Skeet Smith Will Be Remembered

Professor Arjang Hassibi wants to revolutionize medical testing. Dr. Hassibi's research is devoted to making test results quick, convenient, and cheap via biochips. Biosensors—aka biochips—are essentially miniaturized laboratories on a single disposable integrated chip, capable of performing simultaneous biochemical reactions.

Biochips are basically hybrid systems, Hassibi says. The electronic part is solved. The challenge is how to make it into a chemical sensor.

Professor Ted Rappaport has been selected as one of two winners of the WTC Recognition Award. Every year, the IEEE Technical Committee on Wireless Communications (WTC) recognizes colleagues with outstanding achievements and contributions in the area of wireless and mobile communications theory, systems, and networks through this award. It was presented at Globecom 2008 in New Orleans.

Congratulations to Robert C. Daniels, Ketan Mandke, Steven W. Peters, Scott M. Nettles, and Robert W. Heath, Jr. for winning the Grand Prize for the WinCool demo contest at the WiNTECH 2008 Conference, The Third ACM International Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental evaluation and Characterization.

The team won for “Machine Learning for Physical Layer Link Adaptation in Multiple-Antenna Wireless Networks.” Work on the demo was funded in part by NSF and DARPA through the ITMANET program.

Dr. Bruce McCann was named an ECE Fellow at the Fall 2008 Fall Graduating Seniors and External Advisory Committee Banquet. Dr. McCann was recognized for his hard work and dedication to teaching at all levels. Dr. McCann has long taught freshman-level classes as well as masters courses to working professionals. He also made a large contribution to upgrading our senior design course, EE 364 and 464.

Recently, ECE presented the prestigious Gordon T. Lepley IV Endowed Memorial Teaching Award to Prof. Brian Evans. Dr. Evans was an obvious choice for both his classroom performance and curricular reforms. Almost 1,000 students have taken his real-time digital signal processing laboratory course where they translate theoretical ideas into working prototypes. He has also guided 100+ senior design students through their projects and supervised 16 Ph.D. and 8 M.S. students to degree completion.

Dr. Dean Neikirk won the External Advisory Committee's coveted High Gain Award for guiding the Department's graduate program for the last 9 years. Dr. Neikirk serves as the ECE Graduate Advisor. Until recently, he was the chairman of the Graduate Studies Committee as well. These jobs call for diplomacy, discretion, decisivness, and follow-through. I really admire Dr. Neikirk, says graduate coordinator, Melanie Gulick. He's served on committees all over the university, so he understands UT policy, but he's no bureaucrat. He tries to help every student succeed.

ECE alumnus James Truchard (Ph.D. '74) worked at UT's Applied Research Laboratories (ARL) for only two years before he, and fellow ARL employees Jeff Kodosky and Bill Nowlin, founded National Instruments (NI). Thirty two years later, the company has 4,000 employees, direct operations in 41 countries, and nearly $1 billion in sales.

Dr. Robert Flake has discovered the first non-sinusoid signal that doesn’t undergo dispersion on transmission lines that would normally distort a signal. The waveform, “Speedy Delivery” (SD), is a pulse with a positive exponential leading edge.

One possible use of SD to develop a new generation of high-resolution TDR instruments. TDR stands for time-domain reflectometer. TDRs send an electrical pulse through a metal cable encased in the foundation of a structure. Any impedance, such as a crack, sends the signal back towards the source.

Dr. Ted Rappaport has been recognized twice recently. He won an award at the Texas Wireless Summit—the 2008 AWA Wireless Industry Leadership Award.  He has also been appointed to the IEEE Board of Governors for the Vehicular Technology Society for 2009-2011. He already serves on the IEEE Board of Governors for the Communication Society (COMSOC).