Home > News > Weekly News Archive > Weekly News from 2003-04 > May 3-7, 2004

CHAIRMAN'S COLUMN

The latest US News and World Report Rankings of Graduate Programs for 2005 came out earlier this month. The Northwestern University Engineering School has been ranked 20th in the country. Our Electrical Engineering Graduate program has been ranked 26th, and the Computer Engineering Graduate Program has been ranked 21st.

In the past, US News only ranked the top 25 departments in each field, and this used to be on the basis of interviewing the Deans of various schools. This year, they asked all the department chairs to participate in the rankings, and they ranked the top 80 schools. Detailed rankings of various schools and disciplines can be obtained at www.usnews.com, but you need to pay a fee to view the online version. We have moved up in both the rankings this year. We were ranked below 25 in both disciplines last year. As many of you know, our Undergraduate ranking is 20th in Electrical Engineering and 17th in Computer Engineering according to US News for 2005.

I wish to thank all the faculty, staff, and students in the ECE department for contributing to these improved rankings. I want to especially thank Prof. Allen Taflove, Director of Publicity, for doing an outstanding job in creating the ECE Newsletter and the ECE Annual Research Report each year, which helps in publicizing our strengths to the external world.

-Prith Banerjee
Chairman

EXAMINATIONS

Monday, May 3, 2004: Ph.D. Final Examination - 1:00 p.m.
Room G247
John R. Ireland
"Transport Characteristics of Novel Degenerate Semiconductor Materials"
Committee Members: C. Kannewurf (chairman), A. Sahakian, and T. Marks

Tuesday, May 4, 2004: Ph.D. Final Examination - 9:00 a.m.
Room 2058, Cook Hall
Jutao Jiang
"Infrared Focal Plane Array based on GaInAs/InP Quantum Well Infrared Photodetectors"
Committee Members: M. Razeghi (chairperson), A. Sahakian, M. Hersam, and L. Henschen

Wednesday, May 5, 2004: Ph.D. Final Examination - 11:00 a.m.
Room L324
Steve C. Chiu
"Processor-Embedded Distributed Storage for High-Performance I/O"
Committee Members: A. Choudhary (chairman), P. Scheuermann, W.-K. Liao, and G. Memik

Wednesday, May 5, 2004: M.S. Final Examination
Lingyi Lei
"Option C"
Committee Members: L. Henschen (chairman), P. Banerjee, and P. Scheuermann

Wednesday, May 5, 2004: Ph.D. Qualifying Examination - 2:00 p.m.
Room 4051, Cook Hall
Wei Zhang
"Quantum Dot Infrared Photodetectors (QDIPs)"
Committee Members: M. Razeghi (chairperson), A. Sahakian, and M. Epstein

Thursday, May 6, 2004: Ph.D. Qualifying Examination - 9:30 a.m.
Room L324
Haitham M. Al-Angari
"Modeling the Cardiorespiratory Interaction in Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome"
Committee Members: A. Sahakian (chairman), R. Freeman, and T. Pappas

Friday, May 7, 2004: Ph.D. Final Examination - 2:00 p.m.
Room E133
Emin Oral
"A Computational Study of Reconstruction Algorithms for Ultra-Wideband Electromagnetic Pulse Imaging in Tissue"
Committee Members: A. Sahakian (chairman), M. Epstein, and A. Taflove

Friday, May 7, 2004: Ph.D. Qualifying Examination - 3:00 p.m.
Room L324
Chirayu S. Amin
"Timing Analysis of High Performance Integrated Circuits"
Committee Members: Y. Ismail (chairman), P. Banerjee, H. Zhou, R. Dick, and F. Dartu

TRAVEL

Professor Yehea Ismail traveled to Austin, Texas, April 27-28 to give a talk in the IBM Austin Research Labs.

Professor Manijeh Razeghi was a plenary speaker with a talk entitled, "Mimicking Nature with Photonic Technologies," at the SPIE Photonics Europe Conference, Strasbourg, France, April 26-30, 2004.

Professor Bruce Wessels is traveling to Moab, UT, May 2-6, to present an invited paper entitled, "Phase stability of epitaxial ferroelectric thin films" at an ONR workshop.

Copyright © 2002 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science,
Northwestern University. All rights reserved.

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