Electrical & Computer Engineering

The College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University

News for year 2007

December 19, 2007

ECE Students Display Final Projects

Pupils Demonstrate Computer Design Skills

Pupils Demonstrate Computer Design Skills

Several ECE students completed final course projects, displaying skills in everything from using micrometer technology in Analysis and Design of Digital Circuits, to designing large digital systems for Advanced Digital Design Project, to examining thermal and power management in chip-multiprocessors in Advanced Computer Architecture. In this photo, ECE students Vijay Pothi Govindaraj (left) and Abitha Panneerselvam present their research to Associate Professor of ECE Diana Marculescu. View project photos.

December 19, 2007

DRS Technologies Awards ECE Projects

Funds Contest in Digital Communication & Signal Processing Systems Design

Funds Contest in Digital Communication & Signal Processing Systems Design

DRS Technologies, Inc. sponsored a Best Project Award competition for Digital Communication and Signal Processing Systems Design, taught by David Casasent (pictured left), George Westinghouse Professor of ECE, and Associate Teaching Professor of ECE Tom Sullivan. DRS employees Jeff Silvey (M.S. 1998; B.S. 1996; pictured right) and Patrick Mitrik from the company's Washington Operations traveled to campus to watch the final oral reports and demonstrations.

December 19, 2007

AMD Sponsors ECE Course Contests

Funds Awards for IC Design Project & Digital Systems Testing & Testable Design

Funds Awards for IC Design Project & Digital Systems Testing & Testable Design

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) engineers Spence Oliver (M.S. 2000) and Ari Shtulman visited campus from Austin, TX, to present awards to the winners of a final project course contest for Integrated Circuit Design Project. Shtulman also gave awards to the winners for Digital Systems Testing and Testable Design. AMD sponsors the annual competitions. Pictured: Hong Tuck Liew receives the Exceptional Design Award on behalf of his team from Oliver. View project photos.

December 10, 2007

Carnegie Mellon Celebrates Tartan Racing Win

Video Shows Boss' Robotic Adventures

Video Shows Boss' Robotic Adventures

Carnegie Mellon President Jared Cohon and the Pittsburgh campus hosted a celebration on Dec. 4 honoring the Carnegie Mellon Tartan Racing Team, winners of the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. Officials of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) declared Boss the winner of the event, which pitted 11 autonomous vehicles against each other on a course of suburban/urban roadways. The first place prize includes a $2 million cash award. Now you can watch Boss in action!

November 28, 2007

ECE Students Win Grants for Undergraduate Research

Several Projects Awarded Funding

Several Projects Awarded Funding

Several ECE student projects won Small Undergraduate Research Grants (SURG) from Carnegie Mellon's Undergraduate Research Office (URO) for Spring 2008. The winners will participate in a seminar series, including discussions of ethics in research, and will present their projects at the campus-wide "Meeting of the Minds" undergraduate research symposium May 7 at Carnegie Mellon's University Center.

November 27, 2007

Kryder Awarded Singapore's Public Service Medal

Honored for Collaboration With A*STAR

Honored for Collaboration With A*STAR

University Professor Mark Kryder has received a Public Service Medal from the President of Singapore for helping them to establish the Data Storage Institute (DSI). Kryder is the founding director of the Data Storage Systems Center (DSSC) at Carnegie Mellon and retired CTO and VP of Research at Seagate. He has worked with the Singaporean government since 1991 in helping to establish the DSI and has taught multiple short courses there. He has been on the Scientific Advisory Board of the DSI since its inception and currently serves as Chairman.

November 26, 2007

eWatch Will Measure Exposure to Daily Life Stressors

Technology Began in Rapid Prototyping Class

Technology Began in Rapid Prototyping Class

Daniel Siewiorek, Buhl University Professor of ECE and CS, Director of the HCII, and Asim Smailagic, Research Professor of ECE and ICES, are co-investigators in a new study that has received a $426,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In a team lead by Pitt Psychology Professor Thomas Kamarck, they will use the eWatch they developed to measure psychosocial stress exposure during the course of daily life.

November 21, 2007

Charap Receives IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Data Storage Device Technology Award

ECE Emeritus Professor Stanley Charap was selected for the IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Data Storage Device Technology Award. His citation was "for quantative prediction of the superparamagnetic limit for magnetic recording." The award, sponsored by Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and one of the IEEE's most prestigious honors, is presented for "outstanding contributions to the advancement of information storage with emphasis on technical contributions in computer data storage device technology."

November 21, 2007

ECE Faculty Win Accolades from IEEE and ACM

ECE faculty members Gary Fedder, Alex Hills, Roy Maxion, and Jimmy Zhu were elected as Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellows, while Donald Thomas became an Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fellow and Greg Ganger and Raj Rajkumar were appointed Distinguished Engineers of the ACM. Rajkumar was also promoted to Senior Member of the IEEE.

November 12, 2007

CIT a World Leader in Engineering

Carnegie Mellon was ranked seventh worldwide in the most recent THES-QS World University Rankings for engineering and IT, listing the top 50 universities for technology. The rankings are published annually by <i>The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES)</i> and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). Overall, Carnegie Mellon ranked 20th in their list of the top 200 universities.

November 8, 2007

Analyzing Internet Black Markets

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon are working to understand and potentially thwart the growth of Internet black markets — where attackers use well-developed business practices to hawk viruses, stolen data and attack services. Adrian Perrig, an associate professor of ECE and EPP, and Jason Franklin, a Ph.D. student in CS — working in conjunction with Vern Paxson of the International Computer Science Institute and Stefan Savage of the University of California, San Diego — have designed new computer tools for this effort.

November 8, 2007

Engineering to Host Corporate Panel Discussion on Innovation

Pradeep Khosla, dean of Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering and Phillip and Marsha Dowd Professor of ECE and Robotics, will lead a panel discussion about how corporations are aligning their innovative capabilities to turn big ideas into economic growth from noon to 1 p.m., Monday, Nov. 12 in the Singleton Room of Roberts Engineering Hall. The university's College of Engineering is offering a new Master of Science in Engineering and Technology Innovation Management that is designed to train a new breed of innovative leaders.

November 7, 2007

Marculescu and Hu Selected for DATE Book

Featuring Most Influential Papers of 10 Years

Featuring Most Influential Papers of 10 Years

A paper written by Associate Professor of ECE Radu Marculescu and his former graduate student Jingcao Hu (Ph.D. 2005) was selected for a book featuring the most influential work over 10 years of the Design Automation and Test in Europe (DATE) conference. The research, entitled "Exploiting the Routing Flexibility for Energy-Performance Aware Mapping of Regular NoC Architectures" was selected for 2003; only three papers were chosen from each year.

November 6, 2007

Tartan Racing Wins $2M DARPA Urban Challenge

Tartan Racing's self-driving SUV, Boss, was the fastest of the competitors by 20 minutes, averaging about 14 miles per hour over approximately 55 miles. Boss made history by sharing the road with human drivers and other robots. Faculty, students, and alumni from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering were among the contributors to the 45-member Tartan Racing team. The longstanding Carnegie Mellon-GM Collaborative Research Lab (CM-GM CRL) brought hardware integration and system engineering skills to the group.

November 2, 2007

Rutenbar Speaks at Alma Mater

Professor Rob Rutenbar delivered the 2007 annual Forest Brammer Memorial Lecture at Wayne State University on October 3. The lecture series honors an inspirational former teacher in Wayne State's ECE Department, where Rutenbar received his undergraduate degree in 1978. Rutenbar spoke on his current work on speech recognition in silicon.

October 25, 2007

Singhee and Rutenbar Win DATE Best Paper Award

ECE Ph.D. student Amith Singhee and Rob Rutenbar, Professor of ECE and CS, are winners of the 2007 Best Paper Award at the Design Automation and Test in Europe (DATE) conference. Their paper, "Statistical Blockade: A Novel Method for Very Fast Monte Carlo Simulation of Rare Circuit Events and its Application," discusses how to dramatically accelerate the analysis of statistical reliability in very complex memory circuits.

October 25, 2007

Le Wins ICNP Best Paper Award

ECE graduate student Franck Le has won the Best Paper Award in the 2007 IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), one of the premiere conferences on networking. The paper titled "Understanding Route Redistribution" is coauthored by G. Xie, Naval Postgraduate School and Hui Zhang, Professor of Computer Science and ECE, and Le's research advisor.

October 23, 2007

Kanade to Receive Okawa Prize for Contributions Impacting Fields of Information, Telecommunications

Takeo Kanade, U.A. and Helen Whitaker Professor of Computer Science and Robotics and Professor of ECE, is the 2007 recipient of the Okawa Prize, which is sponsored by the Japan-based Okawa Foundation for Information and Telecommunications. The prize pays tribute to people who have made outstanding international contributions to research, technological development and business in the information and telecommunications fields.

October 10, 2007

Ilić Delivers Keynote at IEEE Conference

Professor of ECE and EPP Marija Ilić gave the keynote address at a workshop held during the 2007 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC 2007) October 7-10 in Montreal, Canada. Professor Ilić's keynote, which emphasized the value of IT in the complex evolving energy industry architectures, was entitled "Engineering Future Energy Systems as Cyber-Physical Ecosystems."

October 8, 2007

DRS Signal Solutions Sponsors ECE Course Contest

Funds Award for Digital Communication & Signal Processing Systems Design

Funds Award for Digital Communication & Signal Processing Systems Design

DRS Signal Solutions, Inc. (DRS-SS) will sponsor the Outstanding Design Project Award competition for the Digital Communication and Signal Processing Systems Design course this fall, taught by David Casasent, George Westinghouse Professor of ECE, and Associate Teaching Professor of ECE Tom Sullivan. ECE alumnus Jeff Silvey (M.S. 1998; B.S. 1996), a principal member of the technical staff at DRS-SS will help judge the contest and will keep up-to-date on the progress of the students. The course provides students with a design and application hardware project experience in digital communications and/or signal processing systems.

October 8, 2007

ECE Announces New Graduate Student Fellowship

Endowed in Honor of Alumnus William J. Happel

Endowed in Honor of Alumnus William J. Happel

ECE announces the newly endowed William J. Happel Fellowship, supported by the Lindmor Foundation in honor of Lindsay Reimers' father and Arthur Reimers' father-in-law. The fellowship will be granted for the first time during the 2008-09 academic year. Applicants should be ECE graduate students; preference will be given to Carnegie Mellon graduates who are continuing their studies at the university. William Happel is shown in his 1943 Carnegie Mellon Thistle yearbook picture.

October 2, 2007

Pileggi Wins Industrial Impact Award from GSRC

Larry Pileggi, Tanoto Professor of ECE, received the 2007 Richard Newton GSRC Industrial Impact Award, which acknowledges work from the DARPA/MARCO Gigascale Systems Research Center (GSRC). This inaugural award is in recognition of research that is "at least five years old and has had significant industrial impact." Other Carnegie Mellon affiliated faculty and students who received this award with Pileggi were Herman Schmit, Veerbhan Kheterpal, Aneesh Koorapaty, and Kim Yaw Tong.

October 1, 2007

Blanton and Koopman Named Senior Members of ACM

ECE faculty members Shawn Blanton (left) and Philip Koopman (right) were named Senior Members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). They are two of only 57 recipients worldwide to achieve this status in 2007; Carnegie Mellon is the only university to have two faculty elevated to Senior Members. According to the ACM website, "the Senior Member grade recognizes those ACM members with at least 10 years of professional experience and five years of continuous professional membership who have demonstrated performance that sets them apart from their peers."

October 1, 2007

DSSC Fall Review Draws Over 100 Participants

Carnegie Mellon's Data Storage Systems Center (DSSC) hosted their fall technical review last week. The agenda featured sessions in hard disk drive (HDD) heads and media, HDD servos and channels, tribology and mechanics, and signal processing and controls. Over 100 participants attended, including industrial affiliates, faculty, staff, and students. Samsung Electronics, a new industrial affiliate, participated in the review.

September 19, 2007

Schlesinger Invited to International Advisory Panel of A*STAR Graduate Academy

ECE Department Head T.E. (Ed) Schlesinger has been invited to serve on the International Advisory Panel of Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) Graduate Academy. The A*STAR Graduate Academy was set up in 2003 to nurture and develop Singapore's R&D human capital through various scholarships, fellowships, awards and collaborative Ph.D. programs at both Singaporean and international universities.

September 12, 2007

DSSC Hosts MORIS Workshop

Schlesinger Chairs Conference

Schlesinger Chairs Conference

Carnegie Mellon's Data Storage Systems Center (DSSC) will host the 11th MagnetoOptic Recording International Symposium (MORIS) September 24-26. The conference focuses on heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) and all topics related to thermo-magnetics and magneto-optics. ECE Department Head T.E. (Ed) Schlesinger (pictured) is chair of the workshop, with Professor James Bain, Associate Director of the DSSC, as the steering committee chair and ABB Professor Jimmy Zhu, DSSC Director, as a program co-chair.

September 11, 2007

Khosla Appointed to Treasury Commission

Will Advise State Department on Improving Efficiency

Will Advise State Department on Improving Efficiency

Carnegie Mellon University's Pradeep Khosla has been appointed by State Treasurer Robin L. Wiessmann to e-Treasury Pennsylvania, an advisory commission designed to help the Pennsylvania Treasury Department improve its financial asset and productivity management duties. Khosla, dean of Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering and Phillip and Marsha Dowd Professor of ECE and Robotics, is one of the nation's leading experts in information technology and cybersecurity issues and practices.

September 10, 2007

Wojciech Maly Wins Aristotle Award for Outstanding Teaching

Carnegie Mellon University's Wojciech Maly will receive the prestigious Aristotle Award for innovative teaching from the Semiconductor Research Corporation at the 2007 TechCon conference, Sept. 11 in Austin, Texas. Maly, the U.A. and Helen Whitaker Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), is being recognized for outstanding research and for his work with students whose accomplishments are a testament to his teaching abilities.

September 10, 2007

Carnegie Mellon Hosts House Republican Policy Committee Roundtable Discussion on Future Energy Costs

Khosla a Panelist in Roundtable

Khosla a Panelist in Roundtable

Last week, Carnegie Mellon University hosted a roundtable discussion with energy experts and Rep. Mike Turzia, R-Bradford Woods, in the Singleton Room of Roberts Engineering Hall. Pradeep Khosla, dean of Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering and Phillip and Marsha Dowd Professor of ECE and Robotics, was a member of the roundtable. The public forum addressed a variety of issues, from the environmental impact of using fossil fuels and renewable alternatives to new incentives for power generation statewide.

September 4, 2007

Clarke Receives Top Citations on Microsoft Libra

Edmund Clarke, FORE Systems Professor of CS and Professor of ECE, received the most citations for software engineering and programming languages authors according to Microsoft Libra, a new ranking service. Clarke also ranked tenth in the computer science overall category; his research interests are hardware and software verification, automatic theorem proving, and symbolic computation. Libra Academic Search is a free computer science bibliography search engine.

September 4, 2007

ECE Welcomes New Students

ECE welcomes 55 new graduate students and 170 new sophomores. Incoming graduate students attended an orientation on August 24 and sophomores were invited to a welcoming reception on August 30. As part of their department introduction, new graduate students heard faculty presentations on research areas and met our staff and the leaders of campus organizations. ECE sophomores attended a welcome reception, where they had the opportunity to talk to faculty and staff advisors and meet ECE student leaders.

August 29, 2007

Research preference selection due

Incoming graduate students must notify the faculty of their research project preferences.Professional M.S. students must select by August 31, and PhD students must select by September 7.

August 27, 2007

ECE Spirit Award Announced

Jonathan Lee and Jesse Vizcaino are First Recipients

Jonathan Lee and Jesse Vizcaino are First Recipients

ECE students Jonathan Lee and Jesse Vizcaino are the first recipients of the ECE Spirit Award, presented to a graduating senior and/or Integrated Master's/Bachelor's student, in recognition of their exceptional community building efforts in the ECE Department. The ECE Spirit Award reflects a history of outstanding volunteer service and leadership in ECE student organizations.

August 17, 2007

ECE Undergraduate Programs Rank in Nation's Top Ten

U.S. News & World Report magazine's annual survey of "America's Best Colleges" ranked Carnegie Mellon's undergraduate specialty area in computer engineering 2nd and electrical engineering 10th. The undergraduate engineering program placed 9th on the listing. Carnegie Mellon's undergraduate programs ranked 22nd overall. In addition, Carnegie Mellon was listed 30th in the "Great Schools, Great Price" category and again noted as a "program to look for" in undergraduate research and creative projects.

August 13, 2007

John Cohn: ECE Alumnus, IBM Fellow & Role Model

Supercharging the Next Generation

Supercharging the Next Generation

He's captured headlines in USA Today and EETimes, taking his "Jolts and Volts" science and technology demonstrations to hundreds of schools around the nation, Walt Disney World, and the New York Hall of Science. He's been called "IBM's own Einstein" and for 15 years has enjoyed playing a mad scientist during his show, making engineering fun for nearly 30,000 kids.

August 13, 2007

Modeling Success in 3-D

Student Team Wins David Tuma Undergraduate Laboratory Award

Student Team Wins David Tuma Undergraduate Laboratory Award

Not many students outside of drama may learn how to "strike a pose," but ECE students Gary Garvin, Garrett Jenkinson (center), and Steven Nielsen (left) learned how to do just that—in 3-D. They completed an assignment they titled "Strike a Pose: The 3-D Modeler" for ECE Professor David Casasent's (right) Digital Communications and Signal Processing Systems Design course and won the David Tuma Undergraduate Laboratory Award for the most outstanding student project.

August 10, 2007

ECE Alumnus Delivers Carnegie Mellon West Commencement Keynote

Drew Perkins to Present Address at Ceremony

Drew Perkins to Present Address at Ceremony

As Carnegie Mellon West celebrates the fifth anniversary of its successful Master's of Software Engineering program, 116 are receiving degrees this weekend. The August 11 ceremony is taking place at the Mountain View, California, campus. ECE alumnus Drew Perkins (B.S. 1986), co-founder and CTO of Infinera Corporation, will give the keynote address. He endowed the Drew D. Perkins Professorship in Advanced Networking and Communications in 2003. ECE faculty member Hyong Kim was the first and current recipient of the chair.

August 7, 2007

Narasimhan Selected to Participate in NAE Symposium

Associate Professor of ECE Priya Narasimhan was selected to participate in the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) 13th annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium next month at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington. The event will bring together engineers ages 30-45 who are performing exceptional engineering research and technical work. Assistant Professor of MechE Burak Ozdoganlar was also chosen from Carnegie Mellon, and Christian Lebiere, a research psychologist at the university is one of the program's organizers.

August 3, 2007

ECE Student Wins AREMA Educational Foundation Scholarship

Award Donated by Alumnus Belknap Freeman

Award Donated by Alumnus Belknap Freeman

ECE junior Boris Lipchin won the American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association (AREMA) Educational Foundation Freeman Scholarship, donated by alumnus Belknap Freeman (B.S. 1940), an AREMA member and professional engineer (P.E.). One ECE student each year is selected for the $10,000 award based on their resume, transcript, and interest in railway engineering and the goal of ultimately obtaining a professional engineering license.

August 1, 2007

ECE Students Win Grants for Undergraduate Research

Seven Projects Awarded Funding

Seven Projects Awarded Funding

Seven ECE student projects won Small Undergraduate Research Fellowships/Grants (SURF/SURG) from Carnegie Mellon's Undergraduate Research Office (URO). The grants will be for the fall semester, while the fellowships are for this summer. Thirty projects were funded this year across many majors. The winners will participate in a seminar series, including discussions of ethics in research, and will present their projects at the campus-wide "Meeting of the Minds" undergraduate research symposium on May 7 at Carnegie Mellon's University Center.

July 23, 2007

ECE Researchers Win Two Best Paper Awards

ECE researchers won two best paper awards at the IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) in Minneapolis. ECE graduate student Andrew Gallagher (center) and Tsuhan Chen (left), won the best paper award in the workshop on semantic learning applications in multimedia (SLAM). Chen, Professor and Associate Department Head of ECE, co-directs the Industrial Technology Research Institute Lab at Carnegie Mellon (ITRI Lab@CMU). Additionally, ECE graduate student Devi Parikh (right) and Chen won a best paper award in the beyond patches workshop.

July 19, 2007

Peha Chairs Briefing to Improve Broadband Opportunities for Public Safety Officials

Jon Peha, Professor of Engineering and Public Policy and Electrical and Computer Engineering, will moderate a panel discussion at noon, Monday, July 23 with four public safety representatives to discuss how a few emergency agencies are making effective use of broadband technology. The session will be held in room 2105 of the Rayburn House Office in Washington, D.C. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is preparing to release prime real estate in the radio spectrum, some of which is intended for public safety.

July 19, 2007

ECE Professors Participate in Microsoft Faculty Summit

Eleven Carnegie Mellon professors, including (pictured from left to right) Bruce Krogh, José Moura, and Dawn Song from the ECE Department, attended Microsoft Research's 8th annual Faculty Summit July 16-17 at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Wash. Other ECE affiliated faculty members that participated were Seth Goldstein and Jeannette Wing. The event, which draws about 350 academics from 175 institutions worldwide, is an opportunity for professors to meet with Microsoft researchers and product group engineers for in-depth discussions of computing problems and trends.

July 9, 2007

Mai and Higgs Win NSF CAREER Award

ECE faculty members Ken Mai and C. Fred Higgs III are winners of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Early CAREER Award. The award is bestowed "in support of the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization." Each grant provides around $400,000 in funding for a period of five years.

July 9, 2007

ECE Students Win NDSEG Fellowships

Awards Granted to John Reinke and Nicholas O'Donoughue

Awards Granted to John Reinke and Nicholas O'Donoughue

ECE students John Reinke and Nicholas O'Donoughue were selected for the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship, which will cover their tuition and stipends over three years. Alumnus Daniel Weller (B.S. 2006) also qualified for the honor and will use his fellowship at MIT, where he is a graduate student in electrical engineering. Students at or near the beginning of doctoral study in science or engineering compete nationally for the awards, which are funded by the Department of Defense (DoD).

July 9, 2007

ECE Graduate Student Leaders Elected

ECE's Engineering Graduate Student Organization (EGO) has elected new officers for the year with (clockwise from top left) Srinivas Chellappa as president, Kyle Anderson as vice president and fall picnic chair, Nicole Saulnier as secretary, and Adam Pennington as treasurer. Additionally, Stacey Ivol has joined the team as vice president for the winter party.

July 2, 2007

Graduate Student Fellowship Established in Memory of Alumna

Remembering Margarida Jacome

Remembering Margarida Jacome

ECE remembers alumna Margarida Jacome (Ph.D. 1993), who passed away on May 25 after battling cancer for several months. Margarida was an ECE Professor at The University of Texas (UT) at Austin. The ECE Departments at both Carnegie Mellon and UT Austin have established a joint graduate student fellowship in her name. Contributions may be made out to "The University of Texas," marked "For Margarida," and mailed to: >Anthony P. Ambler >Chairman, Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering >The University of Texas at Austin >1 University Station C0803 >ENS Room 236 >Austin, TX 78712-0240

June 25, 2007

ECE Student Awarded Intel Ph.D. Fellowship

Sebastian Herbert Honored for Microarchitecture Research

Sebastian Herbert Honored for Microarchitecture Research

ECE graduate student Sebastian Herbert was awarded a two-year Intel Foundation Ph.D. Fellowship, which will cover his tuition and fees as well as a stipend. Sebastian is studying variability-adaptive power modeling and optimization in chip multiprocessors. He will be paired with a mentor from Intel and have the opportunity to intern there. In addition, he will receive an Intel architecture-based laptop and travel costs for the Fellowship Forum at Intel in October.

June 8, 2007

ECE Faculty Win Awards at DAC

CSSI Hosts Alumni & Friends Reception

CSSI Hosts Alumni & Friends Reception

Several ECE faculty members won awards at the IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC) this month in San Diego. Rob Rutenbar won the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Industrial Pioneer Award, Randal Bryant received the IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award, and Donald Thomas won an ACM/SIGDA Distinguished Service Award. Radu and Diana Marculescu's work was nominated for a Best Paper Award; the research was co-authored with ECE graduate students Umit Ogras and Puru Choudhary.

June 5, 2007

ECE Professor Rob Rutenbar Wins IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Industrial Pioneer Award

Rob Rutenbar, Stephen Jatras Professor of ECE, received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Circuits and Systems Society (CASS) Industrial Pioneer Award June 5 at the Design Automation Conference in San Diego. Rutenbar was recognized for his pioneering contributions in developing academic and industrial research tools for commercial applications.

June 4, 2007

Schlesinger and Bhagavatula Present Invited Talks at Optical Data Storage Meeting

ECE Department Head T.E. (Ed) Schlesinger (left) and ECE Professor Vijayakumar Bhagavatula (right) presented invited talks at the Optical Data Storage (ODS) Topical Meeting in Portland, Oregon. Schlesinger spoke on "Application-Driven Optical Storage," while Bhagavatula's talk was on "Channels Strategies for Handling Low Signal-to-Noise Ratios in Holographic Data Storage Systems." In addition, ECE alumnus Tim Rausch (Ph.D. 2003) was a program committee co-chair.

May 29, 2007

ECE Ph.D. Graduate Wins Chinese Government Award

Recent ECE Ph.D. graduate James Ma won the 2007 Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad. Ma was the only student chosen from Carnegie Mellon. Awardees are selected based on academic and research achievements, after at least three rounds of judging by invited experts from their fields. In the photo, Ma (left) receives his award from Biwei Liu, Consul General of the Consulate General of the People's Republic of China in New York City.

May 20, 2007

ECE Diploma Ceremony Honors Graduating Class

On May 20, ECE awarded 22 doctor of philosophy, 108 master of science, and 177 bachelor of science degrees. Of the graduates, 21 simultaneously completed both the MS and BS degrees. Among the BS candidates, 78 graduated with university honors (a Q.P.A. of 3.5 or better) and 27 with college honors, completing an intensive senior honors research project. ECE Department Head Ed Schlesinger led the ceremony, which included the presentation of eight awards.

May 14, 2007

Narasimhan and Song Named Sloan Research Fellows

Four Carnegie Mellon Faculty Granted Honor

Four Carnegie Mellon Faculty Granted Honor

Priya Narasimhan (far left), Associate Professor of ECE, and Dawn Song (right), Assistant Professor of ECE and CS, were awarded Sloan Research Fellowships in computer science. The purpose of the award is "to stimulate fundamental research by early-career scientists and scholars of outstanding promise," according to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation website. The two-year, $45,000 funding may be used for equipment, technical assistance, professional travel, or trainee support.

May 9, 2007

ECE Students Win "Meeting of the Minds" Awards

Projects Featured at Undergraduate Research Symposium

Projects Featured at Undergraduate Research Symposium

More than 400 Carnegie Mellon students exhibited their projects at this spring's 12th annual "Meeting of the Minds" undergraduate research symposium, including more than 70 students from the ECE Department. Several ECE students won awards at the event's competitions, which were sponsored by corporations, departments, honor societies, and individuals. The symposium is organized by Carnegie Mellon's Undergraduate Research Office.

May 4, 2007

Tonguz Co-chairs MOVE Workshop at INFOCOM

ECE Professor Ozan Tonguz is organizing the Mobile Networking for Vehicular Environments (MOVE) workshop with General Motors (GM) at INFOCOM in Anchorage, Alaska, May 6-12. Varsha Sadekar, GM program manager, is co-chairing MOVE with Tonguz. In addition to GM, other car manufacturers including Toyota, BMW, and DaimlerChrysler will participate.

May 3, 2007

Morgan Elected to National Academy of Sciences

Carnegie Mellon University's M. Granger Morgan has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Morgan, Lord professor and head of the Department of Engineering and Public Policy, and professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering as well as the Heinz School, was one of 72 new members and 18 foreign associates from 12 countries named to the academy for their outstanding research endeavors.

May 3, 2007

Students Find Recording Studio to be Interdisciplinary Hub

Making of a Microphone

Making of a Microphone

"Check. One, two...check," echoes the voice of Carnegie Mellon vocal student Anna Vogelzang. While this may be a typical day in the university's recording studio, this is not your typical microphone. It was custom-built by engineering student Eric Boulanger—who studied top-quality microphones on the market with the eventual aim of making something that out performed them all. Photographed (left to right): Anna Vogelzang, Eric Boulanger, and Ali Spagnola.

April 10, 2007

ECE Graduate Students Awarded Trip to AMD Austin

Sherif Morcos & James Esper Won Best Course Project

Sherif Morcos & James Esper Won Best Course Project

ECE graduate students James Esper (right) and Sherif Morcos (left) won first place and a trip to Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) in Austin, Texas, for their final project in Digital Systems Testing and Testable Design last fall. ECE Professor Shawn Blanton taught the course, in which students examine the theory and practice of fault analysis, test generation, and design for testability for digital integrated circuits (ICs) and systems.

April 2, 2007

ECE Students Awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowships

Michael Kasick to Pursue Fingerpointing Research in ECE

Michael Kasick to Pursue Fingerpointing Research in ECE

ECE graduate student Michael Kasick (pictured), senior Felix Duvallet, and alumnus Daniel Weller (B.S. 2006) have been awarded three-year National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships. Senior Veronica Yusz, who received an honorable mention, will continue as a graduate student in ECE next fall. Weller is now a graduate student in electrical engineering at MIT, where he will use his fellowship. Duvallet plans to apply his award toward graduate study at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute.

April 1, 2007

DSSC Spring Review Hosts Over 100 Attendees

Carnegie Mellon's Data Storage Systems Center (DSSC) hosted their spring technical review March 27-28. The agenda featured sessions in materials and devices, nanofabrication, metrology and instrumentation, modeling and simulation, mechanics and tribology, and signal processing and controls, with 29 oral talks and 32 poster presentations. Over 100 participants attended, approximately half of whom were industrial affiliates.

March 28, 2007

Consortium Connects Universities with Government & Industry

Over 180 Attend Annual C2S2 Review

Over 180 Attend Annual C2S2 Review

Over 180 researchers, industry leaders, and Department of Defense (DOD) sponsors attended the Center for Circuit & System Solutions (C2S2) annual review at Freescale Semiconductor in Austin, Texas. The agenda included progress updates of C2S2's technical thrusts in analog circuits and interfaces, digital circuits and systems, microarchitecture, silicon infrastructure, and emerging technologies.

March 21, 2007

PDL Researchers Awarded Best Paper at SIGMETRICS 2007

The program chairs of SIGMETRICS 2007, which will be held this June in San Diego, CA, announced that the Best Paper Award will be given to a team of researchers from the Parallel Data Lab (PDL) for their work, "Modeling the Relative Fitness of Storage." The authors are ECE graduate students Michael Mesnier and Raja Sambasivan, Computer Science (CS) graduate student Matthew Wachs, CS postdoctoral research fellow Alice Zheng, and their faculty advisor, Greg Ganger, Professor of ECE and CS, and PDL director.

March 20, 2007

Carnegie Mellon Researchers to Collaborate With National Biometric Security Project

Carnegie Mellon University and the National Biometric Security Project (NBSP) have announced a memorandum of agreement to collaborate on developing advanced biometric technologies like the use of fingerprints, iris recognition and hand geometry to help deter terrorist and criminal activity. Marios Savvides, an ECE research scientist (pictured on left with student Yung-hui Li), directs the BIOmetrics SECurity Research, Engineering and Training (BIOSECRET) Lab at Carnegie Mellon.

March 16, 2007

ECE Alumnus Wins Young Author Best Paper Award

IEEE Signal Processing Society Recognizes Michael Seltzer

IEEE Signal Processing Society Recognizes Michael Seltzer

ECE alumnus Michael Seltzer (Ph.D. 2003; M.S. 2000) was awarded a Young Author Best Paper Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society for his paper, "Likelihood-Maximizing Beamforming for Robust Hands-free Speech Recognition," co-authored with alumnus Bhiksha Raj (Ph.D. 2000) and Richard Stern. Stern, Professor of ECE, CS, and BME, advised both Seltzer and Raj. Seltzer will be recognized next month at an awards ceremony at the International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP) in Honolulu.

March 12, 2007

Conference Focuses on Ensuring Reliable Energy Delivery for Next Three Decades

Electricity Industry Experts Tackle Critical Challenges

Electricity Industry Experts Tackle Critical Challenges

In the face of unprecedented growth in energy demand and the resulting strain on the electricity system, the upcoming Carnegie Mellon Conference on the Electricity Industry will bring together academic and industry experts to address concerns over the capacity of America's aging power grid. The focus of this year's forum, planned March 13-14, is ensuring the nation has the physical and human resources needed for the next 30 years.

March 7, 2007

Engineering Dean Receives Cyber Education Award

Pradeep Khosla Recognized by Industry

Pradeep Khosla Recognized by Industry

Carnegie Mellon University's Pradeep Khosla received the prestigious Cyber Education Champion Award from the Business Software Alliance during a gala celebration March 6 in Washington, D.C. Khosla is dean of the College of Engineering, as well as the Philip and Marsha Dowd Professor of ECE and Robotics. He is the former head of the ECE Department, an alumnus (M.S. 1984; Ph.D. 1986), and the founding co-director of Carnegie Mellon CyLab.

March 2, 2007

Carnegie Mellon to Celebrate Takeo Kanade's Achievements

World-Renowned Expert in Robotics and Computer Vision

World-Renowned Expert in Robotics and Computer Vision

Join Carnegie Mellon March 8-9 for TK60, a celebration honoring the 60th birthday of world-renowned robotics and computer vision expert Takeo Kanade, U.A. and Helen Whitaker University Professor of CS and Robotics; Professor of ECE. Kanade is known for his breakthroughs in computer vision, sensors, multimedia, manipulators, and autonomous mobile robots. His research in video-based vision systems has enabled robots to see, while his work in virtualized reality has shown people new ways to view and interact with the world.

January 23, 2007

IBM Executive Offers Business Insight to ECE Women

WinECE Spring Welcome Dinner Features Cathy Lasser

WinECE Spring Welcome Dinner Features Cathy Lasser

Cathy Lasser, Vice President of Industry Solutions and Emerging Business, IBM Research, visited campus to speak to women ECE students, faculty, and staff at the Women in ECE (WinECE) Spring Welcome Dinner. During her talk, "Innovation that Matters: Creating a Culture of Collaborative Innovation," Cathy discussed new opportunities for business and social innovation. In addition, she shared her experiences balancing work and personal life as an executive business woman with a technical background.

January 22, 2007

Three ECE Faculty Selected for College of Engineering Awards

Song Receives Ladd Research Award; Moura & Püschel Win Outstanding Research Award

Song Receives Ladd Research Award; Moura & Püschel Win Outstanding Research Award

Three ECE faculty members won awards from the College of Engineering this year. Pictured from left to right: Dawn Song, José Moura, and Markus Püschel. Song, Assistant Professor of ECE and Computer Science, received a George Tallman Ladd Research Award, which is granted in recognition of outstanding research, professional accomplishments, and potential. Moura, Professor of ECE and Biomedical Engineering, and Püschel, Associate Research Professor of ECE, were chosen for the Outstanding Research Award.

January 1, 2007

ECE Alumnus Named Engineering Dean at EPFL

Demetri Psaltis to Strengthen Engineering's Central Role at Swiss Institute

Demetri Psaltis to Strengthen Engineering's Central Role at Swiss Institute

ECE alumnus Demetri Psaltis (B.S. ECE and Economics, 1974; M.S. ECE, 1975; Ph.D. ECE, 1977) has been appointed dean of the School of Engineering and professor of electrical engineering and applied optics at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland, effective January 1. Returning to his native Europe, Psaltis will work to strengthen engineering's central role at EPFL.