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Gokhan Memik has been named recipient of the Department of Energy Early Career Award in Mathematical, Information and Computational Sciences for his research on "High Performance Networking Hardware Design". Dr. Memik is working on design of novel silicon-based integrated circuits for use in high-performance networking hardware. The award carries with it a $299,998 stipend.
SEDA OGRENCY MEMIK, GOKHAN MEMIK, AND RAJARSHI MUKHERJEE NOMINATED FOR DAC BEST PAPER AWARD
ECE Professors Seda Ogrenci Memik and Gokhan Memik, and Ph.D. student Rajarshi Mukherjee were nominated for Best Paper at the ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC) held from June 13-17. Their paper, "Temperature-aware Resource Allocation and Binding in High-level Synthesis" allows efficient thermal management during high-level synthesis to avoid hot spot formation on integrated circuits. DAC 2005 had approximately 6000 attendees, and is one of the most prestigious conferences in the area of design tools for integrated circuits.
In the past few years ECE has undertaken a major expansion of its
CAD/VLSI group and the efforts are paying off impressively. 520 papers
were submitted to the 2004 IEEE/ACM International Conference on
Computer-Aided Design. Seven of the 127 accepted papers had first
authors from Northwestern ECE -- a higher number than from any other
organization in the world except for IBM (seven) and Carnegie Mellon
University (ten), which has an ECE department more than twice the size
of Northwestern's. Our papers described work on reliability, analysis
of deep sub-micron integrated circuits, circuit synthesis, and other
topics in analysis and design. Northwestern ECE is doing cutting edge
innovative research in the CAD/VLSI area that is gaining the
department wide recognition.
Please join me in congratulating Alok Choudhary for his election to
Fellow of IEEE for contributions to high performance computing
systems. We also congratulate Manijeh Razeghi for her
election to Fellow of IEEE for contributions to the development of
compound semiconductor growth technology.
It is very unusual for a department of our size to have two Fellows in
the same year.
Professor Horace Yuen was elected Fellow of the American Physical
Society for seminal contributions to the theory of quantum
communications and quantum measurements.
HADDAD APPOINTED INTERIM CHAIRMAN
Dean Joseph Schofer has appointed Professor Abraham H. Haddad as the
Interim Chairman of the ECE Department for the period August 16, 2004
to August 31, 2005 or until a permanent Chairman is appointed. Haddad
is the Henry and Isabelle Dever Professor in the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Director of the Masters of
Information Technology Program. He joined the ECE department in
1988. Prior to that, he was Professor of EE at Georgia Institute of
Technology and Director of the CIMS Program. He has authored about 120
publications and currently supervises two Ph.D. students. He is a
Fellow of IEEE and AAAS. He is the recipient of the Distinguished
Member Award from IEEE Control Systems Society, the IEEE Centennial
Medal, and the IEEE Third Millenium Medal. Abe received his B.S. in
1960 and his M.S. in 1963, both from Technion; he received his M.A. in
1964 and his Ph.D. in 1966, both from Princeton. Professor Haddad has
had a long history of service in the ECE department. He was the
Chairman of the department from 1988 to 1998, was also the Interim
Chairman of the department during 2001-02.
This is to inform everyone that I have decided to step down as Chairman
of the ECE Department at Northwestern effective August 15, 2004, after
five wonderful years. I have accepted a position as Dean of the
College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago, a
position that will become effective Aug. 16, 2004.
I am proud to have served the ECE department at Northwestern over the
past five years as Chairman, and eight years as a faculty member.
During this period, the ECE department rankings have gone up to 17th in
computer engineering, and 20th in electrical engineering at the
undergraduate level, and 21st in computer engineering and 26th in
electrical engineering respectively at the graduate level. The research
funding of the department has doubled from less than $4 million per
year to $8 million per year. During this period, we have hired 10 new
faculty, five of whom received the NSF Career Awards (100% of all eligible
faculty had received the Career awards!). This past year, we had the
best recruiting year in our department where all three of our first
choice candidates accepted our offers. In terms of curriculum changes,
we have made significant changes in our undergraduate electrical
engineering and computer engineering curriculum with strong
instructional labs. Our industrial relations have never been stronger
thanks to support from companies such as Motorola, Microsoft and
Hewlett-Packard. Our department is definitely headed in an upward
trajectory, and I give the credit to my outstanding colleagues for this.
I was honored to be a part of such a strong and exciting department.
I am ready for the next challenge in my life. The Deanship of the UIC
College of Engineering will be a very exciting opportunity for me. I
am deeply indebted to all of you for your support over the past eight
years. I plan to remain in close contact with many of you in the future
since I will continue to be an Adjunct Faculty of the ECE department for
the next three years. I will keep visiting Northwestern regularly to
continue to co-supervise some of my graduate students who will remain,
and to continue research interactions with some of the ECE faculty.
Dean John Birge is in the process of appointing the next Chairman of the
ECE department. We will provide updates of our search for a new
Chairman in the weeks and months ahead.
Regards.
Prith Banerjee
Three new faculty members will join the ECE department as Assistant
Professors effective Fall 2004. They are Russ Joseph in computer
engineering, Dongning Guo in systems, and Hooman Mohseni in
solid-state/nanotechnology. This will bring the total number of
faculty in the ECE department to 34.
Russ Joseph received his B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering
from Carnegie Mellon University in 1999, his M.A. in Electrical
Engineering at Princeton in October 2001, and is expected to finish
his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Princeton in June 2004 under
the supervision of Professor Margaret Martonosi. Russ's research
interests are in computer architecture and power-aware computer
systems including techniques for monitoring, characterizing, and
optimizing performance and power consumption. Russ held a summer
internships at Microsoft Agere Systems and at IBM T.J. Watson Research
Center. He held a Microsoft Technical Scholarship as an undergraduate
and received the W. E. B. DuBois Award for Academic Excellence in
1999 at Carnegie Mellon. He entered graduate school at Princeton with
a Princeton University President's Fellowship and now holds an IBM
Graduate Fellowship. Russ has published five conference papers thus
far. His February 27 seminar was on "Inductive Noise at the
Microarchitectural Level: Analysis Techniques and Effective
Solutions."
Dongning Guo received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and
Information Science from the University of Science and Technology of
China in 1995, his M. Eng. from the National University of Singapore
in 1999, and is expected to receive his Ph.D. in Electrical
Engineering from Princeton University in the summer of 2004.
Dongning's Ph.D. work is concerned with the design, analysis, and
optimization of communication systems and networks under the
supervision of Professor Sergio Verd=FA. Dongning's research
interests are primarily in the fields of wireless communications,
information theory, communication networks, and signal processing.
Dongning Guo has published three journal papers, 12 conference papers,
and one book chapter thus far. He presented a seminar on February 26
seminar on "Interactions of Information Theory and Estimation in
Single- and Multi-User Communications".
Hooman Mohseni received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from
Amirkabir University of Technology in 1993, his M.S. in Electrical
Engineering from Sharif University in 1995, and his Ph.D. in
Electrical and Computer Engineering from Northwestern University in
2001 under Professor Manijeh Razeghi. He is currently a member of the
Technical Staff at Sarnoff Corporation. He was the recipient of the
best Ph.D. thesis award from the ECE department in 2001. Hooman's
research interests are mainly in the fields of novel quantum
structures and micro and nano-integration methods for advanced
photonic and optoelectronic devices. His research area will nicely
complement the ECE department faculty's expertise in the
solid-state/nanotechnology field. He has published seven journal
papers and ten conference papers. In 1999 he won the Best Student
Paper Award at the International Device Research Conference. His
March 4 seminar was on "Advanced Photonic Modulators: An Enabling
Technology for Future Photonic Systems."
This year, the ECE department was looking for faculty candidates in
three areas: (1) Computer engineering with an emphasis on computer
architecture (2) Systems with an emphasis on networking and
communication and (3) Solid-state/photonics with an emphasis on
nano-technology. We received 361 applications for these three
positions, 70 in computer engineering, 210 in systems, and 81 in
solid-state/nanotechnology. From these applications, we identified 12
candidates for interviewing., 3 in computer engineering, 4 in systems
and 5 in solid-state. The interviews took place during February and
March. We made offers to our three top candidates in each of the
three areas in the last week of March. I am delighted to inform you
all that all three of our first choice candidates have accepted our
offers by April 15.
I wish to thank all the faculty for their support of all three hires,
and especially the members of the three search committees for
identifying such superior candidates. I also wish to thank the
faculty for being in constant email and phone communication with the
candidates in the past few weeks answering their many questions, and
making them feel very welcome at Northwestern. I also want to thank
Dean John Birge for approving all three hires in the ECE department
this year. Finally, I wish to recognize Nancy Singer for doing an
outstanding job in arranging the travel arrangements and interview
schedules of 12 faculty candidates in 6 weeks, and preparing the
candidate folders for each of the candidates, and preparing the cases
for their hires for the Dean's office.
-Prith Banerjee
I am delighted to inform you that Larry Henschen has been appointed
the 2004 Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence
for a three year term by the Provost for his contributions in
developing and teaching the ECE 230, ECE 346, ECE 347 courses,
teaching the Engineering Design and Communications (EDC) courses for
many years, for serving as the Graduate Program Director of the ECE
department, and the Associate Dean of the Graduate School, and for
being an outstanding advisor and mentor to many students.
These awards have been established to recognize individual faculty
members who have consistently demonstrated outstanding performance in
classroom teaching, or who have developed significant innovations that
have also influenced the methods and teaching effectiveness of other
faculty. McCormick Professorships are appointed for three year terms.
At any given time, ten people hold McCormick Professorships. Each
recipient of a McCormick Professorship receives a salary supplement
during his or her tenure in the position; holders of the Professorship
also receive an annual research grant. Each holder of a McCormick
appointment is designated a Fellow of the Searle Center for Teaching
Excellence. Faculty members are nominated for the McCormick award by the
department chairmen and the Dean of the school in which they have their
principal appointments. More information on the award and a list of
current and previous recipients are at:
http://www.northwestern.edu/provost/awards/mccormick/index.html
This brings the total number of Charles Deering McCormick Professorships
of Teaching Excellence in our ECE department to four. Alan Sahakian
received the award in 1999, Allen Taflove in 2000, and Alvin Bayliss in
1995. This shows that the ECE department has some of the most
outstanding teachers in the engineering school and the university.
I wish to thank Steve Carr and John Birge for supporting Larry's
nomination. I also wish to recognize the students who wrote strong
letters of reference in support of Larry. Finally I wish to thank
Nancy Singer who compiled an excellent nomination package.
Please join me in congratulating Larry on this outstanding recognition.
-Prith Banerjee
Professor Peter Scheuermann was elected to the grade of IEEE Fellow
"for contributions to logical and physical database design". Getting
elected to the Fellow grade of IEEE is one of the highest honors that
senior ECE faculty strive to achieve. Peter's election to the grade
of IEEE Fellow brings the total number of Fellows in the department to
eight.
Two faculty of the ECE department received the prestigious National
Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award for 2004. Ying Wu
received the award for his proposal on "Visual Analysis of High
Dimensional Motion: A Distributed/Collaborative Approach." Robert
Dick received the award for his proposal on "Analysis, Design, and
Synthesis of High-Performance, Low-Power, Real-Time Embedded Systems."
Getting an NSF CAREER award is one of the most prestigious awards that
a junior faculty can received. This brings the total number of NSF
PYI/NYI/CAREER Awardees in the department to nine.
The prestige of any department comes from its faculty. I am pleased
to announce that last week, two faculty members in our ECE department
were recognized with honors from their societies for their significant
research contributions.
Professor Manijeh Razeghi has been elected a Fellow of the Optical
Society of America (OSA) for "pioneering work on optoelectronic
quantum devices."
Professor Bruce Wessels has been elected a Fellow of the American
Physical Society (APS) for "seminal contributions to understanding
of defect structure and dopant behavior in epitaxial semiconductor and
ferroelectric oxide thin films and heterostructures."
Please join me in congratulating our colleagues.
-Prith Banerjee
The latest rankings of the US News and World Report for 2004 for
undergraduate programs has been announced in August
2003. Northwestern's Electrical Enginering Program is ranked 20th in
the country, and our Computer Engineering Program is ranked 17th. For
the first time, our department has been ranked in the top 20 in both
categories.
The various department rankings in the
Electrical/Electronic/Communications specialization are:
Professor Seng Ho in the ECE department has been awarded a $2 million
research grant on "Molecularly Engineered Materials and Devices for
Ultra-High Performance Electro-Optics," from the DARPA MTO office.
This is a joint 4-year research project with Professor Tobin Marks and
Professor Mark Ratner of the Chemistry Department.
Present-generation military and civilian RF systems are severely
challenged by the lack of compact, lightweight, inexpensive components
capable of efficient broadband RF analog signal distribution and
processing. This research will outline a focused program on
developing and implementing unique, ultra-high response materials
systems for very low-voltage, ultra-high-speed EO devices (modulators,
switches). The unique aspect of the proposed high performance EO
devices lies in the implementation of robust, intrinsically acentric
organic superlattices already demonstrated to have extremely large
electro-optic responses, the use of nanofabrication techniques for
optimal optical and RF confinement and overlap, and the use of
transparent conductor structures to reduce switching voltages to 0.5 V
or less.
We congratulate Professor Ho on this major collaborative,
interdisciplinary research grant. | |
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