In 1990, the shared vision of a group of Georgia business leaders led to the creation of a public-private partnership called the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA). The vision that strategic investment in the state’s research universities would help enable economic growth was implemented with three major elements: recruitment of outstanding researchers to join university faculties, development of first-class research laboratories and facilities, and later, the provision of venture development resources to support formation of commercial enterprises based on intellectual capital resulting from university research.

The GRA Eminent Scholars Program facilitates recruitment of world-class scientists and technologists by providing funds to help establish endowed faculty chairs in fields of strategic importance to the state and to the host university. GRA provides half the chair endowment and the host university the other half, usually from individual gifts by donors. The university foundation manages the endowment assets.

GRA also invests in laboratory outfitting for its Eminent Scholars and their colleagues. GRA has made substantial investments at Georgia Tech to develop facilities including the Pettit Microelectronics Building and the Marcus Nanotechnology Building.

In 2003, GRA created a venture development program to propel the launch and growth of new companies built around university discoveries. The program offers grants, loans, and advisory services to achieve company formation and growth. A few years later, the GRA Venture Fund LLC was formed to provide early-stage capital to the most promising university startups in GRA’s pipeline.

Since 1990, the GRA has invested $668 million and, by independent audit, generated a 12:1 return of $7.8 billion on the state’s investment in GRA. The Ventures Program has 195 companies in its portfolio which have attracted $1.75 billion in equity investment and created more than 1,500 jobs. Currently 88% of the startups receiving GRA investment and guidance are in business after four years (significantly higher than the national average of 44% of startups).

Georgia Tech in general and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineer (ECE) have benefited immensely by partnering with GRA. According to GRA President Susan Shows, ECE has recruited more GRA Eminent Scholars than any school/department at GRA’s members institutions and GRA has supported more start-up ventures emanating from ECE than from any other unit.

ECE has recruited 15 GRA Eminent Scholars, six of whom have retired or otherwise left Georgia Tech. The endowed chairs of these six were used to recruit additional Scholars so that nine members of the current ECE faculty hold GRA Eminent Scholar positions. GRA has invested $28 million to establish the Eminent Scholar positions and fit out their laboratories. It has invested another $21 million in core facilities. The GRA has supported 61 ECE originated startup ventures. While GRA does not track return on investment (ROI) in individual units, it is reasonable to assume that the ROI ratio for ECE investments is at least commensurate with the overall GRA investment return ratio.

The following brief sketches of a few of the outstanding individuals who joined the ECE faculty as GRA Eminent Scholars are illustrative of the impact of GRA on the School and on the economic development of the state:

• John Copeland joined the ECE faculty in 1993 as GRA’s first Eminent Scholar and became the founding director of the Georgia Center for Advanced Telecommunications Technology. Copeland developed a highly successful research program and was noted for successful mentoring of doctoral students. He founded a successful technology company, Lancope, based on intellectual capital developed by his research. Lancope was subsequently acquired by Cisco. Copeland retired from the faculty in 2016.
   
• Rao Tummala became ECE’s second GRA Eminent Scholar. Shortly after joining the faculty in 1993, he led a proposal effort resulting in an award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish the first ever NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) at Georgia Tech. The ERC focused on the area of electronic packaging and was appropriately named the Georgia Tech Packaging Research Center (PRC). Tummala successfully recruited a large number of electronics companies worldwide to join PRC. The PRC obtained the maximum level of ERC funding over an 11-year span and has received over $100 million in contract awards from member companies. Additionally, the PRC provided a substantial educational and student mentoring program. Tummala retired from the faculty in 2019, but the PRC continues to flourish under the direction of his protégé, Madhavan Swaminathan. One of the technologies PRC pioneered was the development of glass substrates for semiconductor chips. It was recently announced that Korean industry giant SKC would locate a major facility to Covington, Georgia to manufacture glass substrates. Access to PRC was a major element in the choice of location.
   
• Russell DuPuis joined the ECE faculty in 2003 as a GRA Eminent Scholar. With support from GRA, Dupuis developed a substantial laboratory and student training facility to continue his research on growth of lll-V compound semiconductor materials using metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). A pioneer in LED technology, Dr. DuPuis was presented the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President George W. Bush in 2002, and he received the Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering in 2015. In 2019, Dupuis was selected to receive the Materials Todayinnovation award for pioneering MOCVD technology. In 2021, he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, based on his contributions to LED technology and marketing, and he was introduced to Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles. Later this year, Dupuis will be honored with the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering.
   
• In 2015, Deepak Divan became an ECE/GRA Eminent Scholar. He is the founding director of the School’s Center for Distributed Energy, which conducts research in the area of devices and distributed control for power systems. The products of his research have led to the formation of three technology companies. Also, in large part due to Divan’s efforts, the School has the largest and most respected educational programs in electric power engineering.
   
• Larry Heck is the latest ECE/GRA Eminent Scholar, joining the faculty in 2021. Heck is no stranger to ECE, having received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Georgia Tech, and he served for many years on the ECE Advisory Board. For the past 30 years, Heck had a distinguished career working in the areas of artificial intelligence and speech processing with several well-known technology companies.

The GRA has more than satisfied the vision and goals of the leaders who conceived and founded it. It has been a significant factor in bringing outstanding faculty to Georgia’s research universities with attendant development of education and research programs. An often overlooked factor in the resultant economic development contributions is the fact that outstanding faculty attract outstanding students. The intellectual property represented by those students joining the workforce upon graduation rivals the importance of the intellectual property leading to commercial enterprises. ECE is proud of its affiliation with GRA and of the resultant program and intellectual property development.

Now in its 197th year, The Franklin Institute Awards Program pays tribute to its namesake and America’s first citizen scientist, Benjamin Franklin, by honoring 13 individuals for their extraordinary achievements in science, engineering, and business leadership. This awards program is the oldest comprehensive science and technology awards program in the United States and has recognized more than 2,000 of the most pioneering scientists, engineers, inventors, and innovators from across the globe.

Dupuis is being honored for pioneering the technology known as MOCVD (metalorganic chemical vapor deposition). This technology provides the materials quality and ultra-precision required for many device components central to modern life, including LEDS, transistors, lasers, and high-performance solar cells. 

His contributions to the development of MOCVD are among the most significant contributions made in the growth of semiconductor devices in the last 40 years. His work on the understanding and improvement of the MOCVD process was the key development that led to the demonstration of the first MOCVD-grown III-V compound semiconductor heterostructure solar cells, injection lasers, the first CW room-temperature quantum-well lasers grown by any materials technology, and the demonstration of high-reliability MOCVD lasers. These important achievements have had a great impact on the efficient use of energy in the world.

Dupuis has been a faculty member in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Georgia Tech since 2003. He holds the Steve W. Chaddick Endowed Chair in Electro-Optics and is a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar. Dupuis also leads the Center for Compound Semiconductors. Prior to his arrival at Tech, he was a chaired professor at the University of Texas at Austin and worked at Texas Instruments, Rockwell International, and AT&T Bell Laboratories.

Dupuis has received several major honors in the last six years. Earlier this year, he and four of his colleagues were awarded the 2021 Queen Elizabeth Prize in Engineering for the creation and development of LED lighting. In 2019, Dupuis was honored with the Materials Today Innovation Award for his development of the MOCVD technology and seminal contributions to compound semiconductor materials and devices. In 2015, he was one of five pioneers to receive the Draper Prize for Engineering in recognition of the significant benefit to society created by the initial development and commercialization of LED technologies. 

Dupuis has also been recognized with the IEEE Edison Medal and as a Fellow of the IEEE, OSA, the American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dupuis was named as a co-recipient of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering earlier this year with his colleagues Nick Holonyak Jr. (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Isamu Akasaki (Nagoya University and Meijo University in Japan), M. George Craford (Philips Lumileds Lighting Company), and Shuji Nakamura (University of California, Santa Barbara). They were recognized not only for the global impact of LED and solid-state lighting, but also for the tremendous contribution that LED technology has made, and will continue to make, to reducing energy consumption and addressing climate change.

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Read more about Dupuis and his colleagues and the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering

Dupuis, the Steve W. Chaddick Endowed Chair in Electro-Optics in Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), received the award for his role in the creation and commercialization of LED lighting, which forms the basis of all solid-state lighting technology. He shares the prize with four of his colleagues from universities and industry around the world.

“It is really something to share in this award with my friends and colleagues,” said Dupuis, a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in ECE. “All five of us played an important role, and this recognition means a lot to me personally.”

First awarded in 2013 in the name of Her Majesty The Queen, the QEPrize celebrates groundbreaking innovation in engineering. The 2021 winners were announced Tuesday.

Administrators of the prize said solid-state lighting technology changed how we illuminate our world. It can be found everywhere, from sports stadiums, parking garages, inside and outside commercial buildings, homes, digital displays, computer screens, and cell phones to hand-held laser pointers, automobile headlights, and traffic lights. Today’s high-performance LEDs are used in efficient solid-state lighting products across the world and are contributing to the sustainable development of world economies by reducing energy consumption. 

Visible LEDs are now a global industry predicted to be worth over $108 billion by 2025 through low-cost, high-efficiency lighting. They are playing a crucial role in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, consuming significantly less energy and producing 90% less heat than incandescent lighting, and their large-scale use reduces the energy demand required to cool buildings. For this, they are often referred to as the “green revolution” within lighting.

“The impact of this innovation is not to be understated. It makes lighting a lot cheaper and more accessible for emerging economies, said Sir Christopher Snowden, chair of the QEPrize judging panel.  “For example, LEDs are being used on fishing boats where previously the only option would have been paraffin lamps. They are much cheaper and safer. It is not only an extreme engineering achievement, but a societal impact that has a significant impact on the environment.”

Dupuis, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the nation’s highest honor for engineering professionals, shares the prize with: Shuji Nakamura, the CREE Chair in Solid-State Lighting and Displays in the Materials Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara; M. George Craford, a Solid-State Lighting Fellow at Philips Lumileds Lighting Company; Isamu Akasaki, a University Professor at Nagoya University and Meijo University (Japan); and Nick Holonyak Jr., the John Bardeen Endowed Chair Emeritus in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The winners will be honored at a ceremony later this year.

First awarded in 2013 in the name of Her Majesty The Queen, the QEPrize exists to celebrate ground-breaking innovation in engineering. The 2021 winners were announced on February 2 by Lord Browne of Madingley, Chairman of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Foundation. HRH The Princess Royal shared a message of congratulation for the winners.

Solid-state lighting technology has changed how we illuminate our world. It can be found everywhere from sports stadiums, parking garages, inside and outside commercial buildings, homes, digital displays and computer screens and cell phones to hand-held laser pointers, automobile headlights and traffic lights. Today’s high-performance LEDs are used in efficient solid-state lighting products across the world and are contributing to the sustainable development of world economies by reducing energy consumption.  

Visible LEDs are now a global industry predicted to be worth over $108 billion by 2025 through low-cost, high-efficiency lighting. They are playing a crucial role in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, consuming significantly less energy and producing 90% less heat than incandescent lighting, and their large-scale use reduces the energy demand required to cool buildings. For this, they are often referred to as the ‘green revolution’ within lighting.

“Engineering is imperative to solving human problems. All over the world, everyone knows the QEPrize. Most importantly, this is a team prize. I was able to do what I did in the 1980s, because of what had come before. When I was modifying reactors every morning and every afternoon continuously for a year and a half, I never thought it would be so successful." Shuji Nakamura

“This is a really special moment for me. The QEPrize is so prestigious and it is spectacular to receive recognition from The Royal Family. It is a career highlight that is impossible to beat. Engineering is incredible, and I am proud to part of something that has made such a big impact on the world.” George Craford

“It is really something to share in this award with my friends and colleagues – all five of us each played an important role, and this recognition means a lot to me personally. In those early days, when we were working long days and nights hand-building reactors, Nick Holonyak mentored us. He really drew us in and inspired us to be part of the adventure that is engineering.” Russell Dupuis

“This year’s Prize winners have not only helped humanity to achieve a greater degree of mastery over the environment, they have enabled us to do so in a sustainable way. They have created a product which we now take for granted, but which will play a major role in ensuring that humanity can live in harmony with nature for many more centuries to come.” Lord Browne of Madingley, Chair, Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Foundation

“The impact of this innovation is not to be understated. It makes lighting a lot cheaper and more accessible for emerging economies. For example, LEDs are being used on fishing boats where previously the only option would have been paraffin lamps. They are much cheaper and safer. It is not only an extreme engineering achievement, but a societal impact that has a significant impact on the environment.” Sir Christopher Snowden, Chair of the QEPrize Judging Panel

Dupuis holds the Steve W. Chaddick Endowed Chair in Electro-Optics and is a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology; Nakamura is the Cree Chair in Solid-State Lighting and Displays in the Materials Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara; Craford is a Solid-State Lighting Fellow at Philips Lumileds Lighting Company; Akasaki is a University Professor at Nagoya University and Meijo University (Japan); and Holonyak is the John Bardeen Endowed Chair Emeritus in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The winners will be formally honoured at a ceremony later this year; they will receive the £1 million prize and an iconic trophy, designed by the 2021 Create the Trophy winner Hannah Goldsmith, a 20-year-old design student from the United Kingdom.

About the 2021 QEPrize

QEPrize celebrates engineering’s visionaries, encouraging engineers to help extend the boundaries of what is possible across all disciplines and applications. It also inspires young minds to consider engineering as a career choice and to help to solve the challenges of the future.

The QEPrize is administered by the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Foundation and funded by generous support from the following corporate donors: BAE Systems plc, BP plc, GlaxoSmithKline, Hitachi, Ltd., Jaguar Land Rover, National Grid plc, Nissan Motor Corporation, Shell UK Ltd., Siemens UK, Sony, Tata Steel Europe, Tata Consultancy Services, and Toshiba.

The 2021 winners are awarded a total cash prize of £1 million.

Rezvanitabar is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). He is co-advised by Professor Levent Degertekin, who leads the Micromachined Sensors and Transducers (MIST) Lab in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, and ECE Assistant Professor Shaolan Li, who leads the Georgia Tech Analog Mixed-signal Microsystems and Applications (GAMMA) Lab. Rezvanitabar was formerly co-advised by Maysam Ghovanloo.

This predoctoral achievement award is for Rezvanitabar’s Ph.D. research on “Integrated Electronics for Wireless Imaging Microsystems Utilizing CMUT Arrays.” Integration of transducer arrays with interface electronics in the form of single-chip CMUT-on-CMOS is transforming the field of medical ultrasound imaging. Rezvanitabar’s research is a step toward implantable wireless microsystems that use ultrasound to image the brain by bypassing the skull. 

These microsystems offer autonomous scanning of the brain and wireless data transfer for image reconstruction and can be used as an emerging modality with sufficient spatio-temporal resolution for the assessment and detection of brain tumors and re-hemorrhage for long-term or continuous monitoring.

Rezvanitabar received two B.S. degrees (summa cum laude) in electrical engineering and biomedical engineering from the Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), located in Tehran, Iran, and two M.S. degrees in electrical engineering with different areas of focus from the Sharif University of Technology, located in Tehran, and from Georgia Tech.

Since that time, the School has changed its name to the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), and it has changed in many other ways over the years. Among those changes are that it now has 13 women in its faculty ranks.

This group of female faculty is one of the largest in any ECE unit in the United States. Their areas of interest span electrical energy, bioengineering, wireless communications, and everything in between. These are the Women of ECE at Georgia Tech.

Read more about Georgia Tech's ECE female faculty members. 

Since that time, the School has changed its name to the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), and it has changed in many other ways over the years. Among those changes are that it now has 13 women in its faculty ranks.

This group of female faculty is one of the largest in any ECE unit in the United States. Their areas of interest span electrical energy, bioengineering, wireless communications, and everything in between. These are the Women of ECE at Georgia Tech.

Read more about our female faculty members. 

In the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the Georgia Institute of Technology, ten current Ph.D. students, newly minted Ph.D. graduates, and postdoctoral fellows/associates have been hired into faculty positions, despite these difficult circumstances. Seven have been hired by universities in the United States, while three have accepted positions in Saudi Arabia, Chile, and Turkey. 

“We are extremely proud of our Ph.D. students, recent Ph.D. alumni, and postdocs and all of their accomplishments,” said Magnus Egerstedt, the Steve W. Chaddick School Chair of ECE. “We wish them all of the very best at their new university homes and in all that they choose to pursue in the future.” 

In a world that needs the expertise of engineering and science faculty more than ever, here are ten new additions to academia, all hailing from the Georgia Tech School of ECE. 

Abdullah Alamri

Abdullah Alamri graduated with his Ph.D. in spring 2020 after working in the Power Systems Control and Automation Laboratory since 2015. He started working this summer as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Islamic University of Madinah, located in Madinah, Saudi Arabia. 

The title of Alamri’s thesis is “Reliability Analysis Methods for Power Systems with Substantial Penetration of Renewable Generating Resources.” Focused on reliability and generation adequacy of present-day power systems, Alamri’s thesis developed reliability assessment models of power systems with wind farms and/or solar farms. The models provide probabilistic descriptions of wind farm/solar farm electric power output, and three different methods for computing the generated power probability distribution function of a wind farm or a solar farm were proposed and implemented. 

Alamri was advised by A.P. Sakis Meliopoulos, who holds the Georgia Power Distinguished Professorship in ECE. Meliopoulos said that Alamri's work is fundamental in understanding and quantifying the uncertainty associated with variable, or non-controllable, power generation, such as wind and solar. “As the penetration levels of wind and solar into modern power systems increase, the reliability and associated costs for maintaining a certain reliability level are greatly affected,” Meliopoulos said. “Mr. Alamri’s work provided rigorous mathematical models and computational procedures to quantify the reliability of the system and enable optimization of planning strategies for modern systems.”

Ningyuan Cao

Ningyuan Cao graduated with his Ph.D. in summer 2020 after working in the Integrated Circuits and Systems Research Laboratory since 2015. In fall 2021, he will join the Department of ECE at George Washington University as an assistant professor. The university is located in Washington, D.C. 

The title of Cao’s thesis is “Circuit and Algorithm Design to Enable Edge Intelligence.” His work aims to bridge the gap between Internet of Things (IoT) intelligence and hardware constraints via technical innovations. In particular, Cao aims to enhance intelligence, robustness, and trust of the human-IoT eco-system via circuit/algorithm co-design. His research has been highlighted in a number of technical media articles including EE Times and Wired.  

Cao was advised by ECE Professor Arijit Raychowdhury, who said that Cao will be an excellent researcher and will succeed in academia. “Ningyuan is curious, eager to work on new problems, but doesn’t compromise on rigor,” Raychowdhury said. “He has been interfacing with a number of semiconductor companies as a part of his graduate work, and I am sure that it has taught him to be careful and successful in selecting problems that will have an impact.”

Adam Charles

Adam Charles graduated with his Ph.D. in ECE in 2015 and recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the Princeton Neuroscience Institute at Princeton University in New Jersey. He began working as an assistant professor this summer at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, located in Baltimore, Maryland.

The title of Charles’ thesis is “Dynamics and Correlations in Sparse Signal Acquisition.” Many advances in technology over the past few decades, such as in robotics, medical devices, and scientific analysis, have relied on the increasing ability to mathematically describe and exploit the intrinsic relationships that exist in data collection. This work bridges the gap between two important data relationships: sparsity and dynamics. Sparsity is the concept that a large, complex dataset admits a simple mathematical representation with a small number of independent features, while dynamics is the smooth evolution of our world through time that creates regularities in sequential data-points. Charles’ resulting algorithms and theory have broad usage in practical applications, including improving the resolution of airborne imaging systems, algorithmic advances that improved on the state-of-the-art for tracking objects in complex temporal data, and theoretical explorations on the computations that can be performed by ever-pervasive recurrent neural network models.

Charles was advised by ECE Professor Christopher Rozell. He said that Charles made innovative technical contributions, focused on activities to develop himself professionally, and invested in collaborative relationships with his colleagues to advance everyone’s work. “This foundation served Adam well as he broadened his skillset in his postdoc work to be uniquely positioned to address some of the most pressing problems at the intersection of neuroengineering and data science,” Rozell said. “It was no surprise that he was very successful on the job market and is embarking now to start his own lab in one of the best environments in the world for his research area. I couldn’t be more proud of Adam, and I am excited to see the way he leads our field over the next generation.”

Thinh Doan

Thinh Doan recently completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship with both ECE and the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE). Doan joined the Bradley Department of ECE at Virginia Tech this fall, where he is an assistant professor. 

Doan earned his Ph.D. in ECE from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2018, and shortly afterwards, he came to Georgia Tech to do postdoctoral work on how multiple agents can collaboratively learn how to behave in their environment when communication between them is contained. This work is a mix of optimization, control, and communications.

Doan was advised by Justin Romberg, the Schlumberger Professor of ECE, and by Siva Theja Maguluri and Ganghui (George) Lan, assistant professor and professor respectively in ISyE. Romberg said that Doan’s time at Georgia Tech was a fantastic success. “In his two years here, Thinh not only published many papers in top applied mathematics journals and computer science conferences, he was also a tremendous mentor to my graduate students in ECE,” Romberg said. “He will make an excellent faculty member.”

Felipe A. Larrain

Felipe Larrain is graduating with his Ph.D. this summer after working in the Kippelen Research Group since 2014. This fall, he joined the Energy and Environmental Engineering Department as an assistant professor at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, located in Santiago, Chile.

The title of Larrain’s thesis is “Physics and Engineering of Organic Solar Cells: Electrical P-type Doping with Phosphomolybdic Acid.” The objective of Larrain’s proposed research was to simplify the fabrication of organic solar cells and limit their environmental impact by optimizing a new electrical doping mechanism. The solution-based electrical doping technique leads to a dramatic simplification of the device architecture of organic solar cells, decreasing the device fabrication cost while keeping the promise for roll-to-roll, large-area, and high throughput manufacturing.

Larrain was advised by Bernard Kippelen, who holds the Joseph M. Pettit Professorship in ECE. “I am extremely thankful to Felipe for his contributions to our research group during his Ph.D. at Georgia Tech and am delighted that he has decided to select an academic career and become a scholar,” Kippelen said. “I am convinced that he will have an incredible impact on future generations of students, especially Latino students.”

Barry Muldrey

Barry Muldrey graduated with his Ph.D. in summer 2019 after working in the Low-power, Adaptive, and Resilient Systems Laboratory and then conducted postdoctoral research in the Integrated Computational Electronics Laboratory. He joined the Department of ECE at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi this fall as an assistant professor. 

The title of Muldrey’s thesis is “Algorithms for Post-Silicon Validation and Debug of Radio-Frequency, Analog, and Mixed-Signal Circuits and Systems.” The problem of validating and verifying the correctness of analog/RF circuits and systems is of critical importance due to their widespread deployment in sensing, control, and communication applications. Novel machine-learning assisted algorithms were developed for automatically modeling and validating behaviors of physical designs across the global space of possible excitations to such systems. A key contribution in Muldrey’s thesis was developing the ability to diagnose design inconsistencies (or “bugs”) down to individual modules to enable rapid design debug and yield ramp-up.

Muldrey was advised by ECE Professor Abhijit Chatterjee for his doctorate and collaborated with ECE Professor Jennifer Hasler on postdoctoral work in her lab. Between Hasler and Chatterjee, they have 11 Ph.D. graduates who are engineering faculty members. “Barry was always looking beyond horizons to push his abilities in so many domains; he is multi-faceted and multi-talented,” Chatterjee said. “It is a great accomplishment for him to get the academic position he always wanted. He is well-positioned to excel in so many areas, and I wish all the best to Barry.”

Nader Sehatbaksh

Nader Sehatbaksh is graduating with his Ph.D. this summer after working in the Electromagnetic Measurements in Communications and Computing Laboratory since 2014. He joined the Department of ECE at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) this fall as an assistant professor.

The title of Sehatbaksh’s thesis is “Leveraging Side-Channel Signals for Security and Trust.” His research is focused on finding new methods to discover, model, and mitigate unintentional information leakage, known as side-channels, from modern computers. His work aims to leverage side-channel signals for useful purposes–like profiling, intrusion detection, and establishing trust–to improve the security and/or performance of resource-constrained devices such as embedded and cyber-physical systems.

Sehatbaksh was co-advised by ECE Associate Professor Alenka Zajic and Computer Science Professor Milos Prvulovic. Zajic noted that faculty positions at schools like UCLA, a top 20 institution in the United States, are highly competitive even in regular years. “Such faculty positions were exceptionally scarce during COVID-19, when most schools have frozen hiring,” Zajic said. “Securing this position is a testament to Nader’s exceptional research accomplishments and other academic achievements, and also to the great training he obtained at Georgia Tech.”

Beren Semiz  

Beren Semiz is graduating with her Ph.D. this summer after working in the Inan Research Lab since 2016. She begins her career as an assistant professor this fall in the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE) at Koc University, located in Istanbul, Turkey. 

The title of Semiz’s thesis is “Digital Biomarker Discovery for Non-Invasive Health Monitoring with Acoustic and Vibration Signals.” There is a compelling need for novel modalities which can employ continuous and non-invasive health monitoring outside the physical confines of the clinic. Consequently, there is a new emerging class of biomarkers, digital biomarkers, which are measures collected through connected digital tools, generally across multiple layers of hardware and software. Semiz’s work in this area proposes the use of wearable acoustic and vibration measurements to derive digital biomarkers, which can be used together with existing medical information to assist in clinical decisions.

Semiz was advised by ECE Associate Professor Omer Inan, who said that being hired as an assistant professor at Koc University is impressive and demonstrates how highly her research activities and plans are regarded internationally. It is a leading Turkish university and was the highest ranked university in Turkey in 2018, according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. “Beren has conducted highly innovative and exciting research while here in my group at Georgia Tech, bridging the disciplines of acoustics and vibration measurements from the body and digital health,” Inan said. “I am confident that she will be a successful independent PI at Koc, and will allow their Department of EEE and College of Engineering new opportunities to collaborate with medical schools and hospitals in Istanbul, addressing some of the most pressing health challenges facing the world today.”

Sahil Shah 

Sahil Shah graduated with his Ph.D. in ECE in 2018 and is currently a postdoctoral associate at Caltech in Pasadena, California. He will begin working as an assistant professor in spring 2021 in the Department of ECE at the University of Maryland at College Park.

The title of Shah’s thesis is “Low-Power Computation using FPAA for Wearable Devices.” His thesis presented foundational work demonstrating multiple low-energy system applications, particularly directions in embedded machine learning. The application of this work could potentially transform a number of portable and wearable devices, including medical devices. Shah’s work proved that these applications were shown to be robust to environmental factors, such as temperature fluctuations. He also developed techniques to self-repair these approaches as they were being used.

Shah was advised by ECE Professor Jennifer Hasler, who said that Shah has a bright future ahead of him in academia and in his particular field. Nine of her Ph.D. graduates hold tenured engineering faculty positions, and Shah is now the tenth to enter academia from her group. “Sahil’s excellent accomplishments both in teaching and research will continue to enable him to make a great impact as a faculty member at the University of Maryland, particularly in the area of wearable personal and medical devices,” Hasler said.

Swamit Tannu

Swamit Tannu has worked in the Memory Systems Lab since 2014 and will graduate with his Ph.D. in ECE during fall 2020. In spring 2021, he will begin his career as an assistant professor in the School of Computer, Data, and Information Sciences at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. 

The title of Tannu’s thesis is “Compiler and Runtime Support for Near-term Quantum Computers.” His thesis work looks at software techniques to improve the fidelity of near-term quantum computers. It also looks at cryogenic processor and cryogenic memory systems for designing scalable quantum computers.

Tannu was advised by ECE Professor Moinuddin Qureshi, who said that Tannu is the third student from the Memory Systems Lab who is headed to academia. His past ECE advisees in academia are Jian Huang at the Department of ECE at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Prashant Nair at the Department of ECE at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. “I am super proud of all of Swamit’s accomplishments, including him joining the University of Wisconsin, which is considered one of the strongest CS departments,” Qureshi said. “Swamit has been an incredible student, who chartered his own path and made strong research contributions in the emerging area of Quantum Computing. He also has a natural flair for teaching and mentorship, making him ideal for academia.”

The paper was published in volume 7, issue number 2 in 2010. Dr. Ghovanloo’s and Dr. Huo’s work, along with others included on the list, is free to read online until December 31, 2012.

Dr. Ghovanloo is an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, and Dr. Huo is a recent Ph.D. graduate of Dr. Ghovanloo’s research group and now works at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington.

Dupuis was specifically recognized “for pioneering development of the metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) technology and seminal contributions to compound semiconductor materials and devices, including the first MOCVD III-V compound semiconductor solar cells, and advances in quantum-well semiconductor light emitters used in telecommunications and visible LEDs (light-emitting diodes).” 

Dupuis’ contributions to the development of MOCVD are among the most significant contributions made in the growth of semiconductor devices in the last 40 years. His work on the understanding and improvement of the MOCVD process was the key development that led to the demonstration of the first MOCVD-grown III-V compound semiconductor heterostructure solar cells, injection lasers, the first CW room-temperature quantum-well lasers grown by any materials technology, and the demonstration of high-reliability MOCVD lasers. These important achievements have had a great impact the efficient use of energy in the world.

Dupuis has been a member of the Georgia Tech ECE faculty since 2003. Prior to his arrival at Tech, he was a chaired professor at the University of Texas at Austin and worked at Texas Instruments, Rockwell International, and AT&T Bell Laboratories. 

In 2015, Dupuis was one of five pioneers to receive the Draper Prize for Engineering in recognition of the significant benefit to society created by the initial development and commercialization of LED technologies. He has also been recognized with the IEEE Edison Medal and as a Fellow of the IEEE, OSA, the American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his achievements in this field.

Ghovanloo and his team received a Most Impactful Rehabilitation Technology Award for their development of “A Multimodal Tongue Drive System,” or mTDS for short, at the Inaugural Rehab Tech Innovation Competition, which was part of the ACRM conference.

In addition, Md. Nazmus Sahadat, an ECE Ph.D. student in the GT-Bionics Lab, received the ACRM Third Place Poster Award for his poster entitled “Efficacy Assessment of multimodal Tongue Drive System (mTDS) in Comparison to Keyboard and Mouse (KnM).” Ghovanloo is Sahadat’s doctoral advisor and co-author on the poster.

The mTDS is a highly integrated wireless assistive technology in the form of a lightweight wearable headset that uses three remaining key control and communication abilities in people with severe physical disabilities, such as tetraplegia, to provide them with effective access to computers. These abilities include: 1) tongue motion for discrete/switch based control (e.g. clicking); 2) head tracking for proportional control (e.g. mouse pointer movements); and 3) speech recognition for typing, all available simultaneously. Multimodal simultaneous discrete and proportional control input options offered by the mTDS, plus rapid typing, are expected to provide more effective computer access to people with severe physical disabilities.

The ACRM brings together an inter-professional mix of rehabilitation professionals from around the world to learn about cutting-edge research and its translation into clinical practice to improve the quality of life experienced by people with disabilities. 

The title of Yeon's paper is “Millimeter-Scale Integrated and Wirewound Coils for Powering Implantable Neural Microsystems,” which he co-wrote with his Ph.D. advisor and ECE Professor Maysam Ghovanloo, who leads the GT-Bionics Lab.

In this paper, which is a joint collaboration with a group at Imperial College London, Yeon explores the next generation brain machine interfaces that are targeting millimeter-scale implants that are freely floating and completely wireless. It is essential that these systems achieve good power transmission efficiency, but also be compatible with microsystem technologies.

This paper presents two schemes for implementing mm-scale coils for power delivery by electromagnetic coupling – on-chip and wire-wound. This work develops the relevant analytical models, equivalent simulation models, and reports results using both finite element modeling (simulation) and experimental measurement of the fabricated devices. Finally, the paper authors compare results and discuss the relative merits of each approach.

The IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference (BioCAS) serves as a premier international forum for presenting the interdisciplinary research and development activities at the crossroads of medicine, life sciences, physical sciences, and engineering that will shape tomorrow’s medical devices and healthcare systems. It brings together researchers, designers, clinicians, and engineers from industry, academia, and government to disseminate the latest cutting-edge research results and innovative solutions for today’s complex health problems at the frontiers of biomedical engineering, life sciences, and circuits and systems.

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.

Promotion to Associate Professor with Tenure

Mark A. Davenport

Maryam Saeedifard

Alenka Zajic

Promotion to Full Professor

Maysam Ghovanloo

Santiago C. Grijalva

Azad J. Naeemi

Fumin Zhang

We think of the engineers, scientists and inventors who change the world as icons. Alexander Graham Bell. Thomas Edison. Albert Einstein – their largest contributions can be recited in just a few words.

But some of them live among us, unnoticed, even though they too made contributions that profoundly impacted everyday life. Russell Dupuis is one of them.

The smartphone you peer into, the LED bulb in your desk lamp, the Blu-Ray player that serves up your favorite film – all are here largely because of Dupuis, a professor in electrical and computer engineering at Georgia Tech.

That’s because an essential component of their manufacturing traces back to a process that Dupuis developed in the late 1970s, a process that ushered in a new breed of mass-produced compound semiconductors. These electronic components – particularly those forged of elements from columns III and V in the periodic table — can operate at extremely high frequencies or emit light with extraordinary efficiency. Today, they’re the working essence of everything from handheld laser pointers to stadium Jumbotrons.

The process is known as metalorganic chemical vapor deposition, or MOCVD, and until Dupuis, no one had figured out how to use it to grow high-quality semiconductors using those III-V elements. Essentially, MOCVD works by combining the atomic elements with molecules of organic gas and flowing the mixture over a hot semiconductor wafer. When repeated, the process grows layer after layer of crystals that can have any number of electrical properties, depending on the elements used. 

Dupuis remembers well the autumn day in 1976 he first produced a working III-V semiconductor device using MOCVD. “It was a solar cell,” he recalls. “I had built my own reactor mostly out of spare parts to study the MOCVD process to grow a semiconductor on a gallium arsenide substrate. I took the solar cell outside and connected it to a current meter, and it worked pretty good. Since MOCVD was viable for solar cell technology, I thought it should be good for lasers and LEDs.”

He was right. At the time, Dupuis was a member of the technical staff at Rockwell International, hired to create working devices based on the MOCVD process being explored by Rockwell chemist Hal Manasevit. 

“They knew they needed devices to make systems,” he says, “and I sold them on the idea that I could evaluate different materials using MOCVD to make those devices.”

After his initial success, Dupuis built a second reactor and refined the process. He then published a paper on his discovery and presented it at the 1977 Device Research Conference, an annual gathering of industry professionals and academics. But before the presentation, he was approached by a familiar face: Nick Holonyak, a University of Illinois professor who was Dupuis’ mentor.

“He came to my room and said, ‘I see you’ve got an interesting paper – can you build thin layers with MOCVD?’ Dupuis says, laughing. “I said, I can do as many as you need. Nick looked at me like I was crazy and said, ‘I’ve been trying to do this for five years.’”

Holonyak is a history-making engineer in his own right. Mentored by John Bardeen, the inventor of the transistor, he became the first to create a visible light-emitting diode in 1962, a breakthrough that continues to transform electrical lighting. While a senior at Illinois in 1969, Dupuis joined Holonyak’s lab. 

Today, at the age of 88, Holonyak continues to operate a lab, and his praise for Dupuis is nothing short of ebullient. 

“Russ Dupuis should be known as the person who invented the big process that’s now used to manufacture all the lasers and LEDs,” Holonyak says. “He has all the tricks to handle the complicated gases, the complicated chemistry, the stuff that explodes. I actually call the process ‘Dupuis-MOCVD’ – I hyphenate it.”

Their meet-up at the conference led Holonyak and Dupuis to reunite in the name of electrical engineering. Together, they published a paper after Dupuis demonstrated that MOCVD was superior to another emerging process, molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), in growing high-purity layers for compound semiconductors. In other words, they showed that MOCVD would work even for compound semiconductor devices that required complex structures.

Meanwhile, MOCVD began to take off as an electronics manufacturing process. Today, it remains the most widely used technology for creating thin-film compound semiconductors for electrical devices. 

Dupuis left Rockwell in 1979 to join AT&T Bell Labs and later transitioned to academia, joining the faculty at the University of Texas, where he worked for 14 years. In 2002, he inquired about a position in Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering. 

“It was a chance to work with really smart graduate students,” he remembers. “Plus, Georgia Tech had a building that was perfect for a clean room setup. I announced I was leaving a year before I actually left Texas, and when I walked in the door at Georgia Tech, the new lab was finished. The support here has been exceptional.”

These days, Dupuis is a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar and holds the Steve W. Chaddick Endowed Chair in Electro-optics. He continues to explore new combinations of atomic elements to make thin-film compound semiconductors. 

And while he may go unrecognized in the local Starbucks, he has not escaped acclaim. In 2003, the White House welcomed him, Nick Holonyak and a third engineer, George Craford, awarding all three the National Medal of Technology. Most recently, in 2015, he was one of five recipients of the National Academy of Engineering’s esteemed Charles Stark Draper Prize – again, honored alongside his mentor, Holonyak. 

While appreciative of the honors, Dupuis remains grounded as an engineer, more at ease with labor than with glamour. 

“I remember our team in Holonyak’s lab hand-building 36 furnaces in the machine shop to support a project,” says the man whose reactor forged from spare parts ended up making history. “New ideas don’t require the best equipment. So if you’ve got a new idea, get your act together, and with the tools on hand, try it and test it. Because someone somewhere else may get there before you do.”

This award, presented by the International Solid-State Alliance, recognizes outstanding lifetime contributions of researchers to the solid-state lighting field. Dupuis invented the process that is the basis of virtually all production of high-brightness LEDs, laser diodes, solar cells, and high-speed optoelectronic devices. 

Dupuis currently studies the growth of III-V compound semiconductor devices by MOCVD, including materials in the InAlGaN/GaN, InAlGaAsP/GaAs, InAlGaAsSb, and InAlGaAsP/InP systems. He and two of his colleagues were awarded the 2002 National Medal of Technology for their work on developing and commercializing LEDs.

In 2015, Dupuis was one of five pioneers to receive the Draper Prize for Engineering in recognition of the significant benefit to society created by the initial development and commercialization of LED technologies. He has also been recognized with the IEEE Edison Medal and as a Fellow of the IEEE, OSA, the American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his achievements in this field. 

The new device, called the Field-Programmable Analog Array (FPAA) System-On-Chip (SoC), uses analog technology supported by digital components to achieve unprecedented power and size reductions. The researchers said that for many applications these low-power analog-based chips are likely to work as well as or better than configurable digital arrays.

Currently, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) – digital devices widely used in consumer devices, defense systems and more – dominate the configurable chip market. These floating-gate integrated circuits can be altered internally at any time, and techniques to reconfigure them for many different forms and functions are well established.

Professionals familiar with FPGAs will find the programming interface of the new analog chip surprisingly like the digital circuits in many ways, said Jennifer Hasler, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and leader of the research team that produced the new analog architecture.

“But in other ways the FPAA is going to seem quite different,” she said. “In terms of the power needed, it's extremely different because you need only milliwatts to run the analog device, while it’s hard to get an FPGA to work on less than a watt.”

A paper on the new FPAA system-on-chip device has been published on the IEEE Xplore website. Another paper focusing on the details of programming FPAA devices was also published on the Xplore site. In addition a third paper, detailing a high-level open-source programming toolset developed by Hasler and her team for programming analog arrays, has also been published online in the Journal of Low Power Electronics and Applications.

Novel Techniques

Traditionally, analog technology has been used primarily for hard-wired circuits such as sensors that interface between digital devices and the real world; examples include the circuits that detect and reproduce sound in cell phones and other devices. Analog circuits are also used extensively in electronics to regulate and optimize power use. These single-function circuits cannot perform software-based computation, using hardware gates and switches, in the manner of digital integrated circuits.

Hasler’s team, however, has developed techniques that perform computation using an analog-style physical architecture by reliably positioning electrons in an FPAA’s connective structure. This approach stands in contrast to FPGAs, which process electrons through floating gates in ways similar to conventional digital semiconductors such as memory chips or central processing units.

One advantage of FPAAs is that they're non-volatile, Hasler explained, meaning they retain data even when power is turned off. This is similar to flash memory technology, such as the solid-state drives and storage cards commonplace today. The use of non-volatile memory reduces power consumption, in contrast to the higher power needs of the volatile SRAM configurations typically used in FPGAs.

“In addition to being non-volatile, our analog architecture lets us do something fairly radical – we can compute using the routing fabric of the chip, exploiting areas that are usually considered just dead weight,” Hasler said. “To help do this, we've developed highly efficient switches that can be programmed on, off, or in-between – partially on and partially off. This flexibility provides both increased computation capabilities and reduced power consumption.”

Milliwatts or Microwatts

The present FPAA device can operate on less than 30 milliwatts – thousandths of a watt, Hasler explained. That level approaches three orders of magnitude less than a conventional digital configurable chip. Further design advances in analog arrays could bring their power needs down into the microwatt range – millionths of a watt.

To program the analog environment of the new device, researchers manipulate electrons in precise ways. Using electron-injection and electron-tunneling techniques, they erase data by lowering the number of electrons at specific locations in the device structure to the lowest possible value. Then they encode new data by increasing the number of electrons located at a given location up to an exact value.

This complex approach makes possible a highly dense chip structure that offers many parameters – meaning programmable variables that can exist in a large number of different states and offer many shadings of behavior. It is this structural density that allows greater computing capability for a given degree of physical size and power input.

“Our FPAA chip has roughly half a million of these programmable parameters,” Hasler said. “They can be used as a switch in a digital manner – using the lowest possible value for ‘off’ or the highest possible value for ‘on’ – or we can achieve even more rich behavior using intermediate values.”

A New Toolset

The FPAA device includes a small amount of built-in digital circuitry that supports communication within the chip and also helps run the programming infrastructure. Utilizing these support features, the team has developed an extensive set of high-level programming tools to take advantage of the new chip.

Among other things, the new toolset is designed to make working with analog arrays accessible to those familiar with digital designs like FPGAs, which are programmed using comparable high-level tools. The new toolset can both simulate and program the FPAA reconfigurable device. A paper detailing these high-level tools has been published online.

“Our toolset uses high-level software developed in the Scilab/Xcos open-source programs, with an analog and mixed-signal library of components,” Hasler said. “Georgia Tech undergraduates are already using these tools in classes in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering that cover mixed-signal and analog devices and tools.”

One area in which the analog approach is notably powerful involves command words – voice recognition technology used in devices like smartphones to do such things as wake up circuits from an off state, Hasler said. Like traditional analog sensing circuits, an FPAA offers excellent context-aware capability at extremely low power states.

Hasler said that she has talked with several companies about potential applications of the FPAA in commercial devices. A significant number of FPAA chips has already been produced, but plans for potential large-scale manufacture of the chips have not been finalized. The key technologies in the FPAA system-on-chip are patent pending.

“We believe that analog technology offers very powerful ways to look at physical computing, with considerable potential for commercial, neuromorphic, military and other applications,” Hasler said.

CITATIONS:

Sihwan Kim, et al., “Integrated Floating-Gate Programming Environment for System-Level ICs,” (IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TVLSI.2015.2504118

Suma George, et at., “A Programmable and Configurable Mixed-Mode FPAA SoC,” (IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, 2016). http://www.dx.doi.org/10.1109/TVLSI.2015.2504119

Michelle Collins, et al., “An Open-Source Tool Set Enabling Analog-Digital-Software Co-Design,” (Journal of Low-Power Electronics and Applications, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jlpea6010003

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This team, from the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), won the award for their demo entitled “Live Demonstration: A Smart Homecage System with Behavior Analysis and Closed-Loop Optogenetic Stimulation Capabilities.” Jia (a Ph.D. student), Wang (a visiting student), and Mirbozorgi (ECE postdoctoral fellow) are members of the GT-Bionics Lab, led by ECE Associate Professor Maysam Ghovanloo.

In this live demonstration, the team presented a smart, wirelessly-powered homecage, called the Enercage-HC system, for conducting behavioral and electrophysiology research on awake, freely-behaving small animal subjects. The smart homecage is equipped with closed-loop wireless power transmission, wireless communication, automated tracking, and animal behavior recognition capabilities.

Wireless power is delivered in near-field at 13.56 MHz in the FCC-approved ISM-band through an array of coils designed to provide the entire homecage with homogeneous magnetic field. Bidirectional data transmission is accomplished at 2.4 GHz via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for communication with sensors and stimulators attached to or implanted in the animal body. A dual-mode 2D/3D imaging system based on Microsoft Kinect is used for animal subject tracking and behavioral analysis using an advanced real-time pattern recognition and machine learning algorithm.

Photo caption: Yaoyao Jia shows the Enercage-HC System at IEEE BioCAS 2015, held October 22-24 in Atlanta.

Photo caption: Abdollah Mirbozorgi (far left) and Yaoyao Jia were presented with the Best Live Demo Award at IEEE BioCAS 2015, held October 22-24 in Atlanta. Taking part in the presentation were ECE Assistant Professor Hua Wang (far right), who served as co-chair of the conference live demo session, and ECE Associate Professor Maysam Ghovanloo (second from left).

Lee was honored for his paper entitled "A Multi-Cycle Q-Modulation Technique for Wirelessly-Powered Biomedical Implants,” which was coauthored with fellow ECE Ph.D. student Pyungwoo Yeon and ECE Associate Professor Maysam Ghovanloo, who advises both students and serves as director of the GT-Bionics Lab.

This paper presents a new method, called multi-cycle Q-modulation, which can be used in wireless power transmission (WPT) to modulate the quality factor (Q) of the receiver (Rx) coil and dynamically optimize the load impedance to maximize the power transfer efficiency (PTE) in two-coil links. This new multi-cycle Q-modulation method can be used to maintain high PTE in wirelessly powered applications that operate in dynamic environments with variable loading, such as implantable medical devices.

“Great engineers imagine new things – and build them,” said Draper Laboratory President and CEO Kaigham J. Gabriel. “These LED pioneers created technologies that brought new light to our lives, spawning an industry that today boasts hundreds of thousands of jobs while making energy consumption more efficient.”

Isamu Akasaki; George Craford; Russell Dupuis; Nick Holonyak, Jr.; and Shuji Nakamura each made contributions critical to taking light-emitting diodes from laboratory concept to ubiquitous reality in smartphone screens, surgical lighting, agriculture and many other applications.

Read more about the prize winning research here.

Co-advised by ECE Associate Professors Maysam Ghovanloo and Elliot Moore, Olubanjo was honored for her paper entitled “Tracheal Activity Recognition Based on Acoustic Signals.” Tracheal activities detected by a neck-worn device are among signals that, if recognized properly, can contribute to effective health monitoring. In this paper co-written with Ghovanloo, Olubanjo explored novel signal processing algorithms to detect and classify common tracheal events that can provide insight into an individual’s health and well-being, such as breathing, chewing, swallowing, coughing, clearing the throat, and speech. Monitoring the patients’ compliance with their prescribed medication regimens and estimating the energy balance in the obese and overweight population are among other applications of a tracheal activity recognition system that is currently under development in the GT-Bionics Lab, which is led by Ghovanloo.

Toreyin’s paper was entitled “A Low-Power, Time-Division-Multiplexed Vector Matrix-Multiplier for a Vestibular Prosthesis,” and his coauthor was his Ph.D. advisor Pamela Bhatti. A vestibular prosthesis can potentially improve the quality-of-life for persons suffering from balance or vision problems caused by bilateral vestibular dysfunction, disorders associated with the brain and inner ear. By replacing the function of peripheral vestibular organs, the prosthesis senses 3D angular and linear head motions by using inertial sensors and selectively stimulates the corresponding vestibular neurons. Toreyin’s paper reports on the first integrated circuit (IC), known as a vector matrix multiplier, designed to improve the effectiveness of stimulating vestibular neurons. Operating in the CMOS subthreshold region, the IC performs a 3-by-3 vector matrix multiplication of rate sensor outputs to reduce misalignment between implanted angular rate sensors and associated peripheral sense organs, and provides a means to precompensate for unwanted electrical stimulation of vestibular neurons.

Kiani’s thesis was entitled “Wireless Power and Data Transmission to High-Performance Implantable Medical Devices.” His proposed wireless data and power transmission techniques have promising prospects for use in implantable medical devices such as biosensors and neural recording/stimulation devices, neural interfacing experiments in enriched environments, RFID, smartcards, near-field communication, wireless sensors, and charging mobile devices and electric vehicles. Advised by Maysam Ghovanloo, Kiani defended his thesis in December 2013 and graduated on May 2. He currently works as a postdoctoral fellow in the GT-Bionics Lab in the School of ECE at Georgia Tech.

Li’s thesis was entitled “Densely Integrated Photonic Circuits for On-Chip Signal Processing.” In his thesis, Li demonstrated photonic structures that are essential for state-of-the-art photonic signal processing systems for RF and wireless signals. Advised by Ali Adibi, Li graduated in May 2013 and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Wu’s thesis was entitled “Bio-Inspired Cooperative Exploration Using Mobile Sensor Networks.” The algorithms developed in her research can be applied to allow networked mobile robots to track pollutants in the environment during events such as oil spills or water contamination. Advised by Fumin Zhang, Wu graduated in August 2013. She is now an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, located in Troy, N.Y. 

A core technological hurdle in this field involves the electrical power requirements of computing hardware. Although a human brain functions on a mere 20 watts of electrical energy, a digital computer that could approximate human cognitive abilities would require tens of thousands of integrated circuits (chips) and a hundred thousand watts of electricity or more – levels that exceed practical limits.

The Georgia Tech roadmap proposes a solution based on analog computing techniques, which require far less electrical power than traditional digital computing. The more efficient analog approach would help solve the daunting cooling and cost problems that presently make digital neuromorphic hardware systems impractical. 

"To simulate the human brain, the eventual goal would be large-scale neuromorphic systems that could offer a great deal of computational power, robustness and performance," said Jennifer Hasler, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), who is a pioneer in using analog techniques for neuromorphic computing. "A configurable analog-digital system can be expected to have a power efficiency improvement of up to 10,000 times compared to an all-digital system."

Hasler and a former student recently published a detailed plan that describes the development of computer systems capable of human-like cognition. The paper, "Finding a Roadmap to Achieve Large Neuromorphic Hardware Systems" by Hasler and Bo Marr, was published in the September 2013 edition of the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.

"To my knowledge, this is the first time a detailed neuromorphic roadmap has been attempted," said Hasler. "We describe specific computational techniques could offer real progress in neuromorphic systems."

Unlike digital computing, in which computers can address many different applications by processing different software programs, analog circuits have traditionally been hard-wired to address a single application. For example, cell phones use energy-efficient analog circuits for a number of specific functions, including capturing the user's voice, amplifying incoming voice signals, and controlling battery power.

Because analog devices do not have to process binary codes as digital computers do, their performance can be both faster and much less power hungry. Yet traditional analog circuits are limited because they're built for a specific application, such as processing signals or controlling power. They don't have the flexibility of digital devices that can process software, and they're vulnerable to signal disturbance issues, or noise.

In recent years, Hasler has developed a new approach to analog computing, in which silicon-based analog integrated circuits take over many of the functions now performed by familiar digital integrated circuits. These analog chips can be quickly reconfigured to provide a range of processing capabilities, in a manner that resembles conventional digital techniques in some ways.

Over the last several years, Hasler and her research group have developed devices called field programmable analog arrays (FPAA). Like field programmable gate arrays (FPGA), which are digital integrated circuits that are ubiquitous in modern computing, the FPAA can be reconfigured after it's manufactured – hence the phrase "field-programmable."

Hasler and Marr's 29-page paper traces a development process that could lead to the goal of reproducing human-brain complexity. The researchers investigate in detail a number of intermediate steps that would build on one another, helping researchers advance the technology sequentially.

For example, the researchers discuss ways to scale energy efficiency, performance and size in order to eventually achieve large-scale neuromorphic systems. The authors also address how the implementation and the application space of neuromorphic systems can be expected to evolve over time.

"A major concept here is that we have to first build smaller systems capable of a simple representation of one layer of human brain cortex," Hasler said. "When that system has been successfully demonstrated, we can then replicate it in ways that increase its complexity and performance."

Among neuromorphic computing's major hurdles are the communication issues involved in networking integrated circuits in ways that could replicate human cognition. In their paper, Hasler and Marr emphasize local interconnectivity to reduce complexity. Moreover, they argue it's possible to achieve these capabilities via purely silicon-based techniques, without relying on novel devices that are based on other approaches.

Commenting on the recent publication, Alice C. Parker, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California, said, "Professor Hasler's technology roadmap is the first deep analysis of the prospects for large scale neuromorphic intelligent systems, clearly providing practical guidance for such systems, with a nearer-term perspective than our whole-brain emulation predictions. Her expertise in analog circuits, technology and device models positions her to provide this unique perspective on neuromorphic circuits."   

Eugenio Culurciello, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Purdue University, commented, "I find this paper to be a very accurate description of the field of neuromorphic data processing systems. Hasler's devices provide some of the best performance per unit power I have ever seen and are surely on the roadmap for one of the major technologies of the future."

Said Hasler: "In this study, we conclude that useful neural computation machines based on biological principles – and potentially at the size of the human brain -- seems technically within our grasp. We think that it's more a question of gathering the right research teams and finding the funding for research and development than of any insurmountable technical barriers."

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In the study, individuals with paralysis were able to use a tongue-controlled technology to access computers and execute commands for their wheelchairs at speeds that were significantly faster than those recorded in sip-and-puff wheelchairs, but with equal accuracy. This study is the first to show that the wireless and wearable Tongue Drive System outperforms sip-and-puff in controlling wheelchairs. Sip-and-puff is the most popular assistive technology for controlling a wheelchair.

The Tongue Drive System is controlled by the position of the user’s tongue. A magnetic tongue stud lets them use their tongue as a joystick to drive the wheelchair. Sensors in the tongue stud relay the tongue’s position to a headset, which then executes up to six commands based on the tongue position.

The Tongue Drive System holds promise for patients who have lost the use of their arms and legs, a condition known as tetraplegia or quadriplegia.

“It’s really easy to understand what the Tongue Drive System can do and what it is good for,” said Maysam Ghovanloo, an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a study co-author and principal investigator. “Now, we have solid proof that people with disabilities can potentially benefit from it.”

The study was published on Nov. 27 in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and the National Science Foundation funded the research. Scientists from Shepherd Center in Atlanta, and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago were also involved in the study. Jeonghee Kim and Hangue Park, who are working on the Tongue Drive System as graduate students at Georgia Tech, are co-authors of the study.

“The Tongue Drive System is a novel technology that empowers people with disability to achieve maximum independence at home and in the community by enabling them to drive a power wheelchair and control their environment in a smoother and more intuitive way,” said

Northwestern co-lead investigator Elliot Roth, M.D, chair of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Feinberg and the medical director of the patient recovery unit at Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. “The opportunity to use this high-tech innovation to improve the quality of life among people with mobility limitations is very exciting.”

The research team had subjects complete a set of tasks commonly used in similar clinical trials. Subjects in the trials were either able-bodied or people with tetraplegia.

“By the end of the trials, everybody preferred the Tongue Drive System over their current assistive technology,” said Joy Bruce, manager of Shepherd Center’s Spinal Cord Injury Lab and co-author of the study. “It allows them to engage their environment in a way that is otherwise not possible for them.”

Researchers compared how able-bodied subjects were able to execute commands either with the Tongue Drive System or with a keypad and mouse. For example, targets randomly appeared on a computer screen and the subjects had to move the cursor to click on the target. Scientists are able to calculate how much information is transferred from a person’s brain to the computer as they perform a point-and-click task. The performance gap narrowed throughout the trial between the keypad and mouse and the Tongue Drive System.

For the first time, the research team showed that people with tetraplegia can maneuver a wheelchair better with the Tongue Drive System than with the sip-and-puff system. On average, the performance of 11 subjects with tetraplegia using the Tongue Drive System was three times faster than their performance with the sip-and-puff system, but with the same level of accuracy, even though more than half of the patients had years of daily experience with sip-and-puff technology.

“That was a very exciting finding,” Ghovanloo said. “It attests to how quickly and accurately you can move your tongue.”

The idea for piercing the tongue with the magnet was the inspiration of Anne Laumann, M.D., professor of dermatology at Feinberg and a lead investigator of the Northwestern trial. She had read about an early stage of Tongue Drive System using a glued-on tongue magnet. The problem was the magnet fell off after a few hours and aspiration of the loose magnet was a real danger to these users.

“Tongue piercing put to medical use — who would have thought it? It is needed and it works!” Laumann said.

The experiments were repeated over five weeks for the able-bodied test group, and over six weeks for the tetraplegic group. All of the subjects with tetraplegia were able to complete the trial, which Ghovanloo called an “exciting” and “major finding.”

The tetraplegic group was using the Tongue Drive System just one day each week, but their improvement in performance was dramatic.

“We saw a huge, very significant improvement in their performance from session one to session two,” Ghovanloo said. “That’s an indicator of how quickly people learn this.”

Experiments on the Tongue Drive System to date have been done in the lab or hospital. In future studies, scientists will test how the Tongue Drive System performs outside of the controlled clinical environment. The research team hopes to test how patients maneuver with the Tongue Drive System in their homes and other environments.

The Tongue Drive System isn’t quite ready for commercialization, but Ghovanloo’s startup company, Bionic Sciences, is working with Georgia Tech to move the technology forward.
Ghovanloo is the foundering director of the GT-Bionics Laboratory, where his team is experimenting with other devices to improve the quality of life for individuals with disability.

“All of my projects are related to helping people with disabilities using the latest and greatest technologies,” Ghovanloo said. “That’s my goal in my professional life.”

DiSanto hopes that the one day he’ll be able to use a tongue-powered wheelchair outside of the hospital, which would help him gain some independence he lost after his diving accident.

"The Tongue Drive System will greatly increase my quality of life when I can start using it everywhere I go,” DiSanto said. “With the sip-and-puff system, there is always a straw in front of my face. With the Tongue Drive, people can see you, not just your adaptive equipment."

This research is supported by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering under award number 1RC1EB010915, and by the National Science Foundation under awards CBET-0828882 and IIS-0803184. Any conclusions or opinions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the sponsoring agencies.

Dr. Ghovanloo's company, Bionic Sciences, is negotiating with the Georgia Tech Research Corporation for a license to the technologies discussed in this article. If the license is executed, the results of his research on the Tongue Drive System could affect his personal financial status. Dr. Ghovanloo's Conflict of Interest has been reviewed and approved by Georgia Tech in accordance with its conflict of interest policies.

CITATION: J Kim, et al “The Tongue Enables Computer and Wheelchair Control for People with Spinal Cord Injury,” (Science Translational Medicine, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1126/scitranslmed.3006296

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This meeting is the foremost global business gathering in Asia and provides a unique platform for 1,500 leaders from business, government, media, academia, and civil society to discuss the leading actors and drivers of growth. Under the theme, Creating the Future Economy, this year’s program will focus on how to ensure that the right values, incentives, and models are in place to deliver the best possible outcomes for global prosperity, national competitiveness, and entrepreneurial growth for future generations.

As a Young Scientists participant, Dr. Ghovanloo will join 40-50 scientists under the age of 40 who represent a wide range of disciplines and come from all regions of the world. They will contribute their scientific and engineering insights and knowledge–along with those provided by the other communities of the Forum, including Technology Pioneers, Social Entrepreneurs, Young Global Leaders, and Global Shapers–to address four sub-themes:

• Rethinking traditional markets and existing value chains
• Rewarding entrepreneurial solutions to societal challenges
• Reinventing institutions and industries through innovative models
• Recognizing the new frontiers of science and technology

A member of the Georgia Tech faculty since 2007, Dr. Ghovanloo is an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). A rising leader in brain-machine interfaces, biosensors, implantable neuroprostheses, and neural engineering, he has initiated an exceptionally strong research program at Georgia Tech through the GT-Bionics Lab. Two projects in particular–the Tongue Drive System and the MagneTrace sensor necklace–have brought much national and international acclaim to his group, ECE, and Georgia Tech.

The newest prototype of the system allows users to wear aninconspicuous dental retainer embedded with sensors to control the system. Thesensors track the location of a tiny magnet attached to the tongues of users.In earlier versions of the Tongue Drive System, the sensors that track themovement of the magnet on the tongue were mounted on a headset worn by theuser.

“By moving the sensors inside the mouth, we have created a TongueDrive System with increased mechanical stability and comfort that is nearlyunnoticeable,” said Maysam Ghovanloo, an associate professor in the School ofElectrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The new intraoral Tongue Drive System was presented and demonstratedon Feb. 20, 2012 at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference inSan Francisco. Development of the system is supported by the NationalInstitutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and Christopher and DanaReeve Foundation.

The new dental appliance contains magnetic field sensors mountedon its four corners that detect movement of a tiny magnet attached to thetongue. It also includes a rechargeable lithium-ion battery and an inductioncoil to charge the battery. The circuitry fits in the space available on theretainer, which sits against the roof of the mouth and is covered with aninsulating, water-resistant material and vacuum-molded inside standard dentalacrylic.

“One of the problems we encountered with the earlier headsetwas that it could shift on a user’s head and the system would need to berecalibrated,” explained Ghovanloo. “Because the dental appliance is worninside the mouth and molded from dental impressions to fit tightly around anindividual’s teeth with clasps, it is protected from these types ofdisturbances.”

When in use, the output signals from the sensors arewirelessly transmitted to an iPod or iPhone. Software installed on the iPodinterprets the user’s tongue commands by determining the relative position ofthe magnet with respect to the array of sensors in real-time. This informationis used to control the movements of a cursor on the computer screen or tosubstitute for the joystick function in a powered wheelchair.

Ghovanloo and his team have also created a universalinterface for the intraoral Tongue Drive System that attaches directly to a standardelectric wheelchair. The interface boasts multiple functions: it not only holdsthe iPod, but also wirelessly receives the sensor data and delivers it to theiPod, connects the iPod to the wheelchair, charges the iPod, and includes acontainer where the dental retainer can be placed at night for charging.

In preliminary tests, the intraoral device exhibited anincreased signal-to-noise ratio, even when a smaller magnet was placed on thetongue. That improved sensitivity could allow additional commands to beprogrammed into the system. The existing Tongue Drive System that uses a headsetinterprets commands from seven different tongue movements.

The ability to train the system with additional commands –as many commands as an individual can comfortably remember – and having all ofthe commands available to the user at the same time are significant advantagesover the common sip-n-puff device that acts as a simple switch controlled bysucking or blowing through a straw.

The researchers plan to begin testing the usability of the intraoralTongue Drive System by able-bodied individuals soon and then move onto clinicaltrials to test its usability by people with high-level spinal cord injuries.

In recent months, Ghovanloo and his team have recruited 11 individualswith high-level spinal cord injuries to test the headset version of the systemat the Atlanta-based Shepherd Center and the Rehabilitation Institute ofChicago. Trial participants received a clinical tongue piercing and tongue studthat contained a tiny magnet embedded in the upper ball. They repeated two testsessions per week during a six-week period that assessed their ability to usethe Tongue Drive System to operate a computer and navigate an electricwheelchair through an obstacle course.

“During the trials, users have been able to learn to use thesystem, move the computer cursor quicker and with more accuracy, and maneuverthrough the obstacle course faster and with fewer collisions,” said Ghovanloo.“We expect even better results in the future when trial participants begin to usethe intraoral Tongue Drive System on a daily basis.”

Georgia Tech graduate students Abner Ayala-Acevedo, XueliangHuo, Jeonghee Kim, Hangue Park and Xueli Xiao, and former postdoctoral fellowBenoit Gosselin also contributed to this work.

This project wassupported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (Award Nos.CBET-0828882, IIS-0953107 and IIS-0803184) and the National Institutes ofHealth (NIH) (Award No. RC1 EB010915-01). The content is solely theresponsibility of the principal investigators and does not necessarilyrepresent the official views of the NSF or NIH.

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A finalist in the prosthetics/orthotics/controls category, Dr. Ghovanloo and his team from the Georgia Institute of Technology received the highest number of "thumbs up" votes for their YouTube video about their work on the Tongue Drive System, an assistive technology that enables individuals with high-level spinal cord injuries to maneuver a powered wheelchair or control a mouse cursor using simple tongue movements. The research team is currently preparing for their second round of clinical trials on the Tongue Drive System, which will be conducted at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

Dr. Ghovanloo is an assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech who specializes in biomedical device development. His main goal for participating in this competition was to promote the use of the most advanced microelectronics technologies in the field of assistive devices and rehabilitation engineering. The Tongue Drive System utilizes the latest in magnetic sensing technology combined with ultra low power RF transceivers, advanced signal processing algorithms, and smartphones.

"Sometimes when you ask our students about assistive devices, the first things that come to their minds are their grandma’s cane or the old manual wheelchair that they once saw at a hospital," said Dr. Ghovanloo, who also leads the GT-Bionics Lab at Georgia Tech. "The Tongue Drive System draws a totally different picture in the students' minds about assistive technologies and their associated field of rehabilitation engineering. Whenever I get a chance, I never hesitate to remind my students that there are very few other areas in engineering in which they can leave such a great impact in the lives of a group of human beings."

The da Vinci Awards is a prestigious international forum that recognizes the latest developments and research in adaptive and assistive technologies that enable equal access and opportunity for all people, regardless of ability. Finalists representing the U.S., Canada, and Denmark were chosen from entries received from around the world. The awards were created by and benefit the National Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Society's Michigan Chapter.

The Tongue Drive System video may still be viewed on the da Vinci Awards YouTube channel at http://bit.ly/tonguedrive.

To read more about the Tongue Drive System, visit http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/tonguedrive2/ and http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/tonguedrive/.

This novel wireless and wearable system allows paralyzed individuals to control a powered wheelchair, operate a computer, and interact with their environments by simply moving their tongues. The device was recently validated through its first clinical trials at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta.

To view the video at the LiveWell HD site or read the article on the NIH site, please visit:

Tongue Controlled Wheelchairs (LiveWell HD Network)

Tongue-Operated Devices Help Paralyzed People (National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health web site)

An annual tradition at the White House during the last eight years, the Iftaar dinner is a meal served at the end of the day during the holy month of Ramadan when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. The White House event honored those members of the Muslim community who have risen to the top of their professions.

This award will continue to build on and improve the existing Tongue Drive System (TDS) by creating a Brain-Tongue-Computer Interface (BTCI). This interface will use the strong neuronal connection between brain and tongue motion as a novel untapped human motor output to substitute or complement some of the functions traditionally performed by the arms and hands in disabled and able-bodied individuals. The project also enhances the functionality of the TDS hardware, signal processing algorithms, and user interface to improve its usability in various environments.

The BTCI research will ultimately transform the lives of persons with severe disabilities by helping them live active, self-supportive, and productive lives. Solutions such as BTCI may also help reduce health care and assisted living costs by relieving the burden on family members and dedicated caregivers.

An assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering since 2007, Dr. Ghovanloo specializes in bioengineering and electronic design and applications. Before coming to Georgia Tech, he was on the ECE faculty at North Carolina State University.

An assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) since 2007, Dr. Ghovanloo was recognized for his tireless efforts in promoting the Tongue Drive System, an assistive device for severely disabled people which was recently validated through its first clinical trials at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta.

The Tongue Drive System story has placed in hundreds of media outlets around the globe, and Dr. Ghovanloo and his students have conducted dozens of print, radio, and television interviews about the project. He has received inquiries from individuals all over the world who have read about the Tongue Drive System and who understand the hope that it represents for themselves or their loved ones.

In the event program, it was noted that Dr. Ghovanloo had reached out to people in need of the technology, and the result of his collaboration with the communications staff at Georgia Tech demonstrates the ultimate goal of engineering and technology

Election to NAI Fellow status is a high professional distinction accorded to academic inventors who have demonstrated a highly prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society.

The 2014 class of NAI Fellows will be inducted by the Deputy Commissioner of Patents Andrew Faile during the Fourth Annual Conference of the National Academy of Inventors. This event will take place on March 20 at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

A faculty member at the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) since 2003, Dupuis holds the Steve W. Chaddick Chair in Electro-Optics. He studies the growth of III-V compound semiconductor devices by MOCVD, including materials in the InAlGaN/GaN, InAlGaAsP/GaAs, InAlGaAsSb, and InAlGaAsP/InP systems.

Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Dupuis was on the ECE faculty at the University of Texas at Austin for 14 years. He also worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Rockwell International, and Texas Instruments before joining academia.

A Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, Dupuis and two of his colleagues were awarded the 2002 National Medal of Technology for their work on developing and commercializing LEDs. He also received the 2004 John Bardeen Award and the 2007 IEEE Edison Medal.

Dupuis was part of a five-person team recently honored with the 2015 Draper Prize for Engineering for their initial development and commercialization of LED technologies. His specific contribution was the invention of the process that is the basis of virtually all production of high-brightness LEDs, laser diodes, solar cells, and high-speed optoelectronic (light controlling) devices in 1977.

Dupuis is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is a Fellow of the IEEE, OSA, the American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The two topics on which he will lecture are "Implantable and Wearable Microelectronic Devices to Improve Quality of Life for People with Disabilities" and "Efficient Power and Wideband Data Transmission in Near Field."



Ghovanloo has been a member of the ECE faculty since 2007. He directs the GT-Bionics Lab, where he and his research team do work in implantable microelectronic devices, wireless neural interfacing, assistive technologies and rehabilitation engineering, smart health and wellbeing, bio-inspired microsystems, medical instrumentation, and low-power analog/digital/mixed-mode integrated circuits.

The purpose of the IEEE CASS 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.

The Edison Medal is bestowed for a career of meritorious achievement in electrical science, electrical engineering or the electrical arts. Dupuis' award commemorates his innovative contributions to metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) and continuous-wave room-temperature quantum-well lasers. MOCVD is a method for depositing high-quality complex semiconductor structures that contain many layers, some only 0.1 millionths of an inch thick.

"Today, we are still using the same basic MOCVD approach that I developed in 1977 for the growth of III-V compound semiconductors to produce much more advanced structures and more challenging materials," explained Dupuis. "This technology is used worldwide for many important device applications in both research and production areas."

The complex semiconductor 'sandwiches' produced with MOCVD are currently used to create light sources (lasers) for optical devices such as laser pointers, DVD lasers, solar cells, photodiodes, and the latest high-density DVD disc technology called 'Blu-Ray,' which is expected to replace DVDs. Other applications include LED-based indicator lamps and solid-state light sources like those in flashlights and large display panels such as the NASDAQ sign in Times Square.

"MOCVD is used for virtually all high-brightness LEDs in traffic signals, automotive lighting, and LCD back lighting, and soon this technology will be widely used to illuminate public buildings and eventually your home," said Dupuis. "I hope that my students can use the knowledge they gain at Georgia Tech and contribute to even greater future advances in this field."

LED technology, based on Dupuis' MOCVD process, is already transforming the lighting industry. LEDs provide a highly efficient and reliable light source. As they become increasingly useful for general illumination and displace the incandescent light bulb, the United States will save billions in energy costs. Carbon emissions from traditional power plants will also be significantly reduced.

"The Edison Medal is a very special and truly wonderful honor for me, both because of the outstanding and innovative inventor and engineer for whom it is named and for the very many truly exceptional individuals who have received it before me," remarked Dupuis. "I am especially honored to acknowledge the impact that Dr. Nick Holonyak Jr., has had on my academic and professional career."

Holonyak was Dupuis' thesis advisor and mentor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where Dupuis earned his B.S. (with Highest Honors--Bronze Tablet), his M.S., and his Ph.D. in electrical engineering. Holonyak was instrumental in launching the field of multi-element semiconductors, and Dupuis has continued his own research in this area, specializing in semiconductor materials and devices, epitaxial growth, and heterojunction devices in III-V compound semiconductors. He currently directs the Center for Compound Semiconductors at Georgia Tech.

A Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, Dupuis has received many awards and distinctions. Among these is the 2002 National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest honor for work in science and technology. President George W. Bush awarded this medal to Dupuis and two colleagues for their work on developing and commercializing LEDs.

Dupuis is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the IEEE, the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Optical Society of America. An author of more than 360 technical papers in refereed journals and a sought-after lecturer, he has held numerous leadership positions within IEEE and the IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society, as well as with various conferences and workshops associated with semiconductor devices in the optoelectronic and photonics areas.

Before joining Georgia Tech in 2003, Dupuis held the Judson S. Swearingen Regents Chair in Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin for 14 years. He previously worked in industry positions at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Rockwell International and Texas Instruments.

The Edison Medal is the oldest medal in engineering. It was created by Thomas Edison's friends and associates in 1904, 25 years after Edison introduced his incandescent electric light bulb. Past Edison Medal honorees include Alexander Graham Bell, Nikola Tesla and other pioneers of the modern electronics era.