Fall 2005 Newsletter

Welcome Back

Faculty and Staff on the Move

Edison Lecture Series

Upcoming
Events

From Departmental Chair Anthony Ambler

Greetings and welcome back! There have been a few changes over the summer. The biggest changes have been to the staff organizational chart. We put a lot of time and effort into trying to tailor job duties to the strengths of various staff members and I think the results will be a smoother, more efficient use of our talented staff.

We are also making a concerted effort to automate as many processes as possible. All the equipment available for check-out on the second-floor has been bar-coded. From now on students, faculty, and staff will be able to check-out what they need with just their UT ID or EID with proof of identity. It should speed up the check-out process, give us better records, and make inventory easier. Even better, students can log-on to a secure website (https://goto.ece.utexas.edu/lab/check/) and review their check-out records. This will give them an opportunity to resolve any issues BEFORE having a bar placed on their records.

Faculty and Staff on the Move

New ECE professor, Dr. Ranjit Gharpurey, comes to us from the University of Michigan. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley where he was awarded the Berkeley Fellowship for Graduate Study. He worked at Texas Instruments for 8 years before returning to academia.

His current research is in the area of RF and high-frequency analog design. He is teaching two graduate courses this fall—one on mixed-signal system design and modeling and the other on radio frequency integrated circuit design—and will be introducting a new course that he designed related to analog and RFICs in the spring. Professor Gharpurey was attracted to technical opportunities in the Department and the greater Austin area.

New staff members include Cristine Ayala, WNCG's new financial quarterback. Charlotte Harris took over as Executive Assistant for EDGE. Selina Keilani and Mel Villarreal support various faculty members. Robert Myers fled the frigid north (Minnesota) to work in ECE's IT group as did our new procurement officer, Steven Moore (Pickle Research Center).

Sadly, one of our most eminent faculty is retiring. Dr. Irwin Sandberg is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a life fellow of the IEEE, an IEEE Centennial Medallist, an IEEE Millennial Medallist, a Circuits and Systems Society Golden Jubilee Medal recipient, and member of the National Academy of Engineering.

His contributions to the theory of stability of nonlinear systems are widely known. His research is applied in the design of control systems, neural networks and frequency-conversion circuits for communication systems. His contributions in nonlinear networks have provided a better understanding of the properties of the circuit equations and how best to use a computer to solve them.