UT ECE News

Profs. Mikhail Belkin and Neal Hall Receive DARPA 2012 Young Faculty Awards

Tue, 15 May 2012 14:47:08 EST

UT ECE professors Mikhail Belkin and Neal Hall have been named recipients of 2012 DARPA Young Faculty Awards. According to DARPA, "The objective of the DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) program is to identify and engage rising research stars in junior faculty positions at U.S. academic institutions and expose them to Department of Defense needs as well as DARPA’s program development process.

Dr. Mikhail Belkin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. Mikhail Belkin's current research interests include the development of novel quantum cascade lasers, giant optical nonlinearities in semiconductor nanostructures, mid-infrared and THz photonic and plasmonic systems for chemical sensing, and metamaterials in mid-infrared.

Dr. Neal Hall is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Hall came to UT Austin from Silicon Audio, LLC, a high-tech venture he co-founded to commercialize state-of-the-art acoustic and seismic sensors with respect to high fidelity and small size. Dr. Hall served as principal investigator (PI) on several projects including the development of a MEMS-based seismometer for nuclear explosion monitoring (sponsored by DOE), and the development of low-cost, high-performance MEMS microphones that leverage optical-based motion detection principles (sponsored by NSF).

Prof. Mattan Erez Receives Department of Energy Early Career Research Award

Tue, 15 May 2012 14:47:08 EST

UT ECE professor Mattan Erez has been named a recipient of an Early Career Research Award from the Department of Energy for his work on programming and execution model support for resiliency. Dr. Erez is one of 68 scientists selected for the five years award out of 850 candidates.

According to the Department of Energy, the "funding opportunity for researchers in universities and DOE national laboratories, now in its third year, supports the development of individual research programs of outstanding scientists early in their careers and stimulates research careers in the disciplines supported by the DOE Office of Science."

Dr. Mattan Erez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Erez's research focus is computer architecture. Specifically, he is interested in the critical aspects of locality, parallelism and bandwidth constraints to overcome the limitations of today's architectures. One goal is to improve cooperation between the hardware, compiler and programmer in order to enable new levels of performance, efficiency and code-portability.

TI Outstanding Student Designer Awards Announced

Thu, 10 May 2012 14:47:08 EST

Four student teams in the EE 382V Data Converter course were awarded Texas Instruments Outstanding Student Designer Awards on May 7th for their excellent performance in the final project. The winners were awarded by Texas Instruments experts Tom Vrotsos, Tim Fischer and Mark McClung. Congratulations to the following winners:

1st Prize:
Peijun Wang and Kathryn Loeffler

2nd Prize:
Stefan Mastovich

3rd Prize:
Ben Bright and Kyoungtae Lee

4th Prize:
Travis Forbes and Rohit Yadav

Prof. John Goodenough Elected to National Academy of Sciences

Wed, 09 May 2012 14:47:08 EST

UT ECE professor John Goodenough has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of his "distinguished and continuing achievements in original research." According to the NAS, "membership is a widely accepted mark of excellence in science and is considered one of the highest honors that a scientist can receive."

Dr. John Goodenough holds the Virginia H. Cockrell Centennial Chair in Engineering in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Goodenough's research into the relationships between the chemistry, structure, and electronic/ionic properties of solids addresses fundamental solid state problems in order to design new materials that can enable an engineering function. For example, his work on ionic transport in solid electrolytes and on mixed electronic/ionic conductors has enabled realization of the rechargeable lithium-ion battery used in cellular telephones and laptop computers; it also continues to provide alternative materials for the realization of a medium-temperature solid oxide fuel cell and an oxygen-permeation membrane.

Senior Design Project Winners for Spring 2012 Announced

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:47:08 EST

The EE 464 Senior Design Contest winners for Spring 2012 were recently awarded by Prof. Gary Hallock at the Senior Design Open House on Thursday, April 26th. First place went to the Guide Robot for the Visually Impaired team of Stephen Hall, Ali Unwala, Razik Ahmed, Thomas Brezinski, and Zachary Lalanne. The top four teams will present their projects at Cirrus Logic this week. Congratulations to all the participants for putting on a great open house.

All Winners:

First Place:
Guide to Robot for the Visually-Impaired
Stephen Hall, Ali Unwala, Razik Ahmed, Thomas Brezinski, Zachary Lalanne

Second Place:
Augmented Reality Application for Android Phone
Pedro Feitosa, Diego Vargas, Zak Soch, Edgardo Handal, Mathew Gee

Third Place:
Augmented Reality Human Anatomy Model
Alim Maredia, Felipe Reyna, Herschel Kulkarni, Marcus Bennett, Sam Oyetunji

Fourth Place:
GPS Tracking System
Nadia Khandoker, Anita Boyle, Samaneh Mohandesi, Gregg Bennett, Thomas VanWinkle

Fifth Place
Sensor Based Gesture Recognition Device
Andrew Coles, Alexander Scheuermann, Eric Chao, William Heiratifar, Ryan Westerman

Sixth Place:
Cius File Link/App
Jose Hinojosa, Lesley Lopez, Chelsie Weathington, Thang Ngo, Tho Nguyen

View pictures of the winners and event on Flickr.

UT IEEE Student Branch Named 2012 Outstanding Student Branch

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:47:08 EST

The University of Texas at Austin student branch of IEEE has been named the 2012 Outstanding Large Student Branch in Region 5.

Founded in 1947, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Student Branch at The University of Texas at Austin is a student-run organization which promotes the interests of undergraduate and graduate electrical/computer engineering students on and off-campus.

IEEE is the world’s largest professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. IEEE and its members inspire a global community through IEEE's highly cited publications, conferences, technology standards, and professional and educational activities.

UT ECE Graduate Student Bei Yu Receives 2012 IBM PhD Fellowship

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:47:08 EST

UT ECE graduate student Bei Yu has been named as a recipient of a 2012 IBM PhD Fellowship. The IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Awards Program is an intensely competitive worldwide program, which honors exceptional Ph.D. students who have an interest in solving problems that are important to IBM and fundamental to innovation in many academic disciplines and areas of study. These include: computer science and engineering, electrical and mechanical engineering, physical sciences (including chemistry, material sciences, and physics), mathematical sciences (including analytics, statistics, operations research, and optimization), public sector and business sciences (including urban policy and analytics, financial services, risk management, marketing, communications, and learning/knowledge management), and service science, management, and engineering (SSME). Bei is studying under the supervision of Dr. David Pan.

UT ECE Graduate Student Michele Saad Receives 2012 US Corporate Intel PhD Fellowship

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:47:08 EST

UT ECE graduate student Michelle Saad has been named as a recipient of a 2012 US Corporate Intel PhD Fellowship. The Intel Corporation Ph.D. Fellowship Program awards fellowships to Ph.D. candidates pursuing leading-edge work in fields related to Intel's business and research interests. These students are also prioritized for internships and hiring within the company. This is a highly competitive program with a limited number of fellowships awarded annually. Michele is studying under the supervision of Dr. Al Bovik.

UT ECE Student Geoffrey Luke Receives NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award for Individual Predoctoral Fellows

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:47:08 EST

UT ECE graduate student Geoffrey Luke has been selected as a recipient of the prestigious NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award for Individual Predoctoral Fellows. Geoff is working with Prof. Stas Emelianov on the detection of micrometastases in the sentinel lymph node in the BME track in ECE and awarded a recruiting TA position.

UT ECE Student Jason Soric Wins Best Presentation at Baylor 2012 Mini-Symposium on Wireless and Microwave Circuits and Systems

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:47:08 EST

UT ECE graduate student Jason Soric recently won Best Presentation at the 2012 Mini-Symposium on Wireless and Microwave Circuits and Systems held at Baylor University on March 23. Jason presented a paper on "Microwave Applications of Epsilon-Near-Zero Metamaterials." Jason is supervised by Dr. Andrea Alù in the Metamaterials and Plasmonics Research Group.