Electrical & Computer Engineering

The College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University

News for year 2001

December 1, 2001

Smailagic Serving IEEE in Program Committee Chair and Editing Roles

Asim Smailagic, Senior Research Scientist, Institute for Complex Engineered Systems and Electrical and Computer Engineering, is a Program Committee Chair of the IEEE Computer Society Symposium on VLSI in Pittsburgh, PA for April of 2002. He also has been appointed Associate Editor of the new journal, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, for the ...

November 15, 2001

Rutenbar Contributes to Engineering Design Book

Rob Rutenbar, Jatras Professor of ECE and CS; Director, Center for Circuits, Systems and Software was among the Carnegie Mellon professors who contributed to the recently published book "Formal Engineering Design Synthesis" (Cambridge University Press), co-edited by Jonathan Cagan, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, with Erik ...

November 13, 2001

Goldstein Participates in ICCAD Nanotechnology Panel

Seth Goldstein, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and ECE, was one of six panelists to address the question "Will Nanotechnology Change the Way We Design and Verify Systems?" at the International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD) panel session on Nov. 7. The panel was part of ICCAD 2001, a conference for EE CAD professionals, held ...

November 5, 2001

Restoring Confidence in the Airline Industry With Center for Computer and Communications Security's Technology

Pradeep Khosla, Director of the Center for Computer and Communications Security (C3S) and ECE Department Head, Philip and Marsha Dowd Professor of ECE and Robotics, cited some of the technologies that "could transform air transport security" in TheFeature's report, "Terror Proof: Making Air Travel Safe."Mobile data systems ...

October 22, 2001

CMU Researchers to Receive $21.6 Million to Enhance Computer Data Storage

Carnegie Mellon University's Data Storage Systems Center (DSSC) and Seagate Technology, along with other academic and industry partners were awarded matching funds for a five-year, $21.6 million project to perform research in promising new data storage technology. The award was granted by the Department of Commerce's Advanced Technology Program, ...

October 18, 2001

Carnegie Mellon Cited as Valuable Player in War on Anthrax

"Because of the Sept. 11 attacks and current anthrax scares, [Allegheny County Chief Executive] Jim Roddey gave [Senator] Rick Santorum a booklet listing Southwestern Pennsylvania resources that could be helpful to national authorities in the fight against terrorism. It included information about programs at Carnegie Mellon University, the ...

October 18, 2001

ASIMPS Alpha User Short Course on October 18-19

On October 18-19, 2001, Cronos Integrated Microsystems, MEMSCAP, and the Carnegie Mellon MEMS Laboratory will host an overview of the DARPA-sponsored Application-Specific Integrated-MEMS Process Service (ASIMPS). The course is intended for designers already familiar with both CMOS electronics and MEMS design and offers a ...

October 3, 2001

Carnegie Mellon Hosts Cybersecurity Brainstorming Series in Washington, D.C.

Carnegie Mellon joins the Washington D.C.-based AEI-Brookings Joint Center on Regulatory Affairs to host an invitation only brainstorming series for leading policy makers and technologists about shaping the national strategy for cybersecurity. The series will begin Oct. 4 with Alan Paller, research director for the System Administration, Networking ...

October 2, 2001

Clarke One of Two CMU Professors Featured in ComputerWorld

In its coverage of the National Science Foundation's $156 Million in grants for IT research projects announced last week, ComputerWorld featured Guy Blelloch [Professor of CS] and Edmund Clarke [FORE Systems Professor of CS and ECE], and their award winning research proposals. Blelloch's project, funded for $5.5 million, intends to close the gap ...

September 27, 2001

Westinghouse Gift to Support Graduate Fellowships

The B.G. Lamme/Westinghouse Graduate Fellowship Fund has given Carnegie Mellon an endowment valued at $1,161,426 that will be used to provide graduate fellowships in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Westinghouse Electric established the Lamme Scholarship Fund for graduate study in electrical engineering in 1927 in memory of ...

September 27, 2001

Falsafi Wins IBM Faculty Partnership Award

Babak Falsafi, Assistant Professor of ECE and CS, received an IBM Faculty Partnership Award (FPA) for his work on bridging the processor/memory performance gap in future generation computer systems. Falsafi's research group, the CMU Impetus, is proposing novel memory system designs which unlike conventional approaches are "proactive." A proactive ...

September 25, 2001

CMU Faculty Awarded More Than $24 Million in Grants From NSF's ITR Initiative

The National Science Foundation has awarded faculty in Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science more than $24 million in grants from its Information Technology Research (ITR) initiative.The 14 awards, announced by NSF director Rita Colwell Sept. 25, are part of a $156 million program established to maintain U ...

September 13, 2001

Pradeep K. Khosla: Superman

Reprinted with permission from "The Seats of Wisdom" article, Carnegie Mellon Magazine, volume 20, number 1, fall 2001 Text by Ann Curran, Editor, Carnegie Mellon Magazine Photos by Glenn Brookes Photography (724)-779-9811Pradeep K. Khosla: Superman When Pradeep K. Khosla received the Philip ...

September 11, 2001

CMU's Undergraduate Programs in Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Electrical/Electronic/Communications Rank in Top Ten

In U.S. News & World Report magazine's annual survey of "America's Best Colleges," Carnegie Mellon's undergraduate engineering program was ranked 7th by engineering school deans and senior faculty, up from ninth in 1999. Carnegie Mellon's program tied for seventh place with Cornell University, Purdue University, and the University of Michigan at ...

September 4, 2001

Bryant's Paper Most Cited on Scientific Digital Library

The NEC Research Institute quantification program, Citeceer (http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/source.html), lists Randy Bryant's 1986 paper, "Graph-Based Algorithms for Boolean Function Manipulation," as the most heavily cited work for all years in the NECI Scientific Literature Digital Library, ResearchIndex, collection of 400,000 documents as of April ...

August 28, 2001

Intel Teams Up With CMU to Boot Up New Computer Data Storage Center

Intel Corporation and Carnegie Mellon University are forming a research laboratory that will employ 25 to 30, conducting research for the "next generation of computer data storage," according to an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Mahadev Satyanarayanan, CMU's Carnegie Group Professor of Computer Science, will head ...

August 10, 2001

CHIPS Computer-on-a-Chip Research Top Story in EE Times

The microelectromechanical (MEMS) memory that researchers in the Center for Highly Integrated Information Processing and Storage Systems (CHIPS) at Carnegie Mellon are developing may one day put an entire computer system CPU, RAM, I/O and hard drive on a single chip, according to an article in EE Times.The MEMS memory ...

August 6, 2001

Khosla and Ganger Take a Byte out of Computer Crime

Pradeep Khosla, ECE Department Head and Philip and Marsha Dowd Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Robotics, was featured in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for his expertise on computer system security as computers heal from the recent Code Red virus. Khosla, Assistant Professor of ECE Greg Ganger, and Jeannette Wing, Associate Dean ...

August 6, 2001

ECE Displays Robotic Rescue Research To Indian Ambassador Lalit Mansingh

Carnegie Mellon will showcase a new colony of modular robots designed to map and explore uncharted areas to Lalit Mansingh, the Indian ambassador to the United States. The Millibots are designed for military rescue missions and space research. Pradeep Khosla, the head of Carnegie Mellon's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, also will ...

August 2, 2001

Seshan Wins IBM Faculty Partnership and NSF Career Development Awards

Srinivasan Seshan, Assistant Professor of CS and ECE, received an IBM Faculty Partnership Award (FPA) for his work in networking protocols and infrastructure for ubiquitous computing, and a National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Development Award for his proposal, "Towards an Efficient Ubiquitous Computing Infrastructure." In this proposal, he ...

July 30, 2001

Khosla Discusses Web Savvy vs. Paranoia in Post-Gazette

Although he advises computer users to take precautions, such as encrypting financial data while using the Internet, Pradeep Khosla, ECE Department Head and Philip and Marsha Dowd Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Robotics, said he is more concerned about web paranoia than privacy violations in an interview with the Pittsburgh ...

July 19, 2001

Bianchini Finalist for 2001 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award

Ronald Bianchini, Adjunct Professor of ECE and CS, was a finalist for the Western Pennsylvania 2001 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Emerging Entrepreneur category. He was selected for his ability to "operate successfully in multiple and diverse environments - the academic arena, large multinational companies and start-ups for ...

June 25, 2001

Siewiorek Keynote Speaker at IEEE International Workshop on Rapid System Prototyping

Daniel P. Siewiorek, Buhl Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science, will present the keynote address, "Rapid Prototyping on Computer Systems: Experiences and Lessons," at the 12th annual IEEE International Workshop on Rapid System Prototyping (RSP) in Monterey, Calif. on June 25.Exploring trends ...

June 9, 2001

Stern's Auditory Research Noted in Physics Today

Physics Today cited Richard Stern's early work in an article about how owls process sound to locate items in space. Stern's thesis study at MIT with advisor Steve Colburn (now at Boston University) investigated how people determine the origin of sounds based on models of time-difference and intensity cues.Stern, Professor of ...

June 6, 2001

Morgan Leads Effort to Improve Science and Technology Advice for Congress

Granger Morgan, Lord Professor of ECE and EPP; Head, Department of EPP; and Professor of H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, is leading an effort to develop better ways to advise Congress about current and future issues in science and technology, covering issues such as improving the nation's air traffic control system, ...

June 5, 2001

Faloutsos, Gibson, Nagle and Riedel's Research Featured in Computer Magazine

Computer Magazine's June 2001 edition (Vol. 34, No 6) featured an article on Active Disks for Large-Scale Data Processing by Christos Faloutsos and Garth A. Gibson, Associate Professors of CS and ECE, David Nagle, Senior Research Scientist, CS and ECE, and Erik Riedel, ECE alumnus. ...

May 20, 2001

Diploma Ceremony Honors ECE Graduates

On May 20, 2001 the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering awarded: 30 Doctor of Philosophy degrees; 33 Master of Science degrees; 55 Integrated MS/BS (IMB) degrees;* 16 simultaneously completed both the MS and BS degrees; * 11 completed both degrees in 4 ...

May 19, 2001

Diana Marculescu and Tamal Mukherjee Invited to Teach at Design Automation Summer School

Diana Marculescu, Assistant Professor of ECE, and Tamal Mukherjee, Research Engineer, have been invited to teach short courses at the Design Automation Summer School (DASS) in Cape Cod, MA (May 19-26), sponsored by ACM-SIGDA. The topic of Marculescu's course is high-level power estimation and optimization, while Mukherjee will instruct on MEMS ...

May 10, 2001

Money and Minds Meet at CMU

An article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette features the benefits of ties between Information Technology University (ITU) Ventures, a Beverly Hills, California-based venture capital group, and CMU faculty. Pradeep Khosla, ECE Department Head and Philip and Marsha Dowd Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Robotics, and Donald ...

May 5, 2001

Wu Wins Best Paper Award from the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology

Ph.D. student Dapeng Wu is co-author of a paper selected to receive the 2001 Best Paper Award from the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology. The paper titled "On end-to-end architecture for transporting MPEG-4 video over the internet," which appeared in the September 2000 Transactions, was written while Wu was a graduate ...

May 3, 2001

ECE Department Dinner Honors Women Graduates

The new Women in ECE organization held their first annual dinner on May 3 to honor women in the ECE Department graduating with their B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in August, December, and May. Approximately 70 students, faculty, and staff, gathered in the Singleton Room, Roberts Hall to celebrate the success of their colleagues. ...

May 1, 2001

Chen Appointed Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Multimedia

Tsuhan Chen, associate professor of ECE, has been appointed editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Multimedia for a three year term, 2002-04. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia is jointly sponsored by the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society, IEEE Signal Processing Society, IEEE Communications Society, and IEEE Computer Society. The goal of the IEEE ...

April 28, 2001

CMU Web Site Design/Information Rated #1 Among Top 25 University Web Sites

Digital High, a Web site created by teenagers in Silicon Valley, ranked Carnegie Mellon's Web site as the best among the top 25 university Web sites, as rated by U.S. News and World Report, for its design and information. "The graphics are top notch and it provides excellent information about that school that you could not get from the viewbook," ...

April 7, 2001

Siewiorek Elected to University Professor

Daniel P. Siewiorek, Buhl Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science and Director of the Human Computer Interaction Institute, has been elected a University Professor. With this nomination, Siewiorek joins a distinguished group of peers who represent the intellectual leadership of Carnegie Mellon. ...

April 3, 2001

ECE's Graduate Program in Computer Engineering Ranked Number One

In the annual U.S. News & World Report survey of engineering school deans, ECE's graduate program in Computer Engineering has been ranked THE top program of its kind in the country. This is the first time that any of our graduate or undergraduate programs have ranked number one. The Department's graduate programs in ...

April 3, 2001

Mor Harchol-Balter Receives Anna McCandless Chair

Mor Harchol-Balter, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science, has been awarded the Anna McCandless Chair, a three-year career development professorship providing funding for travel and sabbaticals, partial costs of academic-year teaching, research, and programs. Her research interests include performance ...

March 27, 2001

Pradeep Khosla Cited in New York Times' Toy Robots Article

The New York Times included Pradeep Khosla, ECE Department Head and Philip and Marsha Dowd Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Robotics, as an expert reference in its look at robotic toys during last month's Toy Fair. The article "Robots Can Learn Much From High-Tech Playthings" explores how today's toy robots may be helping to ...

March 12, 2001

Radu Marculescu Wins Best Paper Award at Design Automation and Test (DATE) Conference

Radu Marculescu, Assistant Professor of ECE and Amit Nandi (CMU) won the Best Paper Award at the 2001 Design Automation and Test (DATE) Conference in Munich, Germany. The paper is titled, "Probabilistic Application Modeling for System-Level Performance Analysis." ...

March 8, 2001

Rutenbar Directs New $19.4 Million Multi-University Research Consortium

ECE Professor Rob Rutenbar will head a national consortium of nine research universities and will oversee the allocation of $19.4 million over three years to study improvements for semiconductor product design.The Center for Circuits, Systems, and Software (C2S2) will focus on improvements to circuits, systems, and software ...

March 6, 2001

Carley First Recipient of STMicroelectronics Professorship

Richard Carley, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been awarded the STMicroelectronics Professorship in Engineering. A leader in both research and education, he has co-authored/authored 2 textbooks and more than 150 papers. His books have been used for courses at Carnegie Mellon, UC San Diego, the University of Illinois, and ...

March 5, 2001

Rutenbar Receives Jatras (E47) Chair and Aristotle Award

ECE Professor Rob Rutenbar received the Stephen J. Jatras (E47) Professorship and the 2001 Aristotle Award. He is an internationally known researcher in CAD for analog circuit synthesis, parallel algorithms for CAD, automatic layout of mixed signals, and high-speed digital circuits.Winning the Semiconductor Research ...

February 28, 2001

CMU Virtual Basketball Commercials to Air During NCAA Games

CBS will air two 30-second Carnegie Mellon commercials during the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship, in exchange for their use of Eye Vision technology during Super Bowl XXXV. The commercial will run at half-time on March 15 (the program begins at noon) and March 17 (the game starts at 1 p.m.). Debuting as CMU's first ...

February 22, 2001

Smailagic, Siewiorek, and Kanade Awarded SCS's Newell Medal

Asim Smailagic, Research Scientist, Institute for Complex Engineered Systems and Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Daniel P. Siewiorek, Buhl Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science, have been awarded the 2000 Allen Newell Medal for Research Excellence from the School of Computer Science. ...

February 10, 2001

Winter Party 2001 Comes to Town

Graduate students, faculty, staff, and their guests gathered to celebrate Winter 2001 on the evening of February 10th. The party featured a talent show, dinner, and dancing, as well as an ice sculpture of Hamerschlag Hall. ...

February 6, 2001

CNN TechWatch Reports Pittsburgh As New Boomtown

Pittsburgh is garnering more national media attention for its growing robotics industry. TechWatch, CNN's Financial Network, reports that most recently Pittsburgh has been declared one of four "new boomtowns" by engineering trade magazine Prism. Readers might also remember the November 1999 Wall Street Journal article, which renamed Pittsburgh ...

January 21, 2001

Khosla to Receive 2001 W. Wallace McDowell Award

The IEEE has selected ECE department head Pradeep Khosla to receive the 2001 W. Wallace McDowell Award. Khosla was cited "for significant contributions to the design of reconfigurable real-time software systems, and for significant contributions to undergraduate and graduate education in electrical and computer engineering and robotics." ...

January 16, 2001

Takeo Kanades Unique New Vision Technology Used to Present Instant Replays in Super Bowl XXXV

Eduardo Camponogara, a post-doctoral student in the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems (ICES), and Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Sarosh Talukdar won the Best Paper Award in the Complex Systems Track at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Jan. 3-6. Their paper was titled "Network Control as a Distributed, ...

January 15, 2001

New Center for Silicon System Implementation (CSSI) Formed

With a new vision of "first-pass success" in chip design, and a goal of becoming leaders in this new endeavor, the faculty in the Center for Electronic Design Automation (CEDA) have restructured themselves and formed a new research center under the direction of Professor Larry Pileggi.Research in the Center for Silicon ...

January 10, 2001

Schlesinger Elected International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) Fellow

Tuviah E. Schlesinger, Professor and Associate Department Head, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been elected to the grade of Fellow of the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE). Schlesinger was cited for his "outstanding work in penetrating radiation and electro-optic devices." ...

January 2, 2001

Palm Pilots Becoming Robots

With a $300 kit available over the Web, everyday people can turn their Palm Pilots into the brains of a small, six-sided robot with three red wheels, equipped with infrared sensors and rechargeable batteries. The device, developed at Carnegie Mellon University and licensed to a Boulder, Colo.-based robotics company called Acroname, has few, if any, ...

January 1, 2001

Koopman Speaks on Software Licensing Laws at FTC Forum

ECE Professor Philip Koopman spoke at the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) High-Tech Warranty Forum in Washington D.C. on issues related to new computer software licensing laws, such as the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA).UCITA covers liability disclaimers and other clauses common in "shrink-wrap" and ...