Alumni News
EAC Member one of IBM's Top Inventors
Scott Winters, Director of development at IBM in Austin
and member of ECE's External Advisory Committee, is one of the top patent
producers at IBM. He received 25 patents last year; during his 18 years with
the company, his total is 65 patents and another 40 pending. He says that
inspiration can come from anywhere.
He was sitting in the food court at an Austin mall while his family shopped when he came up with a new system for a cell phone network that he later patented. Winters modeled a directory of cellular services on the way kiosk vendors display their merchandise.
Cypress Appoints ECE Alumnus, Chris Seams, Vice President of Marketing and Sales
Chris Seams, 1988 MSEE from UT-ECE, was promoted in June 2005 from VP of technology and manufacturing to VP of marketing and sales--a position that was expanded to include assembly and test operations. Seams' responsibilities include order entry, production control, back-end manufacturing and customer support.
Seams is a senior member of IEEE, serves on the IEEE EDS Semiconductor Manufacturing Committee, the Executive Committee of the International Symposium on Semiconductor Manufacturing, and is a director on the boards of SunPower and 1st Silicon.
Alumni in the News
- Anthony Ha joined Aspectrics's R&D department as a senior software engineer to develop embedded systems for application specific chemometric analyzers.
- John Graff, National Instruments' VP of marketing, and Phil Hester, chief executive officer of Newisys, participated in a new mentoring program initiated by UT-Austin's Student-Alumni Relations Team (START).
ECE Graduate, Raymond C. Almgren, receives two Alumni Awards Simultaneously
Ray Almgren
National Instruments VP, Ray Almgren, has been
honored twice recently by UT. The Texas Exes named him as one of their
Outstanding Young Texas Ex Award recipients. This award is reserved for
alumni who have made significant achievements in their careers and in service
to the university. Mr. Almgren, BSEE 1987, also received an
Outstanding Young Engineering Graduate award from the Cockrell School
of Engineering. The criteria for this honor includes distinguished
contributions to the field of engineering; service to the community and the
college; and acting as an exceptional role model.
Dr. James J. Truchard
The Cockrell School of Engineering also honored
Dr. James J. Truchard, President and CEO of National Instruments with a
Distinguished Graduate award. Dr. Truchard, Ph.D. E.C.E. 1974, is a member and
former chairman of the Engineering Foundation Advisory Council, works closely
with UT-Austin's Chancellor's Council, and is a former member of ECE's Visiting
Committee.
UT-ECE Alumni Shake up the West Coast
Jerry Frenkil
UT-ECE alumn and low-power expert, Jerry Frenkil, was
recently promoted to Sequence Design's chief technology officer.
Mr. Frenkil has over 25 years of experience in the semiconductor and EDA
industries. He predicts that increasing power constraints will force industry
to "aggressively embrace power efficent methodologies in all aspects of design".
More...
Steve Poizner
Steve Poizner made a fortune--twice. First in
geographic mapping software and then in cell phone locating technology for
emergency workers. The 1978 UT-ECE BSEE then became a White House Fellow
assigned to the National Security Council's anti-terrorism unit, government
teacher in a tough San Jose high school, and candidate for the California
State Assembly. More...
ECE Alumnus Wins Prestigious Fellowship to Research Computer Vision
ECE alumn and Georgia Tech computer science Ph.D.
candidate, Gabriel J. Brostow, won one of only two
Marshall Sherfield Fellowships awarded to American science and engineering
students to study at a British university. He is the first computer science or
engineering student selected since the award was created in 1998.
Brostow's research specialty, computer vision, initially started as a sub-domain of artificial intelligence but has grown to include numerous researchers focusing on medical imaging, machine learning, forensics, robotics, and graphics to name a few. At UT-ECE, Dr. J. K. Aggarwal's Computer and Vision Research Center spearheads the analysis and understanding of images, signals, and data, and the development of the computer resources required to accomplish these tasks. More...
ECE Alumnus Receives IEEE-USA Fellowship and is Elected to HKN Board of Governors
Dr. Steve E. Watkins, associate professor of
electrical engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla, received one of
two highly competitive IEEE-USA Congressional Fellowships for 2004. The
Fellowships are awarded to U.S. members of the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE) to involve engineers in the public policy process
by having them serve on personal or committee staff in the US Congress.
Dr. Watkins was also elected as Director-at-large for the Eta Kappa Nu, the National Electrical and Computer Engineering Honor Society. He is serving a 2004-2007 term on the nine-member Board of Governors. Over 200 chapters have been chartered since the organization began on October 28, 1904. The organization celebrated its centennial with an October 2004 conference at the University of Illinois.
Dr. Watkins studied under Dr. Michael Becker and received his PhD from ECE in 1989.
What Was Your Most Memorable Moment at UT? Alumni Speak Out.
Brian Bloom, BSEE 1992
Brian Bloom of Vancouver, WA and currently working towards a Masters degree in Computer Science at Portland State University:
"Bizarrely, I miss the old eggroll stands on the corner... Go figure. And all the antics in the HKN, IEEE, and IEEE-CS offices. Those places were my home away from home."
Jennifer Greeson, BSEE 2002
Now a graduate student at Rice:
"Wow ... there's too many to pick just one. I really miss the people, the campus and the overall atmosphere."
Rohan Jasani, BSEE 2002
"The moment right after my last EE final..."
Johnny (Anuj) Kumar, BSEE 1983 and JD 1993
Now a shareholder at the law firm of
Heller Ehrman in Washington DC:
"Returning to the UT Campus to conduct on-campus recruiting always brings back a lot of happy memories from the time that I spent at UT."
Monty Mitra, BS 2001
Engineer with Eastman Kodak:
Dr. William Schaffer, MS 1973 and PhD 1977
Owner of Advanced Materials Processing in California:
"The 1969(?) national championship football season. John Cogdell's circuits course, Ed Powers' course in Fourier Optics, hours and hours of graduate work under Bob Bene and Rodger Walser."
Tom Thomas, MS 1994
CEO of Ekomate Systems India Pvt Ltd and the
Texas-Ex representative in Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley:
"The day I got admitted to the prestigious Masters program in Computer Engineering with Prof Jacob Abraham as my advisor. Some of my most memorable moments were spent at the Computer Engineering Research Center (CERC) at UT."
ECE Alumnus, Dr. Luan D. Nguyen, Thrives with WebOffice
A three-year old startup focused on providing small businesses, government agencies, and service providers with a low-cost way to share business information over the Internet is thriving despite the economic slump. WebOffice, founded by Dr. Nguyen and and Dr. Lan Vu who met at UT as undergraduates, offers products that can be set up in 10 minutes, cost only one-fifth as much as similar systems, and allow various locations of a business to share share and move large files quickly and easily without employing rigid, centralized controls. More...
Of his student days Dr. Nguyen says, "UT's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering was a formative and unique educational experience for me. It was there I met some of the people I still network with in business everyday, and the coursework challenged me to think in new ways and focus intently on which problems are most important to solve. The capability to exercise and stimulate your brain cells and do it with joy and fun is key to me, and is a good foundation for success."
Congratulations to ECE Alumn, Duy-Loan Le
The Texas Exes recently named Le as one of four recipients of the Outstanding Young Texas Ex award. She was also elected this summer to the National Instruments Board of Directors. Le, a Senior Fellow at Texas Instruments, was born to middle-class parents in Saigon, Vietnam, in 1962. Her family fled the country when she was 12. Four years later, she graduated valedictorian of her high school and 3 years later, in 1982, she graduated from UT ECE with a BSEE. More...
ECE Alumnus: Albert McQuown
Albert McQuown began EE graduate school after serving in the Navy in World War II. He worked at the Electrical Engineering Research Lab alongside another graduate student named Francis Bostick.
McQuown received his master's degree and began working. He spent the last 20 years of his career designing and building security systems for public buildings-first with his own company, later as a consulting engineer. McQuown designed and approved the fire alarm systems for the VA Hospital in Temple and the Texas State Hospital and more complex security systems at a number of Texas jails.
Two years ago, McQuown donated 40 years of IEEE Proceedings to the University and has offered to let ECE display some of his vintage radios.