Home > News > Weekly News Archive > Weekly News from 2003-04 > March 29-April 2, 2004

CHAIRMAN'S COLUMN

We would like to update everyone about our efforts at graduate student recruiting this year. We have received more than 400 applications for M.S. and Ph.D. degree studies in the ECE department. We have admitted more than 20 new students so far with a combination of Murphy and Cabell Fellowships, Teaching Assistantships, and Research Assistantships for the 2004-05 academic year. The students have until April 15, 2004 to make their decision.

This year we are planning to host a Graduate Student Recruiting Weekend on April 2-3 to allow our prospective new students to get to know our department better. On this day, all the students who have been admitted have been invited to visit our department and meet the faculty and current graduate students. The schedule for the ECE Graduate Weekend is as follows:

Friday, April 2, ECE Conference Room

9:00am - 10:00am                       Introduction to ECE Department
Prith Banerjee, Chairman
Peter Scheuermann,  Associate Chairman
Larry Henschen, Associate Dean

10:00am -10:30am                       Morning Break

10:30am -12:00pm                       Faculty Presentations
                                       5 mins. each)

12:00pm -1:00pm                        Lunch (4th floor - Cohen
                                       Commons) with group leaders 
                                       and students

1:00pm -  4:00pm                       Meetings with advisors,
                                       related faculty and 
                                       students

7:00pm - 10:00pm                       Dinner with graduate
                                       students

Saturday, April 3

9:00am  - 2:00pm                       Sightseeing in Chicago
                                       (with graduate students)

I encourage our faculty and current graduate students to welcome our prospective new graduate students on that day.

-Prith Banerjee
Chairman

EXAMINATIONS

Tuesday, March 23, 2004: M.S. Final Examination
David P. Cerra
"Option C"
Committee Members: M. Honig (chairman), P. Banerjee, and P. Scheuermann

Tuesday, March 30, 2004: M.S. Final Examination - 1:00 p.m.
Room L324
Kawinnun Phatchanun
"Two-Cell Downlink Scheduling"
Committee Members: M. Honig (chairman), R. Berry, and A. Haddad

Wednesday, March 31, 2004: M.S. Final Examination - 10:00 a.m.
Room L324
Arindam Mallik
"Quantasmart -- A Low Power Optimization Algorithm with Quantization Error Constraints in System C based ASIC Design"
Committee Members: P. Banerjee (chairman), H. Zhou, and G. Memik

Wednesday, March 31, 2004: Ph.D. Qualifying Examination - 3:00 p.m.
Room L324
Yishen Sun
"Traffic Shaping and Congestion Control in Access Networks"
Committee Members: C.-C. Lee (chairman), R. Berry, and A. Haddad

TRAVEL

Prith Banerjee traveled to Orlando, FL, March 21-22, to attend the ECE Department Heads Association meeting.

Alok Choudhary traveled to Stanford, CA, March 16-18. He gave a talk on Scientific Data Management.

Robert Dick traveled to Washington, D.C., March 20-23, to serve on an NSF panel.

Professor Manijeh Razeghi gave an invited talk entitled, "QDIP vs. QWIP: Theory and Experiment," at the Conference on "Optical Properties of Nanostructures and Nanophotonics," American Physical Society Meeting, Montreal, Canada, March 22, 2004.

Richard Waltz is traveling to Dresden, Germany, Mar 29-April 1, to attend the European Conference on Computational Optimization (EUCCO) 2004 and present a talk entitled, "An Active-Set Algorithm for Large-Scale Nonlinear Optimization."

OTHER NEWS

Everyone is invited -- students, faculty, and staff -- to the Second Annual ECE International Pot Luck! Friday, April 16th at 11:30AM

A Pot Luck is when each guest brings one dish and everybody shares. Since our department is richly represented by people from a myriad of cultures, this is an event that has mouths watering weeks in advance in anticipation of a culinary adventure: home-cooked secret family recipes -or- a store-bought favorite for those who dare not enter a kitchen. Everything is welcome! Look for the sign up sheet next to the coffee maker and write in what you plan to bring.

So, mark your PDAs for April 16th (but set your alarms for the day before, to remind you to start cooking!)

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Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science,
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