ECE News for Fall 2005
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Dr. Garg Helps Organize India/America Teaching Exchange
UT-Austin Wins National Championship! The Texas victory ended USC’s 34-game winning streak and gives the Longhorns a 20-game streak, the longest in the nation. This is the Longhorns’ second consecutive Bowl Championship Series appearance and victory at the Rose Bowl. The Tower will be lighted entirely orange with the #1 displayed on Thursday, Jan. 5, and it will remain lighted throughout the weekend. More... 2005 Holiday Party
Mr. Glenn Andrew was honored at the Fall Banquet for his years of service to the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department. Mr. Andrew was the head of the External Advisory Committee which is responsible for helping the Chairman evaluate and improve the Department.
Faculty Briefs
Professor Jake Aggarwal was selected as an 2005 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Dr. Aggarwal, a member of the UT-Austin ECE faculty since 1964, was honored for his fundamental contributions to the theory and practice of image sequence analysis for the recognition of objects in images. AAAS Fellows are chosen annually by their peers to recognize their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. In addition to its educational efforts and serving as a professional association, AAAS publishes the prestigious journal Science. Pictures from Staff Meeting
Dr. Sandberg Retires
ECE Professors Write 4% of all UT-Austin's Research Papers Between 2000 and 2004, professors in the UT-Austin Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering wrote 442 papers. This means that out of almost 60 departments at UT-Austin, 4.01% of all research papers produced by UT-Austin were written by the ECE department. This prodigious output also places UT-ECE #1 in the country for the number of research papers published by an electrical engineering department and #4 for the percentage of a university's total papers. More... Marty Ringuette Leaves after 21 Years Marty Ringuette, known for his dry sense of humor and way with a soldering iron, was honored at a farewell breakfast on Nov. 3, 2005. Marty worked at ECE for 21 years in a variety of positions. He accepted another job in the Physics Department.
Schulumberger reps reached out to ECE faculty and students by speaking in several classes on November 2. The highlight of Schlumberger Day was a distinguished lecture by Schlumberger Fellow, Dr. Brian Clark. He discussed some basic (but often poorly known) facts about today's energy supplies, and looked at what might be coming in the near future. More... Parent's Weekend
Cisco came to campus looking for interns and co-ops! Students had multiple opportunities to meet Cisco staff and hand them their resumes. Cisco also picked up the tab for lunch on the ENS lawn.
Ben's Bash - Tailgate and Watch Party
The Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering's Distinguished Lecture Series and the UT VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) Seminar Series jointly hosted Dr. Larry Pileggi of Carnegie Mellon on Friday, Oct 14. Dr. Pileggi gave a lecture entitled "Regular Circuit Fabrics for CMOS Design at Nanoscale". Dr. Pileggi is a leading researcher in the area of integrated system design. Recently he has focused on the advantages of constructing circuits from simpler, more regular structures and geometry patterns than those used today. Restricting the number of unique layout patterns can lower design and manufacturing costs. More... ECE Grad Students Win Fellowships to Pursue Wireless Research Two Electrical & Computer Engineering Ph.D. candidates have received significant fellowship awards to aid their research in multi-antenna communication. Wan Choi and Bishwarup Mondal are working on a new technology to improve reception quality of cellular phones. Mr. Choi is supervised by Prof. Jeff Andrews and Mr. Mondal is supervised by Prof. Robert Heath. More...  Dr. Rappaport among Most Highly Cited Researchers and Receives IEEE Award Electrical & Computer Engineering Professor Theodore Rappaport has been named among the most highly cited researchers in computer science, according to the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Researchers on the ISI Highly Cited list are recognized for total citations of papers indexed and must rank among the 250 most cited in the world from 1984-2003. The list can be found at www.isihighlycited.com/. Rappaport was also recently selected to receive the Stuart Meyer Memorial Award for his contributions to the wireless industry. The Vehicular Technology Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers gives the Stuart Meyer Memorial Award to researchers who have developed radio technology and science in an “outstanding and exemplary manner,” evidenced by publications and patents. More... From the Austin American Statesman A University of Texas engineering professor has earned a $241,000 grant from the Department of Energy to help in the effort to safeguard the country's electricity grid from terrorist attack. Ross Baldick, a professor at UT since 1994, received the money for his program that analyzes different terrorist scenarios and assesses the amount of disruption each would cause. More...
R&D Magazine, which reports on the application of new technology, has listed a creation by UT-Austin Electrical & Computer Engineering professor as one of the best 100 inventions for 2004.
Sanjay Banerjee and visiting professor Rajiv Singh, made the "R&D 100 Awards" list for improving a transistor fabrication technique that allows creation of better, faster and smaller computer chips. The technique is called chemical mechanical polishing (CMP), a method addressing the problem of rough and uneven silicon during transistor fabrication. Banerjee and Singh developed a slurry, or mixture of abrasive particles and reactive chemicals, that will polish silicon more uniform and at a faster rate than previous methods. More... HKN Freshmen Burger Burn
SigmaTel visited ECE on Wednesday, Sept. 14th. Company reps showcased the mixed-signal integrated circuits that are dominating the flash based MP3 player market and talked to students about co-op and intern opportunities at the company recently named The Best Place to Work in Central Texas by The Austin Business Journal. After a free pizza lunch, Sr. VP, Mike Wodopian gave a distinguished lecture that specifically addressed student concerns:
At the subsequent raffle, Usama Ubiadullah Syed won the Oakley Thump sunglasses.
Dr. David Pan joined ECE's faculty two years ago. Since then he has founded a research group, co-sponsored a seminar series, developed two new courses, published over a dozen papers, won the highly competitive IBM Faculty Award (twice), and may have solved some of the most challenging and high-impact problems that the semiconductor and EDA industries face. Little wonder that he was selected by ACM as the winner of the 2005 ACM/SIGDA Outstanding New Faculty Award. The award recognizes a junior faculty member early in her or his academic career who demonstrates outstanding potential as an educator and/or researcher in the field of electronic design automation. The award will be presented at the opening ceremony of the 2005 International Conference on Computer Aided Design (ICCAD), the premier scientific conference in the area of computer-aided design. More... ECE Professor in the News The IBM Austin Center for Advanced Studies awarded $280,000 to 10 UT professors. Dr. Lizy John was the only researcher from the College of Engineering to receive a grant. Dr. John's research focuses on high performance processors, memory systems, and caches; low-power design; compiler optimization techniques; program behavior studies; workload characterization; and rapid prototyping. |
Glenn Andrew Retires as 
