Conference, Nov. 10-13 in Vienna, Austria. His title was "Design and measurement of a passive thrust magnetic bearing for a bearingless motor." (Prof. Ned Mohan, advisor)
 

Ph.D. candidate Xu selected for Best Paper Award at IEEE Neural Engineering Conference
Ph.D. candidate Tingting Xu received a best paper travel award for "Classification of Single-Trial MEG during Sentence Processing for Automated Schizophrenia Screening" at the Sixth IEEE Neural Engineering Conference in Sand Diego , Nov. 6-8, 2013. (Prof. Keshab Parhi, advisor)

 

November 2013 

Alumnus Mark Strong (MS') named VP of Research and Development at HeartWare
Mark Strong was named vice president of research and development at HeartWare (based in Framingham, MA). Mark is a native of Ortonville, MN and earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering at the University of Minnesota and an MBA at the University of St.Thomas in St. Paul. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and biomedical engineering from North  Dakota State University. Mark recently relocated to Massachusetts from the Twin Cities area. At HeartWare, Mark will lead the company’s R&D efforts and will play an integral role in advancing the technology pipeline.(Prof. Bruce Wollenberg, former advisor)

October 2013   

U of MN Daedalus Solar Car races across Australia
in the World Solar Challenge
The final results are in! The University of Minnesota Solar Vehicle Project team finished in fourth place in the World  Solar Challenge Cruiser Class. The University of Minnesota was one of only three teams from the United States that competed in the World Solar Challenge and the only U.S. team in the Cruiser Class. Teams raced their solar cars across the Australian Outback and were judged on other criteria including efficiency and car comfort. Great job, team! 

Watch the race's progress

Read the team's blog 

 

September 2013   

Alumnus Hongliang Chang and Prof. Sachin Sapatnekar to receive ICCAD Ten-Year Most Influential Paper Award 
ECE Alumnus Hongliang Chang (Ph.D.'05) and co-author Prof. Sachin Sapatnerkar will receive the Ten-Year Most Influential Paper Award from the 2013 International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD.) Their paper is titled "Statistical Timing Analysis Considering Spatial Correlations Using a Single PERT-like Traversal Prof. Sapatnekar was Chang's advisor when she attend the University of Minnesota. 

Prof. Ramesh Harjani to give keynote at IEEE 10th International Conference on ASIC

IEEE 10th International Conference on ASIC, Oct.30 in Shenzhen, China. His topic is "Low Power RF Circuits for Broadband Signals".

Prof. Oh and his team create breakthrough atomic layer lithography technique  
An international group of researchers from the University of Minnesota, Argonne National Laboratory and Seoul National University have discovered a ground breaking technique in manufacturing nanostructures that has the potential to move electrical and optical devices toward atomic scale dimensions. A surprising low tech tool of Scotch tape ended up being one of the keys to the discovery. To read more in Nature Communications, click here.
   

Prof. Kim's article on Future of VSLI Technology published in Circuit Cellar Magazine

Prof. Chris Kim was invited to write an article about the future of VLSI technology. It appeared in Circuit Cellar Magazine, August, 2013. For the article, click here.

 

Prof. Koester’s “Artificial Pancreas” Research Awarded Discovery Transformation Grant by Minnesota Partnership

After an extremely rigorous selection process conducted by globally-prominent diabetes researchers, The Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics awarded funding to “A Revolutionary Sensor Platform for Realizing the Artificial Pancreas,” Principle Investigators Yogish Kudva, M.D., professor, Department of Endocrinology, Mayo Clinic, and Steven Koester, Ph.D.,  professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Minnesota.  Kudva’s and Koester’s research involves creating a system of automated insulin delivery through continual monitoring of blood glucose. The investigators are developing a graphene-based wireless sensor that can be placed in blood vessels for accurate and continual monitoring of blood glucose levels – a key to achieving optimal glucose control. The project has been referred to, by Kudva, as creating an artificial  pancreas. Kudva’s and Koester’s research was one of four projects deemed to have “the highest potential for transformative results.”   To read more, click here…..

 

August 2013 

REU Summer Program welcomes 14 students                  
Front Row: Andrew Stephan (Bethel University),  Ashlyn Young (Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Seung Yeon Kim (Georgia Institute of Technology) 
Second Row: Jordan Ly (Villanova Univ.),  Suman Gunasekaran  (Harvard Univ.)
Third Row: David Zoltowski (Michigan State Univ.), Jennifer Pullman (Univ. of Cal.- Berkeley), Ming-Lun Wu (Univ. of Florida)
Fourth Row: Harold Haldren  (Liberty Univ.), Edward Kleinsasser (Univ. of Montana) 
Fifth Row: Oliver Heywood  (Carleton College), Ted Kocher (Univ. of Nebraska - Lincoln), Hunter Storaci (Univ. of Wyoming)
Back Row: Nicholas VanDeusen  (Western New England Univ.-- Springfield)      

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering welcomed fourteen students from around the U.S. for a 10-week research experience sponsored by the
National Science Foundation.

Students were invited to:

• Explore aspects of engineering research                                                

• Interact with world-renowned faculty and staff                                           

• Work with state-of-the-art research equipment and facilities                

• Learn about the role of graduate education in your future

• Improve your interpersonal and communications skills                              

• Meet program participants from across the United States

 

Universal Magnetic Systems - Prof. Wang's startup focuseson innovative magnetic nanoparticles for life sciences           
Universal Magnetic Systems, a start-up created by Prof. Jian-Ping Wang, his Ph.D. student Shihai He (MSEE'12), and former students Ying Jing (MSEE'10,  Ph.D.'12) and Hao Wang (MSEE'13, Ph.D.'13), focuses on multifunctional high magnetic moment and smart magnetic nanoparticlesfor disease detection and diagnostic target separation.Universal Magnetic Systems, LLC (UMS) is scaling up production of intelligent and highly magnetic nanoparticles for life sciences  applications, including immunoassay and bio-target separations. UMS will produce commercial quantities of high magnetic strength nanoparticles using five patents pending physical sciences methods developed in Prof. Wang’s laboratory at the U of MN. Nanoparticles produced by these proprietary methods have significant   advantages over currently available magnetic nanoparticles and cannot be made by any existing commercial available systems. The UMS CEO and co-founder is an ECE alumnus Mr. Claire Hovland (MSEE'80).

 

Prof. Sang Hyun Oh , Dr.  Jincy Jose, and Research team's work featured as cover article in Advanced Functional Material    
Sang-Hyun Oh, post-doc Jincy Jose and research co-workers report using template stripping to create embedded plasmonic nanodisks that can generate tunable plasmonic fields on ultraflat surfaces. The embedded nanodisks are topographically flat and capped with a silica layer to form a laterally homogeneous and biocompatible substrate. The nanoplasmonic architecture hidden underneath creates a tunable plasmonic landscape.Nanostructures can also be embedded in elastomeric materials, which can be peeled off the substrate to create flexible plasmonic membranes that conform to nonplanar surfaces.

  
Prof. Kim’s chip design wins ISLPED low power design contest 
Prof. Chris Kim and his research team (Bongjin Kim and Weichao Xu) won the ISLPED Low Power Design Contest. They will present their research titled “An   Adaptive PLL in 32nm SOI for Optimal Processor Power and Performance under Resonant Supply Noise” at the Sept. ISLPED Conference.The new phase-locked-loop (PLL) circuit Kim demonstrated in 32 nm basically allows a microprocessor to operate at its peak energy-efficiency point across a wide voltage and temperature range.

 
Ph.D. Student Angeline Klemm  receives Best Paper Award at IEEE Magnetics Society Summer School  
Ph.D. student Angeline Klemm, was selected to attend the 6th IEEE Magnetics Society Summer School in Assisi, Italy, and while there received a Best Poster Award, one of six awardees out of 90 participants from the world. Her title was"Integration of a Spintronic Interface with Nanomagnetic Arrays and Clock Field Effect."   (Prof. Jian-Ping Wang, advisor)

 

 2013 Solar Car is a 2-seater—ready for competition in Australia             
The University of Minnesota Solar Vehicle Project team unveiled its newest solar-hybrid car Thursday, July 18 at the University’s St. Paul Campus. Those attending saw the new car—a two-seater—and view its inner workings, toured the Solar Vehicle Project team’s shop,and hear from members of the team about the upcoming competition. This is the first public viewing of the car in preparation for the 2013 World Solar Challenge, a 3,000-kilometer (1,864-mile) race across the Australian Outback starting in Darwin and heading south to Adelaide. The race runs from Oct. 6-13, 2013. Named Daedalus, it is the first-ever two-seater car that balances practicality with efficiency. The U of M’s team will compete in a new Cruiser Class where practicality, not speed, is the goal. 

 

Prof. Mo Li’s group to develop next generation neural probes     
Prof. Mo Li’s group received a grant from the National Science Foundation to develop the next generation opto-electrical neural  probes for multimodal interrogation of brain activity. The work will be a collaboration with Prof. Sotiris Masmanidis in the Department of Neurobiology at UCLA. The new probe will integrate large arrays of nanophotonic wave-guides and microelectrodes to achieve active control and readout of neural activities. On these probes, the waveguides will emit light pulses to selectively activate or silence a local,optically excitable neuronal population, while the microelectrodes will record the network activity resulting from this stimulation. The research aims to provide neuroscientists with a powerful new tool to decipher the neural- circuitry of behavior, leveraging recent advances 

 

July 2013

 

Prof. Harjani to give Keynote at the IEEE International Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems
Prof. Ramesh Harjani will provide the Keynote talk at the IEEE International Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems, Aug. 6 in Columbus, Ohio. The title of his talk is "Efficient Power Management  Using Fully Integrated DC-DC Converters."

Prof. Imbertson named to receive U of M 2013 Award for Global Engagement 
Prof. Paul Imbertson will receive the 2013 Award for Global Engagement during National Education Week (Nov. 18-22). The award, presented by the Office of the Vice President for International Initiatives, recognizes Imbertson’s involvement in a variety of international projects as well as his role as a stellar ambassador of the U of MN.

 Prof. Salapaka appointed as Hermes-Luh Chair
Prof. Murti Salapaka has been appointed to the Vincentine Hermes-Luh Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering in recognition of his extensive contributions to control systems and its applications to nanotechnology.

Prof. Sachin Sapatnekar receives 2013-2014 Fulbright Senior Researcher Award
Prof. Sachin Sapatnekar will be visiting the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona, Spain under a 2013-14 Fulbright Senior Researcher Award. While in Spain, Sapatnekar will be working on research in electronic design automation.

Prof. Keshab Parhi to receive Distinguished Alumnus Award
Prof. Keshab Parhi is the recipient of the 2013 Distinguished Alumnus Award from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT),  Kharagpur, India. Parhi received his Bachelor of Technologydegree in 1982 from IIT. The award will be presented at the 59th Convocation on
July 27, 2013.

 

June 2013

Bodhisatwa Sadhu (Ph.D.'12) authors most downloaded paper on IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits forMay 2013
Bodhisatwa Sadhu (Ph.D.’12), post-doctoral researcher at IBM T.J.  Watson Research Center, is the author of the top paper downloaded from the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits in May 2013. This work—“A linearized, low-phase-noise VCO-based 25-GHz PLL with autonomic biasing”—was done in collaboration with IBM Yorktown and Carnegie Mellon University, and funded by DARPA. (Prof. Ramesh Harjani, Ph.D. advisor)

Vivek Bhandhari receives first place at Fulbright Science and Technology Seminar
Vivek Bhandhari received first place in a recent social entrepreneurship challenge organized by Fulbright and the U. S. Dept. of State.  The competition was based on topics of Energy, Water, and Maternal Health. There were nearly 130 participants from 60 countries participating in 8 groups.(Prof. Ned Mohan, advisor) 

Bo Yuan presents his work at the 2013 Broadcom University Competition
Bo Yuan is one of 12 Finalists who presented his research at the 2013 Broadcom Foundation University Research Competition (BFURC) held in Irvine during June 4-5, 2013. He presented his work on "VLSI Architectures for Polar CodeDecoders.“ Each Professor supported by the Broadcom Foundation can nominate one student, and Finalists are selected from among all nominees. Bo Yuan received a $1000 award at the competition as a Finalist.(Prof. Keshab Parhi, Advisor)

 

May 2013 

ECE Prof. Beth Stadler receives University of Minnesota "Outstanding Mentor Award"
Prof. Beth Stadler received the Outstanding Mentor Award from the President’s Distinguished Faculty Mentor Program. The program, established in 1986, pairs high-ability students of color with  distinguished faculty members as mentors. This is the second time Stadler has received this award. 

ECE Dr. Rhonda Franklin promoted to full professor with tenure
At the May 10th University of Minnesota Board of Regents meeting, the Board promoted  Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering’s Rhonda Franklin to Professor with tenure. 

Alumnus Dr. Shengli Zhou promoted to Professor and received Outstanding Advisor Award
ECE alumnus Dr. Shengli Zhou (Ph.D.'03 2003),  is now a faculty member at the University of Connecticut, and was recently promoted to the rank of Professor with tenure. Prof. Zhou received also the Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award at the University of Connecticut.
(Prof. G. B. Giannakis, former advisor)

ECE and Humphrey students win national prize for poster that illustrates smart grid technologies research
Mudita Suri (M.S.'13) (left) and Clark Koenigs (MPP'11) won first place in a student poster competition at the 2013 University of Texas Energy Forum. Suri, who graduated this spring with a Master of Science in electrical engineering and minor in energy policy,  and Koenigs created a poster that summarizes the various components of smart grid technologies research. The poster includes background about how the technologies are governed, policy analysis, and research methodology.  To read more, click here.

Prof. Sidiropoulos to receive Distinguished Alumni Award from University of Maryland - College Park
Prof. Nikos Sidiropoulos has been selected to receive the University of Maryland – College Park Distinguished ECE Alumni Award. Prof. Sidiopoulos earned his Ph.D.  in 1992 from the University of Maryland. 

Prof. Stadler voted top instructor for 2012 IEEE Magnetics Society Summer School; will teach again this summer
Prof. Beth Stadler was voted Top Instructor by students attending the 2012 IEEE Magnetics Society Summer School in Chennai, India. She will be teaching for the IEEE program again this summer in Assisi, Italy, June 9-14.  

Ph.D. Student Feilong Liu wins Super Computing Grand Prize
Ph.D. student Feilong Liu  has just won the grand prize in the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute 2013 research exhibition for "Numerical modeling of organic semiconductor heterostructure devices." (Prof. P. Paul Ruden, advisor)

Ph.D. candidate Lauren Otto awarded NSF grad research fellowship
Ph.D. candidate Lauren Otto has received the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. She also was awarded the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering Fellowship. (Prof. Sang-Hyun Oh, advisor)
 

April 2013

 

Prof. Chris Kim and research team work on gain cell shows promise, overcomes SRAM drawbacks
Associate Prof. Chris Kim and his research team members Wei Zhang and Ki Chul Chun have developed a bit cell based on the gain cell embedded DRAM (eDRAM) concept that overcomes the SRAM drawbacks. Kilopass Technology, Inc., reported on the findings in its online  “Memory Pill” journal. (www.kilopass.com) 

Prof. Gerald Sobelman receives Charles E. Bowers Faculty Teaching Award
Prof. Gerald Sobelman has been selected for the 2013 Charles E. Bowers Faculty Teaching Award. This award recognizes a University of Minnesota professor who has demonstrated exceptional interest and commitment to teaching. Established in 2000 by alumnus John Bowers (Physics '76) in honor of his father, Professor Emeritus Charles E. Bowers, this award recognizes an outstanding College of Science and Engineering professor who has demonstrated exceptional interest and commitment to teaching.

ECE Alumnus Dr. David L. Carlson (EE'58) dies March 11, 2013
David L. Carlson (EE'58), who received his Master Degree  in 1961 and his Ph.D in 1964 both from Iowa State University (ISU) died Monday, March 11, 2013. Born and raised in Minneapolis, he graduated from Washburn High  School and received a bachelor degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1958. Family and friends mentioned that he shared  memories of working at the University radio station while  he was a U of MN student. Both his father and brother also had a  passion for electronics.

 

Carlson, with four ISU collaborators, developed one of the first infant respiratory augmentors thus saving countless prematurely born infants. He received a patent for the device in 1967.

Among Carlson's awards were the Patent Law Association's Inventor of  the Year Award as well as the Faculty Citation Award from Iowa State  University Alumni Association for this device.During his career, Carlson  worked with Los Alamos National Laboratory, NASA, and the World Health  Organization.

 

March 2013

Prof. Keshab Parhi receives excellence in teaching award
Prof. Keshab Parhi has been selected as one of the recipients for the University of Minnesota Award for Outstanding Contributions to Postbaccalaureate, Graduate, and Professional Education 2012-2013. Recipients are chosen for excellence in instruction; involvement in students’ research, scholarship, and professional development; development of instructional programs; and advising and mentoring of students.
 

Alumnus Suneel Arora (BEE'90) One of Five Minnesota Attorneys Selected As Client Choice 2013 Winner
Suneel Arora (BEE'90), a shareholder at Schwegman Lundberg & Woessner, P.A., (Schwegman) was chosen as a 2013 Client Choice award winner. These awards survey senior corporate counsel only, with this year’s winners chosen from a pool of more than 2,000 individual client assessments. This year 355 individual winners across 70 jurisdictions were recognized. In the United States 222 attorneys were recognized and only 19 of those were patent lawyers. Suneel is one of five attorneysfrom Minnesota selected, and he is the only patent attorney in that group.

Suneel graduated from the University of Minnesota with a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering in 1990 and from  William Mitchell College of Law in 1999 (Summa Cum Laude and ClassValedictorian). Following a judicial law clerkship to Chief Judge Paul Magnuson of the U.S. District Court in Minnesota, Suneel began his intellectual property practice at Schwegman. His practice includes strategic counseling and patent procurement in electrical, software, mechanical, and biomedical technologies.
 
Ph.D. graduate student and visiting Interventional Radiologist Dr. Islam Shehata receives New Investigator Award
Dr. Islam Shehata (top photo) is a visiting Interventional Radiologist from Cairo University, Egypt. He currently pursues his Ph.D. thesis in Interventional Radiology (IR) under supervision of ECE Prof. Emad Ebbini (lower photo) and Dr. Erik Cressman (IR). The recognized research work is for a new application of high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) for a potential non-invasive surgical treatment of polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS); a common cause of infertility among females. This potential application is conducted using advanced transducers, dual mode ultrasound arrays (DMUAs), that were developed by Dr. Ebbini's group. The work will also bepresented in the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana (April 13-18). Dr. Shehata's paper title is "Feasibility of high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) for treatment of polycystic ovarian syndrome using dual-mode ultrasound arrays: Tuning the exposure parameters." Authors included are Islam Shehata, John Ballard, Andrew Casper, Erik Cressman, Emad Ebbini.
 
 
Prof. Ned Mohan to receive ECEDHA 2013 Innovative Award
Prof. Ned Mohan has been selected for the 2013 Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association (ECEDHA) Innovative Program   Award for his pioneering work in reforming the Electric Energy System Curriculum. He will receive the award  in March at the annual conference awards banquet in Orlando, FL.
  

Prof. Massoud Amin named among the "Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers of 2013"
Prof. Massoud Amin has been named Government Technology’s “Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers for 2013” as one who sets the standard for using innovative technology to solve public sector  challenges and improve the performance of critical government programs.

Mudita Suri wins 1st Prize in 2013 Texas Energy Research Challenge
Graduate student Mudita Suri has won first prize in the 2013 Texas Energy Research Challenge hosted by University of Texas at Austin. With U of MN student, Clark Koenigs (MS HHH; Prof. Elizabeth Wilson, advisor), Suri presented "Evolving context of Smart Grid: Technology and Policy across states and utilities." (Prof. Ned Mohan, advisor)  

 

February 2013
 

University of Minnesota awarded $28 million grant to lead development of next-generation microelectronics
New center is one of only six in the nation aimed at supporting the U.S. semiconductor industry
The University of Minnesota announced today that it has been awarded a $28million grant over five years to lead a new national research center focused on developing the next generation of microelectronics. About one-third of the grant  will support research in Minnesota. ECE faculty Prof. Jian-Ping Wang has been named C-Spin's director. Other ECE faculty involved with the research will be Profs. Steven J. Koester (associate director), Chris H. Kim,Mo Li, David J. Lilja, Sachin S. Sapatnekar, and Randall H. Victora. For more...

 

Prof. Mo Li Awarded a McKnight Land-Grant Professorship
Asst. Prof. Mo Li has been awarded the 2013 McKnight Land-Grant Professorship of the University of Minnesota. This award is designed to advance the careers of the most promising junior faculty of the university at a crucial period in their professional lives. Dr. Li's research focuses on nanoscale photonic devices and mechanical systems for next-generation communication, computation and sensing, as well as for probing fundamental physics phenomena. Dr. Li joined the ECE department in 2010 from Yale University, where he was a postdoctoral associate. He received his Ph.D degree from Caltech in 2007. In 2012, he received the AFOSR Young Investigator Award.
 

ECE Alumnus Taehyoun Oh accepts faculty position in South Korea
Taehyoun Oh (Ph.D.'12) accepted the positions of assistant professor for the Electrical Engineering Department of Kwang-Woon Univesrity in Seoul, South Korea. He is currently employed at IBM, New York, and will head to Seoul in mid-February. His area of research focus will be Digital/Analog Integrated Circuits. (Prof. Ramesh Harjani, advisor) 
 

ECE Alumnus Prof. Naresh Shanbhag receives two honors
ECE alumnus Prof. Naresh R. Shanbhag (Ph.D.’93)  was invested as the first Jack S. Kilby Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on Oct. 31, 2012.  The same day, literally hours before the investiture ceremony, he learned that the proposal he lead for establishing the SONIC (Systems on Nanoscale Information fabriCs) Center under the new STARnet program was selected for funding. The STARnet program is funded by DARPA and the U.S. semiconductor and supplier companies, and administered by SRC. Its goal is to maintain U.S. leadership in semiconductor technology vital to U.S. prosperity, security and intelligence. SONIC(www.sonic-center.org) will receive $30 million over the next five years to investigate the design of robust, energy efficient, and intelligent computing platforms using emerging nanoscale devices, inspired by the information processing principles found in communication and biological systems. SONIC team consists of 23 faculty researchers from 8 universities across the nation,including Illinois (Lead), CMU, Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, and Michigan, with Professor Shanbhag as its director. (Prof. Keshab Parhi, ECE advisor)

 January 2011

ECE Welcomes three new faculty members
   Asst. Prof. Jeong-Hyun Cho (Ph.D. from Washington State University) will focus on Sustainable Energy Systems, Power Electronics , and Drives  as well as Micro and Nano Structures.   Research Web site http://www.jeong.umn.edu/
   Asst. Prof. Sairaj Dhople (Ph.D. from University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign) will focus on Sustainable Energy Systems, Power Electroncis, and Drives.
   Asst. Prof. Arya Mazumdar (Ph.D. from University of Maryland) will focus on Communications, Signal Processing, and Networking. 

December 2012

 

Prof. Gerald Sobelman named IEEE Distinguished Lecturer
Prof. Gerald Sobelman has been named as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society for calendar years 2013-2014.

Prof. Ned Mohan organizes an NSF Workshop in Abu Dhabi
Prof. Ned Mohan, in collaboration with the University of Central Florida and the Petroleum Institute, organized an NSF-sponsored workshop in Abu Dhabi during Nov. 25-28, 2012, on the topic of  "Energy Education and Research: Addressing the need of Industry." It was attended by US academic and industry representatives and middle east representatives from UAE, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

November, 2012

Ph. D. candidate Sohini Roychowdhury receives Best Student Paper Award
Ph.D. candidate Sohini Roychowdhury received a Best Student Paper award at the  2012 Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers for her paper titled “Screening  Fundus Images for Diabetic Retinopathy.” Her paper was one of three selected from a field of 87 student papers. (Prof. Keshab Parhi, advisor)  

Ph.D. candidate Andrew Casper wins Best Paper at international conference
Ph.D. candidate Andrew Casper won the Best Paper Competition for his "Real-time Implementation of a Dual-Mode Ultrasound Array System: In Vivo Results" at the International Ultrasonics Symposium 2012 in Dresden. (Prof. Emad Ebbini, advisor)

 

October 2012 

Ph.D. candidate Mohamed Almekkawy receives travel award from ECE to attend BMES 2012 Annual Meeting 
Ph.D. candidate Mohamed Almekkawy received a $1,000 travel grant from ECE to attend the BMES 2012 Annual Meeting in Atlanta to present his poster  "Thermal Lesion Formation in Atheromatous Plaques Using High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU).
(Prof. Emad Ebbini, advisor)

Zhang, Xiao, Park and Lilja receive Best Paper at IEEE ICCD
Ph.D. students Zhe Zhang (top left) and Nohhyun Park (middle left), former postdoc Weijun Xiao (lower left)—now assistant professor of ECE at Virginia Commonwealth University—and Prof. David Lilja received the Best Paper (testing and  verification track) award for “Memory Module-level Testing and Error Behaviors for Phase Change Memory” at the IEEE International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD), September 2012. (Prof. David Lilja, advisor)

Prof. Paul Imbertson is co-PI in $8 million U of MN STEM Education Grant from National Science Foundation
The University of Minnesota's STEM Education Center has received an $8 million, five-year grant from the National Science Foundation, to partner with 200 Twin Cities metro area teachers to increase science and math learning through engineering for 15,000 students in fourth through eighth grades.  ECE Prof. Paul Imbertson, one of four co-PIs and assigned to be the Content Director, along with Gillian Roehrig assigned to be the Pedagogy Director, will be responsible for Professional Development activities with area teachers. 

Graduate student Chuan Zhang to give invited talk at East Lake International Forum in China
Graduate Student Chuan Zhang has been invited  to give a talk at the East Lake International Forum on Frontiers of Science and Technology for Outstanding Overseas Young Scholars to be held on Oct. 6-8 in Wuhan, Hubei, China. His invitation comes with an all expenses paid trip to attend the conference. (Prof. Keshab Parhi, advisor) 

Prof. Rhonda Franklin named CIC Academic Leadership Program Fellow
Prof. Rhonda Franklin was named one of five fellows representing the University of Minnesota in the 2012-13 CIC Academic Leadership Program (ALP). Established in 1989, this intensive experience develops the leadership and managerial skills of faculty who have demonstrated exceptional ability and academic promise. Many of the programs’ nearly 1000 Fellows have gone on to serve with  distinction as college presidents, provosts, and  deans. 

Prof. Steven Koester's research on building an artificial pancreas is highlighted
Professor Steven Koester's research , in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic, was highlighted in the Minnesota Medical Foundation's "Discoveries in Diabetes" newsletter. To see the article, go to  http://blog.lib.umn.edu/mmf/news/diabetes/2012/building-    an-artificial-pancreas.html

Prof. Massoud Amin presents TEDxUMN: "Powering Progress - Smart Infrastructure and the Future of Cities
Did you know it takes the power output equivalent of nearly two nuclear plants to keep our Tweeting habits going? Watch as Prof. Amin explains the US power grid, its challenges and suggested ways to make it  more efficient and more reliable. Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CurJGL_aqYA

 

September  2012

Prof. Rhonda Franklin appointed associate editor
Rhonda Franklin, Associate Professor,  is appointed to a three-year term as Associate Editor for the IEEE Microwave Wireless Component Letters (MWCL), a journal of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society, starting October 2012.

Prof. Marc Riedel gives Keynote
Prof. Marc Riedel gave the keynote address at The International Workshop on Power and Timing Modeling, Optimization, and Simulation on Sept. 6 in Newcastle, U.K.
 
Prof. Beth Stadler invited to teach at IEEE Magnetics Summer School in Chennai, India
The IEEE Magnetics Society Summer School is held annually during summer holidays. The school is designed for graduate students studying magnetism and related areas. It consists of lectures by international experts and includes poster presentations by participating graduate students. The program covers fundamentals and advanced topics in magnetism. Support is typically provided for approximately 100 students based on a competitive application. Awardees  are provided with free room and board and are reimbursedfor most of the cost of transportation to/from the school. Students from all parts of the world are accepted.
 

Prof. Ned Mohan leads successful DOE curriculum workshop at U of MN
Prof. Ned Mohan organized a highly successful workshop to discuss power and energy related curricular reform,  attended by nearly 120 ECE faculty, department heads and engineering deans at the University of Minnesota in August.
 

August  2012

ECE undergraduate Ken Condon interns at SpaceX working on new Dragon Capsule
ECE undergraduate Ken Condon accepted an electrical engineering internship at SpaceX in Los Angeles for the fall. He will be working on the new Dragon Capsule and hopes to get it certified for human transport. Dragon is a free-flying, reusable spacecraft developed by SpaceX under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program.

Thirteen students complete REU projects
The 2012 Summer REU Group completed their projects with a Poster Show on Thursday, Aug. 9. Students came from across the country and Puerto Rico. Program coordinators are Prof. Doug Ernie and Prof. Ted Higman.
 
Prof. Jian-Ping Wang Receives IonE Resident Fellowship
Prof. Jian-Ping Wang has been appointed as a Resident Fellow within the Institute on the Environment (IonE) at the U of MN. IonE's resident fellows program provides support for creative faculty members from a range of backgrounds with the objective of generating a new cadre of world-class environmental leaders and problem solvers. In conjunction with his ongoing work in the ECE Department, as IonE Resident Fellow, Prof. Wang will bridge spintronic and nano magnetic technologies with environment monitoring and research.
 
Prof. Mihailo Jovanovic receives IonE Resident Fellowship
Prof. Mihailo Jovanovic has been appointed as a Resident Fellow within the Institute on the Environment (IonE) at the University of Minnesota. IonE's resident fellows program provides support for creative faculty members from a range of backgrounds with the objective of generating a new cadre of world-class environmental leaders and problem solvers. In conjunction with his ongoing work in the ECE Department and the Control Science and Dynamical Systems Center, as IonE Resident Fellow, Prof. Jovanovic will be involved in research, teaching, outreach, and leadership activities in the area of renewable energy.

Emeritus Professor Mahmoud Riaz dies August 10, 2012
Professor Emeritus Mahmoud Riaz of Minneapolis, a long-time professor in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 1959 to 1999, passed away on Aug. 10, 2012. He was 87. Riaz is best known for his solar energy research in the 1970s. More...

IEEE Symposium Best Paper Awarded to Ph.D. candidate Jianxin Fang and Prof. Sapatnekar
Ph.D. candidate Jianxin Fang (left, top photo) and Prof. Sachin Sapatnekar have been awarded Best Poster of the 2012 IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium for “Understanding the Impact of Transistor- Level BTI Variability.” 

U of MN Innovative Engineers student group receives international honor for wind energy work in Nicaragua
The University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering student  organization Innovative Engineers has received international recognition for their wind energy project in Nicaragua. The group’s work is included in Sustainia100, a guide to 100 of the top global solutions in sustainability, unveiled last night at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de  Janeiro, Brazil. For more...

Prof. Bruce Wollenberg interviewed by Associated Press on power outages
Prof. Bruce Wollenberg was interviewed by the Associated Press (AP) to comment on  power outages in Washington. The article was picked up by a number of media affiliates around the U.S.

Prof. Massoud Amin interviewed about power outages and the US Power Grid
Prof. Massoud Amin was interviewed live on the Takeaway --  a morning program co-created and co-produced by Public Radio International (PRI) and WNYC-New York Public Radio with editorial partners the BBC , the New York Times, and WGBH Radio Boston. More details at: http://t.co/AykbQwTX with a link to a 7-minute podcast  (http://www.thetakeaway.org/audio/m3u/220135/) on enabling a smarter, stronger and more secure system. 

 

July 2012

Solar Vehicle Team Unveils Centaurus III
The University of Minnesota Solar Vehicle Project team unveiled their new solar-powered car on Tuesday. This was the first public viewing in preparation for the 2012 American Solar Challenge which begins in Rochester, NY on July 14 and ends in St. Paul at the Minnesota State Capitol Mall on July 21. For more information, click here.
 
Prof. Harjani named IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference TPC Chair
Prof. Ramesh Harjani has been selected to be the next IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC) TPC Chair starting in September, 2012.  He will be serving one year as TPC chair, one year as Conference Chair, one year as General Chair and three years of the Steering Committee.
 
Prof. Kim's Embedded Flash Chip was selected for a ISLPED 2012 Design Contest Award
Prof. Chris Kim's "An Embedded Flash Memory in a Generic 65nm Logic Process for Zero-Standby-Power System-on-Chip Applications" was accepted by the  ISLPED 2012 Design Contest Program Committee  to appear at this year's conference. From a field of 16 submissions, only four were selected for the design contest award.
 
ECE Graduate students Elbadry and Sadhu nominated for IEEE RFIC best papers at conference held in Montreal
Mohammad Elbadry along with Bodhisatwa Sadhu, Joe Qui and Ramesh Harjani were nominated for a best paper at IEEE RFIC held in Montreal. The title of their paper is ”Dual Channel Injection-Locked Quadrature LO Generation for a 4GHz instantaneous Bandwidth Receiver at 21GHz Center Frequency”. (Ramesh Harjani, advisor)

Bodhisatwa Sadhu, Mark A. Ferrissy, Jean-Olivier Ploucharty, Arun S. Natarajany, Alexander V. Rylyakovy, Alberto Valdes-Garciay, Benjamin D. Parkery, Scott Reynoldsy, Aydin Babakhaniyx, Soner Yaldizz, Larry Pileggiz, Ramesh Harjani, Jose Tiernoy and Daniel Friedman also were nominated for a best paper at the IEEE RFIC conference. Their paper is titled “A 21.8-27.5GHz PLL in 32nm SOI Using Gm Linearization to Achieve 130dBc/Hz Phase Noise at 10MHz Offset from a 22GHz Carrier”. (Ramesh Harjani, advisor)
Both papers were nominated from a field of 123 accepted papers. The RFIC Symposium is one of the foremost IEEE technical conferences in RF circuits, systems, and devices, and attendance is considered essential to those in the academic and industrial communities.

ECE Alumnus Ted Brekken (Ph.D.'05 ) is chosen Professor of the Year at Oregon State University
ECE Alumnus Ted Brekken (Ph.D.'05) was chosen as the 2011-2012 Oregon State University Electrical Engineering and Computer Science "Professor of the Year." (Ned Mohan, advisor)
 

June 2012 

Prof. Emad Ebbini named President of International Society for Therapeutic Ultrasound
Prof. Emad Ebbini has been named President of the International Society for Therapeutic Ultrasound (ISTU) for a three-year term. ISTU is a non-profit organization founded in 2001 to increase and diffuse knowledge of therapeutic ultrasound to the scientific and medical community, and to facilitate the translation of therapeutic ultrasound techniques  into the clinical arena for the benefit of patients worldwide.

Prof. Ebbini's dual-mode ultrasound work has beenselected for funding by the OVPF MN Futures Grant Program
The U of MN Office of the Vice President for Research has approved Prof. Emad Ebbini's Minnesota Grant Proposal collaboration with Prof. Efie Kokkoli (CEMS), Dr. Erik Cressman (Radiology), and Dr. Raj. Aravalli (Radiology).The team will investigate the use of  dual-mode ultrasound array (DMUA) system for both image guidance and controlled release of a peptide functionalized thermo- sensitive liposome (TSL) with specific binding to target cells such as liver cancer cells as one example for the  platform. The unique DMUA system (patent pending) developed at U of MN is capable of noninvasive feedback control of temperature fields within sub-millimeter volumes and with millisecond resolution based on real-time ultrasound thermography (also developed at  Uof MN). If successful, this approach will allow for the use of most powerful agents to fight the disease with minimum adverse systemic effects. The new guidance- feedback-control approach to image-guided targeted drug delivery (IGTDD) will put the UMN team members in a very competitive position to attract significant funding and  strengthening of the intellectual property portfolio in this  important application area of nanomedicine.

Prof. Guillermo Sapiro's early detection of autism spectrum disorder research reported on in New Scientist
Prof. Guillermo Sapiro’s research into early detection of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using Microsoft’s gaming and GoPro sensors combined with computer vision algorithms was reported in the article “Watch over me” in New Scientist, May 5, 2012. The project is in collaboration with N. Papanikolopoulos, V. Morellas, A. Esler, and a team of superb students: Jordan Hashemi, Thiago Spina, and Mariano Tepper..

 

May 2012

Prof. Keshab Parhi received the IEEE CAS Charles A. Desoer Award
Prof. Keshab Parhi received the IEEE Circuits and Systems Charles A. Desoer Technical Achievement Award for his exceptional technical contributions.  Contributions are documented by publications (including but not limited to patents) and based on originality and continuity of effort.

Prof. Sang-Hyun Oh and Prof. Marc Riedel receive promotions
Prof. Sang-Hyun Oh (top photo) and Prof. Marc Riedel received approval for promotion to Associate Professors with tenure by the University of Minnesota Board of Regents.

Prof. Ned Mohan selected for the IEEE P&E Ramakumar Family Renewable Energy Excellence Award
Prof. Ned Mohan was selected for the IEEE Power and Energy Society Ramakumar Family Renewable Energy Excellence Award. This award recognized outstanding contributions in the field of developing, utilizing and integrating renewable energy resource in the national and global energy scenarios. This award, given once a year, will be presented to Prof. Mohan at the IEEE-PES General Meeting in San Diego.

Prof. Jian-Ping Wang named one of University of Minnesota 2012 Distinguished McKnight Professors
Prof. Jian-Ping Wang was selected as a University of Minnesota Distinguished McKnight Professor for his work in magnetic materials and spintronic devices for Information Storage and Computing and Molecular Diagnostics. Wang is an international leader in magnetic recording materials and spintronic devices.His inventions are used in the production of hard disk drives. He discovered the origin of giant saturation magnetization in the iron nitride compound. He also pioneered the interdisciplinary research of high-moment magnetic nanoparticles and spintronic nanosensors for the early detection of disease.

 

April 2012

Prof. Steve Campbell receives the George W. Taylor Award for Distinguished Service
Prof. Steve Campbell has received the College of Science and Engineering George W. Taylor Award for Distinguished Service for 2012. This award recognizes Prof. Campbell's extensive contributions to the college and to the university as the Director of the Nanofabrication Center (NFC) and the Center for Nanostructured Applications (CNA).

 
Prof. Chris Kim named a 2012 COGS Outstanding Faculty Award recipient
Prof. Chris Kim was named a 2012 Council of Graduate Students (COGS) Outstanding Faculty Award recipient. The COGS Outstanding Faculty Award was established in 2010. Students nominate faculty members they believe are outstanding and a panel of students reviews and selects the winners.

 

March 2012

ECE Alumnus Dr. Ranjan Gupta (Ph.D.'10) leads ARPA-E Project
Dr. Ranjan Gupta (Ph.D.’2010) of GE Global Research is leading a nearly $4.5M ARPA-E project titled “Resilient Multi-Terminal HVDC Networks with High-Voltage High-Frequency Electronics.” Gupta joined GE Global Research in Niskayna, NY, upon graduation. (Prof. Ned Mohan was Gupta’s advisor.) For more: http://arpa-e.energy.gov /LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=JtAkonea2vm%3D

 
Ph.D. student Binh Lieu receives E-CAero fellowship
Ph.D. student Binh Lieu has received a fellowship from the European collaborative dissemination of aeronautical research and applications (E-CAero) initiative to attend the E-CAero Spring School on Fast Methods in Scientific Computing in Montestigliano, Italy (Mar. 26 – Apr. 2, 2012). Twelve doctoral students from around the world have been selected on a competitive basis by a panel of experts involving the organizers and the keynote speaker, Prof. Gunnar Martinsson of the University of Colorado at Boulder. (Advisor:  Prof. Mihailo Jovanovic)
 

Prof. Massoud Amin named to "Networked Grid 100: The Movers and Shakers of the Smart Grid in 2012" by GreenTechMedia
As the smart grid market continues to move from the fundamental ‘blocking and tackling’ of infrastructure and communications build-out to a wide swath of new, advanced applications ranging from consumer behavior analytics, to next-gen control and protection, to greentech integration and grid optimization, we thought it helpful to once again call attention to those leading the charge…Massoud Amin, Director, Technological Leadership Institute, University of Minnesota, has a long and distinguished pedigree in managing smart grid complexity in the real world, stretching back to his work in 1998 on a joint EPRI/Department of Defense project aimed at securing the country’s critical infrastructure. To read more, go to: http://www.greentechmedia.com /articles/read/the-networked-grid-100-the-movers-and-shakers-of-the-smart-grid-in-2012/


Director of Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy Dr. Arun Majumdar visits Prof. Wang's Lab
Dr. Arun Majumdar (right), Director of Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) of the Department of Energy, toured Prof. Jian-Ping Wang’s (left) research lab to view the world-leading facilities developed by Wang’s team for the deposition of nanocomposite magnets. Dr. Majumdar was in the  Twin Cities to attend a Renewable Energy Summit hosted by Senator Al Franken.

Prof. Paul Imbertson and students help build wind turbine on White Earth Reservation for the new Circle of Life School
Prof. Paul Imbertson, with students David Giacomin (Civil Engineering), and EE exchange students from Norway Robert Pederson, Magnus Bjoringsoy and Sigurd Livgard, worked with Circle of Life ninth grade students on the White Earth Reservation helping them build a wind turbine for their new school. Efforts are part of the NSBE/IE Bridge project.

CSE Assoc. Dean Mos Kaveh to receive Britzius Distinguished Engineer Award
College of Science and Engineering (CSE) Associate Dean Mostafa Kaveh has been selected to receive the MFESTS’   Charles W. Britzius Distinguished Engineer Award. The award  will be presented at the 48th Annual Engineer’s Week Awards  and Recognition Banquet to be held starting at 5:30 pm on  Friday, Feb. 24 at The Nicollet Island Pavilion in Minneapolis.

February 2012

Prof. Amin presents at ISS 2012
Prof. Massoud Amin presented “Smart Grid: Overview, Issues and Opportunities” at the Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS 2012), Jan. 15-18 in Half Moon Bay, Calif.
 
Prof. Li selected for Young Investigator Research Program award
Prof. Mo Li was selected by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research for a Young Investigator award. His research is  titled “Exploiting Repulsive and Attractive Optical Forces in Advanced Nanophotonic Systems.”
Prof. Li's research is conducted at the convergence of two central areas of nanoscience, i.e. nanophotonics and nanomechanics. The goal of his proposed project is to engineer repulsive and attractive optical forces in advance nanophotonic systems based on a silicon photonic platform, focusing on developing new photonic functionality and demonstrating novel optomechanical effects.

January 2012

Prof. Georgios Giannakis and U of MN alumnus Dr. Pengfei Xia receive IEEE Best Paper
Prof. Georgios Giannakis and Dr. Pengfei Xia (Ph.D.'05), of Broadcom Corp., received 2011 IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper for “Design and analysis of transmit-beamforming based on limited-rate feedback.”

Prof. Tom Luo named Editor-In-Chief of IEEE Transactions in Signal Processing
Prof. Tom Luo has been appointed Editor-In-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, the premier publication of the field.

Profs. Nicholas Sidiropoulos and Tom Luo receive IEEE 2011 Best Paper
University of Minnesota ECE Prof. Nicholas Sidiropoulos (far right) and Prof. Zhi-Quan (Tom) Luo, and McMasters University ECE Prof. Timothy Davidson were selected for a 2011 Best Paper Award by the IEEE Signal Processing  Society for “Transmit beamforming for physical-layer multicasting.

December 2011

Alumnus Mark Kroll (BS '75, MS '83, PhD '87) elevated to IEEE Fellow
IEEE has elevated University of Minnesota, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering alumnus Mark Kroll (BS '75, MS '83, PhD '87) to the grade of Fellow for his contributions to implantable and external defibrillator technology.

U of MN/ Mayo Clinic Partnership Research Grant
Prof. Steve Koester and Yogish C. Kudva's “Graphene-Based Wireless Glucose Sensing for the Artificial Pancreas” has been selected for funding by the "Decade of Discovery: A University of Minnesota/ Mayo Clinic Partnership to Conquer Diabetes" with an approved total budget of $500,000, to begin on January 1, 2012.

Ph.D. student Sai Madhukar Reddy wins Best Poster Award at MMM 56th Annual Conference
Ph.D. student  Sai Madhukar Reddy  (CEMS) won Best Poster Award at the Magnetism and Magnetic Material (MMM) 56th Annual Conference in Scottsdale, AZ on Nov. 3, 2001.  His poster was titled  “Towards Epitaxial  Fe1-xGax/GaAs Structures via Electrochemistry for Spintronics Applications.” This award is given to the top one percent of posters presented. (Advisor: Prof. Beth Stadler.)

November 2011 

Prof. Beth Stadler awarded Best Presentation at 19th Annual International Anodizing Conference
Prof. Beth Stadler was awarded the Donald I. Johnson Award of Excellence for Best Presentation at the 19th  Annual International Anodizing Conference in Montreal, Quebec. The title of her talk was “Using Anodic Alumnina to Fabricate Artificial Cilia Sensors.” 

Prof. Guillermo Sapiro receives the ICCV 2011 Test-of-Time Award
Prof. Guillermo Sapiro and colleagues V. Caselles and R. Kimmel were awarded the International Conference in Computer Vision (ICCV) Test-of-Time Award for their 1995 paper "Geodesic Active Contours." The Test-of-Time Award honors the paper that has had a notably significant following and impact in computer vision and related fields. The selection committee selects the award winner based on the number of times the paper has been cited and also its individual impact on its field and its contribution to that field. Sapiro's paper and its journal companion have been cited 2,950 times and is the basis of numerous segmentation packages, in particular in medical imaging."

Ph.D. student Manohar Ayinala receives two honors for his Master’s Thesis
 ECE Ph.D. candidate Manohar Ayinala received the University of Minnesota Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award 2011-12 and the nomination for the 2012 Midwest Association of Graduate Schools’ Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award. (Prof. Keshab Parhi, advisor)

Prof. Ramesh Harjani awarded $5.975 million DARPA Grant for Wideband Signal Sensing for Dynamic Spectrum Access
Prof. Ramesh Harjani is the principal investigator of a new Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) $5,975 million grant to solve the challenge of wideband signal sensing for dynamic spectrum access - the process of identifying frequency usage and efficiently maneuvering to access unused frequencies.Other members of the team include the University of California at Los Angeles (Profs. Danijela Cabric and Dejan Markovic), Army Research Lab (Brian Sadler), Lockheed Martin Corp. andSilvus Technologies.

Epilepsia cover illustration from research article by Prof. Keshab Parhi and team
"Seizure Prediction with Spectral Power of EEG Using Cost-Sensitive Support Vector Machines," by Y. Park, L. Luo, K.K. Parhi and T. Netoff, appears in Epilepsia , 52(10), pp.1761-1770, Oct. 2011. The magazine's cover art is an illustration from their paper. You can see the paper at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1528-1167.2011.03138.x/full
 

October 2011

Prof. Jian-Ping Wang receives funding to research replacement for
scarce ingredients used in magnets
"Synthesis and Phase Stabilization of Body Center Tetragonal (BCT) Metastable Fe-N Anisotropic Nanocomposite Magnet- A Path to Fabricate Rare Earth Free Magnet" In a joint research effort with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Prof. Jian-Ping Wang will lead research at the University of Minnesota to aggressively develop an early stage prototype of bulk iron-nitride permanent magnet material.This new material has the potential to be the “holy grail” of magnets as the highest energy density magnet from earth-abundant raw materials.This project will provide the basis for an entirely new class of rare-earth free magnets for electric vehicle and wind turbine applications capable of eliminating the need for costly and scarce rare-earth materials.

Dr. Donatello Materassi receives four honors at recent conferences       
Dr. Donatello Materassi has received Best Presentation awards in three different sessions at the American Control Conference, 2011:
     • D. Materassi, "Reconstruction of topologies for acyclic networks of dynamical systems" pp 37 - 41, Proc. of American Control Conference, San Francisco, CA, USA
     • D. Materassi, M. V. Salapaka, "A Generalized Zames-Falb Multiplier" pp 1990 - 1993 , Proc. of American Control Conference, San Francisco, CA, USA
     • D. Materassi, M. V. Salapaka, "Causal and Non-causal Filtering for Network Reconstruction" pp 4928 - 4933, Proc. of American Control Conference, San Francisco,  CA, USA
Materassi also received the Best Oral Presentation award at the SIDRA Conference in Pisa, Italy for D. Materassi, M. V. Salapaka, L. Giarrè, "Relations between structure and estimators in networks of dynamical systems." He is a post-doc working with ECE Prof. Murti Salapaka.
 

September 2011

ECE Ph.D. Candidate Taehyoun Oh received Best in Session at Techcon 2011
ECE Graduate Taehyoun Oh received the Best in Session award at Techcon 2011 in Analog, Mixed Signal and RF Circuit Design at Techcon 2011 for his paper "An 11 Gb/s MIMO Channel Equalization and Crosstalk Cancellation Architecture for High-Speed I/O" authored by Oh and his advisor Dr. Ramesh Harjani. Techcon 2011 was conducted by Semiconductor  Research Corporation (SRC) and was held on September 12 and 13 at Austin, Texas. Oh currently is doing an internship at Intel in Santa Clara, Calif. this fall.

ECE Prof. Jian-Ping Wang, Chris Kim, and Steven Koester, and Physics Prof. Paul Crowell  receive NSF Nanoelectronics for 2020 and Beyond Competition Grant
ECE Professors Jian-Ping Wang (PI), Chris Kim (Co-PI) and Steven Koester (Co-PI) and Physics Professor Paul Crowell (Co-PI) have received a National Science Foundation research grant to work on All-Spin Non-Volatile Logic Devices and Circuits. This project is awarded under the Nanoelectronics for 2020 and Beyond competition, with support by multiple Directorates and Divisions at the National Science Foundation as well as by the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative of the Semiconductor Research Corporation. Minnesota is one of only ten universities who won this NSF NEB award. For more, go to:http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1124831

Prof. Sang-Hyun Oh receives prestigious DARPA Young Faculty Award for 2011
Prof. Sang-Hyun Oh, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has received a DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) for 2011. Oh's Topic area is MEMS/NEMS and his title of effort is "Stretchable Plasmonic Devices with Sub-1 nm Critical Dimensions." For more information, go to http://www.darpa.mil/Opportunities /Universities/Young_Faculty_Award_Recipients_2011.aspx

Prof. Amin interviewed about Guarding the Grid on energyNOW!
Prof. Massoud Amin was interviewed by Thalia Assuras on energyNow! about the security issues facing the electrical grid in the United States.
 

August 2011
 

Dr. Hyungsoon Im and Prof. Sang-Hyun Oh's team have article in ACS Nano and on Institute of Physics website
Dr. Hyungsoon Im and colleagues from Prof. Oh's team, in collaboration with Prof. David Norris, have an article in ACS Nano, which was highlighted on the Institute of Physics website - titled "Template stripping produces nanohole arrays." They have shown new methods to synthesize large-area nanohole  arrays in ultra-smooth metal films for biosensing.

Best Student Paper Award in IEEE Industrial Electronics Society
Ranjan Gupta (PhD ‘10, now with GE) and PhD candidate Apurva Somani have been chosen as the recipients of the 2011Student Best Paper Award for their IEEE – Industrial Electronics Transactions Paper "Direct-Matrix-Converter-Based Drive for a Three-Phase Open-End-Winding AC Machine  With Advanced Features," Trans. IE vol. 57, Dec 2010. This award comprises
of a prize of $1K and travel funds up to $2K to attend the award ceremony in Melbourne, Australia. (Advisor Prof. Ned Mohan).

Prof. Sapiro and Graduate Student Alexy Castrodad to present at NGA
Prof. Guillermo Sapiro and graduate student Alexey Castrodad have been selected to present their work on human activity recognition in video as a yearly highlight of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) basic research. This is the third time in the last four years that Prof.Sapiro's research will be highlighted as one of the success stories at the annual NGA meeting. Alexey Castrodad is a full time NGA employee pursuing his Ph.D. at the U of MN under support of InnoVision-NGA.

ECE students participate in NASA ROCKSAT program; Designed and built experimental payload
University of Minnesota students participated in the June 23 launch  of a sub-orbital sounding rocket from NASA Wallops Flight Facility. This rocket launch is part of the NASA ROCKSAT program which promotes student designed experiments on board sounding rockets.The University of Minnesota team designed a 20 pound payload which included a variety of experiments. Students from the electrical engineering department designed and built the power distribution system along with an absorption spectrometer for ozone detection. The ECE team included Prof. Ted Higman and students Rebecca Lam, Patrick Plonski, Joshua Flugar, Sean DIng, Cole Anderson, and Carl Johnson.
 

July 2011

 

Governor, Legislature approved new Physics and Nanotechnology Building Physics Nano New Building
Revitalizing and expanding two key science areas, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton and the 2011 State Legislature approved $51.3 million in bonding funds for an Experimental Physics and Nanotechnology Building at the University of Minnesota. The building was part of larger capital investment bill approved by the governor and legislators early Wednesday, July 20. Construction on the new building is expected to begin this fall. For more, go to http://z.umn.edu/physnano

Graduate students Patil and Zhou receive James Zeese Fellowships
ECE graduate students Shruti Patil and Pingqiang Zhou received James Zeese Fellowships. Prof. David Lilja is Patil's advisor and Prof. Sachin Sapatnekar is Zhou's advisor.

Nvidia provides upgrades for CUDA Labs
ECE’s CUDA Training Center received a donation of 50 Fermi class GeForce GTX480 boards for the CUDA Teaching Center program from Nvidia. Thirty of the boards will be installed for ECE/CS courses and 20 will go to MSI to support their tutorials.  Thank you, Nvidia!
 
Ph.D. student Todd Klein awarded the DOD Teal Predoctoral scholarship
ECE Ph.D. student Todd Klein received the DOD Teal Pre-Doctoral scholarship to fund his work with Prof. Jianping Wang in collaboration with Medical School Profs. Amy Skubitz, Dr. Kristin Boylan and Dr. Levi Downs. The team is researching protein biomarker detection using giant magnetoresistive (GMR) biosensors for early identification of ovarian cancer with funding from a DOD Ovarian Cancer Pilot Award. (Prof. Jianping Wang, advisor)
 

PhD Student Anthony Giacomoni receives Best Paper Presentation Award
ECE Ph.D. student Anthony Giacomoni has received the Best Session Presentation at  the 2011 American Controls Conference for his “Reconfigurable Interdependent  Infrastructure Systems:Advances in Distributed Sensing, Modeling, and Control.” (Profs. Massoud Amin and Bruce Wollenberg, advisors)
 

Prof. Guillermo Sapiro's Journal on Imaging Science (SIIMS) is a leader
Prof. Guillermo Sapiro is founding Editor-in-Chief of the SIAM Journal on Imaging Sciences, which already is ranked as the journal with the second highest impact factor in the area of Applied Mathematics. In one year, it has become one of the most cited journals in its field
 

Prof. Georgios Giannakis ranked in Top Ten of Thomson ISI Most Cited Researchers
Prof. Georgios Giannakis is ranked in the Top Ten of the world in Thomson ISI Web of Knowledge List of Highly Cited Researchers in Computer Science. His h-index is 90. Giannakis also tops the list from the societies he is most involved - Signal Processing, Communications, and Networking.
 

Prof. Tryphon Georgiou elected as Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science
Prof. Tryphon Georgiou was elected as a Foreign Member of theRoyal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA). IVA , founded in 1919, is a learned  society composed of elected members active in the technological and economic sciences who have performed outstanding work in their fields and in the Academy's spirit "for the benefit of society."
 

Alumnus Dean Klein interviewed about memory trends by HPC Wire
Dean Klein (EE ’80, MEE ’04), Micron Technology, Inc. Memory System Development Vice President,  was interviewed as an international expert for the HPC Wire article “Thoughts on Memory Trends from Micron’s Dean Klein.” Klein also provided the closing keynote about this topic at the 2011 International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg, Germany in June. 
 

June 2011
 
Profs. Steven Campbell and Mo Li receive U of MN research funding grants
Profs. Steven Campbell (far Left) and Mo Li (near left) received research funding grants from the University of Minnesota. Funding for the grants comes from the University's share of technology commercialization royalties. These grants, two of 11 awarded, are the most recent round of awards in a two-year initiative conducted by the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) in collaboration with the University's academic leadership to identify infrastructure needs deemed critical to the University's continued competitiveness.


Prof. Nikos Sidiropoulos joins ECE faculty beginning 2011 Fall Semester
Prof. Nikos Sidiropoulos (Fellow, IEEE) received the Diploma in Electrical Engineering from the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and M.S. and Ph.D.degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University ofMaryland - College Park, in 1988, 1990 and 1992, respectively. To read more


Prof. Sachin Sapatnekar honored by IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation
Prof. Sachin Sapatnekar was presented the IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA) Outstanding Service Contribution Award for his significant service as the general chair of the 47th Design Automation Conference (DAC).The award was presented at the 48th DAC held in San Diego, Calif.


Prof. Mihailo Jovanovic's research work selected as MSI Research Spotlight
Prof. Mihailo Jovanovic 's work on "Controlling the Onset of Turbulence by Downstream Traveling Waves" was selected as a Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI) Research Spotlight for May 2011. An article about his work, aimed at a "general science" audience, was featured in the Spring 2011issue of MSI Research Bulletin. www.msi.umn.edu

Graduate student Neil Dhingra wins NASA Fellowship
ECE graduate student Neil Dhingra won the 2011-2012 NASA Aeroservoelastic Control using Distributed Sensing Fellowship.He will participate at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center. His advisor is Prof. Mihailo Jovanovic.


Graduate student Kyle Olson receives 3M fellowship
ECE graduate student Kyle Olson received the 2011-2012 3M Fellowship. His advisor is Joey Talghader.


Graduate student Jesse Gantz receives NSF travel study grant to China
ECE graduate student Jesse Gantz was selected to participate in the National Science Foundation (NSF) East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes for U.S. Graduate Students (EAPSI) to conduct research at the Tsinghua University in Beijing this summer. His advisor is Bruce Wollenberg.


Five ECE graduate students receive dissertation fellowships
The University of Minnesota Graduate School awarded five ECE graduate students 2011-2012 Doctoral Dissertation fellowships. The awardees are:

Binh Lieu "Dynamics and Control of Transition to Turbulence in Shear Flows of Newtonian and Viscoelastic Fluids (Advisor: Mihailo Jovanovic)

Bodhisatwa Sadhu "Wideband RF Circuits for Cognitive Radio Receivers (Advisor: Ramesh Harjani)

Hao Zhu "Efficiently Monitoring and Optimizing the Power Grid: A Vision whose Time has Come (Advisor: Georgios Giannakis)

Manohar Ayinala "Low-Power Architectures for Implantable and Wearable Devices (Advisor: Keshab Parhi)

Wei Zhang "Printed Flexible Circuits Based on Organic Transistor (Advisor: Chris Kim) 

Prof. Chris Kim researching ways to measure aging transistors
Prof. Chris Kim’s article titled “An Odometer forCPUs” was published in the IEEE Spectrum, May 2011, pp 29-33. Kim and his colleague John Keane are researching ways to measure aging transistors.


PhD candidate Im receives MRS Graduate Student Silver award
Ph.D. candidate Hyungsoon Im received the Materials Research Society's (MRS) Graduate Student Silver Award. His abstract title is "Plasmonic Nanopore Arrays for Label-Free Kinetic Biosensing of IgM Antibody Binding to Lipid Membranes". He conducted his research in collaboration with Mayo Clinic. (Prof. Sang-Hyun Oh, advisor)

May 2011 

ECE Department promotions
On May 13, The University of Minnesota Board of Regents approved the following promotions: Dr. Gerald Sobelman to Professor ; Dr. Mihailo Jovanovic to Associate Professor
 

Graduate student Eric Severson receives NSF Nordic Research Opportunity Award
Graduate student Eric Severson recently received the National Science Foundation’s Nordic Research Opportunity Award for his proposed project of "Design of Outer-Rotor, Bearingless Motors for a Power Distribution-Grid Flywheel Energy Storage Module". Eric also is the recipient of the Graduate Research Fellowship from NSF and NDSEG Fellowship from Department of Defense. (Prof. Ned Mohan, advisor)

PhD candidate Gysler Castelino receives CSE 2010-2011 Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award
ECE Ph.D. candidate Gysler Castelino was named College of Science and Engineering 2010-2011 Outstanding Teaching Assistant. (Prof. Ned Mohan, Advisor) 

CSE Solar Vehicle Project Team wins American Solar Challenge 
College of Science and Engineering Solar Vehicle Project Team celebrated their  Formula Sun Grand Prix win on the "Brickyard" track at the Indianapolis Motor  Speedway. The American Solar Challenge event was part of the 100-year anniversary celebration of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  For more details.

Profs. Jian-Ping Wang and Paul Imbertson receive CSE 2010-11 Outstanding Professor Awards
Profs. Jian-Ping Wang (top left) and Paul Imbertson (bottom left) were honored by the College of Science  and Engineering and its undergraduates students as the 2010-2011 Outstanding Professors for their  teaching and service to students and student organizations. This is the eleventh year that Prof. Imbertson has received this award. Awards were presented by Associate Dean Paul Strykowski at the CSE Week Banquet.
 

April 2011

Prof. Oh named one of ONR 2011 Young Investigator Program recipients
Prof. Sang-Hyun Oh received the Department of Defense, Office of Naval Research 2011 Young Investigator Program Award. The Navy selected 21 proposals from more than 270 applications received last year.  Awarded for compelling research with the potential to deliver game-changing naval science and technology, recipients will receive approximately $170,000 in
annual research grants for three years.  A list of the 2011 YIP winners can be found at http://go.usa.gov/2mC.

Prof. Amin elected as American Society of Mechanical Engineers Fellow
Prof. Massoud Amin, Director of the Technology Leadership Institute, has been elected to the grade of Fellow at American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), an organization that promotes the art, science and practice of mechanical and multidisciplinary engineering and allied sciences to diverse communities throughout the world. He is only one of 3,068 Fellows  out of 121,087 ASME members and is recognized for his engineering achievements.

2011 March

Minn. startup aims to treat atheroschlerosis with noninvasive method developed by Prof. Emad Ebbini and his research team
The University of Minnesota has finalized a license agreement with International Cardio Corporation (ICC), a Minnesota start up company, for a technology  that could treat atherosclerosis in a noninvasive manner that is faster, more precise, and safer for the patient. 

ECE Prof. Emad Ebbini, along with Dr. Dalong Liu, Ebbini's former student  (Ph.D., 2010) and now post doctoral researcher, and Ebbini's research team developed this high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) technology that performs  noninvasive, real-time ultrasonic imaging and localized treatment of tissue abnormalities (cancer tumors, fibroids, etc.). The technology can also be applied in the treatment of vascular disease.

 “This would be safer than anything you can think of,” said Ebbini. “For HIFU, we use higher intensity levels to achieve the desired therapeutic effect. The advantage of our approach is that therapeutic exposure is confined to the focal spot without collateral damage to the intervening normal tissues.” Read more.

Prof. Sang-Hyun Oh selected for NSF CAREER Award
Prof. Sang-Hyun Oh has been selected to receive the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award. This highly competitive five-year award, in the amount of $597,111, is the NSF's most prestigious program to support the early career development of promising young researchers. The title of Prof. Oh's project is "Ultrasmooth patterned metals for membrane biology."

Prof. Luo named one of 2011 SIAM Fellows
The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) named ECE Prof. Tom Luo as one of 34 academics and professionals to its 2011 Class of Fellows for outstanding contributions to applied mathematics and computational science through research in the field and service to the larger community. This distinguished group will be recognized in July at the 7th International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM 2011) in Vancouver, British Columbia.Prof. Luo is being conferred this fellowship for the development of novel applied mathematics ideas and methods for signal processing and digital communication.

Prof. Imbertson named co-director of CCEFP Outreach and Education
Prof. Paul Imberston was named Center for Compact and Efficient Fluid Power (CCEFP) Education and Outreach Co-Director. This is a 20 percent appointment; Imbertson will continue as teaching faculty for the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The CCEFP, working through its networks of strong partners, places an emphasis on developing new understandings of fluid power and related STEM topics as it reaches out to diverse audiences. More than twenty projects are include in the CCEFPT’s Education and Outreach Program Portfolio.

U of MN researchers studying the use of robots and computer vision to diagnose mental disorders in children
A University of Minnesota research team recently was awarded two grants totaling more than $3 million from the National Science Foundation's Cyber-Enabled Discovery and MRI Programs to create robotic devices and computervision algorithms that will assist with the early diagnosis of children at risk of developing disorders such as autism, attention deficit disorder (ADD)and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Prof. Guillermo Sapiro is part of the U of MN seven-member research team. Read more. 

2011 January/February

U of MN researchers studying the use of robots and computer vision to diagnose mental disorders in children
A University of Minnesota research team recently was awarded two grants totaling more than $3 million from the National Science Foundation's Cyber-Enabled Discovery and MRI Programs to create robotic devices and computervision algorithms that will assist with the early diagnosis of children at risk of developing disorders such as autism, attention deficit disorder (ADD)and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

ECE Prof. Massoud Amin honored by his Alma Mater
ECE Prof. Massoud Amin, Director of the Technology Leadership Center, received a 2011 Alumni Achievement Award from the School of  Engineering and Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.

Prof. Mostafa Kaveh named AAAS Fellow by peers
College of Science and Engineering Associate Dean and Electrical and Computer Engineering Prof. Mostafa Kaveh was named fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He has been elevated to this rank because of his distinguished contributions to multiple sensor signal processing and applications to localization, imaging and communications and for long-standing academic and professional leadership. Election as a fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers. New fellows will be honored during the AAAS Fellows Forum Saturday, Feb. 19, at the 2011 AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.This year AAAS awarded this honor to 503 members nationwide.
 

2010 - December

Prof. Riedel, Bazargan, and Lilja have stochastic logic article featured in IEEE Transactions on Computers
IEEE Transactions on Computers January 2011 issue features "An Architecture for Fault-Tolerant Computation with Stochastic Logic" by Weikang Qian, Xin Li, Marc D. Riedel, Kia Bazargan, and David J. Lilja.

Ph.D. student Bazerque wins U of MN Best Masters Science Thesis Award
Ph.D. student Juan-Andres Bazerque received the University-wide Best Masters of Science Thesis Award 2009-2010 for “Distributed Sensing and Resource Allocation for Cognitive Radio Networks.” He will represent the U of MN for the best Masters of Science Thesis among Midwest Universities.

Ph.D. students Im and Lindquist win Materials Research Society poster award
Ph.D. students Hyungsoon Im and Nathan C. Lindquist, Advisor Prof. Sang-Hyun Oh and Antoine Lesuffleur received a poster award from Materials Research Society during the fall meeting in Boston. Their poster was titled “Enhancing the Optical Properties and Chemical Stability of Plasmonic Nanoholes Using Atomic Layer Deposition of Dielectric Overlayers.”

Ph.D. student Lyle wins Magnetism and Magnetic Material Annual Conference Best Poster 
Ph.D. students Andrew Lyle (near left) with co-author Angeline Klemm, Research Experience for Under-graduates (REU) student from the University of Wisconsin LaCrosse, won Best Poster at the Magnetism and Magnetic Material Annual Conference for “Incorporating Magneto Resistance into Magnetic Quantum-dot Cellular Automata Logic.” (Advisor: Jian-Ping Wang)

Prof. Giannakis names one of most cited researches in Thomson ISI Web of Knowledge 
Prof. G. B. Giannakis has been included in the Thomson ISI Web of Knowledge List of Highly Cited Researchers in Engineering and Computer Science for the last three years. He has maintained an h-index over 75 (top in the IEEE Signal Processing Society).

Prof. Emad Ebbini honored as IEEE Fellow
Prof. Emad Ebbini was elevated to IEEE Fellow during the Nov. 2010 IEEE Board of Directors meeting for his contributions to ultrasound temperature imaging and dual-mode ultrasound. This is one of IEEE's most prestigious honors.

Post-doctoral research associate Guoshen Yu receives Prix de These ParisTech
Post-doctoral research associate Dr. Guoshen Yu (Sept. 2009-Nov. 2010; advisor Prof. Guillermo Sapiro) was awarded the “Prix de these ParisTech” (ParisTech thesis prize). Yu was honored from a group of 550 Ph.D. students that graduated in 2009 from ParisTech (the ensemble of 12 grandes ecoles in France, including Polytechnique, Mines, Pont, Telecom, etc.) 

2010- November

Prof. Harjani receives Johnson Professorship
Prof. Ramesh Harjani received the Johnson Professorship. The endowed professorship is named for University of Minnesota alumnus Edgar F. Johnson, (’21), founder of E.F. Johnson Company. Harjani also will give the keynote address at the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society's Asia Pacific Conferenceon Circuits and Systems Dec. 6-9 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.The title of his presentation is "Fun with Injection Locking." The conference website is http://www.apccas2010.org 

Ph.D. student Im receives a Graduate School Thesis Research Grant
Ph.D. student Hyungsoon Im received a Graduate School Thesis Research grant to visit the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago to conduct experiments in sub-5-nm nanogap structures. (Advisor: Prof. Sang-Hyun Oh)

Prof. Mohan provides keynote at ECEDHA Conference
Prof. Ned Mohan gave a Keynote Luncheon presentation to the ECE Department Heads at the Energy and Power Educational Programs Development Workshop organized by the ECE Department Heads Association (ECEDHA) on Nov 2, 2010, in Arlington, Virginia. In this presentation, he pointed out the need, challenges and opportunities in power engineering education to help ECE department heads decide their priorities in terms of hiring new faculty, research layout, etc. He described the curriculum that our university has developed with the help of NSF, the U.S. Navy - the Office of Naval Research, and NASA; it is actively being disseminated and any university can easily adopt it. Also, any university not a part of the DOE-funded 82-university consortium, the largest of its type, is welcome to join. 

ECE undergraduates Phil Senum and Sasha Kharam excel in UROP program
ECE undergraduate Phil Senum (left, top) has developed a compiler that synthesizes digital signal processing functions with chemical reactions. He also has developed the first set of rate-independent computational modules for arithmetic and logical operations.

ECE undergraduate Sasha Kharam (left, bottom) has designed a binary counter with DNA strand-displacement reactions.

Senum and Kharam have co-authored research papers that have been accepted at the Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing. They will both be giving oral presentations at the conference in Hawaii in January. Senum has co-authored a paper accepted at the International Conference on Computer-Aided Design, to be held in San Jose, CA, in November. His research has been submitted to the journal PLoS One." ECE Prof. Marc Riedel is mentor to both.

2010-October

ECE alumnus Ted Brekken (PhD '05) receives OSU Engelbrecht Young Faculty Award
Ted Brekken (PhD ’05) received the annual Oregon State University College of Engineering Engelbrecht Young Faculty Award in recognition of his “exceptional scholarly and teaching accomplishment and outstanding potential for achievement tenure….” Brekken also received the Innovative Teaching Award given to an EECS school professor annually as voted by  students.

University of Minnesota officially dedicated Kenneth H. Keller Hall on Oct. 27
The University of Minnesota hosted a special dedication ceremony open to the public to mark the naming of Kenneth H. Keller Hall from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 27, at Kenneth H. Keller Hall, Room 3-180, 200 Union St. S.E., Minneapolis. Speakers included former university president and chemical engineering professor Keller,  (read more....)

 2010 - September

Prof. Zhi Quan Tom Lou Awarded Farkas Prize by INFORM
The G. Farkas Prize of the INFORMS Optimization Society was established in 2006, and is administered by the Optimization Society (OS) of INFORMS. The Farkas Prize is awarded for the most significant contribution to the field of optimization by a researcher, or a team of researchers. It is awarded bi-annually at the INFORMS National Meeting.

Minnesota Economic Development legislative staff visits Prof. Wang's research labs
On Thursday, Sept. 2, Prof. Jian-Ping Wang and his students provided lab tours for Minnesota Economic Development legislative staff during  the Technological Commercialization Showcase. The tour was conducted to increase awareness of the many ways in which the University of Minnesota plays a key role in Minnesota’s economic development and to promote partnerships on strategic economic development issues.

John Hoschette (Lockheed Martin) to offer "Industry Organizational Dynamics and Your Career" class for students
Beginning Tuesday, Sept. 14, Lockheed Martin Technical Director and ECE department adjunct instructor John Hoschette will provide students career advice in a one-credit elective course. Hoschette will incorporate his recently published book "The Engineer's Career Guide" as class resource. An IEEE senior member, Hoschette has had careeer articles appear in Today's Engineer and IEEE's Spectrum Magazine.

University of Minnesota Alumnus John (Jack) M. Reid ('50,MSEE'57) to receive U of MN Outstanding Achievement Award
John M. (Jack) Reid will be awarded the University’s Outstanding Achievement Award in October for his work in refining tissue characterization with ultrasound, echocardiography, and pulse Doppler that directly expanded our knowledge of biomedical imaging diagnostics and vastly improving patients’ lives. More...

 
2010 - August

ECE provides DOE-supported workshop to revitalize power education
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) was host to more than 90 participants from more than 60 universities on August 9-10 for the Department of Education-funded 82-university consortium workshop.U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota provided welcome remarks to kick off this $4.2 million project led by ECE professors Ned Mohan, William Robbins, Bruce Wollenberg, and Paul Imbertson, to revitalize power engineering education in colleges and universities nationwide.
 

ECE Prof. Imbertson and Alumnus Kiki Mentan ('10) provide instruction at University on the Prairie
ECE Prof. Paul Imbertson and ECE alumnus Kiki Mentan ('10) provided the Engineering component of University on the Prairie program held at University of Minnesota Southwest Research and Outreach Center in Lamberton, Minn. Students in grades 7-12 engaged in hands-on career exploration experiences in Healthcare, Food Science, Environmental Science, and Engineering.
 

Article by ECE students Im and Lindquist and Prof. Oh published in Nano Letters highlighted in August issue of Nature Photonics
Vertically Oriented Sub-10-nm Plasmonic Nanogap Arrays" by ECE doctoral students Hyungsoon Im and Nathan Lindquist and Prof. Sang-Hyun Oh along  with Chemistry's student Kyle Bantz and Prof. Christy Haynes published in Nano Letters was highlighted in the August issue of Nature Photonics.

 

2010 - July

University of Minnesota grad student study major disasters
CNN.com reports about University of Minnesota masters program in Security Technology. The Security Technology program, that includes military and government workers, provides information how to prepare for natural and man-made (collapse of banking industry, electrical power grids, food supply chains) disasters and terrorist attacks. The program was created by Prof. Massoud Amin.

 
2010 - June

University of Minnesota ONR-NSF-sponsored curriculum workshop welcomes nationwide university faculty members
Forty-seven faculty members from universities across the country attended the ONR-NSF sponsored Faculty Development Workshop in Electrical Energy Systems June 7-12. This workshop helped familiarize faculty members with the curriculum and the educational materials developed at the University of Minnesota, so that this curriculum can be readily adopted in their respective universities. 
 

Hyoungsuk Yoo (Ph.D.'09) Awarded Third Place at IEEE MTT International Microwave Symposium
Hyoungsuk Yoo (Ph.D.’09) post-doctoral research associate at the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research (CMRR) received third place at the IEEE MTT  International Microwave Symposium held in Anaheim, Calif., for Hyoungsuk Yoo, Anand Gopinath, J. Thomas Vaughn, “A method to control non-uniformity RF B1 field for high field magnetic resonance imaging.”  Yoo presented both poster and oral talk as one of 27 finalists (218 student papers) and went on to place third.The symposium is the premier annual international meeting for technologists involved in all aspects of microwave theory and practice. (Ph.D. Advisor: Anand Gopinath andCo-Advisor: Thomas Vaughan) 
 

Pulkit Jain Awarded IBM Doctoral Scholarship
Pulkit JainECE doctoral candidate Pulkit Jain received the IBM Doctoral Scholarship. This award is highly competitive and recognizes Pulkit's  doctoral research. His adviser is Prof. Chris Kim. 

Weikang Qian awarded 2010-2011 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship
Weikang Qian ECE doctoral candidate Weikang Qian received a 2010-2011 Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship from the University of Minnesota Graduate  School Fellowship Office. His adviser is Prof. Marc Riedel.

 
2010 - May

Prof. David J. Lilja receives reappointment as Head of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Louis John Schnell Professor David J. Lilja has been reappointed Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Head for another five year term, though June 30, 2015.

Prof. William Robbins receives reappointment as Assistant Head of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Professor William Robbins has been reappointed Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Assistant Head for another three-year term.
  

Three faculty members receive promotion
In recognition for their accomplishments, the following faculty members have received promotions: Murti Salapaka promoted to Professor; Nihar Jindal promoted to Associate Professor; and Paul Imbertson promoted to Teaching Professor. 

Siemens Energy Automation donates $5,000 to support Innovative Engineers' Wind Turbine Project
The management team at Siemens Energy Automation (EA) gave $5,000 to student organization Innovative Engineers for their Wind Turbine Project. "I can't overstress the value of the opportunities that Siemens Energy Automation is enabling for our students and those in need in Nicaragua," says Prof. Paul Imbertson.
 

Prof. Douglas Ernie receives President's Distinguished Mentor Award
Prof. Douglas Ernie was recognized by University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks as the Distinguished Mentor during the award ceremony for the President's Distinguished Faculty Mentors.
 

Profs. Jovanovic and Oh receive IREE Early Career Grants
Prof. Milhailo Jovanovic received an Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment (IREE) Early Career Grant Award for his proposal: "Improving efficiency of wind turbines by means of model-based flow control." Prof. Sang-Hyun Oh received an IREE Early Career Grant Award for his proposal: " High-Throughput Nanofacbrication Technologies for Low-Cost Plasmonic Photovoltaics."
 

2010 - April

Raymond M. Warner, Jr., Professor Emeritus, dies
Raymond M. Warner, Jr., Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota, Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, died Friday, April 16, 2010. Dr. Warner served as professor in the department from 1970 until his retirement in 1989. The memorial services has been scheduled for Monday, April 26 at 1 p.m. at the First Universalist Church,  3400 Dupont Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55408.
 

Professor Jindal receives Guillermo E. Borja Awards for exceptional research and scholarly accomplishments
Professor Nijar Jindal received the Guillermo E. Borja Award recognizing his exceptional research and scholarly accomplishments as a candidate for tenure. Faculty members are considered for the award at the time they are being evaluated for the granting of permanent tenure at the rank of associate professor. The Borja Award is announced every other year and includes a cash award.
 

University of Minnesota receives $2.5 million to revitalize electrical power engineering education
The University of Minnesota was awarded $2.5 million in Recovery Act funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to lead a nationwide consortium of universities to revitalize electrical power engineering education. The funding is part of a nationwide $100 million effort for 54 smart grid workforce training programs that will help prepare the next generation of workers in the utility and electrical manufacturing industries. The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering will be leading the efforts on the U of MN campus.

Professor Jian-Ping Wang's giant saturation magnetization materials research reported in ScienceNow
Professor Jian-Ping Wang’s breakthrough research on saturation magnetization material made the March issue of ScienceNOW. Professor Wang presented his research about the extremely  high magnetic properties of the complex iron and nitrogen crystalline structure at the American Physical Society’s March meeting.

Professor James Leger receives University of Minnesota Tate Award
Professor James Leger received one of four University of Minnesota Tate Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate advising that were presented in April. The award recognized his contribution to helping students formulate and achieve intellectual, career, and personal goals. The Tate Award identifies positive models and recognizes the role that academic and career advising plays in the University’s educational mission.

 
2010 - March

Alumnus Gary Glover receives University of Minnesota Outstanding Achievement Award
Alumnus Gary Glover (BS with honors '64, MSEE '65, Ph.D. '69), director of the Stanford School of Medicine Radiological Science Laboratory in the Richard M. Lucas Center for Imaging and professor of radiology and by courtesy, of electrical engineering and of psychology, has been awarded the University of Minnesota Outstanding Achievement Award for his outstanding contributions in refining medical magnetic resonance technologies that directly improve patients’ lives while also substantially expanding our knowledge of biomedical imaging.   Read more.... 

Professor Ned Mohan receives UWIG Achievement Award
Professor Ned Mohan has been selected to receive a Utility Wind Integration Group (UWIG) Achievement Award in recognition for his work on curriculum development.UWIG was established in 1989 to accelerate the development and application of good engineering and operation practices supporting appropriate integration of wind power into the electrical system. Nearly 170 U.S. utility companies are UWIG members including Xcel Energy and Great River Energy.
 

Graduate student Jianxin Fang and Professor Sachin Sapatnekar receive ISQED 10 Best Paper Award
ECE graduate student Jianxin Fang and his advisor Prof. Sachin Sapatnekar were awarded Best Paper for International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design (ISQED) 2010. The paper is titled “Scalable Methods for the Analysis and Optimization of Gate Oxide Breakdown.”
 

Juyul Lee (Ph.D. '10) receives Samsung Human Tech Thesis Bronze Prize
Juyul Lee (Ph.D. '10) was awarded the Samsung Human Tech Thesis Bronze Prize. More than 1,000 papers were submitted for the prize. Juyul's work (a paper from his Ph.D. thesis) was judged to be in the top 40 papers. (Nihar Jindal, Advisor)

2010 - February

Steve Koester receives GOMACtech-09 Best Paper Award
ECE faculty member Steven Koester received The George Abraham Outstanding Paper Award from the 2009 Government Microcircuit  Applications and Critical Technology Conference (GOMACTech-09) for “Design and Fabrication of Planar Si/SiGe Heterojunction Tunneling Transistors.” 

Guillermo Sapiro selected for Department of Defense Fellowship
Professor Guillermo Sapiro is one of 11 distinguished university faculty scientists and engineers selected for the 2010 Department of Defense’s National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship (NSSEFF) program. From a field of 800 nominations, of which 670 white papers were reviewed, 21 semi-finalists were invited to submit full proposals outlining research plans. 

Steve Koester receives GOMACtech-09 Best Paper Award
ECE faculty member Steven Koester received The George Abraham Outstanding Paper Award from the 2009 Government Microcircuit Applications and Critical Technology Conference (GOMACTech-09) for “Design and Fabrication of Planar Si/SiGe Heterojunction Tunneling Transistors.”

Guillermo Sapiro selected for Department of Defense Fellowship
ECE faculty member Steven Koester received The George Abraham Outstanding Paper Award from the 2009 Government Microcircuit Applications and Critical Technology Conference (GOMACTech-09) for “Design and Fabrication of Planar Si/SiGe Heterojunction Tunneling Transistors.” 

Zhi Quan Luo receives Research Council of Norway program grant
Zhi-Quan “Tom” Luo received the Leiv Eiriksson mobility program grant from the Research Council of  Norway for his “Dynamic Spectrum Management in Cognitive Radio Networks” project. The program aims to create long-term research and development collaborations between the U.S., Canada, and Norway.

 
2010 - January

Anand Singh (Ph.D. '09) receives Best Paper Award from SINCONF
Anand Singh, (Ph.D. ‘09) received the Best Paper Award from International Conference on Security of
Information and Networks (SINCONF) for “Improving Risk Assessment Methodology: A Statistical Design
of Experiments Approach.” (David J. Lilja, advisor) 

Steven J. Koester joins ECE Faculty
Steven J. Koester joined the ECE faculty as full professor on Jan. 19, 2010. Dr. Koester received
his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the University of Notre Dame and his Ph.D. from University 
of California, Santa Barbara.  

Before joining the University of Minnesota, Dr. Koester was at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center for
more than 14 years. His most recent position was Manager of Exploratory Technology, where he worked
on the advanced device and integration concepts for potential use in 22-nm node and beyond CMOS
technology.   

Dr. Koester has authored more than 125 journal and conference publications and holds 21 United States
patents. His research interests include micro- and nanoelectronics, optoelectonic devices, photovoltaics,
energy harvesting and  biomedical devices. 

ECE graduate student Dan Wang awarded Louise T. Dosdal Fellowship
ECE graduate student Dan Wang (Advisor: Ahmed Tewfik) was awarded the Louise T. Dosdal
Fellowship for the 2010-11 academic year. She received the award for her excellent academic record
and professional promise. The award includes a stipend, health insurance coverage, and tuition for up
to 14 credits per semester. 

Jacobs interviewed by BBC News and Science Magazine
In a recent BBC News article titled "The solar cell that builds itself," ECE faculty member
Heiko Jacobs was interview about his and Ph.D. candidate Robert Knuesel's work presented in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Jacobs also was interviewed by Science Magazine.

2009

 2009-December

Zhi-Quan Luo receives IEEE SPS 2009 Best Paper Award
ECE faculty member Zhi-Quan Luo and Chinese University of Hong Kong faculty member Shuzhong
Zhang received the IEEE 2009 Signal Processing Society's Best Paper Award for their paper titled
"Dynamic Spectrum Management: Complexity and Duality," IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in
Signal Processing, Volume 2, Issue 1, Feb. 2008 Pages: 57-73. 

Ramesh Harjani's article in SiliconIndia Magazine
Ramesh Harjani's article "Programmable, Software Definable, and Cognitive Radios" was published in
the December 2009 issue of SiliconIndia Mazgazine.  SiliconIndia is a business and technology
magazine with a readership of 70,000 CIOs, CTOs, and CEOs, and market influencers such as fund 
capitalists, technology adopters, and analysts.  www.siliconindia.com

 2009-November

Rhonda Franklin and Bethanie Stadler two of 31 women scientists feature at
Minnesota History Museum Exhibit
"Inventive Women: Portraits of Women Scientists and Engineers from the University of Minnesota,"
a photography exhibit featuring U of M Institute of Technology women science, engineering and
mathematics faculty opened Nov. 27 at the Minnesota History Center, 345 Kellogg Blvd.W.,
St. Paul, MN. ECE faculty members Rhonda Franklin, Ph.D.,(top) and Bethanie Stadler, Ph.D.,
are two of the women featured.The exhibit runs until July 4, 2010. For more information, go to
it.umn.edu/students/women/inventive/index.html 

Former ECE professor Stephen Chou honored at Deutsches Museum, Munich, Germany
Stephen Y. Chou, former ECE faculty member (1989-1997), is honored at the Deutsches Museum,
Munich, Germany. On display is Chou’s original press used for nanoimprint lithography, a method
he invented while at the University of Minnesota that simplifies the production of computer microchips
and a broad range of other nano products by creating molds that can emboss intricate patterns onto
silicon chips. 

Professor Emeritus James A. (Alex) Carruthers dies
Professor Emeritus James A. Carruthers died Nov. 12 at age 88. He taught at the Electrical Engineering
Department from 1965-1986. As part of the EE's Quantum Electronics and Optics Group, Carruthers
researched laser isotope separation, miniature high-pressure gas lasers, pulse propagation and hybrid
electric cars.
  
Carruthers received his Ph.D. from McGill University, Montreal, Quebec in 1949, served as scientist
and section head, Atomic Defense, Defense Research Board of Canada, 1951-59, and then worked
with the British government's team to develop atomic capability.

He served as Physics professor at McGill University, 1959-62; research scientist at Honeywell
Aerospace, Minneapolis, 1962-64; and professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of
Minnesota, Minneapolis until he retired in 1986. 

Daniel Sun (MSEE'93) owner of Sun-Net Consulting, dies
Daniel Sun, owner of Sun-Net, Consulting of San Jose, Calif., died of liver cancer. He is survived by
his wife, Helen Hu (MSEE '94), and a daughter, Joanna. Daniel and Helen worked for Siemens after
graduating from the University of Minnesota and then moved to California where they both worked for
ABB in Santa Clara and eventually started Sun-Net Consulting, a leader in the field of outage scheduling
and leading supplier of transmission outage applications software. 

Sun-Net generously gave funds in Daniel memory to the University of Minnesota Foundation to provide
fellowships for students studying electric power systems. (Bruce Wollenberg, advisor)   

Bazerque receives U of M Distinguished Masters Thesis
ECE graduate student Juan Andres Bazerque’s master thesis was chosen as the Distinguished Master’s
Thesis of 2009-10 and chosen to be nominated for the 2010 Midwest Association of Graduate Schools
Distinguished Master’s Thesis. 

2009-October

U.S. Department of Energy grant awards up to $8 million to University of Minnesota
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
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.” 

2009 - September

Professor Oh received funding award
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.
 

2009-August

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  
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
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)

2009 - July

University of Minnesota Institute of Technology to hold Alumni event in Bay Area
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
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

2009-June

ECE Professor Anand Gopinath publishes new book
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
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 strong 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
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
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
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.

2009- May

ECE Ph.D. student Yun Sang Park awarded University of Minnesota Interdisciplinary Fellowship
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
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
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
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
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
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.

2009- April

ECE graduate student Eric Severson receives a 2009 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Award
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
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
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
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
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
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.

2009-March

Professor Massoud Amin addresses Congressional committee about Modernizing the Electric Grid
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
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)
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
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
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
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
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
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.

2009-February

Assoc. Prof. Ali Abdi ('01) receives 2008 New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame Innovators Award
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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

2009-January

Building closed Friday, Jan. 30, 2009
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
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
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
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
"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.

2008

2008-December

White House honors 2007 early career scientists and engineers
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
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.

2008-November

Former ECE Ph.D. student receives NIH Salzman Memorial Award
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
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
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.

2008-October

ECE student wins MASS 2008 best paper award
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.
 

 

 

 

 

MnDRIVE Team works to improve the delivery of more reliable, inexpensive energy to rural and industrial areas
A recent story published in the U of MN blog "Inquiry" includes comments from MnDrive Team members  Prof. Peter Seiler (Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics) and Assistant Professor Sairaj Dhople (left) (Electrical and Computer Engineering). Dhople, the group's solar expert, is researching small-scale energy distributions systems that may someday  replace the existing large-scale power stations. For more go to http://wp.me/p4wAsQ-oW
 
U of MN Bridges and IEEE-SIGHT conduct workshop for students and community members
Karel Kalthoff (left) (Computer Science, 2016) and WIE President) and Fernando Mirafuentes (Chemistry 2014, and IE alum),along with Elliot Cayasso (EE 2014,  National Engineering University of Nicaragua) delivered the three day U of MN Bridges/IEEE-SIGHT workshop for a group of 30 students and community members in Jinotega, Nicaragua, October 2-4. ( Prof. Paul Imbertson, Advisor) Imbertsonis in a blue shirt in the center of the groupphoto above.) For more, visit the Facebookpage: IEEE Seccion Nicaragua

NSF Workshop on electric power and energy systems welcomes more thn 175 attendees
"Reforming Electric Energy Systems Curriculum" held Oct. 4-5 at the University of Minnesota sponsored by National Science Foundation welcomed more than 175 attendees. Workshop chair Prof.Ned Mohan introduced presenters from Office of Naval Research, Minnesota Power, Cummins, NASA Glenn Research Center, SolarBridge Technologies, Purdue University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Oregon State University, Department of Energy, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, and International Rectifier. The workshop also included a poster session and lab demonstrations.

Treating Brain Disorders through Wearable Technology
A MnDRIVE (Minnesota’s Discovery, Research and InnoVationEconomy), team of researchers at the University of Minnesota has its sights set on treating the symptoms of tinnitus, a neurological disorders —without the need for surgery. These MnDrive experts, ranging from computer engineers to apparel designers,are working to develop thin, wearable electronics that attach to the skin and deliver low electric currents to specific regions of the brain and decrease symptoms of brain disorders.Principle Investigator for the project Prof. Chris Kim says,"Through this unique interdisciplinary collaboration, we are exploring ways to target areas of the brain for treatment that is noninvasive. We are really just beginning to understand the possibilities this form of treatment holds for patients suffering from debilitating brain disorders.For more, go to: http://wp.me/p4wAsQ-oL

Dr. Morris Collen (EE’35), pioneer in medical computing, dies
Alumnus Dr. Morris Collen (EE’35) died in September, 2014, at his home in Walnut Creek, Calif.
Dr. Collen pioneered the use of computers to improve medical care and published a book in 1995 titled “A History of Medical Informatics in the United States, 1950-1990.” Prior to his death he had just completed an updated version of the book to include the additional history of medical informatics from 1990 to 2010.In addition, Dr. Collen was an original founder of the Kaiser Medical Group, now Kaiser Permanente Medical Group. He worked part time at the Kaiser Division of Research until his death.In 1935, after graduating with a Bachelor in Electronic Engineering from the University of Minnesota, he went on to study medicine at the University and graduated in 1938. He did his residency at  USC/Los Angeles County General Hospital and in 1942 he met
Dr. Sidney Garfield. Drs. Garfield and Collen worked together to provide care for the Henry J. Kaiser shipyard workers of Richmond. In 1948, along with five other physicians, Garfield and Collen founded the Kaiser medical group.
Dr. Collen served as chief of medical services from 1942-1952 at Kaiser’s Oakland Hospital and as medical director until 1953. He then became the physician-in-chief at Kaiser’s San Francisco Hospital until 1961.

Alumnus Ted Brekken (Ph.D. '05) received OSU College of Engineering Teaching Award
Prof. Ted Brekken (Ph.D. ’05) received the Oregon State University, College of Engineering (COE) Loyd Carter Award. This award is voted on by all COE students. This past year, Brekken “flipped”  all his classes using the Power engineering curriculum and materials created by Prof. Ned  Mohan. (Prof. Ned Mohan, former advisor)