The winner of the 2012 Zuhair A. Munir Award for Best Doctoral Dissertation is Dr. Keqin Liu for his research entitled "On Multi-Armed Bandit in Dynamic Systems". Dr. Liu received his Ph.D. in June 2010. His research was completed under the mentorship of Professor Qing Zhao in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Professor Jerry Woodall, National Medal of Technology Laureate, to Join ECE
March 9, 2012
Jerry Woodall will join ECE as Distinguished Professor effective July 1, 2012. Woodall is well known for his prolific and seminal contributions to compound semiconductor materials and devices for high-speed circuits and photovoltaic applications. He is also engaged in work on “green” energy storage using bulk aluminum alloys. Woodall, who has co-authored over 350 publications and holds over 60 patents, will add a wealth of industrial and academic experience to the department.
Professor Brian Kolner has been selected for elevation to IEEE Fellow for "contributions to optical waveform analysis and mode locked lasers". IEEE Fellow is conferred upon a person with an "extraordinary record of accomplishments" and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement. The total number selected in any one year does not exceed 0.1% of the voting membership.
The UC Davis ECE Department is pleased to announce that four new members will join its faculty this year. Professors Joshua Hihath and Erkİn Şeker, who began fall quarter, do research in physical electronics with an emphasis on biology: Hihath from the molecular transport side and Şeker from a materials interface perspective. Professors Xiaoguang "Leo" Liu and Omeed Momeni, who will join this winter and summer, respectively, do research in microwave/mmWave/THz electronics: Liu focuses on micro/nano-electromechanical systems while Momeni studies high-performance circuits and systems.
Graduate student Anh Tran and Professor Bevan Baas receive the Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD), October 2011. Their paper was entitled "RoShaQ: High-Performance On-Chip Router with Shared Queues."
Professor Ben Yoo will receive this year's "Outstanding Senior Research Faculty Award" for the College of Engineering. This award will be presented along with others honoring the achievements of outstanding faculty at a reception on November 3rd, 5:00-7:00 pm in the lobby of Kemper Hall.
Professor Stephen O'Driscoll was awarded the 2011 ASUCD Excellence in Education Award for the College of Engineering. These teaching awards are completely student-funded, student-nominated, and student-chosen. One award is presented to an outstanding instructor from each college (except for Letters & Science, which has one award for each of its three divisions).
Intel's Science and Technology Center for Visual Computing, a $2.5M/5-year collaboration between Intel and eight universities, includes Associate Professor John Owens who leads UC Davis's involvement as theme leader in "Graphics Systems" theme within the center. (ISTC home, Press Release)
Professor Kolner has been elected to Fellow of the Optical Society of America for "conceiving and developing the optical time lens and for contributions to the understanding of low-frequency noise properties of femtosecond solid state lasers." The OSA Fellow Member designation is awarded to select OSA members who have made significant contributions to the advancement of optics.
Professor Qing Zhao was awarded the 2010 IEEE Signal Processing Magazine Best Paper Award for her paper co-authored with Brian M. Sadler of ARL entitled "A Survey of Dynamic Spectrum Access", published in the Vol. 24, No. 3, May 2007 issue. The IEEE Signal Processing Magazine Best Paper Award honors the authors of a paper of exceptional merit and broad interest on a subject related to the Signal Processing Society's technical scope and appearing in the Society's magazine. The award will be presented at the Society's Awards Ceremonies at ICASSP to be held in Prague, Czech Republic, in May, 2011.
Professor Scaglione has been selected for elevation to IEEE Fellow for "contributions to filterbank precoding for wireless transmission and signal processing for cooperative sensor networks". IEEE Fellow is conferred upon a person with an "extraordinary record of accomplishments" and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement. The total number selected in any one year does not exceed 0.1% of the voting membership.
Professor Qing Zhao has been selected as a 2010-11 Chancellor's Fellow. The Chancellor's Fellows Program is supported in part by funds from the Davis Chancellor's Club and the Annual Fund of the University of California, Davis. The Program was established in 2000 to honor the achievements of outstanding faculty members early in their careers. It includes a one-time award of $25,000 to be used for support of research, teaching, and service activities, together with the designated title Chancellor's Fellow.
Integrated Nanodevices and Nanosystems Lab (Inano) masters student Heim Kirin Grewal won the highly competitive and prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored Sandia Fellowship 2010. Only twelve fellowships were awarded in the nation. Dr. Jack L. Skinner will be Heim Kirin Grewal's Sandia research supervisor whose work involves plasmonics and nanofabrication; the integration of nano- and microscale devices.
Professor Saif Islam is one of 3 recipients of this year's Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award for undergraduate teaching. The award will be presented at a ceremony in conjunction with other Academic Senate and Academic Federation awards on Tuesday, May 11, 2010 5:30 p.m. in ARC Ballroom A.
Anjul Patney, an ECE graduate student studying under the mentorship of Prof. John Owens, has received a prestigious NVIDIA Fellowship for the second time and is one of 10 recipients from 268 applicants.
Nathaniel J. Guilar, who received his Ph.D. from UC Davis ECE in 2008 under the mentorship of Professor Amirtharajah, has been awarded the 2010 Zuhair A. Munir Award for best doctoral dissertation for his research entitled "A Flexible Power Management System for Interfacing with Energy Harvesting Transducers".
Linda Katehi, UC Davis’s new Chancellor, has joined the ECE faculty. Professor Katehi has received the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Distinguished Educator Award; best-paper awards from MTT, IEE, and the Society of Hybrid Microelectronics; and the Distinguished Alumni Award from the School of Engineering and Applied Science at UCLA, among many other distinctions. Her NAE election citation is for "contributions to three-dimensional integrated circuits and on-wafer packaging and to engineering education." (See http://chancellor.ucdavis.edu/bio.html)
This year’s conference was held Friday, January 29, 2010. Keynote Presentation by Dr. Thomas N. Theis, Director, Physical
Sciences, IBM Research, T.J. Watson Research Center. Agenda
Professor Stephen O'Driscoll joined the ECE faculty in August 2009. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University and joins UC Davis at the rank of Assistant Professor. His research includes analog, RF and mixed-signal integrated circuit design, wireless power transfer, medical electronics and bioelectronics, system-configured analog circuits and automated circuit design. Signal processing, electromagnetics, and system design for medical applications are also a strong focus.
"UC Davis students Sunny Dhillon and Fei Li have developed the ultimate iPhone app about all things Davis! From real-time Unitrans tracking, campus map GPS location, class schedules, search directory, instant e-mail access, and watching AggieTV videos, this app has it all!"
Anna Scaglione is the UC Davis PI of the TCIPG team awarded nearly 18.8 million over 5 years to establish a major Resilient Smart Grid Program. Led by the University of Illinois, the project is funded by the DOE and Homeland Security and includes Dartmouth College and Washington State University.
UC Davis is a general member of a $35.5 million, 10-year project that will create the Communication Networks Academic Research Center under a new Collaborative Technology Alliance for Network Science Program run by the Army Research Laboratory.
"Channel Codes: Classical and Modern" (Cambridge University Press) contains a solid coverage of classical channel codes and an extensive coverage of modern channel codes. It gives an up-to-date presentation of the state of the art.
Prof. Anh-Vu Pham has been appointed as a Distinguished Microwave Lecturer of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) for the term of 2010-2012. The IEEE Distinguished Microwave Lecturers are recognized experts in their fields and available to present lectures to local MTT-S chapters world-wide. MTT-S is the fifth largest IEEE society and has more than 11,000 members with 138 chapters around the globe.
CS graduate student Pinar Muyan-Ozcelik has been named a finalist for the 2009 Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship. Google awarded scholar/finalist status to 50 women in the US.
An (8176, 7156) Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) code, devised by Professor Shu Lin and his co-workers, has been selected for use in the NASA Landsat Data Continuation Mission scheduled to launch July 2011 with a design life of 5 years.
Professor Zhi Ding is appointed Child Family Professorship in Engineering and Entrepreneurship. From Bruce White's announcement:
It is with great pleasure that I announce the appointment of Professor Zhi Ding of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering to the Child Family Professorship in Engineering and Entrepreneurship. He is the first person to receive this honor.
CS graduate student Pinar Muyan-Ozcelik has been named a finalist for the 2009 Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship. Google awarded scholar/finalist status to 50 women in the US.
An (8176, 7156) Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) code, devised by Professor Shu Lin and his co-workers, has been selected for use in the NASA Landsat Data Continuation Mission scheduled to launch July 2011 with a design life of 5 years.
Professor Zhi Ding is appointed Child Family Professorship in Engineering and Entrepreneurship. From Bruce White's announcement:
It is with great pleasure that I announce the appointment of Professor Zhi Ding of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering to the Child Family Professorship in Engineering and Entrepreneurship. He is the first person to receive this honor.
Professor Saif Islam receives funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to study techniques for integrating 3D multifunctional materials and devices on amorphous surfaces for low cost electronics and photonics.
Professor Qing Zhao receives College of Engineering Outstanding Junior Faculty Award. The goal of the program is to honor achievements of outstanding faculty members early in their careers and additionally to provide peer recognition within the College of Engineering.
Professor Chen-Nee Chuah has been selected as a 2008-09 Chancellor's Fellow. The Chancellor's Fellows Program is supported in part by funds from the Davis Chancellor's Club and the Annual Fund of the University of California, Davis. The Program was established in 2000 to honor the achievements of outstanding faculty members early in their careers. It includes a one-time award of $25,000 to be used for support of research, teaching, and service activities, together with the designated title Chancellor's Fellow.
Professor Anna Scaglione has joined the faculty at ECE in July 2008, and she will be part of the Information Systems group. She was previously at Cornell University and joins UC Davis in the rank of Associate Professor. Her expertise is in signal processing and communication theory and her current research interests are in wireless communications and sensor networks.
Prof. Jonathan Heritage of UC Davis, together with his colleague at Purdue University, Prof. Andrew M. Weiner won one of the most distinguished awards in optics, R. W. Wood Prize.
Susan Dragich of Lockheed Martin presented the Lockheed Martin Teaching Excellence Award to Professor Stephen Lewis and Professor Rajeevan Amirtharajah.
Professor Anh-Vu Pham has been named as the recipient of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) Outstanding Young Engineer Award.
Murat Demirkan, Stephen Bruss and Professor Richard Spencer won the 2nd-place Student Paper Award at the 2007 Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuit (RFIC) Symposium for their paper entitled "11.8GHz CMOS VCO With 62% Tuning Range Using Switched Coupled Inductors".
Professor Richard Spencer has received the ASUCD 2007 Excellence in Education Award for the College of Engineering. This was the fifth annual set of ASUCD excellence in education awards. Each year, seven awards are given with one in each of six colleges or divisions and one overall award winner selected from the six winners.
Professor M. Saif Islam has been selected to receive the Outstanding Junior Faculty Award for the College of Engineering Dean's Faculty Award Program. This is the highest honor the College of Engineering can bestow upon its faculty. The award plaque and the accompanying certificate will be presented to Prof. Islam at the College of Engineering New Faculty and Dean�s Annual Award Reception that will be schedules in early November, 2006. Recipient of the Dean's Faculty Award are added to a permanent display board located in the main lobby of the Kemper Hall to honor the achievements of the outstanding faculty members within the College of Engineering.
Bokuba Nwengela, a senior at the ECE department of UC Davis was honored with a Special Award for Best Oral Presentation at the CAMP symposium (California Alliance for Minority Participation). This award was given to the best four presentations in each category (Biological Sciences, and Physical/Engineering Sciences).
Professor S. J. Ben Yoo was elected a Fellow of the IEEE, effective January 1, 2007, and was also elected a Fellow of the Optical Society of America. Prof. Yoo's main area of expertise and interest is photonic systems and technologies for next generation networks.
Professor Qing Zhao has received two new multi year NSF awards. One is entitled "Decision Theoretic Approach to Resource Constrained Cyber Infrastructure" and the second one is entitled: "Integrated Approach to Opportunistic Spectrum Access". She is the only PI on both these awards and these are each a three year grant with the first one at $240K for three years and the second at $230K level for three years. It is extraordinary and exceptional for a young faculty to receive two such grants in the same year from a peer reviewed agency like NSF. Congratulate Professor Qing Zhao.
Dr. Bevan M. Baas received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation for his proposal titled, "Processors for the Computation of Future Digital Signal Processing Applications".
The National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization.
Dr. Amirtharajah's research focuses on powering electronic systems from environmental sources by harvesting energy from solar radiation or mechanical vibration. The goal is to reduce battery size and volume, decrease system maintenance costs, and increase operating lifetime for portable or wearable electronics or wireless sensors. Research under the new grant will include the exploration of circuit styles and signal processing architectures for energy harvesting sensors which enable a trade off between system performance and available power. This work will open new possibilities in long-lifetime sensors for monitoring critical infrastructure, health care, and security applications.
Assistant Professor M. Saif Islam was recently awarded a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award by the National Science Foundation. The Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the NSF's most prestigious awards in support of the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization. Such activities build a firm foundation for a lifetime of integrated contributions to research and education. His work is titled "Massively Parallel and Manufacturable Self-Assembly Techniques for Interfacing and Integrating Nanowires in Devices and Circuits".
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded $9.5 million over three and a half years to UC Davis, MIT and commercial partners to develop new high-speed devices for ultra fast optical communications, imaging and other applications.