Electrical & Computer Engineering Electrical and Computer Engineering

The College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon University

ECE Students Win "Meeting of the Minds" Awards

 Celebrating Undergraduate Research

May 6, 2005

Think only faculty and graduate students do research at Carnegie Mellon? Think again. At this spring's 10th annual "Meeting of the Minds" undergraduate research symposium 400 Carnegie Mellon students exhibited their projects, including nearly 45 contributions from the ECE Department.

"These students are engaged in real research--asking questions to which no one knows the answers, creating new works of art, working with primary documents and data, researching alongside faculty, graduate students and post-docs," writes Undergraduate Research Office (URO) Director Janet Stocks in the symposium program. "Our undergraduate research program here has been recognized by U.S. News and World Report for several years as one of the best undergraduate research programs in the country."

Several ECE students won awards at the symposium competitions, which were sponsored by corporations, departments, honor societies, and individuals. Read on for the ECE winners (for a complete listing, visit the URO site).

Fifth Annual Lockheed Martin ECE Undergraduate Project Award

Organized by Carnegie Mellon's chapter of Eta Kappa Nu, the ECE National Honor Society, this competition encourages undergraduates in ECE to present their projects and motivates them to learn from others' work.

  • 1st Place:
    • Boris Sofman
      "Obstacle Map Construction from Aerial Information for Unmanned Ground Vehicle Navigation"
      Advisor: Anthony Stentz
  • Runners-up:
    • Jenna Fu, Idongesit Ebong, Jonathan Lee, Bowei Gai, and Syed Hussain
      "SmartCart525"
      Advisor: Andrzej Strojwas
    • James Salvia "Tunable High-Q On-Chip Inductors Using High-µ Material"
      Advisors: Jim Bain, Patrick Yue
  • Judge's Choice:
    • Allison Naaktgeboren, Jessica Kang, Steven Shamlian, Aaron Johnson, Ryan Kellogg, Iain Proctor, Kate Killfoile, Richard Juchniewicz, Prasanna Velagapudi, Suresh Nidhiry, Justine Rembisz, Sungjoon Won, Felix Duvallet, and Christopher Atwood
      "Relative Localization in Colony Robots"
      Advisor: Brett Browning
    • Andy Shen and Arun Penmetsa
      "Linux Emulation of Transparent Switching Network Architecture"
      Advisor: Hyong Kim
    • Uland Wong
      "Human Odometer"

Richard Schoenwald Phi Beta Kappa Undergraduate Research Prize

This prize is awarded to an outstanding member of Carnegie Mellon's Phi Beta Kappa chapter.

  • 1st Place:
    • Kelly Collins
      "Developing Novel Assays for the Classification of Cancers"
      Advisor: Javier Lopez
  • 2nd Place:
    • Boris Sofman
      "Obstacle Map Construction from Aerial Information for Unmanned Ground Vehicle Navigation"
      Advisor: Anthony Stentz

Ford Motor Company Undergraduate Research Award

A new award that encourages environmental and automotive research.

  • 2nd place ($300):
    • Derek Leong
      "Hedonic Price Modeling for New and Used Automobiles"
      Advisors: Paul Fischbeck, David Gerard

Bose Competition

This competition is open to all students with research projects in audio - technology, signal processing or education.

  • 1st place:
    • Thammanit Pipatsrisawat
      "Content-based Music Retrieval"
      Advisor: Tsuhan Chen

Sigma Xi Poster Competition

This independently sponsored competition within the Undergraduate Research Symposium is open to students presenting posters in the quantitative sciences. Grants were provided by a number of industrial sponsors. Sigma Xi is a national honor society for those in scientific research.

  • 1st place:
    • James Salvia
      "Tunable High-Q On-Chip Inductors Using High-µ Material"
      Advisors: Jim Bain, Patrick Yue
  • Honorable Mention:
    • Thammanit Pipatsrisawat
      "Content-based Music Retrieval"
      Advisor: Tsuhan Chen
    • Jenna Fu, Idongesit Ebong, Jonathan Lee, Bowei Gai, and Syed Hussain
      "SmartCart525"
      Advisor: Andrzej Strojwas

CIT Honors Poster Competition

All students conducting research through the Carnegie Institute of Technology Honors Program compete for three cash prizes, this year provided by Ford Motor Company. Judges included faculty from across CIT, including the following ECE faculty: James Hoe, Radu Marculescu, Asim Smailagic, and Tom Sullivan.

  • 1st place:
    • Kelly Collins
      "Developing Novel Assays for the Classification of Cancers"
      Advisor: Javier Lopez
  • 2nd place:
    • James Salvia
      "Tunable High-Q On-Chip Inductors Using High-µ Material"
      Advisors: Jim Bain, Patrick Yue
  • 3rd place:
    • Jianjian Sun
      "Deployment of Low Power Modes for E-Textile Applications"
      Advisor: Diana Marculescu

Intel First Year Research Experience (IFYRE) Competition

This contest recognizes significant and creative work supported by the IFYRE program and encourages students to develop and practice visual and oral presentation skills suitable for academic conferences and industrial research venues. Scientists from the Intel Labs judged.

  • Runner-up:
    • Faustinus Gozali, Crispin Ali Basah, and Ze Tian Ding
      "Music Identification Service"
      Advisor: Tim Hoffman

View the photo gallery.

Carnegie Mellon President Jared Cohon kicks off the undergraduate research symposium.

Bill Messner (left), Professor of MechE and ECE, inspects MechE junior Caroline Conley's remote-controlled robot.

L to R: Research Professor Asim Smailagic and Associate Professor of ECE Radu Marculescu judge ECE senior Prateek Goenka's CIT poster.

ECE, EPP, & HCI senior Wenyao Ho (right), explains his CIT honors project on WiFi to Karen Stump, Director of Undergraduate Studies.