Electrical engineering placed fifth and computer engineering ranked sixth, the same positions as last year, and both disciplines ranked third in their fields among public universities. The College of Engineering ranked fifth, and Georgia Tech retained its seventh place standing among public universities. Three other Georgia Tech initiatives – internships, senior capstone design, and undergraduate research – are also cited in U.S. News' "Academic Programs to Look For" section. 

“Our success in ECE can be attributed to our innovative and internationally renowned academic and research programs, but none of these things would be possible without the hard work and commitment of our faculty, staff, and students,” said Steven W. McLaughlin, the Steve W. Chaddick School Chair of ECE. “I’d like to thank our entire community for their efforts, and I look forward to building on our long track record of continued excellence.”

Dr. Juang has held the titles of Motorola Foundation Chair Professor and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar since his arrival at Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2002. Previously, he was the director of Avaya Labs and held many technical leadership roles during his 20-year career at AT&T Bell Labs and Lucent Technologies. He has published close to 300 papers and holds over 20 patents in the areas of speech analysis, coding, recognition, and enhancements; speaker authentication; machine learning; and stochastic processes.  

This IEEE technical award is the latest of many distinctions for Dr. Juang, who is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, an academician with Academia Sinica in Taiwan, and a Fellow of both IEEE and Bell Labs.  

Dr. Dupuis will be working with Michael Kneissl and Dieter Bimberg at the Technical University of Berlin on growth of compound semiconductor nano structures in the III-N system. Dr. Dupuis holds the Steve W. Chaddick Endowed Chair in Electro-Optics and is a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar. He has been on the faculty of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech since 2003 and leads the Center for Compound Semiconductors. The Center is a focal point for research and educational collaborations in the Georgia Tech community related to compound semiconductors, including conventional and nanotechnology materials and devices.

Dr. Adibi leads the Photonics Research Group and advises two postdoctoral scholars and 16 Ph.D. students. One of the most highly ranked instructors in ECE, Dr. Adibi has won multiple awards at Georgia Tech for advising students and for his outstanding classroom teaching. He is also a two-time recipient of the Richard M. Bass/Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Teacher Award, an honor determined by a majority vote of the ECE senior class, and he will receive the 2013 Georgia Tech Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Advisor Award on April 10 at the Georgia Tech Faculty Staff Honors Luncheon.

As the leader of several multi-investigator research programs, Dr. Adibi has extensive experience in the design, optimization, simulation, and fabrication of integrated photonic structures for optical sensing, optical communications, and optical signal processing. His group has demonstrated multiple photonic structures, especially resonators and spectrometers, with world-record performance. He has published more than 120 journal papers and more than 350 conference papers.

Dr. Adibi and his Ph.D. students have also started two companies–Prospect Photonics and Sinoora–that are part of Georgia Tech VentureLab. Prospect Photonics is developing a spectrometer for lab, in-line diagnostic, and portable sensor applications, and Sinoora is building a spectroscopy platform that will have applications in a broad range of areas including biochemistry, medicine, pharmaceuticals, industrial quality assurance, homeland security, mineralogy, and environmental sciences.

Within the last two years, Dr. Adibi has been elected as a Fellow of SPIE, OSA, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has also received several of the nation’s most prestigious technical accolades such as the Packard Fellowship, the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).

IEEE is the world's leading professional association for the advancement of technology, and the IEEE grade of Fellow is conferred upon a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. It is one of the highest honors that can be bestowed on an individual by the Institute.

Raghupathy Sivakumar, Ken Byers Professor in the School of ECE, received his IEEE Fellow citation "for contributions to the design of algorithms and protocols for wireless networking and mobile computing."

Dr. Sivakumar joined the Georgia Tech ECE faculty in 2000, where he leads the Georgia Tech Networks and Mobile Computing Research Group. He and his current team of six graduate students develop algorithms and protocols for next generation wireless networks and mobile computing, which span the network protocol stack from the link-layer all the way up to the application layer. His key research contributions have included algorithms for multi-path transport protocols, smart antenna based networking, wireless sensor and ad-hoc networks, and ultra-mobile computing. Dr. Sivakumar’s work has led to the founding of two venture-funded technology startups: Asankya, Inc. and StarMobile, Inc.

Sudhakar Yalamanchili, Joseph M. Pettit Professor of Computer Engineering in the School of ECE, was promoted to Fellow "for contributions to high-performance multiprocessor architecture and communication."

Dr. Yalamanchili’s early distinctive contributions dealt with the design and analysis of reliable, high performance multiprocessor interconnection networks followed by architectural optimizations for power and time efficient multiprocessor communication. His subsequent contributions are related to the development of microarchitecture and compilation optimizations for heterogeneous computer architectures motivated primarily by the challenges of efficient processing of massive, unstructured data sets.  He joined the faculty of ECE in 1989.

Bloch joined approximately 60 engineers under the age of 45 for an intensive two-and-a-half day event to discuss cutting-edge developments in the areas of nano sensors, big data, the future of transportation, and wireless broadband. During this event, he presented a poster entitled "Physical-Layer Security."

The symposium also facilitates international and cross-disciplinary collaboration, promotes the transfer of new techniques and approaches across disparate engineering fields, and encourages the creation of a transatlantic network of world-class engineers. 

A faculty member in ECE since 2009, Bloch conducts research in the areas of communications and information theory, error-control coding, and wireless communications.    

Habetler has been on the faculty of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech since 1989. His research interests are in protection and condition monitoring of electric machines and building electrical systems, power electronics, and drives. He has published over 300 technical papers in the field. He is also a regular consultant to industry in the field of condition-based diagnostics for electrical systems.

Habetler has been involved in many different aspects of IEEE, including service on various committees and boards for IEEE-USA, terms as chair and secretary of the Atlanta chapter of the IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS), and a wide range of technical conference leadership roles, including most recently the 2010 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Expo. 

Habetler received the 2012 IEEE-PELS Harry A. Owen Distinguished Service Award, and the 2012 Gerald B. Kliman Innovator Award from the IEEE Industry Applications Society. He was the inaugural recipient of the IEEE-PELS “Diagnostics Achievement Award” and is a Fellow of IEEE.

The two-year program’s interdisciplinary approach intersects science, law, and business and brings together Georgia Tech Ph.D. and M.B.A. students with law students from Emory University. The program is nationally recognized for its success at developing entrepreneurs. Teams are formed in the first semester and consist of one Ph.D., two MBA, and two law students. Up to seven new research students are accepted each year and the teams form around their doctoral projects. Sometimes the research is successfully commercialized; sometimes it is not.

ECE Ph.D. students Matthieu Leibovici and Amir Dindar, advised by Professor Tom Gaylord and Professor Bernard Kippelen, respectively, are currently enrolled in the TI:GER program. While they are at different stages in the program, both are reaping the rewards of TI:GER’s four-course academic track that provides instruction in technology commercialization processes with a focus on technology law and business fundamentals. An added benefit of the program is that many of the research students receive a two-year, half-time graduate research assistantship to cover their stipend and tuition waiver.

Matthieu Leibovici and his team are in the first semester of the program and are pursing the commercialization of pattern-integrated interference lithography (PIIL) technology, the subject of his graduate research currently developed in the GT Optics Laboratory. The lack of rapid and inexpensive fabrication techniques for periodic structures at the nano-scale has resulted in a significant roadblock to commercial development. PIIL addresses the limitations of multi-beam interference lithography by coupling it with projection lithography simultaneously. PIIL has far-reaching possibilities in areas such as optical communications, HD displays, solar cells, and biomedical devices, among others.

While Leibovici and his team hope to commercialize the technology and are currently seeking partners for development and licensing, he is quick to stress that TI:GER is not an incubator, but an education program. He says, “The goal is for Ph.D. students to gain business and legal skills in an environment of learning how to commercialize a technology, but you don’t ‘fail’ if you don’t launch a company.”

Second year TI:GER participant, Amir Dindar, is researching an ink-jet printed organic thin-film solar cell module for his electrical engineering doctoral degree. With this emerging technology, a solar cell module can be fabricated on top of glass as well as flexible substrates such as plastic. Low fabrication costs combined with applications that include futuristic new products such as bendable and disposable electronics had Dindar’s TI:GER team excited about taking the product to market.

The one downside of organic solar cells is low-efficiency compared to conventional cells. The team knew this was a hurdle, but as part of their coursework, they embarked on an extensive discovery phase that involved in-depth industry analysis, product concepting, and market segmentation. In the end, their research uncovered that the return on investment was too low to make the technology viable in the market—for now.

“We learned a valuable lesson through our analysis. In academia, you aren’t as concerned about the market, but in industry it often happens that your idea isn’t feasible. You have to either stop the project or change direction. TI:GER helped me pinpoint problems in my research and now I have the opportunity to solve them,” says Dindar.

The program, which was started in 2002 with funds from the National Science Foundation, provides a unique opportunity to ECE doctoral students. Adding an advantageous dimension to ECE curriculum, TI:GER teaches students to be both innovators and entrepreneurs. This duality is what academic institutions and industry are looking for in new hires.

Marie Thursby, Director of the TI:GER program says, “Programs like TI:GER give engineering students a competitive edge in the market. It’s not enough to just have the technical knowledge. Companies are looking for students with leadership skills and an understanding of what it takes to capitalize on technology.”

Interested students can plan to attend the information session on February 18, 2014. Please RSVP to Jennifer Jacobs by Feb. 17th. For more information, click here.

Howard, who is the Motorola Foundation Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Georgia Tech, and Chen, an assistant professor from the Department of Physical Therapy at Georgia State University, have designed a robot that helps children impacted by cerebral palsy to improve their muscle control and motor skills. Video cameras in the robot’s eyes record data as the child plays, allowing researchers to tailor therapy to his or her needs.

Howard leads the Human-Automation Systems Lab, which is based in ECE, and she was recently named as the associate director for research for Georgia Tech’s Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines. Howard received the Georgia Tech 2013 Class of 1934 Outstanding Interdisciplinary Activities Award for her outstanding work in robotics and is a past recipient of the Janice A. Lumpkin Educator of the Year Award, which is given by the National Society of Black Engineers.

The Center (PRC) is led by professors from various schools of the College of Engineering. They will be collaborating with Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), a top academic institute in Korea, and GigaLane, a wireless module and package company in Korea.

This international partnership will focus on developing ultra-miniaturized, low-cost and high-performance long term evolution (LTE) front-end modules. Using Georgia Tech’s innovative Integrated Passive and Active Components glass package concept, these modules will have multi-band radios integrating miniaturized active and passive components.

Their research will also include the integration of multiple bands for global roaming in glass packages with a large reduction in form factor, cost, and power consumption.

“GT PRC, KAIST and GigaLane partnership is a very unique global collaboration model in that KAIST will design, GT PRC will develop and GigaLane will commercialize the most advanced WLAN and LTE modules. It is a perfect fit to what we are trying to do in GT PRC — explore, demonstrate and commercialize new technologies by means of global collaborations involving universities, industry and government,” said Center Director Rao Tummala, a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, in a news release.

The Packaging Research Center was established in 1994 as a U.S. National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center. Since then, it has been the largest global research center dedicated to System-on Package technologies. Its research vision is to explore and demonstrate new fundamental concepts in all the core technologies necessary to achieve highest functionality at smallest size and lowest cost for electronic and bio-electronic 3D systems by embedded thin film components and high density interconnections at nanoscale.

“IEEE GLOBECOM is one of the most significant scientific events of the networking and communications community and a must-attend for industry leaders representing the entire spectrum of broadband, wireless, multimedia, Internet, image, and voice communications research,” says Branko Bjelajac, general chair for IEEE GLOBECOM 2013 and CTO for Landis+Gyr. “Each year, our organizers work tirelessly to ensure our world-class agenda is filled with the presentations of global experts, C-level corporate executives and international government officials sharing their visions for a better future and their efforts to introduce the next wave of technological accomplishments to billions of people and businesses worldwide.”

IEEE GLOBECOM 2013 will be highlighted by more than 800 technical paper presentations and hundreds of speakers from industrial leaders, senior-executive panel discussions, the exhibitions of global technological corporations, and numerous business and industrial forums focused on the “new world” of IPv6, smart grid, cloud computing, and network infrastructure advancements. Already included within this comprehensive agenda are the keynote addresses of Lew Tucker, vice president and CTO of Cloud Computing at Cisco, and Bjelajac, who will speak on “ICT – A Key Enabler of Smart Grid Innovation” and its role in transforming and modernizing the sustainability, production, distribution and consumption of electricity on a global scale.

Scheduled to begin Monday, December 9, IEEE GLOBECOM 2013 will open with a full day of workshops and tutorials detailing the newest accomplishments, applications, and research in Broadband Wireless Access; Cloud Computing Systems, Networks & Applications; Wireless Networking and Control for Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles; Optical Wireless Communications; Autonomous Underwater Sensor Networks; and Cognitive Radio, Software-Defined Radio, and the Adaptation of Wireless Mobile Radio Systems.

The conference’s technical and executive program will then officially commence on Tuesday, December 10 with the first of three days of wide-ranging presentations entailing the latest original findings in e-Health, Internet of Things (IoT), game theory, power-line, satellite, space, green and social networking communications, among the many other topics.  Other significant events include the Industry Forum & Exhibition (IF&E) Program, which will explore subjects like “What is TV White Space and How Can It Be Used?,”  “Smart Metering,”  “Cyber Security Challenges in Software Defined Networks,” “Next Generation 4G/5G Cellular Networking,” “Internet Governance,” and “Programmable Cloud Networking.”

IEEE GLOBECOM 2013 will then close on Friday, December 13 with another day of workshops and tutorials discussing Wireless Device-to-Device Communications and Networks, Wireless Network Economics and Games, Machine-to-Machine Technologies & Markets, Online Learning, Energy Harvesting Wireless Communications, Emerging Technologies for LTE-Advanced and Beyond 4G, Cloud-Processing in Heterogeneous Mobile Communication Networks, and Vehicular Network Evolution.

For more information on IEEE GLOBECOM 2013 including registration details and conference updates, please visit www.ieee-globecom.org/2013

Sivakumar joined the Georgia Tech ECE faculty in 2000, where he leads the Georgia Tech Networks and Mobile Computing Research Group. He and his current team of six graduate students develop algorithms and protocols for wireless networks and mobile computing. Sivakumar has graduated 20 Ph.D. and M.S. students, and has published over 125 refereed journal and conference papers and book chapters with his students and faculty colleagues. He has served on the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, Elsevier Computer Networks Journal, ACM/Baltzer Wireless Networks Journal, and the ACM Mobile Computing and Communications Review.

While at Tech, Sivakumar has been active in entrepreneurial activities. He is the co-founder and CTO at StarMobile, Inc., a venture-backed enterprise mobility technology start-up that mobilizes enterprise applications at a fraction of the cost and time of other approaches in the market. He also was the founder and CTO of Asankya, Inc., a venture-backed enterprise application optimization start-up that was acquired by EMC Corporation in 2011.

This fall, Sivakumar has launched the Center for Engineering and Technology Entrepreneurship (CREATE), an exciting new student-focused entrepreneurship initiative that will be available to all Georgia Tech students. Startup Lab, a new course on startup basics, is being offered in Spring 2014 through CREATE.  Sivakumar has also served as associate director of the Georgia Tech Broadband Institute from 2006-2012 and is a co-PI for the GT I/UCRC Center on Optical Wireless Applications.

Sivakumar is a past recipient of the ECE Outstanding Junior Faculty Member Award, and has won several best paper awards at conferences such as ACM MobiCom, IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols, and IEEE/Createnet Broadnets.

Crystals are at the heart of diodes. Not the kind you might find in quartz, formed naturally, but manufactured to form alloys, such as indium gallium nitride or InGaN. This alloy forms the light emitting region of LEDs, for illumination in the visible range, and of laser diodes (LDs) in the blue-UV range.

Research into making better crystals, with high crystalline quality, light emission efficiency and luminosity, is also at the heart of studies being done at Arizona State University by Research Scientist Alec Fischer and Doctoral Candidate Yong Wei in Professor Fernando Ponce’s group in the Department of Physics.

In an article recently published in the journal Applied Physics Letters, the ASU group, in collaboration with a scientific team led by Professor Alan Doolittle at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has just revealed the fundamental aspect of a new approach to growing InGaN crystals for diodes, which promises to move photovoltaic solar cell technology toward record-breaking efficiencies.

Solar Energy Crystallizes

The InGaN crystals are grown as layers in a sandwich-like arrangement on sapphire substrates.  Typically, researchers have found that the atomic separation of the layers varies; a condition that can lead to high levels of strain, breakdowns in growth, and fluctuations in the alloy’s chemical composition.

“Being able to ease the strain and increase the uniformity in the composition of InGaN is very desirable,” says Ponce, “but difficult to achieve. Growth of these layers is similar to trying to smoothly fit together two honeycombs with different cell sizes, where size difference disrupts a periodic arrangement of the cells.”

As outlined in their publication, the authors developed an approach where pulses of molecules were introduced to achieve the desired alloy composition. The method, developed by Doolittle, is called metal-modulated epitaxy. “This technique allows an atomic layer-by-layer growth of the material,” says Ponce. 

Analysis of the atomic arrangement and the luminosity at the nanoscale level was performed by Fischer, the lead author of the study, and Wei. Their results showed that the films grown with the epitaxy technique had almost ideal characteristics and revealed that the unexpected results came from the strain relaxation at the first atomic layer of crystal growth.

“Doolittle’s group was able to assemble a final crystal that is more uniform and whose lattice structures match up…resulting in a film that resembles a perfect crystal,” says Ponce. “The luminosity was also like that of a perfect crystal. Something that no one in our field thought was possible.”

The Perfect Solar Cell?

The ASU and Georgia Tech team’s elimination of these two seemingly insurmountable defects (non-uniform composition and mismatched lattice alignment) ultimately means that LEDs and solar photovoltaic products can now be developed that have much higher, efficient performance.

“While we are still a ways off from record-setting solar cells, this breakthrough could have immediate and lasting impact on light emitting devices and could potentially make the second most abundant semiconductor family, III-Nitrides, a real player in the solar cell field,” says Doolittle. Doolittle’s team at Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering also included Michael Moseley and Brendan Gunning. A patent is pending for the new technology.

The collaboration was made possible by ASU’s Engineering Research Center for Quantum Energy and Sustainable Solar Technologies (QESST) funded by National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy. The center, which brought the two research groups together, is directed by ASU Professor Christiana Honsberg of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. Designed to increase photovoltaic electricity and help create devices that are scalable to commercial production, the center has built partnerships with leading solar energy companies and fueled collaborations between many of the notable universities in the U.S., Asia, Europe and Australia. The center also serves as a platform for educational opportunities for students including new college courses, partnerships with local elementary schools and public engagement events to raise awareness of the exciting challenges of harnessing the sun to power our world.

NOTE: Pending U.S. patent application # US20130244408, “Systems and Methods For Growing A Non-Phase Separated Group-III Nitride Semiconductor Alloy.”  Inventors are Alan Doolittle and Michael Moseley.  The published application can be found online at http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220130244408%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20130244408&RS=DN/20130244408 or https://www.google.com/patents/US20130244408?dq=20130244408&hl=en&sa=X&ei=p1plUt3YK4XU9ASc2YAQ&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAA.

This story was written by Peggy Coulombe, media relations officer and director of Academic Communications for the College of Liberal Arts and Studies at Arizona State University.

Yezzi has over 20 years of research experience in image processing, computer vision, and shape optimization using geometric partial differential equations. He is the director for the Laboratory of Computational Computer Vision, where he and his group conduct research in the areas of medical imaging, 3D surface reconstruction, and visual tracking.

An active industrial consultant, Yezzi is the founder of Vintinura Imaging, Inc., a startup company that is being hosted by ATDC/VentureLab and is focused on image analysis solutions, particularly those connected with shape detection, tracking, and optimization. He has authored 200 peer-reviewed publications, co-edited a book on shape analysis, holds a patent for 4D cardiac segmentation, and personally developed a complete user-interactive 3D brain segmentation C++ software library, which he licensed to General Electric as part of their commercial MRI image analysis package for 10 years.

A strong proponent of international education opportunities, Yezzi has spent the last five years fostering international relationships between Georgia Tech and top Italian engineering universities. He has been the director of the dual master's degree program between Georgia Tech and Politecnico di Torino (PdT) since 2008. He was also instrumental in developing joint Ph.D. programs between Georgia Tech and both PdT and Politecnico di Milano that were approved last fall by the University System Board of Regents.

Submissions were requested in three categories:

• What is electrical engineering?
• What is computer engineering?
• A Student's View

The student body selected their favorite videos in each category and prizes were awarded for the videos with the most votes. A best overall and an honorable mention were also awarded by a judges panel that consisted of Steve McLaughlin, the Steve W. Chaddick School Chair; Steve Chaddick, mentor capitalist and ECE Advisory Board Chair; and Neal Jean, a student with the ECE Ambassadors.

Brenden Duncombe-Smith won in the What is electrical engineering? and A Student's View categories and also won best overall for his A Student's View video. Abhinav Uppal's video titled Electrical Engineering: Interdisciplinary Perspectives received an honorable mention.

The cochlear implant is widely considered to be the most successful neural prosthetic on the market. The implant, which helps individuals who are deaf perceive sound, translates auditory information into electrical signals that go directly to the brain, bypassing cells that don't serve this function as they should because they are damaged.

According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, approximately 188,000 people worldwide have received cochlear implants since these devices were introduced in the early 1980s, including roughly 41,500 adults and 25,500 children in the United States. Despite their prevalence, cochlear implants have a long way to go before their performance is comparable to that of the intact human ear.

Led by engineer Pamela Bhatti at the Georgia Institute of Technology, a team of researchers at both Georgia Tech and the Georgia Regents University created a new type of interface between the device and the brain that could dramatically improve the sound quality of the next generation of implants.

With funding from NSF, Bhatti and her team have developed a new, thin-film electrode array that is up to three times more sensitive than traditional wire electrodes, without adding bulk. Unlike wire electrodes, the new array is also flexible, meaning it can get closer to the inner wall of the cochlea. The researchers believe the new design will create better coupling between the array and the nervous system, leading to a crisper signal.

The research in this episode was supported by NSF award #1055801, a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program award for an ultra-low-power, MEMS-based, implantable biosystem for restoring vestibular function-platform for an integrated, human-centered, hybrid biosystem.

This piece was produced by the National Science Foundation Science 360 News Service. View the video.

Conte holds a joint appointment as a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and in the School of Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research is in the areas of computer architecture and compiler optimization, with emphasis on manycore architectures, microprocessor architectures, back-end compiler code generation, architectural performance evaluation, and embedded computer system architectures.

An IEEE Fellow, Conte has served the IEEE Computer Society in a variety of capacities, including as a member of its board of governors, vice president for publications, awards committee chair,  and past chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Microarchitecture. Conte is currently the editor-in-chief of ACM Transactions on Architecture and Compiler Optimization and is a past associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Computers and the IEEE Computer and IEEE Micro magazines.

The fellowship at Georgia Tech was brokered by Darel Preble, president of the Space Solar Power Institute, and supported, in part, by donations from members of the Brown family. Georgia Tech was chosen for this Fellowship due to its outstanding reputation in the area of microwave engineering and RF energy-harvesting.

Blake Marshall is the inaugural recipient of the Fellowship and was chosen by his advisor Professor Gregory Durgin for his accomplishments in the area of microwave power research. Mr. Marshall has co-invented and published on the staggered pattern charge collector (SPCC), a device for dramatically enhancing microwave power transfer in scenarios when the total available power is very low.  The technology promises to revolutionize microwave power transfer, energy-harvesting sensors, RFID, and other forms of low-power communications.

“The fact that Georgia Tech ECE was chosen for this endowment means that we are developing expertise in students that people outside the School really value. Tech has more research activity in RF energy harvesting and microwave power than any other institution out there and this award allows us to recognize talented students like Blake Marshall,” said Professor Durgin. “We don’t want to simply commemorate Bill—we want to continue his work.”

The award ceremony on October 13, 2013 featured a presentation by distinguished engineer and long- time colleague of Bill Brown, Dr. John M. Osepchuk. Also in attendance were Mr. Brown’s three daughters: Donna Salisbury, Barbara Brown, and Beth Logan.

 “GT 1000 students are typically 18 and leaving home for the first time,” said Auerbach. “The obstacles they face are specific to that transition. In contrast, ECE transfer students have already taken their core courses and have dealt with those challenges. Now they must overcome the learning curve associated with transferring to a top tier institution in engineering.” 

Auerbach crafted the ECE 2801 course in relation to a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant called the Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Program (S-STEM).

With funding from the S-STEM, the Transfer Initiative for Engineering Scholars (TIES) Enrichment Program was launched. TIES supports community college transfer students majoring in computer engineering and electrical engineering through both enrichment programs and scholarship opportunities. Through her work co-directing TIES with Doug Williams, senior associate chair, Auerbach learned about the unique challenges that transfer students have coming into ECE.

ECE 2801 utilizes many of the elements that make GT 1000 successful such as peer mentors and a curriculum that includes academic success strategies, team building skills, and Georgia Tech history and traditions. In addition to these key areas, the course focuses specifically on challenges faced by transfer students and the development of strategies early on to minimize their impact.

When surveyed at the beginning of the course, most ECE transfer students indicated that difficulty of class material and quantity of classwork are among their main concerns. As a result, ECE 2801 also aims to familiarize students with the ECE curriculum, subtopics, and course planning.

Like GT 1000, some of the greatest assets offered by ECE 2801 are the student volunteers that serve as Team Leaders (or TLs). Phillip Hughes, an electrical engineering senior, transferred in as a junior and is now a TL for the class. He acknowledges that his first year at Tech would have been very different had he been offered a course like ECE 2801.

“Students who started at Tech had a leg up and knew what was expected,” said Hughes. “I spent my first year trying to catch up.”

Even as a TL, Hughes is benefitting from the course. In addition to providing new students with advice, he is learning a few things himself.

“Last week we covered concept mapping—a method to better understand how topics in a course intersect. This would have been useful to me during my first year at Tech, but I’m learning it now,” he said.

While there are GT 1000 classes designed for different subpopulations at Tech, no GT 1000 equivalent for transfer students is offered through the Center for Academic Enrichment. Nirmal Trivedi, director of the Academic Transitions Program, plans to use ECE 2801 as a model as he explores developing a Georgia Tech transfer student seminar course.

“With around 23% of our new undergraduate students coming in as transfer students each year, I think a course that speaks specifically to their concerns is a great idea,” said Trivedi. “Learning from ECE’s experience will help us shape appropriate curriculum and test assumptions we make about the transfer student population.”

If you are an ECE faculty member or student and would like to get involved in an upcoming section of ECE 2801, please contact Jill Auerbach.

Thadesar won the top award for the 3D-IC Reliability and Optimization session for his paper titled "Fabrication and Wideband Characterization of Novel Photodefined Polymer-Embedded Vias for Silicon Interposers," which he cowrote with his Ph.D. advisor, ECE Associate Professor Muhannad Bakir.

In his paper, Thadesar discusses the transition to multicore microprocessors, which has led to an increasing bandwidth demand between integrated circuits. Using a silicon interposer to interconnect multiple silicon chips and obtain high-bandwidth communication between the chips has been a topic of great interest to both the semiconductor industry and academia. Vertical interconnects, also known as through-silicon vias (TSVs), help connect silicon chips over the silicon interposer to an organic substrate below the interposer, but these state-of-the-art TSVs exhibit a large electrical loss. To address this challenge, Thadesar fabricated and characterized photodefined polymer-embedded vias and proved their scalability for the first time. The polymer-embedded vias promise approximately 80 percent reduction in TSV insertion loss at 50 GHz compared to the state-of-the-art TSVs with similar dimensions.

Raghunathan won the top award for the Analog Devices and Performance session for his paper titled "Identifying SOA Boundaries in SiGe HBTs through Mixed-Mode Device Degradation," which he co-wrote with his fellow ECE graduate students Partha Chakraborty and Brian Wier and his Ph.D. advisor, ECE Professor John Cressler.

Raghunathan and his team study the degradation of SiGe HBTs under mixed-mode electrical stress and identify safe operating areas (SOA) using a physics-based TCAD degradation model that simulates the probabilities of hot energetic carriers acquiring sufficient energies to cause damage at oxide interfaces. They carefully calibrate the avalanche generation model across temperature and calibrate the damage at various points on the I-V output plane to adequately cover it and analyze the SOA boundaries. The team looks at the region of the output plane dominated by high electric field damage and shows boundaries for the SOA at the high-current and low-voltage/low-current limits. They also show the time and temperature dependencies of the two boundaries and the implications this method of determining SOA has for circuit designers.

A member of the ECE faculty since 2003, Kippelen conducts research ranging from the investigation of fundamental physical processes to the design, fabrication, and testing of lightweight flexible optoelectronic devices and circuits based on nanostructured organic materials.

Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Kippelen was on the faculty of the University of Arizona Optical Sciences Center from 1994-2003 and was a senior research lecturer with the French National Centre for Scientific Research from 1990-1994. He currently serves as the director of the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics at Georgia Tech and is the associate director of CIS:HSEM, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

During his academic career, Kippelen has graduated 11 Ph.D. students and five master's students. He has also mentored a large number of undergraduate researchers, including 20 students at Tech, and 20 postdoctoral fellows. Kippelen is the co-author of 235 refereed publications and 12 book chapters, and he holds 15 patents. He is the president of the Lafayette Institute, a major optoelectronics commercialization initiative that is based at Georgia Tech-Lorraine in Metz, France. 

The research findings of Kippelen and his team have been the focus of many technical and popular press articles, with the most recent featuring the development of solar cells made from plants and trees. He is a Fellow of SPIE and OSA, a senior member of IEEE, and a member of the American Chemical Society, American Physical Society, and Materials Research Society.

Rozell joined the School’s faculty in July 2008 after spending a year as a postdoctoral scholar at the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at the University of California at Berkeley. His research interests, which are at the intersection of computational neuroscience and digital signal processing, include biological and computational vision, theoretical and computational neuroscience, high-dimensional data analysis, distributed computing using dynamical systems, and applications in imaging, remote sensing, and biotechnology.  

Rozell is a member of the Center for Signal and Information Processing, and he is heavily involved in the current organization of neuroscience and neurotechnology initiatives across campus. He currently advises five Ph.D. students and has published approximately 50 refereed journal and conference papers.



Dedicated to high quality teaching and student mentoring, Rozell has participated in the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) Class of 1969 Teaching Fellows Program and is a faculty associate for the Grand Challenges Living Learning Community at Georgia Tech. In recognition of these contributions, he was recently honored with the CETL/BP Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award at the 2013 Georgia Tech Faculty Staff Honors Luncheon. An excellent citizen of ECE, Rozell has also served on a variety of standing, search, and selection committees that cover many different facets of the School.


ECE Professors James H. McClellan and Waymond R. Scott and their former Ph.D. student, Ali Cafer Gurbuz, received this award for their paper titled "Compressive Sensing for Subsurface Imaging Using Ground Penetrating Radar." Gurbuz received the award on the team's behalf at the 21st European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO), held in Marrakech, Morocco. Gurbuz graduated with his Ph.D. in 2008 and is now an associate professor with TOBB University of Economics and Technology in Ankara, Turkey.

The paper, published in the October 2009 issue of Signal Processing, presented a novel data acquisition and imaging algorithm for Ground Penetrating Radars (GPR) based on the theory of compressive sensing. For a GPR land-mine detection system, the acquisition can run more than 10 times faster than conventional Nyquist-rate sampling. At the same time, the inversion algorithm based on compressive sensing produces high-quality images of underground objects that are, in many respects, better than standard imaging results.

Raghunathan's paper, entitled "TCAD Modeling of Accumulated Damage During Time-Dependent Mixed-Mode Stress," and coauthored with Partha S. Chakraborty, Brian Wier, John D. Cressler, Hiroshi Yasuda, and Philipp Menz, presented a new approach to virtual prediction of device and circuit reliability for SiGe HBT circuits operating under dynamic conditions. Raghunathan's work represents an important first step in something long desired by industry: the ability to predict, with confidence of the simulated fidelity, the end-of-life characteristics of complex circuits whose dynamic load lines swing through multiple domains of different stress damage mechanisms. This work is supported by SRC and Texas Instruments. 

Raghunathan is a Ph.D. student in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and is advised by Cressler, who holds the Schlumberger Chair in Electronics.  

Dr. Bakir was chosen for this award based on his proposed project with Intel entitled “Design and Experimental Evaluation of Novel Architecture-Driven Interconnect Technologies for On-Chip, Off-Chip, and Monolithic 3D Integrated Circuits.” In this work, Dr. Bakir's research group will explore limits and opportunities of architecture-driven novel interconnect technologies at the on- and off-chip levels for significantly improved IC performance per unit energy over the current state-of-the-art. While total available power is fixed for virtually all electronic systems and platforms, the energy cost of data movement within a chip and across a system accounts for a large fraction of the total energy and is projected to increase in the future. With this key support from Intel, Dr. Bakir and his group will address this disparity in performance and energy dissipation of interconnects (data movement) relative to computation.

A Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering faculty member since 2010, Dr. Bakir holds the ON Semiconductor Junior Professorship. He leads the 3D Integrated Systems Group, which explores the design, fabrication, and characterization of 3D nanoelectronic systems and advanced interconnect networks.

Read the entire Q&A conducted by Nan Price of Circuit Cellar.

Year Degree Awarded: 1998

Current Title/Position: President and CEO

Current Company/Organization: IvySys Technologies, LLC

Describe your average workday. 

There is no average workday at a high-tech small business such as ours. On some days, I spend most of my time meeting with existing customers and looking for new business opportunities. On other days, I spend my time overseeing the financial operations of the company to maintain healthy cash flow. I, however, most enjoy spending time refining and optimizing our business strategy and charting the technical vision of the company. 

How did ECE prepare you for your current role? 

The Georgia Tech ECE program provided me with a strong technical background, but most importantly, my doctoral studies helped me develop critical problem solving skills for adapting to complex unstructured business challenges. Having the skill sets to dynamically adapt to rapidly changing business environments is essential for success as an entrepreneur.

What advice would you give current ECE students? 

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Who was your favorite ECE professor?

Prof. Vijay Madisetti (my Ph.D. advisor)

What do you think is the most important technological breakthrough of the past 20 years? 

The advent of high-bandwidth, low-power mobile computing devices to support a myriad of applications (ranging from consumer to military) on a single platform. 

When you aren’t being an Electrical/Computer Engineer, what do you like to do?

When I am not working, I enjoy spending quality time with my wife and two boys, who are 4 and 2 years old. If I have any energy remaining after playing with my boys, I like to take time out to exercise through running and weightlifting.

Dr. Grijalva holds the Georgia Power Distinguished Professorship in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Georgia Tech. He is being honored for his contributions to electricity grid modernization through theories and models for decentralized control, leadership through transformational research in renewable energy integration in electric power systems, and mentoring and support for student organizations in the energy field.

A member of the ECE faculty since 2009, Dr. Grijalva is the director of the Advanced Computational Electricity Systems Laboratory, where he and his group conduct research on electrical energy systems for both large- and small-scale grid and on the “systems” problems of electrical energy, including planning and real-time system control stages. In his role as the associate director for Electricity Systems for the Strategic Energy Institute, he is responsible for coordinating large efforts on electricity research and policy at Georgia Tech. Dr. Grijalva is also the founding faculty advisor for the Georgia Tech Energy Club.

GT Degree(s): M.S.E.E.

Year Degree Awarded: 1985

Current Title/Position: President and CEO

Current Company/Organization: InvenSense Inc. (NYSE: INVN)—the leading provider of MotionTracking™ devices for consumer electronics products such as smartphones, tablets, game controllers, smart TVs, and wearable sensors.

Describe your average workday.

Multiple reviews with engineering, sales, marketing, finance. Customer visits. Response to investor calls. Emails and presentations. Travel. There are no average days!

How did ECE prepare you for your current role?

Strong technical education, combined with a very practical approach to problem solving.

What advice would you give current ECE students?

Understand how the technology you're studying can, and should, impact consumers and society at large in a positive and meaningful way. If you don't understand that, then it's just a hobby.

Who was your favorite ECE professor?

Dr. Leach

What was your favorite ECE class?

Microelectronics and Analog Design

What do you think is the most important technological breakthrough of the past 20 years?

It's a tie between Internet and wireless connectivity.

When you aren’t being an Electrical/Computer Engineer, what do you like to do?

Travel, Read

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I'm very encouraged with GA Tech's efforts to connect with industry through closer collaborations, technology and business incubation, and other efforts. Tech is a Tier 1 institution and as such carries a tremendous responsibility in nurturing the next generation of technology and business leaders to keep the United States competitive in high tech.

Describe your average workday.

As leader for Georgia Power’s Distribution organization, I set the strategy on how we grow and evolve the business to meet our customers’ needs and expectations.  On a daily basis, that may include setting goals, establishing metrics, looking for industry trends that could impact our business model, and keeping abreast of legislative and regulatory developments.   It is important to stay engaged in what is going on industry-wide with academia, peers, regulators, and legislators.  Building relationships helps us stay current, solve problems, and be prepared for changes before they arrive. 

How did ECE prepare you for your current role?

ECE provided me the foundation for learning the electric utility business.  As a co-op student, I was able to tie my learning at Georgia Tech to the work I was doing at Georgia Power.  It gave me a significant edge early in my career.

What advice would you give current ECE students?

My advice is three-fold and has helped me in my career development:

1. Learn to take calculated risks.  Seek those challenging work assignments that will raise you to a higher level of performance, confidence, and understanding. 
2. Gain broad experience.  Learning many areas of a company helps to view the business more strategically, influencing decision making and ability to lead.
3. Build relationships.  Developing relationships inside and out of a company or industry opens the possibility for partnerships and collaboration yielding improved performance and innovation.

Who was your favorite ECE professor? 

Dr. John Uyemura was my favorite teacher.  He genuinely wanted you to learn and could present complex material in a manner you could understand it.

What was your favorite ECE class? 

I would have to say Digital Signal Processing (DSP).  For some reason it just fascinated me.  DSP is at the very core of today’s information technology.

What do you think is the most important technological breakthrough of the past 20 years?

The evolution of digital technology has had the greatest impact on the electric utility business.  Digital technology has changed the way we equip, plan, and operate the electrical system.  The grid has changed over the last 20 years from an electro-mechanical system to one that is smart, automated, and communicates.  With a significant amount of computerized equipment deployed on the system, the system is more reliable and efficient, enabling us to be more responsive to customer expectations.  

When you aren’t being an electrical engineer, what do you like to do?

I have a husband, Ken, and two children, Jessica, 17 years old, and Chandler, 12 years old, who I enjoy spending time with.  We like to travel as a family and also enjoy attending movies, plays, concerts, and sporting events.  I am a PADI certified diver.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I love staying connected to Georgia Tech.  Being able to engage on advisory boards and with students at events on campus is a highlight for me.

Dr. Papapolymerou joined the faculty of the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) in 2001 after spending two years at the University of Arizona. He leads the Microwave Circuit Technology Group, where he currently advises eight Ph.D. students, one master’s student, and one research engineer. Dr. Papapolymerou and his team develop micromachining techniques and RF MEMS devices for use in high-speed electronics, as well as system-on-a-chip and system-on-a-package technologies for microwave, mm-wave and THz circuits, antennas, and systems. He has also served as associate director of the Georgia Electronic Design Center since 2011.

Dr. Papapolymerou has published over 340 refereed journal and conference publications with his students and peers, and he serves as the editor-in-chief for the IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters. His students have received numerous best paper and best poster awards at IEEE conferences and have also earned very competitive graduate and undergraduate fellowships from the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) and the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S). He also currently serves as a member of the Periodical Review Advisory Committee of IEEE and as a member of the IEEE MTT Administrative Committee.

Elected an IEEE Fellow in 2011, Dr. Papapolymerou received the 2012 IEEE AP-S H.A. Wheeler Prize Paper Award, the 2010 IEEE AP-S John Kraus Antenna Award, the 2009 IEEE MTT-S Outstanding Young Engineer Award, and the 2009 ECE Junior Faculty Member Award. He is also a past recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and Army Research Office Young Investigator Award. 

The Class of 1969 Teaching Fellows Program is designed for early career professionals who want to develop their full teaching potential. During this academic-year-long experience, the Teaching Fellows will explore various aspects of teaching and learning in weekly seminars, receive private assistance with teaching, and undertake a project to improve student learning in one of their courses.

Dr. Kim joined the ECE faculty in August 2007, where he is a member of the computer systems and software technical interest group. His research and teaching interests are in the areas of multicore designs, heterogeneous system-on-chip architectures, information-communication-media convergence systems, emerging storage architecture, and hardware-assisted security.

“When I teach, I strive to show students how what they learn in class is used in real world applications. I also try to create an interactive class experience for the students where they use the latest equipment and software, and I host guest speakers from industry who make the material come to life,” Dr. Kim said. “By participating in the CETL Teaching Fellows Program, I look forward to exploring additional ways to make the learning process even more fun and applicable for my students.”

A professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, Dr. Tentzeris and his team will be recognized for their paper, "Design and Fabrication of Ultra-Low Cost Radio Frequency Identification Antennas and Tags Exploiting Paper Substrates and Ink Jet Printing Technology," which appeared in the June 2011 issue of IET Microwaves, Antennas, and Propagation. The paper discusses the first RFID-enabled wireless sensors on paper, plastics, and other flexible/wearable substrates. This technology could set the foundation for the truly scalable Internet of Things and "smart skin" topologies for structural health monitoring systems such as bridges, aircraft, and other large structures. It could also enable the development of wearable and implantable biomonitoring systems and be applied to logistics, tracking, smart energy systems, and food and water quality monitoring using truly recyclable green configurations.

Dr. Tentzeris' coauthors are Giulia Orecchini, Federico Alimenti, Valeria Palazzari, and Luca Roselli–all of the University of Perugia in Italy– and Amin Rida, an ECE Ph.D. graduate of Dr. Tentzeris' research group who now works with Northrop Grumman.

A rising computer engineering senior, Ms. Hanson has accumulated a wealth of work experience and is very involved in extracurricular activities at Georgia Tech and in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). She has worked as a co-op student at GTRI where she helped design an algorithm to detect disease in poultry growout houses and used C++ and image processing techniques to identify the number of people riding in a vehicle on the highway. Ms. Hanson has tackled a variety of software and embedded systems challenges through her internship experiences with the U.S. Naval Academy, the Air Force Research Lab, and Boeing, and she also served as a project manager for the GTRI Robotics Team in the Vertically Integrated Projects Program.

Ms. Hanson's activities outside of work and the classroom include leadership roles with Women in ECE and the ECE section of the GT 1000 Freshman Seminar. She is also the current vice president of the Briaerean Co-op Honor Society.

Together with KTH President Peter Gudmundson, a board of alumni, students, and faculty makes the selection for this honor. Dr. Egerstedt graduated with his M.S. degree in engineering physics and a Ph.D. degree in applied mathematics from KTH in 1996 and 2000, respectively, and he earned his B.A. degree in philosophy from Stockholm University in 1996. "This is a great honor and I'm both humbled and excited about the prospect of returning to Stockholm in October to accept the award," Dr. Egerstedt said.

In the nomination for this honor, Dr. Egerstedt was cited for his work in robotics and automatic control as the Schlumberger Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Georgia Tech and for his very high international research visibility. He is also being recognized for his global impact through his massive open online course (MOOC), "Control of Mobile Robots," that attracted over 40,000 students in its first offering earlier this year.

Dr. Egerstedt joined the ECE faculty in 2001, where he leads the Georgia Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory. He has published four books and over 250 refereed journal and conference publications, and he serves as associate editor for both the Journal of Discrete Event Dynamical Systems and the Journal of Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems.

Elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 2012, Dr. Egerstedt was recently named as an IEEE Control Systems Society Distinguished Lecturer and as the inaugural deputy editor-in-chief of the new journal, IEEE Transactions on Control of Networked Systems. He is a past recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the Georgia Tech ECE Outstanding Junior Faculty Member Award. Earlier this year, Dr. Egerstedt was elected by a majority vote of the ECE senior class to receive the 2013 W. Marshall Leach, Jr./Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Teacher Award.

Story by Lyndsey Lewis
Photos by Zach Porter

There is a problem with the robots.

Professor Magnus Egerstedt eyes them with dismay. His robots, rotund little things that wouldn’t look out of place in a Roomba ad, are misbehaving. They’re crawling toward two silver cases in the middle of the floor, but just before reaching them, they’re supposed to sense the obstacles and skitter away.

The demonstration is the highlight of Egerstedt’s lecture; it is the center ring of this particular circus. A professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Egerstedt is teaching a class on robot control, and the point of the course tends to be lost if the robots in question are going rogue.

Toward the cases they go, but wait! They’re sliding this way and that way. They come to halting stops or turn dizzily, and some of them don’t recognize the cases at all and slam into their shiny edges. HAL 9000 these robots are not, but their predicament is looking dire.

It’s as if they’re drunk — and in a way, they are. The robots, all Khepera IIIs, have infra-red sensors that are sensitive to light, and they’re suffering beneath the harsh glare of studio lamps. This isn’t a typical classroom lecture — these robots are starring in a massive open online course, or MOOC.

Egerstedt is teaching in a familiar way, but the setting is different. There are no students present, and instead of a classroom or lecture hall, the lesson is being given in a studio with a jungle of lamps overhead. Every move Egerstedt makes is recorded for online broadcast, and his robots are not taking kindly to the extra light. Frustrated, Egerstedt calls out to Brian Wilson, the instructional media producer who is filming the lesson.

“Brian, can we do it again?” he asks.

“I’m just going to keep rolling,” Wilson replies.

“Yeah,” Egerstedt says. “Till it works.”

And it does work eventually, and when it does, the effect is sublime. Egerstedt turns triumphantly to his student assistant, Jean-Pierre de la Croix.

“Yeah!” he exclaims. “Robotics is so easy, man.”

A MOOC is a special type of online class. Available to anyone with an Internet connection, most MOOCs offer college-level material via pre-taped lectures, and course enrollments can swell to tens of thousands of students. The premise is simple: Bring higher education to the masses by cutting through academia’s red tape and, most tantalizingly, offering many courses (including Egerstedt’s) at the low, low cost of free.

Read the full article.

Advised by ECE Professor Abhijit Chatterjee, Mr. Banerjee designs digitally assisted adaptive analog/RF circuits and systems for process variation tolerant, low power, and reliable operation which aims to leverage digital correction and calibration techniques to improve analog and RF performance. This will enable development of ultra-low power, intelligent, flexible, and robust RF communications systems.

Dr. Cressler is interested in the understanding, development, and application of new types of silicon-based, bandgap-engineered microelectronic devices and circuits for high-speed electronics in emerging 21st century communications systems. Widely recognized as one of the world's foremost experts in silicon-germanium (SiGe) technology, he has graduated 37 Ph.D. students (including 28 from Georgia Tech) and 37 M.S. students (including 28 from Georgia Tech). Dr. Cressler’s former students hold university faculty positions and occupy high-level management or principal engineering positions across the microelectronics industry. His technical contributions have helped pave the foundation of a worldwide industry in SiGe transistor technology that generates multi-billion dollar sales globally.

Dr. Cressler and his team have published over 550 refereed journal and conference papers, 29 book chapters, and six books (including his debut historical novel, Emeralds of the Alhambra). In serving his professional community, he is involved with four different IEEE professional societies and is currently editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, the flagship journal of the IEEE Electron Devices Society. He has previously served as associate editor for the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits and the IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science. 

An inspirational teacher and gifted mentor, Dr. Cressler was honored this spring with the Class of 1934 Distinguished Professor Award, the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a faculty member at Georgia Tech. He has also received the 2011 IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award, the 2010 Georgia Tech Class of 1940 W. Howard Ector Outstanding Teacher Award, the 2007 Georgia Tech Outstanding Faculty Leadership for the Development of GRAs Award, and the 1996 C. Holmes MacDonald National Outstanding Teacher Award (given by Eta Kappa Nu).

“This growth in female enrollment is a huge accomplishment, as this number lingered in the 10 percent range just a few years ago,” said Steven W. McLaughlin, Steve W. Chaddick School Chair of ECE. In addition, the total number of freshmen enrolling in ECE this summer and fall has increased by 3.5 percent from last year.

On the Institute level, this was the most selective class of incoming Georgia Tech freshmen ever. The acceptance rate for this year was 40 percent (down from 54 percent last year), which is the first time it has ever been that low. The credentials of the incoming class, which includes an average high school GPA of 3.95, are significantly better than any previous year.

“Our fantastic results in ECE would not have happened without the contributions of many dedicated faculty, staff, and students,” Dr. McLaughlin said. He particularly noted the efforts of the following organizations and individuals: Women in ECE, ECE Ambassadors, ECE Associate Chair for Undergraduate Affairs Bonnie Ferri, high school teachers participating in the STEP-UP program, and ECE Outreach Director Leyla Conrad and ECE Outreach Coordinator Nirvana Edwards.

“We have the best group of students, faculty, and staff anywhere,” Dr. McLaughlin added. “Let's make sure that we do all that we can to make the newest members of the Georgia Tech ECE family feel welcome this fall.”

Leadership Atlanta is the oldest, sustained community leadership program in the nation. The core of its programming is a nine-month executive-level series. Through retreats, full-day seminars, service projects, discussion groups and community tours, members explore critical community issues, examine themselves as leaders, and build relationships of trust and mutual understanding.

“I’m excited to further engage our community leaders on the issues of post-secondary education, economic development in the technology area, and on diversity in the STEM fields,” Dr. Beyah said. “I look forward to learning from such a dynamic group of Atlantans and to harnessing our skills to better the city.”

Dr. Beyah, a Georgia Tech alumnus, has been on the ECE faculty since 2011, where he teaches and conducts research in the areas of networking and security. He leads the Communications Assurance and Performance Group, which develops algorithms that enable a more secure network infrastructure with computer systems that are more accountable and less vulnerable to attacks.

A native Atlantan, Dr. Beyah received his bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from North Carolina A&T State University in 1998 and his masters and Ph.D. in ECE from Georgia Tech in 1999 and 2003, respectively. Prior to returning to Georgia Tech as an associate professor, he was on the computer science faculty at Georgia State University for six years.

Dr. Beyah devotes much time to service activities in both academia and in the Atlanta community. At Georgia Tech, he is the director of the Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering/Science (SURE) Program, and he is the faculty advisor for the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) Program. Dr. Beyah also coordinates a postdoctoral fellowship program for the Georgia Tech Facilitating Academic Careers in Engineering and Science (FACES) initiative.

His work in the Atlanta community and nationally includes four years working on the Board of Directors of KIPP WAYS Academy and serving as a keynote or workshop presenter on education and diversity topics to various audiences. Dr. Beyah has been named in the Georgia Trend Magazine 40 Best and Brightest Under 40 (2006) and the Atlanta Business Chronicle Up & Comers 40 Under 40 (2007). He is also a graduate of the United Way's Volunteer Involvement Program, L.E.A.D. Atlanta, and Leadership Georgia, and he was named an Outstanding Atlantan in 2007.

Advised by ECE Professor Emmanouil M. (Manos) Tenzeris, Mr. Cook is designing and characterizing a multi-layer printing process, which fills a crucial gap in inkjet printing as an industrial electronics fabrication technology. The final process will demonstrate multi-layer, millimeter-wave systems up to 110 GHz on a chip for antennas in inter/intra-chip communication topologies and nanotechnology-enabled autonomous sensor networks.

Potential applications for this work include autonomous sensor nodes, sideband inter/intra-chip communication, energy harvesters, storage devices, and wireless power transfer systems–all of which can be rapidly printed onto nearly any substrate outside of a cleanroom environment. Mr. Cook’s work in this area has been accepted for publication in Electronic Materials Letters and was presented at the 2013 IEEE International Microwave Symposium, which took place June 2-7 in Seattle, Wash.

The DSSG introduces outstanding science and engineering professors to the United States’ security challenges, and it encourages them to apply their talents to these issues either as government advisors or in their own research. This small and select group of individuals was chosen from nominations made by senior academic officials; DSSG alumni, mentors, and advisors; and other officials from various government agencies to take part in the DSSG.

During the two-year program, participants will focus on defense policy, related research and development, and the systems, missions, and operations of the armed forces. They will interact with top-level officials from the Departments of Defense and Energy, various intelligence agencies, and Congress, and they will visit U.S. military bases, defense labs, and related industrial facilities to gain further insight into research, development, and manufacturing technologies.

Dr. Howard is the Motorola Foundation Professor in the School of ECE, where she is the director of the Human-Automation Systems Laboratory. She and her research team work in projects ranging from rover navigation in glacial and other extreme environments, assistive/rehabilitation robotics, and human-robot interaction. Dr. Howard has received numerous honors during her career, including most recently the Janice A. Lumpkin Educator of the Year Award, given by the National Society of Black Engineers, and the Georgia Tech Class of 1934 Outstanding Interdisciplinary Activities Award.

The Class of 1969 Teaching Fellows Program is designed for early career professionals who want to develop their full teaching potential. During this academic-year-long experience, the Teaching Fellows will explore various aspects of teaching and learning in weekly seminars, receive private assistance with teaching, and undertake a project to improve student learning in one of their courses.

Dr. Wang joined the ECE faculty in January 2012, and he is a member of the electronic design and applications and the bioengineering technical interest groups. He has taught both undergraduate and graduate level electronics courses that have been enthusiastically received by ECE students. In the research arena, he is interested in developing mixed-signal, RF, and millimeter-wave integrated systems for wireless communication and bioelectronics applications.

“I believe the essence of teaching is more than passing the knowns to the next generation. It should also involve mentoring the students to establish their independence, passion, and creativity to explore the unknowns in the future,” Dr. Wang said. “I believe this program is a perfect opportunity for me to develop a stronger foundation for teaching. I also look forward to meeting the other teaching fellows and sharing our passion for teaching and our desire to create positive classroom experiences for our students.”

A Ph.D. student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Georgia Tech, Mr. Shih is co-advised by ECE Professor Anthony J. Yezzi and Civil and Environmental Engineering Associate Professor Francesco Fedele.

Mr. Shih is developing an approach to improve the accuracy of vision-based ocean surface reconstruction systems. During the last five years, he and his advisors have been developing a system known as VWASS (Variational Wave Acquisition Stereo System), where variational stereo computer vision principles are used to reconstruct the ocean surface. A crucial factor that determines the accuracy of the reconstruction is the camera parameters. These parameters constitute an arithmetical comparison between the reconstruction and the image measurements so that the reconstruction can “grow” to approximate the images. His research involves refining the camera parameters to improve the accuracy of the variational ocean surface reconstruction generated through VWASS. 

Emeralds is historical fiction set in medieval Muslim Spain and deals with issues of tolerance, religious dialogue and interfaith love. The novel illustrates a time in history when Muslims, Jews and Christians lived together in harmony. Its themes of religious tolerance are of great significance in today’s society and will resonate with a diverse audience.

Dr. Cressler will present Emeralds of the Alhambra followed by a Q & A session and book signing at the Georgia Tech Barnes & Noble on Tuesday, June 25 at 6:30 p.m.

Read the following interview with Dr. Cressler for additional insight on his writing process, motivations and future plans:

One does not normally put the words ‘engineering professor’ and ‘novelist’ in the same sentence. How did Emeralds of the Alhambra come about?

No argument there! I have always enjoyed writing, and while it has actually been a lifelong dream of mine to write a novel, somehow I never quite felt ready. Novel writing is an intimidating business! I have always been an avid reader, and after a high school/college infatuation with science fiction and fantasy, I moved into more mainstream literary fiction and to this day that is pretty much all I read. With each new novel, I would find myself wondering what it would be like to try my hand at fiction. Interestingly, however, the opportunities for writing non-fiction books seemed to materialize naturally as a part of my career as a professor. And it is MUCH easier to get non-fiction published! When I finished my first book, a graduate-level textbook in my research field, I found the process deeply satisfying, and wanted more. My fourth non-fiction book, Silicon Earth, was a little different in genre, in that it was for a general, non-specialist audience, and I got permission to use a nontraditional, breezy and fun narrative style. That worked so well that when I finished it, I decided it was finally time to explore whether I had a novel in me. The whole prospect was a little scary because the canvas is so large. What type of fiction should it be? I have a deep love of history and really enjoy well-executed historical fiction, so I took the plunge and started there. It was love at first sight!

How does writing non-fiction compare with writing fiction?

Good question. They are very different in many obvious ways: tone, narrative style, subject matter. I find that writing fiction requires much more contact with your material, an obsession of sorts. I think what I most enjoy about writing fiction are the nearly constant unanticipated discoveries in plot and character. The creative energy this produces is profound! Let me give you a feel for this. In writing Emeralds, I first mapped out the synopsis in a few pages, to bind the themes and characters and historical events that I wanted to address. Then I expanded that synopsis into a chapter-by-chapter draft, each of which was maybe a quarter page of what factually happens in that chapter. This allows me to make sure all the plot twists and timing angles gel properly with the overall story trajectory. I did this for the whole book before beginning my writing. Then, when it was time to compose, I took the first chapter summary and expanded it into the various chapter scenes, fleshing the chapter out to about a page, no more, so that I had a good sense of the story that would transpire. Then I set this aside and began composing. The magical part of the process is that inevitably the characters and plot threads begin to deviate from the plan, assuming a life of their own. I love this! Almost on a daily basis, as I was driving to work, thinking about my characters, it would jump into my head, “Well, of course, she needs to do this!” or “Obviously this needs to happen!” Things I had never anticipated before actually doing the writing. That creative element is unique to fiction and I find it deeply satisfying.

How did you end up with medieval Muslim Spain as a setting for your novel?

Well, after I narrowed it down to historical fiction, I spent quite a bit of time on the web just exploring history. I have always loved European history, so one magical day I stumbled upon medieval Muslim Spain. The more I explored the more amazed I was, particularly since it is a period of history so rich in its message for our modern world and yet so little appreciated by most people. Imagine, a period of more than 300 years with Muslims, Jews and Christians living in harmony! An existence proof we owe it to the world to recall. I was quickly locked in on medieval Muslim Spain. At that point, I ordered a ton of books on medieval Iberia and began to immerse myself in the period, to learn the history. I was after a short span of years that was of pivotal importance, and yet contained the themes I was after. That led me to Granada, the Alhambra Palace, Sultan Muhammad V and Ibn al-Khatib, and the Castilian Civil War (1367-1369). I was set for historical backdrop. I knew I wanted to wrap the book around a love story between a Muslim and a Christian, and that fell right into place.

Tell us about the Alhambra.

The Alhambra—what a magical place! The Alhambra is the best preserved medieval Islamic palace in the western world, perhaps in the whole world. It is located in Granada, in Andalusia (al-Andalus in Arabic), in extreme southern Spain. “Alhambra” refers to the entire walled fortress that clings to the long and narrow red-soiled ridge overlooking Granada. The red hill itself is the source of the palace’s name (‘al-hamra’ is Arabic for ‘red’). Unlike today, in the fourteenth century the towers and walls of the Alhambra would have been white-washed and the hill laid bare for defense, a stunning white on red contrast. The fortress is compact, as dictated by the terrain, about 100 yards wide and 700 yards long, and is nestled within the walled and garrisoned city of Granada. The Alhambra complex contained the Royal Palace of the Sultan, the complete functioning town that supported it, all of the judicial and administrative services required to run the Nasrid Kingdom, and a separately castled garrison. The Alhambra and the walled city of Granada itself were, for all intents and purposes, impregnable, and were never captured by force of arms, only surrendered (in 1492 to Isabel and Fernando, the “Catholic Monarchs”). The Alhambra’s population in 1367 was roughly 2,000, including a garrison of perhaps 300 elite troops, compared to about 65,000 inhabitants in Granada proper, a very large city by fourteenth-century standards.

Tell us about the background research you did for the book. Did you visit Spain?

I spent almost nine months on background research before laying pen to paper. The credenza in my office at home where I write is lined with over 10 feet of references on all things al-Andalus, which I digested. As I describe in my blog entry, in the fall of 2010 I spent two weeks in Spain doing on-site research: Seville, Córdoba, Jaen and Granada. I had all I needed factually at that point, but I still needed to absorb the scenes, burn them into my mind’s eye. See the sky, the landscape, the architecture, and most importantly close my eyes and bring the palace to life as it would have been 600 years ago. There is no substitute for this type of on-the-ground research. I virtually lived in the Alhambra for six days, and that proved invaluable when writing. Fortunately, the Royal Palace itself is mostly preserved in the same form it was when my story takes place.

What are your writing habits?

Like most novelists, I find that I need significant “face-time” with my characters and story. I am a morning person, up at 5:15 a.m. during the work week. After prayer time, breakfast and the paper, I retreat to my office by 7:15 a.m. and work without interruption until about 9:30 a.m.-ish Monday through Friday. I do not write on the weekends, but instead prefer to do some mental mull over of my characters and story. Each morning when I start writing, I first re-read and tinker with my previous section or two, then I begin new material once I have found my groove. I repeatedly write, re-read and revise as I compose, so I manage only a few pages a day. I aim for a chapter a week. Slowly but surely the novel grows. I wrote Emeralds in about 15 months. When I close down each morning, I do a quick catch up on email, then off to campus. I still manage to beat all of my graduate students into the office!

Tell us about your prose style.

I utilize a third-person/objective/limited narrative scheme. The narrator sees all but does not know all. It is a very visual style. The reader stands with the narrator and is invited to observe and draw their own conclusions of what they see (the so-called camera-eye perspective). The action unfolds in the present tense, which I find lends dramatic weight to the story. I lean towards impressionistic descriptions of places, sights, sounds and smells. One of my major jobs in writing historical fiction is to create a well-developed sense of the time and place in the reader’s mind, and I find this impressionistic approach works well. I also adopt a modest amount of magical realism, choosing to bring certain inanimate things to life—in Emeralds, for instance, the constellations are participants in the story. My writing style is perhaps a bit unusual, but I think it works quite well.

Emeralds of the Alhambra is book one of a series called Anthems of al-Andalus. What comes next? And when will book two be out?

Yes, Emeralds is the first in a series of at least three novels dealing with medieval Muslim Spain. Book two is called Shadows in the Shining City and is set in late tenth-century Córdoba, at the height of the Golden Age of the Umayyad Caliphate. A remarkable period of cultural and intellectual enlightenment. This period is also the pinnacle of convivencia (coexistence), the time when Muslims, Jews and Christians lived together in harmony. I also tell the story of how it all unraveled. So Anthems of al-Andalus is not a trilogy in the traditional sense, with one book following the next chronologically. Book three will come back to Granada, but in the late fifteenth century at the fall of the Nasrid Kingdom. There will, however, be a linkage between all three books, so don’t despair! I am presently 450 pages into Shadows, with a target delivery date of early fall. I expect it will be released in the summer of 2014. It is a fantastic story of epic proportions that I lifted straight out of history. Stay tuned! Will the series go beyond a trilogy? I suspect so. There is just too much to talk about in medieval Muslim Spain. I will say, however, that I am already getting very interested in medieval Muslim Sicily, which also has a fascinating history.

Are all of your novels going to be centered on love stories?

Absolutely! The timelessness of love is the most riveting subject I can imagine writing about. Big, epic themes wrapped about love stories—my life’s blood!

Will you ever go back to writing non-fiction or is your heart now firmly entrenched in fiction?

Good question. From a technical perspective, I have published five books now in my field of study, including two for general audiences, so that is pretty much covered. To be honest, though, I find writing fiction to be one of the most creatively satisfying things I have ever done.  So, for the foreseeable future, novels it is!

What can you tell us about the underlying religious themes in the book? How are these themes reflected in your personal feelings about religion and conflict?

Great question. While my principal goal with Emeralds was to create an engaging historical novel that folks enjoy, and that would also bring alive an important period of time now largely forgotten, my motives in writing the book actually had a deeper thrust. I wanted to remind folks that there was an existence proof from the pages of history, one that transpired over several hundred years, when Christians, Muslims and Jews lived together in relative peace, sharing languages and customs, whispering words of love across religious boundaries, embracing a level of mutual acceptance and respect unimaginable today. Together, they launched one of the great intellectual and cultural flowerings of history. In my opinion, our modern world aches for a future graced with religious tolerance and peace. How do we best get there? Well, I would argue that first you need to recall that once upon a time it was in fact a reality. And if it existed once, it can exist again. Call me an idealist, but that is what I believe. We deserve a peaceful world. I chose to use interfaith love as a tool for breaking open this history, because love is the great universal. By that I mean love transcends cultural, religious and historical boundaries. It always has; it always will.

What do your colleagues and students think of your “2nd career” as a novelist?

I think the standard response I get from colleagues is “How on earth do you find the time?!” Well, it is certainly true that I don’t sleep much (who does?!), but to be candid, I have always made the time to do the things I am truly passionate about. And this is clearly one. I have found students to be exceptionally interested in the fact that their professor writes fiction. I talk about it in class. They ask questions about it. Hopefully, they will read it and like it, too! I strongly suspect they will.

Who is your favorite character in Emeralds? Why?

Mmmm… That’s a tough one. As a writer, you put some of yourself in all of your characters. But, if I had to pick one…well, I have had the great blessing in my life of being surrounded by very bright, strong-willed females (my wife, my two daughters and now my daughter-in-law, to name a few), and thus I would have to say that Layla is my favorite. And she’s certainly the most fun to write about.

Visit Dr. Cressler’s website for additional content.

Mr. Li’s research focuses on growing high-quality InAlGaN compound semiconductor material for high-performance ultraviolet optoelectronic devices such as laser diodes, light-emitting diodes, and detectors. These devices are fundamental for next-generation optical storage, water purification techniques, and bioagent detection. He grows materials by using an Aixtron Epilab Metal-organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) system, a state-of-the-art system that can grow materials at an ultrahigh temperature of up to 1,300 degrees celsius while obtaining a uniform temperature profile.

Mr. Li works in the Advanced Material and Device Group and is advised by Russell D. Dupuis, who is the Steve W. Chaddick Endowed Chair in Electro-Optics and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar. Before coming to Tech, Mr. Li received the bachelor’s degree in Applied Physics from Huazhong University of Science and Technology and the M.S.E.E. degree from Lehigh University.

SPIE serves more than 235,000 constituents from approximately 155 countries, offering conferences, continuing education, books, journals, and a digital library in support of interdisciplinary information exchange, professional networking, and patent precedent. In 2013, SPIE awarded $351,000 in scholarships to 139 outstanding individuals, based on their potential contribution to optics and photonics, or a related discipline.

Dr. Howard and her students are affiliated with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Georgia Tech. Their team, dubbed as “Angry DARwIn: Framework for Human-robot Task Collaboration on a Shared Tablet Workspace,” demonstrated their robot learning from a human demonstrator how to play a game of Angry Birds. Based on Ms. Park’s Ph.D. thesis work, “Task Learning Policies for Collaborative Task Solving in Human-Robot Interaction,” the key elements to long-term engagement during human-robot interaction are the robot’s capability to learn and engage in new tasks through human demonstration and a defined workspace that provides content that both the human and robot participants can use and enjoy.

The framework that the team proposed for the competition provides a case-based reasoning approach to robot learning, a human reasoning methodology that retrieves the solutions of problems observed in the past, and reuses the solutions to respond to emerging similar problems. Researchers using the framework can model their own task as tablet apps and configure the framework settings to teach the task to their robots. The framework provides tools for modeling the task policy through training the parameters for case-retrieval function that maximizes the rewards. During the demonstration, the team’s robot, Angry DARwIn, was able to quickly learn the strategies to solve each level of Angry Birds after less than three or four demonstrations from the teacher. Angry DARwIn not only learns to play the game, but also picks up verbal and emotional behaviors that the human teacher demonstrates. The robot then converts the learned emotions into his own verbal and gestural primitives that merge with his task behavior. The team anticipates using Angry DARwIn as a mediator to research how social interaction emerges during human-robot interaction.

This award-winning work originated from the Human-Automation Systems Lab, led by Dr. Howard, who is the Motorola Foundation Professor in ECE. Their prize included $20,000 worth of the humanoid robot platform DARwIn-OP from ROBOTIS, robot simulator Webots Pro from Cyberbotics, and Labview Robotics Software from National Instruments.

In addition to the competition, Angry DARwIn was voted the best robot application through its promotional video and was awarded a $1,000 gift certificate from ROBOTIS. The video can be viewed at http://youtu.be/eCKInnYDB2E.

Magnus Egerstedt, ECE 8823 Networked Control Systems

Francesco Fedele (jointly appointed with ECE; primary appointment in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering), ECE 2025 Introduction to Signal Processing

Mark A. Richards, ECE 2025 Introduction to Signal Processing

George F. Riley, ECE 3090 Software Fundamentals for Engineering Systems

Justin K. Romberg, ECE 6250 Advanced Digital Signal Processing

This award is given to faculty members with exceptional response rates and scores on the Course-Instructor Opinion Survey (CIOS), an instrument that is distributed to students at the conclusion of semester classes. Taking the class size into account, evaluators for this award also look for a robust response rate (85 percent or better) and a high rating on instructor effectiveness.

All five professors had teaching effectiveness scores ranging from 4.8 to 5.0 and evaluation response rates ranging from 88 to 100 percent for the courses that they taught. “We are extremely fortunate to have many gifted teachers in our school,” said Steven W. McLaughlin, Steve W. Chaddick School Chair of ECE. “I am very proud of the dedication and passion that these faculty members have shown in teaching our undergraduate and graduate students.”

The objective of her work is to investigate how supercapacitor (SC) device characteristics affect power management policies and to establish the theoretical foundation and applied framework of adaptive power management for SC-powered wireless sensor networks (WSNs).

The results of Dr. Zhang's CAREER research will significantly extend the lifetime of self-powered WSNs and lead to maintenance-free WSNs that can exist for decades on weak ambient energy and provide sustainable services required by many important long-life applications. In addition, the SC model and power management framework can have an impact on other portable embedded electronics.

ECE alumni Leslie Sibert and Holmes Hawkins hosted this year's event. Ms. Sibert (BEE '85) is vice president of distribution at Georgia Power, and Mr. Hawkins (BEE '90) is a partner at King and Spalding and serves as the head of the firm's Intellectual Property Practice Group. Support for this annual event is provided through an endowment established by the ECE Advisory Board.

The recipients of the 2013 Roger P. Webb Awards are as follows:

Student Awards

Outstanding ECE Sophomore Award: Qisi Wang

ECE Junior Scholar Award: Charles Austin Sutlief

ECE Undergraduate Research Award: Penyen Chi

Most Outstanding ECE Senior Co-op Award: Jessica Shaffer

Outstanding Service to Georgia's Community Award: Caitlyn Seim

ECE Faculty Award: Layla Marshall

Outstanding Electrical Engineering Senior Award: Allison Del Giorno

Outstanding Computer Engineering Senior Award: Andrew Biviano

ECE Senior Scholar Award: Stephen Bracca, Siddhartha Datta Roy, Adam Dixon, Layla Marshall, Timothy Philip, Ackshaey Singh, Samrat Sinharoy

Colonel Oscar P. Cleaver Award: Razi Dehghannasiri, Matthew Hale, Yiming Kong

ECE Graduate Teaching Assistant Excellence Award: Amy LaViers

ECE Graduate Research Assistant Excellence Award: Han Lun Yap, Qi Zhou

Staff Awards

Hats Off Performance Award: Marion Crowder, Chris Malbrue

Research Spotlight Award: Ian Cooper

Academic Spotlight Award: Kevin Pham

Faculty Awards

Outstanding Junior Faculty Member Award: Santiago Grijalva

ECE Outreach Award: Jeff Davis

Richard M. Bass/Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Teacher Award: Greg Durgin

W. Marshall Leach, Jr./Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Teacher Award: Magnus Egerstedt

D. Scott Wills ECE Distinguished Mentor Award: Steven McLaughlin

Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award: John Copeland

In addition, two ECE staff members were recognized for receiving college degrees, as were five graduate teaching assistants who were also honored at the annual ECE Spring Picnic, sponsored by all of the ECE student organizations.

College Degree Graduates

Peter Huynh, Master's Degree in Business Administration (Computer Information Systems), Georgia State University, Spring 2012

Toya Jordan, Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration (Managerial Sciences), Georgia State University, Spring 2013

Recognition of Outstanding ECE Graduate Teaching Assistant Awards

Jevon Raghubir, Amanda Cummings, Clifton Thomas, Nicholas Bertrand, Andrew Price

Recognition of Awards Presented at the April 10 Georgia Tech Faculty Staff Honors Luncheon

Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Advisor Award: Ali Adibi

Class of 1934 Distinguished Professor Award: John Cressler

Class of 1934 Outstanding Interdisciplinary Activities Award: Ayanna Howard

Steven A. Denning Faculty Award for Global Engagement: Abdallah Ougazzaden

Staff Leadership Award: Etta Pittman

Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning/BP Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award: Chris Rozell

Recognition of Awards Presented at the April 16 Georgia Tech Student Honors Day

CEIA Academic Internship Student Achievement Award: Andrew Harris

Love Family Foundation Scholarship: Allison Del Giorno

Helen Grenga Outstanding Woman Engineer Award: Layla Marshall

James G. and Mary G. Wohlford Scholarship: Shivani Mehta

Dorothy Cowser Yancy Incentive Award: Kyle Woumn

William Gilmer Perry Award: Alan Dong

Kelley Music Scholarship: Joseph Lind, Matthew O'Shaughnessy, Chris Wang

Henry Ford II Scholar Awards: Sachit Kadle, Jason McElrath

Recognition of Awards Presented at the April 4 Sigma Xi Awards Program

Sigma Xi Best Doctoral Thesis Award: Maysamreza Chamanzar (Ali Adibi, Advisor) and Suk Choi (Russell Dupuis, Advisor)

Mr. Wu is developing a compiler, Red Fox, for accelerating large-scale data warehousing applications on cloud architectures augmented with GPU accelerators. Red Fox is now capable of running all TPC-H queries in one GPU device with small-scale inputs.  The longer term goal of Red Fox is to be integrated with large relational database systems consisting of multiple nodes and multiple GPU devices to explore the opportunities for GPU computing in the “Big Data” era.

All NVIDIA award-winning students were selected from hundreds of applicants in 39 countries. Their projects involve a variety of technical challenges, including computer architecture, programming models, character animation, computer graphics and computational methods for simulating chemical events.

Read more about the NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship Program.

A pioneer in the area of power system informatics and green electricity, Dr. Grijalva serves as the director of the Advanced Computational Electricity Systems Laboratory, where he advises 22 graduate students. The group focuses on high-impact, transformative research on electrical energy systems for both large- and small-scale grid and on the “systems” problems of electrical energy, including planning and real-time system control stages. In his role as the associate director for electricity systems with the Strategic Energy Institute, he is responsible for coordinating large efforts on electricity research and policy at Georgia Tech. 

Dr. Grijalva’s research and educational interests include real-time power system control, electrical energy informatics, and power system economics. He leads research efforts focused on future electricity grids for the U.S. Department of Energy, ARPA-E, the Electric Power Research Institute, and the Power Systems Engineering Research Center, an NSF-funded center based at Arizona State University. He is also the founding faculty advisor for the Georgia Tech Energy Club.

Prior to his arrival at Georgia Tech, Dr. Grijalva worked with PowerWorld Corporation as a senior software architect and developer of innovative power systems applications used today in more than 60 countries. He also worked with the Ecuadorian National Center for Energy Control as engineer and manager of the Real-Time EMS Software Department. 

Dr. Egerstedt joined the Georgia Tech ECE faculty in 2001 and conducts research in the areas of control theory and robotics, with particular focus on control and coordination of complex networks, such as multi-robot systems, mobile sensor networks, and cyber-physical systems. He leads the Georgia Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory, where he currently advises 15 graduate students. He has published four books and over 250 refereed journal and conference publications, and he serves as associate editor for both the Journal of Discrete Event Dynamical Systems and the Journal of Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems.

Dr. Egerstedt is not only an established educational leader in ECE and in the systems and controls group, but also on campus and in the massive open online course (MOOC) arena. He was instrumental in establishing the multidisciplinary Ph.D. program in robotics and was one of the first faculty members at Georgia Tech to teach a Coursera MOOC called "Control of Mobile Robots," which has an enrollment of over 40,000 students this semester.

Elected an IEEE Fellow in 2012, Dr. Egerstedt was recently named an IEEE Control Systems Society Distinguished Lecturer and as the inaugural deputy editor-in-chief of the new journal, IEEE Transactions on Control of Networked Systems. He is also a past recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and the ECE Outstanding Junior Faculty Member Award.

Dr. Rohatgi started his research and educational program in solar cells, literally from scratch, when he arrived at Georgia Tech in the mid-1980s. In 1992, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) awarded the nation’s first University Center of Excellence in Photovoltaics Research and Education (UCEP) to Dr. Rohatgi and his team, and the DoE has continuously funded by the Center since that time. The program has generated more than $40 million in external support and attracts many international visitors.

During his career, Dr. Rohatgi and his team have produced many record high efficiency solar cells and more than 400 technical papers.  During the 1996 Olympics, the photovoltaics (PV) program showcased one of the world’s largest grid-connected systems on top of the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center. The system still produces 400 megawatt-hours annually, which is equal to the energy consumed by 50 homes.

Dr. Rohatgi is also the co-founder and chief technical officer of Suniva, an Atlanta-based solar cell manufacturing company, spun out of UCEP patents and intellectual property. Suniva is the only U.S.-based manufacturer of high-efficiency monocrystalline silicon solar cells in the Southeast using advanced, low-cost techniques to make solar-generated electricity cost-competitive with fossil fuels. Suniva has been named Georgia’s fastest growing small mid-market company, employing a diverse workforce of approximately 200 people.

Equally dedicated to PV education, Dr. Rohatgi has developed courses and built state-of-the-art labs for characterizing, modeling, and fabricating solar cells. He also established a PV Educational Support Program that provides practical training and education for Georgia Tech researchers and for other university PV programs in the U.S.

An IEEE Fellow, Dr. Rohatgi has won many technical society, government, and industrial awards for his work, including the Environmental Protection Agency Climate Award and the American Solar Energy Society Hoyt Clark Hottel Award. He has also been recognized at Georgia Tech with numerous educational, research, and commercialization honors, including most recently the ECE Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award and the Georgia Tech Outstanding Achievement in Research Innovation Award.  Dr. Rohatgi was also named among the “Champions of PV” by Renewable Energy World Magazine in 2010.

Dr. McLaughlin is the Steve W. Chaddick School Chair in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech and leads the largest ECE program in the United States.

Their award-winning paper, entitled "Effect of Thickness Anisotropy on Degenerate Modes in Oxide Micro-Hemispherical Shell Resonators," was co-written with their Ph.D. advisor and director of the Integrated MEMS (IMEMS) Laboratory, Farrokh Ayazi. Mr. Sorenson is a Ph.D. student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Mr. Shao is a Ph.D. student in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, while Dr. Ayazi is a professor in ECE.

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices are an enabling technology to power novel applications in next generation smart phones such as motion sensing, navigation, air quality monitoring, wireless communications, and timing. Limited by fabrication resolution, traditional 2D planar MEMS devices face great challenges for further size reduction as demanded by Moore's law. In contrast, 3D MEMS structures can overcome these fabrication limitations by taking advantage of the inherent symmetry of diffusion-based processes to create nearly perfect devices.

An example of 3D MEMS devices are the micro-hemispherical shell resonators (micro-HSRs) developed over the past two years by the IMEMS Lab through a DARPA-funded project in collaboration with Northrop Grumman. These resonators consist of millimeter diameter silicon dioxide micro-wineglass shells surrounded by electrodes for electrostatic actuation of the mechanical resonance modes of the shells. The thickness to diameter ratio of these ultra-miniature wineglasses is about 1:1000, or approximately the same as a beach ball, yet they show remarkable structural resilience.

A distinguishing feature of the Georgia Tech approach is to blend and adapt traditional micromachining techniques for the purpose of creating the 3D micro-wineglasses with monolithically-integrated electrodes to create these truly unique devices with unprecedented symmetry for the first time. A key technology developed by this work is the generation of freestanding silicon dioxide wineglasses by thermal oxidation of a silicon wafer in which hemispherical cavity molds were first formed by an isotropic etch process.

If there are any systematic variations in the oxide growth, such as those arising from the crystallinity of the silicon mold wafer, the symmetry of the shell would be broken, perturbing the two ideally-degenerate principle mechanical modes of the structure and leading to a split in the frequency response of the resonator. The scope of the presented work was to theoretically and numerically study the effect of the expected oxide growth variations as sources of anisotropy in the shells, and compare these estimates with observed frequency splits in the prototype micro-HSRs. A very small frequency split is needed to turn the micro-HSRs into high performance rotation sensors, or gyroscopes.

Spurred on by the early success of their project, this interdisciplinary team is continuing their theoretical investigations into other sources of structural anisotropy and using these results to develop new prototypes of even more perfect structures.

Published by Artec House last month, the book provides a detailed introduction to state-of-the-art mobile-to-mobile wireless propagation and offers professionals guidance for rapid implementation of these communication systems. It also offers engineers and students a thorough understanding of signal propagation and channel models for vehicle-to-vehicle, air-to-ground, and underwater vehicle-to-underwater vehicle communications.

This is the first book published by Dr. Zajic, who also specializes in wireless communications, applied electromagnetics, electromagnetic security and compatibility, communications in computer systems, and underwater wireless channel modeling and measurements. She currently serves as editor for the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

The IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS) named Dr. Egerstedt as a Distinguished Lecturer for a three-year term. The two topics on which he will lecture are "Control of Multi-Robot Systems: From Formations to Human-Swarm Interactions" and "Choreographic Abstractions in Robotics." The purpose of the IEEE CSS Distinguished Lecturer Program is to help the Society's chapters provide interesting and informative programs for the membership, as well as to industry, universities, and other interested organizations.

Dr. Egerstedt was also recently named as the inaugural deputy editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Control of Networked Systems, which will focus on how one organizes, controls, and coordinates networks of "agents" such as robots, sensors, computers, or even people on social networks. Everyday applications of topics to be covered in the journal include robotics, manufacturing, computer networks, communications systems, and sensor networks, just to name a few. The editorial board is currently being assembled, and the first issue of the journal will be published in January 2014.

A professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech since 2001, Dr. Egerstedt is the director of the Georgia Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory. He was elected as an IEEE Fellow in 2012 "for hybrid and networked control, with applications in robotics."

Dr. Verriest first came to Georgia Tech as a visiting professor in 1980 and then joined the faculty of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering as an assistant professor in 1981. He has held the rank of professor since 1993.

The main thrust of Dr. Verriest’s research and educational work involves systems with delays, nonlinear model order reduction, optimal control and estimation, and modeling of periodic and hybrid systems. He was elected as an IEEE Fellow in 2012 “for contributions to balancing and model reduction for time-varying and nonlinear systems and contributions to delay systems,” and he has edited one book and published 37 parts of books, over 50 refereed journal papers, almost 200 refereed conference papers, and over 70 published and/or acknowledged mathematical solutions. Dr. Verriest was also a Francqui-Fellow in 1974, an honor given by the Belgian American Educational Foundation, which allowed him to pursue his graduate degrees at Stanford.

The Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts is an autonomous and multidisciplinary society that is divided into four classes–Natural Sciences, Humanities, Arts, and Technical Sciences. Presently, there are 45 members of the Class of Technical Sciences in the Academy and 12 international members. The Academy organizes scientific and cultural activities and tries to stimulate cooperation between universities in Belgium, while assuring Belgian representation in international organizations and forums, attracting foreign researchers, and giving recommendations and advice to government, industry, education, and research institutions. 

A Ph.D. student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Ms. Zhang was recognized for her paper entitled "3D Stacked Microfluidic Cooling for High Performance 3D ICs," which she coauthored with her fellow Ph.D. student Ashish Dembla; her Ph.D. advisor Muhannad Bakir, an associate professor in ECE; and Yogendra Joshi, a professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering.

Cooling is a significant challenge for high-performance, high-power 3D ICs. In her paper, Ms. Zhang and her colleagues describe the experimental evaluation of 3D ICs with embedded microfluidic cooling. For the first time, different architectures were experimentally evaluated including: 1) a memory-on-processor stack, 2) a processor-on-processor stack with equal power dissipation, and 3) a processor-on-processor stack with different power dissipation. In all cases, embedded microfluidic cooling shows significant junction temperature reduction compared to air-cooling.

Hua Wang and Mark P. Styczynski, assistant professors in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, respectively, will investigate how to fuse actual live cells or tissues with CMOS electronics to form a hybrid bio-semiconductor system. This system would provide novel biosensors with high signal sensitivity and specificity while at a very low operating power. According to Wang, the major applications of this technology include low-cost drug development, fast chemical screening, and personalized medicine.

In such a hybrid bio-semiconductor system, Wang envisions live cells or tissues serving as the "Biological Front-End" to interface with the physical environment and the CMOS integrated circuits functioning as the "Silicon Synthetic Back-End" to convert the cellular responses to electrical signals for information processing and storage. “This system will open the door for novel sensing, actuation, and even signal processing capabilities beyond existing silicon platforms,” said Wang. “If I may draw an analogy between our hybrid biosensor and a radio-frequency receiver, these live cells in our sensors are actually functioning as ‘biological’ front-end filters and low noise amplifiers, which select and amplify the desired biochemical information.”

Led by SRC’s Global Research Collaboration, the SSB program concentrates on synergies between synthetic biology and semiconductor technology that can foster exploratory, multi-disciplinary, longer-term university research leading to novel, breakthrough solutions for a wide range of industries. Results from the university research, guided by semiconductor industry needs, should significantly enhance and accelerate opportunities for advancing properties, design and applications for future generations of integrated circuits. The Georgia Tech team was one of six U.S. university groups to receive funding from the SSB program, which is supporting exploratory projects in cytomorphic-semiconductor circuit design; bio-electric sensors, actuators, and energy sources; and molecular-precision additive fabrication.

“I am very excited that our Georgia Tech team was selected as a winning team for this SRC program.” Wang said. “Our world-class infrastructure in electronics research and the strong interdisciplinary collaborations at Georgia Tech really helped us win this SRC opportunity.”