ECE News for 2007

Happy Holidays from ECE

Drs. Yilmaz and Ling win Grant to Study Electromagnetic Waves and Antennas in Forests

This collaborative effort will demonstrate how the latest CEM solvers can be effectively tailored and deployed on high-performance computers to analyze complex systems in nature. The developed methodology can also benefit other applications involving wave interactions with synthetic media such as electromagnetic metamaterials.

Dr. Aggarwal Receives International Award

Professor J.K. Aggarwal recently received the 2007 Okawa Prize, awarded each year by the Okawa Foundation for Information and Telecommunication of Japan. The Okawa Prize honors those who have made outstanding contributions to the research, technological development, and business in the information and telecommunication fields. Dr. Aggarwal was cited for "Outstanding Contribution to Conception and Pioneering Research of Dynamic Scene Analysis and Multisensor Fusion in Computer Vision Systems." He received a gold medal and 10 million yen (~$92K).

Professor Aggarwal is also the recipient of the 2004 King-Sun Fu Prize of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR) and the 2005 Leon K. Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE). He is a Fellow of IAPR, IEEE, and AAAS.

EE 464 Senior Lab Winners

First Place Mobile Ad-Hoc Network Test-bed Bart Gillan, John Fraziler, Nick Paine TA: Pierre Collinet	Second Place Remote Kitchen Control using Webservices Sonik Shah, Chen Ding, Adam Tyler, Abel Mathew TA: Bassem El Karablieh	Third Place Portable Sign Language to Speech Translator Cong Wang, Esther Kim, Michelle Garich, Lauren Jarvis TA: Mohit Singh
Fourth Place RFID Bus Tracking System Lisa De La Fuente, James Teherani, Nady Obeid, Carlos Silva TA: Kris Gleason	Fifth Place Data Acquisition System with Ad-Hoc Network Tim Craddock, Richard Broderick, William Forrest, Adilbek, Imanbaev, Ernst Leiss TA: Sanghyun Chi	Sixth Place Autopilot for UAV Ross Dickey, Franco Alamo, Jonathan Bowman, Kevin Baker, Muhammad Ali TA: Pierre Collinet

Students win Computer Architecture Best Paper Award

Grad student, Elias Mizan, and ECE undergrad, Tileli Amimeur, received the 2007 Best Paper Award at the 19th International Symposium on Computer Architecture and High Performance Computing. Their paper, "Self-Imposed Temporal Redundancy: An Efficient Technique to Enhance the Reliability of Pipelined Functional Units", discussed a new technique that allows computational circuits in microprocessors to produce more reliable results, effectively reducing the rate of errors. The paper was chosen from among 107 submissions and 32 accepted papers.

The late Professor Margarida Jacome is a co-author. Mr. Mizan says, "Even though Margarida was sick during the time we worked on this paper, she played an active role in guiding us to investigate the issue in detail and produce a high-quality publication. Most importantly, she believed in the value of my idea and encouraged me to set high standards and develop a full-length paper, rather in a short workshop publication, as I initially intended to."

ECE Grad Student Wins 2 Best Paper Awards

Awards Distributed at the Fall Banquet

Faculty and staff were recognized at the annual graduating seniors' banquet. The Undergraduate Student Affairs Office received special recognition for a job well done. Undergraduate adviser, Professor John Pearce, won the Lepley Teaching Award for sustained classroom excellence. The undergraduate academic advisers received special commendation for substantial contributions to the departmental mission. They collectively won the Chairman's Excellence Award, which is the operational equivalent of the High Gain Award. Stephanie Peco won HKN's Staff Merit Award and Dr. Frances Bostick won HKN's Faculty Merit Award. Both were given in recognition of general splendidness. Dr. Archie Holmes gave new graduates advice about navigating work and graduate school and HKN president, Nady Obeid, supervised the HKN raffle.

Professor Kwasinski's Paper Proposes a New Telecom Design

Dr. Alexis Kwasinski received the best technical paper award at the 29th International Telecommunications Energy Conference (INTELEC) for the paper entitled "Telecom Power Planning for Natural and Man-Made Disasters". The paper, co-authored by Dr. Philip Krein from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discusses a planning framework to reduce telecommunication network power supply vulnerability during natural and man-made disasters. One of the alternatives suggested in the paper is to use of alternative distributed generation technologies, such as photovoltaic panels, small wind generators, microturbines, and fuel cells, to diversify energy supply. During the presentation of the award, Mr. Grossoni—INTELEC 2007 Chairman—highlighted both the technical value and the social implications of the framework suggested in the paper.

INTELEC is one of the three main annual conferences supported by the IEEE Power Electronics Society. The conference is the main forum dedicated to the analysis and discussion of issues related with telecommunications and data-networks energy systems technologies, and related devices and circuits.

Dr. Garg's Research Makes Computing More Efficient

Vijay Garg, Cullen Trust Endowed Professor, was awarded $242K from the National Science Foundation. The project introduces the idea of fusible data structures and fusible state machines. Given a fusible data structure, it is possible to combine a set of such structures into a single 'fused' structure. This approach greatly reduces the space required for backups compared to currently used methods without significantly affecting normal operations on the original data structures. The project involves implementing a library that uses fusion for standard data types, thus enabling users to transparently use these ideas in their programs without any programming overhead.

Professor Garg has authored four textbooks--Concurrent and Distributed Computing in Java, Elements of Distributed Computing, Principles of Distributed Systems, and Modeling and Control of Logical Discrete Event Systems--and is a recognized expert on distributed systems.

Dr. Caramanis wins $2M to Study Air Traffic

Professor Constantine Caramanis and colleagues at MIT received a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study the National Air Transportation System (NATS) as an autonomously reconfigurable engineered system, enabled by cyber-infrastructure. The NATS is a core part of the national economy. Recent studies project that disturbance-induced congestion and delays will soon make the current system unstable, thus threatening to arrest growth and expansion. In short, the current system is unsustainable.

Dr. Caramanis’ research will develop new mathematical models and tools, cooperative and distributed algorithms and protocols to enable the NATS to be robust to unforeseen disturbance and uncertain events, through autonomous reconfigurability. This is accomplished through dynamic, distributed, iterative and optimization-based capacity allocation and scheduling mechanisms, complemented by dynamic pricing and collaborative arrangements between airlines.

ECE Graduate Student wins Fellowship

ECE graduate student, Yonghyun Kim, recently received the prestigious Applied Materials Graduate Fellowship. The fellowship includes $17,000 cost of educational allowance and $18,000 annual stipend, which can be renewable up to 3 years. The fellowship is awarded to excellent engineering and science graduate students.

Kim studies semiconductor defects as well as process simulations for ultrashallow junction formation of CMOS under Professor Sanjay Banerjee.

Professor Ghosh Wins Two New NSF Grants

Dr. Joydeep Ghosh recently won two new grants worth over $1M to study land use and improve analysis of large and complex data sets. The National Science Foundation awarded the money to Dr. Ghosh and his co-PI's, M. Crawford and B. Pijanowski of Purdue University, for a project called "Advanced learning and integrative knowledge transfer approaches to remote sensing and forecast modeling for understanding land use change." This research applies data mining techniques for long-term forecasting of land use change over large geographical areas using both remotely sensed and GIS data sources.

The second projects is called "Versatile Co-clustering Analysis for Bi-modal and Multi-modal Data." Professor Ghosh and co-PI, Dr. Inderjit S. Dhillon of UT-Computer Science, will analyze very large and complex data sets, including tensor data and relational data such as large social networks, to find natural grouping and similarities among objects. This research can enhance our understanding of underlying physical, economic or social phenomena.

Parents' Day 2007

Professor Bovik works on Next-Generation Video Quality

The National Science Foundation awarded $272,764 for a project entitled "Quality Assessment of Natural Videos," under the direction of Dr. Alan Bovik, the Keys and Joan Curry/Cullen Trust Endowed Chair of ECE.

The goal of the project is to formulate an objective measurement of image quality and embed the quality measurement techniques into the very algorithms that process images and videos. A reliable quality metric could dynamically monitor and adjust image quality. It could also be used to optimize and benchmark algorithms and image processing systems—and ultimately, help design algorithms whose quality prediction is in good agreement with subjective scores from human observers.

ECE Welcomes Companies

Schlumberger Day - Sept 19

National Instruments Day - Sept 24

Dr. Yilmaz awarded NSF Grant for Computational Electromagnetic Research

Professor Ali Yilmaz recently received a $150K grant from the National Science Foundation to develop fast multiscale algorithms for computational electromagnetics (CEM). CEM algorithms in particular and numerical algorithms in general grind to a halt when confronted with problems involving real-world systems due to the “tyranny of scales”. Physical phenomena occurring across large ranges of length and time scales are often critical for the operation of complex systems; unfortunately, few conventional algorithms are efficient and robust enough for computations involving more than a single scale of interest. Innovative CEM algorithms are needed to overcome the difficulties inherent in multiscale modeling and analysis.

Dr. Yilmaz’s team will develop multiscale extensions for state-of-the-art fast algorithms and incorporate them to CEM simulators. The simulators resulting from this research effort will enable the first-principles analysis of a variety of challenging electromagnetic propagation, scattering, and radiation problems, which ultimately will advance the understanding, design, and optimization of complex engineering systems.

Thank you, CO-OP and Gonzalo Zapata, for our new Student Lounges!

Before:	After: Ohm's Coffee Shop	Before:	After: 7th floor Penthouse Study Area - Inside	After: 7th floor Penthouse Study Area - Outside

Sriram Vishwanath wins Army Research Office's Young Investigator Award

Dr. Sriram Vishwanath received a $300,000 U.S. Army Research Office Young Investigator Award to design transmission strategies of wireless networks that are both optimal in performance and simple in complexity and structure.  The award is intended to support the research, teaching and careers of university faculty members who have held their doctorate for five years or less.

Dr. Vishwanath also won a NSF CAREER Award and the 2005 IEEE Joint IT/Comsoc Best Paper Award.

Dr. Abraham wins Best Paper Award at Major Symposium

Dr. Jacob Abraham and two of his graduate students—Hongjoong Shin and Byoungho Kim—received the Best Paper Award at the 24th IEEE VLSI Test Symposium for a possible solution to loopback testing problems. The paper, "Spectral Prediction for Specification-Based Loopback Test of Embedded Mixed-Signal Circuits", outlines a new approach to testing mixed-signal circuits. Instead of using the traditional time-domain approach, Professor Abraham and his team were able to create a composite loopback response of all the devices being tested, extract characteristic parameters, and use spectral predictors to provide demonstrably more accurate test results.

The IEEE VLSI Test Symposium has been a premier test conference since it's inception in 1982 with international attendance and a rigorous selection process.

Dr. Pan wins NSF CAREER Award

Prof. David Z. Pan recently won a $410K National Science Foundation CAREER award. The NSF Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) is its most prestigious award for junior faculty using a highly competitive peer-review process. Dr. Pan’s research focuses on nanometer VLSI CAD and design/manufacturing integration.  This project will develop a synergistic CAD framework that enables holistic design and process integration. It will resort to the root causes of yield losses by developing a set of design-oriented and variation-aware manufacturing/yield models. Meanwhile, novel multi-objective design/manufacturing optimizations will be studied at various abstraction levels. The project will further investigate design and process integration issues for emerging technologies such as nanolithography and hybrid CMOS/post-CMOS processes. If successful, Professor Pan's research will help fill the critical gaps between IC design and manufacturing to further extend the scaling and economic benefits of the Moore’s Law.

This is another major recognition that Dr. Pan received in the past couple of years. He won ACM/SIGDA Outstanding New Faculty Award in 2005, IBM Faculty Awards three times (2004-2006), ISPD 2007 Routing Contest Awards, etc. He has been serving as an Associate Editor for three IEEE transactions, TCAD (2006-), TVLSI (2007-), and TCAS-II (2006-), and will be the General Chair for the 2008 ACM International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD), the premier conference on IC physical design.

Professor Orshansky named Outstanding New Faculty by SIGDA

Dr. Michael Orshansky, NSF CAREER Award recipient, was named Outstanding New Faculty by the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) interest group on design automation. 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 selection committee weighs research and teaching accomplishments, but especially considers “the impact that the candidate has had on her or his department and on the EDA field during the initial years of their academic appointment.”

In the past year, Dr. Orshansky was the program chair of the Austin Conference on Integrated Systems & Circuits and won the IEEE/ACM William J. McCalla ICCAD Best Paper Award at International Conference on Computer-Aided Design ( ICCAD). His paper, "Joint Design-Time and Post-Silicon Minimization of Parametric Yield Loss using Adjustable Robust Optimization" is co-authored with two of his graduate students, Murari Mani and Ashish K. Singh and describes a novel technique for improvement of integrated circuit yield.

Fall 2007 Newsletter

We are extremely pleased that our national recognition has improved in the past year. The latest US News & World Report ranks UT-Austin's

• Undergraduate Electrical/Electronic/Communications #9 (up from #11)
• Undergraduate Computer Engineering #8
• Graduate Electrical/Electronic/Communications program #10
• Graduate Computer Engineering program #6 (up from #8)

Each of our programs is in the top 10. We are the only department in the Cockrell School of Engineering to move upwards this year.

More...

ECE Research Review for Industry

Computer Architecture and
VLSI/CAD Research Areas

The research faculty and their PhD students in computer architecture and VSLI/CAD will present a snapshot of the research in these areas that is going on in the ECE Department on August 28, 2007. The opening session will be held in ACES 2.302.

Everyone is welcome to attend at no charge.

AGENDA

Drs. Julien and Vishwanath win Grant to Create Flexible Test-Bed

Professors Christine Julien and Sriram Vishwanath received a $380K grant from the Air Force to create a test-bed for mobile, distributed and pervasive computing research. The grant will be used to create a flexible environment that incorporates different technologies into a single integrated test bed. Both graduate and undergraduate researchers will use the environment to study cross-layer information exchange, context-sensitive communication, adaptive mobile middleware, multimedia in mobile networks, and delay tolerant networking. In addition, the team intends to make the test bed available to students to use for projects in courses on mobile and ubiquitous computing.

This new grant is in addition to Dr. Julien's recent $472K grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for developing middleware abstractions in support of network-centric communication in sensor networks.

ECE Graduate Student wins Best Paper Award

PhD candidate, Ramakrishna Kotla, along with CS professors—Drs. Lorenzo Alvisi and Mike Dahlin—won the Best Paper Award at USENIX annual technical conference. Their paper, SafeStore: A Durable and Practical Storage System, proposes a solution for long-term data storage which protects it from hackers, human error, hardware and software failures, and environmental catastrophes. Their system, called SafeStore, is a new storage system architecture that ensures that duplicate data being stored at different locations is durable, cost effective, readily available, and audited for data loss. "It's the store, forget, and recover based storage system that everyone can use," says Mr. Kotla.

The USENIX conference is ranked as the seventh most influencial publication venue in Computer Science according to CiteSeer. Mr. Kotla's paper beat out 112 other papers for the Best Paper Award.

EE 464 Senior Lab Winners

First Place Multi-effect, Dual Output Guitar Control Board Joseph Crew and Ryan Moench TA: Pierre Collinet	Second Place Ad-Hoc Network Platform using Autonomous Vehicles Burt Snover and Daniel Mott TA: Sanghyun Chi	Third Place Constantly Variable Phase Shift Audio System Matthew Stone TA: Etienne Darphin
Fourth Place Voice-controlled Multiplication Table Device Karen Phan and Huan Lee TA: Sanghyun Chi	Fifth Place Automatic Control Outdoor Cooking Grill Asa Kirby and Suraya Fakhreddine TA: Yeo-Joon Kim	Sixth Place Digital Game System Gavin Rade and Adam Larue TA: Etienne Darphin

ECE Alumni win Best Paper Award

ECE alumni, Drs. Kagan Tumer and Adrian Agogino, received the Best Paper Award at the 2007 International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS). Drs. Tumer and Agogino, both supervised by Professor Joydeep Ghosh while at UT, are researching ways to accommodate the anticipated tripling of air traffic over the next decade. The current system routes flights on the basis of projections that do not take into account rapidly changing conditions in weather or airport congestion. Drs. Tumer and Agogino's approach is to create agents to govern specific air locations and use reinforcement learning to keep them informed of changing conditions. This approach shows a 67% reduction in congestion over current air traffic flow management.

Dr. Agogino is now with NASA Ames and Professor Tumer works at Oregon State. The AAMAS is the preeminent agent conference with more than 500 participants from 34 different countries and an acceptance rate of 23%. More...

Dr. Bovik wins $300K for Video Research

Professor Al Bovik recently received a $300K grant from the National Science Foundation entitled "Quality Assessment of Natural Videos." The research proposed by Dr. Bovik will create powerful Video Quality Assessment (VQA) algorithms that correlate highly with human visual perception of video quality.

Digital video acquisition, networking, storage and display devices have advanced to an extraordinary degree of sophistication, leading to the rapid rise of many popular and globally deployed networked applications as Internet Video, Interactive Video on Demand (VoD), Video Telepresence, Video Phones, PDAs and other Wireless Video devices, Video Surveillance, HDTV, Digital Cinema etc.

Monitoring and controlling the quality of broadcast video streams is essential towards improving quality of service (QoS). Yet, progress in methods for performing reliable video quality analysis has remained quite limited. In this work, Dr. Bovik and his students will extend their world-leading work on (still) image quality assessment to the video domain. The expected benefits of the research are far-reaching, since successful VQA algorithms are likely to be deployed throughout the global wireline and wireless communication networks as well as in video acquisition and display devices.

ECE Grad Student accepts Faculty Position

PhD candidate, Shobha Vasudevan, has accepted an offer from the University of Illinois for an assistant professor position. "UIUC is included among the nation's top few research institutions and the ECE department has maintained a reputation of excellence and world class research for the past many decades," says Ms. Vasudevan. "I am very excited and will be starting sometime in Fall 2007."

Ms. Vasudevan was advised by Dr. Jacob Abraham and was selected from over 250 candidates. Her research is concentrated on formal verification of hardware.

She has some advice for graduate students interested in faculty positions:
"The journey through grad school, from a diffident incoming grad student in 2001 to a professor in a top flight institution, has been a tough but rewarding one. More...

Prof. Lizy John receives NSF Grant

Dr. Lizy John was awarded a $300K grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for research on using workload characterization to predict computer system performance.

Dr. John's team will produce a workload distiller to capture essential properties of workloads and create miniature program spines to help evaluate performance and power during presilicon design exploration. They will also formulate a methodology to create scalable benchmarks for performance estimation of futuristic systems and workloads. Benchmarking methodology for multi-core systems will also be developed.

Dr. John is an expert in this field. She has edited a book on computer performance evaluation and three books on workload characterization. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, DARPA, IBM, Intel, Motorola, AMD, Texas Instruments, Tivoli and Microsoft Corporations.

AMD pledges $1 Million to UT-ECE

AMD announced a $1 million endowment to UT-ECE last week. This unique endowment, the first of its kind at the university, will be used for course redesign, student and faculty support and laboratory improvement, and will be administered by Chairman Tony Ambler. The funds will be given over a four-year period.

For more than a decade, AMD has worked with ECE to support higher education and recruit top engineering talent. AMD Day is a yearly event. AMD also contributes generously to various projects, scholarships, and faculty endowments; collaborates on research; and sponsors student design contests. In 2006, AMD trained 100 co-ops and interns from ECE and hired 16 new college graduates. Since 2000, AMD has hired approximately 200 new graduates from UT-ECE, more than from any other single university.

"AMD and UT Austin’s collaboration enables the university to continue the important work of educating and inspiring tomorrow’s innovators and helps us recruit top talent. It is my hope that the AMD Chair of Computing Engineering continues to push the limits of what is possible for the university, its students and AMD," said Dirk Meyer, president and chief operating officer, AMD.

Rappaport Elected to IEEE Communications Society Board of Governors

Professor Ted Rappaport has been elected to the IEEE Communications Society (Com Soc) Board of Governors. Com Soc is one of the largest of IEEE’s 39 industry-leading technical Societies with 145 chapters and members in 71 countries worldwide. Dr. Rappaport will serve as a Member-at-Large and as a member of the Operations Committee (Op Com). Only one member of the newly elected class is selected from the group to serve on this additional committee. In the past Prof. Rappaport has served Com Soc as the Technical Program Chairman for the IEEE Global Communications Conference in 2004, member of the IEEE Communications Society Awards Committee, liaison between Com Soc and the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society, and special assistant to the editorial board of the IEEE Communications Magazine.

ECE Mourns the Loss of a Scholar and Friend

Margarida Jacome passed away on the morning of Friday, May 25th, having battled against cancer for several months. We are all deeply shocked at her passing on but we are left with fond memories of her presence, character, hard work, and technical prowess - she was loved by everyone who came across her.

The Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering at both The University of Texas at Austin and at Carnegie Mellon are creating a joint Graduate Student Fellowship in her name – Margarida’s passion was for her research and for her students and it would seem very appropriate that we should do this.

If you would like to make a donation to this Fellowship, please send your contribution made out to ‘The University of Texas’ and marked ‘For Margarida’ to:

• Anthony P Ambler
• Chairman, Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
• BN Gafford Endowed Professor in Electrical Engineering
• The University of Texas at Austin
• 1 University station C0803
• ENS Room 236
  
• Austin, TX 78712-0240

• Tel: (512) 471-6179
• Fax: (512) 471-3652
• ambler@mail.utexas.edu

Congratulations 2007 Graduates!

Edison Lecture Series reaches Thousands of Texas Schoolchildren

In the past 3 years, the Edison Lecture Series has inspired and informed almost 14,000 middle and high school students. Almost 8,000 have attended a live free hour-long show on The University of Texas at Austin campus. Another 6,000 students participated in Texas Connects: EDISON DAY, a day-long video conference presented by the Texas Education Telecommunications Network. Dr. Mack Grady also took the series on the road to the fifth grade science classes of Cypress Elementary in the Leander school district. For more information about the program, please see edisonlectureseries.org. Next year's topic is Surveillance.

Staff Recognized and Fed at Breakfast Event

Years of perseverance were recognized at a Staff Breakfast recently. The reasons that long-time staff members work here vary.

• Cristine Ayala (15 yrs): "I like the campus environment—the mix of people of various ages, backgrounds, and disciplines. I see the University from inside and out."
• Carole Bearden (20 yrs): "Most of my friends I met at UT. There are so many people here and I've made some really wonderful friends."
• Perry Durkee (25 yrs): "UT is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to find."
• Paul Landers (25 yrs): "I like the scenery."
• Terri Caldwell (30 yrs): "It's in my blood. My dad worked here for 44 years, my mom for 25. This is the only place to have a real job in my daddy's eyes."
• Merydith Turner (35 yrs): "My interests are varied and UT provides so many areas of academia and research that I am never bored. It is the most stimulating place in the world."

Graduate Student wins Best Paper Award

Graduate student, Ramya Bhagavatula, received the Best Student Paper Award at the 2007 Vehicular Technology Conference held in Dublin, Ireland, April 23 - 25, 2007 for her paper entitled "MIMO Antenna Placement for Multimedia Delivery in Aircraft." The paper is co-authored by Dr. Sriram Vishwanath and her advisor, Prof. Robert Heath. The Vehicular Technology Conference is one of the premier conferences for cutting edge research in wireless communication. The best student paper award was selected out of more than 1,200 submissions.

Sharon Bressette wins College of Engineering Staff Excellence Award

Sharon Bressette, Undergraduate Advising Center Coordinator, won a CoE Staff Excellence Award for "her leadership and dedication to ECE students." Sharon has been at UT since Fall 2003. Her promotion to Undergrad Office supervisor resulted in a sharp increase in student satisfaction. "Sharon has done a fantastic job with the Undergrad Office. It is a smooth-running machine full of contentious, people-people. She's great!" says Undergrad Advisor, Dr. John Pearce. "No one deserves this award more."

Graduate Students Excel

Kaibin Huang, jointly supervised by Professors Jeff Andrews and Robert Heath, won a University Continuing Fellowship. The Fellowship includes tuition and an $18K stipend. Huang is researching precoding for multiple antenna systems, spatial division multiple access, code division multiple access, adaptive modulation coding and power control.

Dr. Hao Ling's graduate student, Youngwook Kim, won the A.D. Hutchinson Fellowship which pays tutition plus a $19K stipend to support Kim's research in broadband antenna design, antenna optimization, and human target tracking.

Minsik Cho received a highly-competitive IBM Ph.D. Scholarship award in the amount of $10,000. This award was given in recognition of his academic excellence. Mr. Cho is a third year Ph.D. student studying under Prof. David Pan. His main research interest is VLSI Design Automation Algorithm for DFM.

Profs write Influential Papers

The International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA) recently recognized Professor Yale Patt and Dr. Tse-Yu Yeh for work they did 15 years ago. Every year the symposium selects one paper that has had the most impact on the field (in terms of research, development, products or ideas) during the intervening years. This year the paper was "Alternative Implementations of Two-Level Adaptive Branch Prediction."

Dr. Ananth Dodabalapur, along with co-authors, Dr. Wang and Dr. Torsi, wrote one of the 2006 Top 10 most viewed articles published in Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry. The paper, entitled "Nanoscale organic and polymeric field-effect transistors as chemical sensors" reviewed current research in organic and polymer semiconductor vapor-phase chemical sensing.

EE 464 Senior Lab Winners

First Place Vacuum Tube Audion Amplifier Bobby Kathuria and Junyong Chau TA: Sanghyun Chi	Second Place Ear Training and Music Composition for the Nintendo DS Lu Yang and Tien Quang Le TA: Etienne Darphin	Third Place Multipurpose Bioamplifier Manoochehr Hosseini and Chung-Chieh Lo TA: Sanmi Koyejo
Fourth Place Remote Home-Control System Sandy Hermawan, Christian Suwarna, and Wee Chin Tan TA: Bassem El Karablieh	Fifth Place Wireless Power Analysis and Control Mark McKeown and Erik Lee TA: Pierre Collinet	Sixth Place Power Bike Kit Instrumentation Package Cohen Davis Steed and Rium Tapjan TA: Ruoyu Li

2007 Spring Banquet Honors Staff and Students

IEEE recognized general excellence at the 2007 Graduating Senior Banquet including Stephanie Peco and Mike Fillipo tying for IEEE's Favorite Staff Award. The Ohm's Coffee Shop won for Biggest Improvement. Sterling Wei was crowned the Most ECE Student. The coveted ENS Dweller Award went to Will Ward. And finally, the Most Valuable Employees in ENS 135 went to the Undergraduate Student Affairs Office.

2007 Graduating Senior Banquet Honors Faculty

Five faculty members were recognized at the 2007 Spring Banquet. Senior Lecturer Bill Bard won the ECE Fellow medal for his service to the Department. Bill developed a network lab course, saved ECE money with VoIP, and is a popular mentor. Dr. Dean Neikirk's long service as Chairman of Graduate Studies Committee and Graduate Advisor was also acknowledged. "Dean has been guiding our graduate programs since fall of 1999 and our recent US News and World Report graduate school rankings owe a lot to his leadership." said Chairman Tony Ambler.

IEEE also presented awards. Dr. George Cardwell won Best Professor Award. Typical comments from students are: "I loved this class. I appreciated the straight-forward, no-bull atmosphere." "I wish I could take my entire degree with Dr. Cardwell." "Cardwell for President, '08" Dr. Yale Patt, co-author of Intro to Computing Systems: from bits and gates to C and beyond, won the Best Class Award for EE 306 - Introduction to Computing. "This is the course that decides it. Are you going to be an engineer or not?" said one student. And finally Chairman Tony Ambler received the prestigious Tony Ambler Award.

Jeff Andrews wins First High Gain Award

ECE's External Advisory Committee gave Professor Jeff Andrews their first High Gain Award for his work in ad hoc wireless networks. The High Gain Award was established to recognize exceptional contributions to the mission of the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Dr. Andrews recently received a $400K National Science Foundation CAREER award and a $6.5 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). "Jeff's research is at the forefront of his field." says Chairman Tony Ambler. "We feel very lucky to have him in the department."

Dr. Andrews' research focuses on understanding the fundamental performance limits and characteristics of ad hoc wireless networks, particularly at the physical layer. Ad hoc networks are far more challenging to design and analyze than centralized (for example cellular) networks due to the distributed nature of the nodes, and the unpredictable interference experienced by the receivers in the network. As a result, despite increasing interest, ad hoc networks have not become widely deployed. If successful, Professor Andrews' research plan will help provide theoretically-grounded guidelines for this emerging application of wireless technology

Wireless Pioneer Gives Distinguished Lecture

One of the most impressive and important people in the history of wireless communications, Dr. Irwin Jacobs, lectured on the future of wireless devices and applications. Dr. Jacobs co-wrote a seminal textbook on wireless communication back in the late 1960's (Wozencraft & Jacobs, still in use today) when an MIT professor, before founding Link-a-bit (the grandfather company of the San Diego telecommunications industry) and then co-founding Qualcomm with Andrew Viterbi. He was their CEO for the first two decades of their existence (until 2 years ago). More...

Professor Pan pushes IC Global Routing State-of-the-Art

In a very heated IC global routing contest at the International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD), the BoxRouter team from UT led by Dr. David Pan won 2nd place in the industry-strength 3D category. BoxRouter was based on a DAC 2006 paper by Minsik Cho and David Pan which helped to generate the recent renaissance of global routing research.

The ISPD’07 Global Routing contest's purpose was to guide researchers toward the most urgent challenges in the EDA industry and also to map out state-of-the-art solutions. It attracted 17 teams from US and Asia, including entries from industry, but only 11 teams survived at the final contest. BoxRouter completed the most number of circuits overall.

Professor Flake's Research Improves Electronic Testing

Dr. Robert Flake has tackled one of the fundamental problems of signal technology—distortion. He has developed a waveform, which he named “speedy delivery,” that keeps its shape over the entire transmission path. This ultra-fidelity signal technology holds great potential for advancing electronic test technology of high-speed computer and communication systems. For instance, cable companies currently have no way to test cables once they have been installed. Using Dr. Flake's waveform, cable companies would be able to go into the field with a laptop, oscilliscope, and waveform generator and diagnose performance problems. Companies would be able to locate communication delays between clustered computers and bus problems inside single computers with a low-cost system on a single mixed signal chip.

Spring Break 2007 at UT

HKN Wins E-Week.... Again!

For the fourth year in a row HKN dominated E-Week in the small group division, taking first place. American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) won the large group division by only 4 more points. The next closest organization was Tau Beta Pi (TBP) which trailed by 217 points. HKN won $500 for their efforts and will be "promoted" into the large group division next year.

ECE Dazzles the Masses

ExploreUT 2007 was bigger and better than ever. Volunteers from Electrical & Computer Engineering described the hazards and rewards of this major to potential undergraduates; gave away 15 boxes of t-shirts, pins, blinking light bulb novelties, posters, and toys; and explained the Doppler Effect, computer architecture, conductivity, wireless innovations, and how much exertion it takes to run a television.

Dr. Grady Wins Again!

The Women in Engineering program presented Professor W. Mack Grady, Associate Chairman of ECE, with another teaching award—the 2007 Advocate Award. Dr. Wallace Fowler, an Aerospace eningeering professor, and Dr. Grady were recognized as "outstanding faculty members viewed by students as helping advance women in the field of engineering."

"Dr. Grady is incredibly patient and really mentors girls, too," said one ECE undergraduate. Selection was based on nominations by College of Engineering students.

ECE TA, John Porterfield, One of the Best on Campus

ECE swept the Texas Exes teaching awards again. Professor Mack Grady, who also recently won an award from the Women in Eningeering program, picked up the best professor in the College of Engineering award and grad student, John Porterfield, was named the College's best TA.

Since 1982, the Texas Exes have honored a faculty member and graduate instructor in each school and college who has had a positive influence on the educational experience of university students.  A committee from each school reviews nominations from the student body and selects each school’s recipients. Porterfield received $500 as well as the recognition.

Undergrad Advisor wins University Award

Janice Williams, an academic advisor in the Undergraduate Student Affairs office, just won the Texas Exes’ James W. Vick Award for Academic Advising. Only four of these University-wide, student-nominated honors are given every year. The award is presented "to academic advisors who have had an effective, positive influence on the educational experience of university students."

Dr. John Pearce, ECE's faculty undergraduate advisor, says "Janice works very closely with our students and is obviously extremely well respected by them for her diligent attention to their advising needs. The Vick Advising Award will be presented at a luncheon on March 7, 2007.

Grad student and Dr. Ghosh win Honorable Mention at ICDM

ECE graduate student, Gunjan Gupta, and Professor Joydeep Ghosh just missed the best research paper award at the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining. Their paper, "Bregman Bubble Clustering: A Robust, Scalable Framework for Locating Multiple, Dense Regions in Data", came in second out of 776 submissions. Their research addresses the problem of grouping data in meaningful ways.

Dr. Andrews wins CAREER Award

Prof. Jeff Andrews was recently chosen as a recipient of a $400K National Science Foundation CAREER award.  The NSF Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) recognizes promising young faculty members using a highly competitive peer-review process.

Dr. Andrews' research focuses on understanding the fundamental performance limits and characteristics of ad hoc wireless networks, particularly at the physical layer. Ad hoc networks are far more challenging to design and analyze than centralized (for example cellular) networks due to the distributed nature of the nodes, and the unpredictable interference experienced by the receivers in the network. As a result, despite increasing interest, ad hoc networks have not become widely deployed. If successful, Professor Andrews' research plan will help provide theoretically-grounded guidelines for this emerging application of wireless technology. More...

Dr. Baldick becomes IEEE Fellow

ECE professor, Ross Baldick, was recently elevated to IEEE Fellow. Each year, following a rigorous evaluation procedure, the IEEE Fellows Committee recommends a select group for one of IEEE's most prestitious honors. Dr. Baldick was recognized "for contributions to analysis of power system economics."

Professor Baldick's research focuses on optimization and economic theory applied to electric power system operations and the public policy and technical issues associated with electric transmission under deregulation. Recent research analyzes the robustness of the electricity system subject to terrorist interdiction by testing different terrorist scenarios and assessing the amount of disruption each would cause.

ECE Grad Student Wins <br>Best Paper Award

Kaibin Huang, jointly supervised by Professors Jeff Andrews and Robert Heath, won Best Student Paper Award at the Global Telecommunications Conference. The paper, "Multi-Antenna Limited Feedback for Temporally-Correlated Channels: Feedback Compression," was also authored by Bishwarup Mondal, R. W. Heath, Jr., and J. G. Andrews. The GLOBECOM conference is one of the two biggest communications conferences every year (the other is ICC).

Ari Arapostathis named IEEE Fellow

Electrical & Computer Engineering professor, Ari Arapostathis was elected fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Fellows are academic and industry professionals with extraordinary accomplishments in the field of electrical engineering. Arapostathis was elected for his contributions in nonlinear and stochastic control as well as applications in power systems. Currently, he is developing control techniques that would allow U.S. Navy ships' power systems to continue operating after sustaining damage.

From Departmental Chair Anthony Ambler

Welcome back! We hope you enjoyed the extra days of rest and return to us full of energy for what promises to be an exciting semester. The UT-ECE faculty continues to inspire us with their accomplishments. Congratulations go to:

• Sanjay Banerjee, elected Fellow of the American Physical Society and director of The University of Texas at Austin’s new $30 Million Southwest Academy of Nanoelectronics
• Al Bovik, named Fellow of the Optical Society
• Michael Orshansky, winner of Best Paper Awards at two major conferences (ICCAD and ISQED)
• Jeffrey Andrews, Sanjay Shakkottai, Robert Heath, and CS professor, Peter Stone, recipients of a $6.5 Million grant from DARPA for pure research into ad-hoc wireless networks
• our two newest IEEE Fellows: Ari Arapostathis "for contributions in nonlinear and stochastic control and applications in power systems" and Ross Baldick "for contributions to analysis of power system economics."

More...

2007 Edison Lecture: Renewable Energy

The third annual Edison Lecture featured ECE professor and renewable energy authority, Dr. Mack Grady, and some of the country's leading lights in wind and solar power. The free interactive show included audience participation, give-aways, and demonstrations which brought the excitement of technology alive. Speakers discussed the ongoing transition from finite, expensive, and polluting energy sources to clean and cheap energy. More..

2007 Edison Lecture:
Renewable Energy
Thurs, Jan 11, 7 PM
UT-Austin Campus
Welch Hall, Rm. 2.224

FREE! interactive live show about solar power including audience participation, give-aways, and demonstrations which bring the excitement of technology alive! Power comes at a price. Currently most of the world uses finite, expensive, and polluting energy sources. UT professor and renewable energy authority, Dr. Mack Grady, will show students how far we’ve come in providing clean, cheap energy and the most promising directions for the future. Interactive exhibits include:

• student designers of an 800 sq ft off-the-grid solar house
• solar car designed, built, and “rayced” by UT undergraduates
• hybrid and electric car demonstrations
• TV powered by a bike

More...