The 1998-99 academic year has been the first year of my chairmanship of the Electrical and Computer Engineering department. We started the year with a ten-point action plan for the department, which included:
I am extremely pleased to report that we have made progress in each of the above areas this past year. I will outline the accomplishments in each of these categories in the remainder of this message.
In the area of faculty improvement, we set up a Promotions, Tenure, Recruiting, and Improvement (PTRI) Committee, which consisted of elected members from six areas of the department, all of whom are full professors that are respected by the department faculty. These committee members acted as mentors to junior faculty. The committee members were a part of the review process for recommending salary raises for all faculty in the department. This committee assisted the Chairman in identifying the areas in our department that we should recruit new faculty.
During 1998-99, we recruited for two faculty positions in the department in the areas of signal and image processing, communications and networking, and optics and optical communications. We received more than 200 applications for these positions, and interviewed 10 excellent candidates. We made offers to two candidates, and one of them accepted. We are pleased to report that Thrasyvoulos (Thrasos) Pappas will be joining us from Lucent Technologies, Bell Labs in Sep. 1, 1999 as an Associate Professor. Thrasos received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1987, and has worked at Bell Labs for the past 12 years in the area of image processing for telecommunications. In addition, Prof. Christopher Jelen will start his appointment on Sep. 1, 1999 as Assistant Professor. Prof. Jelen obtained his Ph.D. in 1998 from Northwestern University but worked at Northrop Grumman for a year to gain some industry experience.
In the area of faculty improvement, two of our faculty have been honored for their teaching accomplishments. Prof. Alan Sahakian has been appointed as the Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence, and Prof. Scott Hauck was awarded the Best Teacher of the Year from the ECE Department during 1998-99.
We regret to announce that we lost three faculty in our department this past year who have gone on to other faculty positions in other universities. They are Prof. Der-Tsai Lee, Prof. Scott Jordan and Prof.
Scott Hauck.In the area of increased research activity, our faculty have continued to write strong collaborative research proposals, and have been successful in getting several new grants. For example, Prof. Choudhary, Banerjee and Taylor received a $1 million grant from the DOD ASCI program. Prof. Kumar, Ho and Wessels received a $1 million MURI grant from the DOD. Our research expenditures for the 1998-99 year were $9.4 million (up from $8.6 million during 1997-98) for the department.
Our faculty collectively wrote several research proposals during 1998-99 for new or continued finding.
Of these, 76 proposals were funded at a total level of $7.9 million for the 1999 year. 27 of the 76 proposals were new funding. It is interesting to note that 18 of the 30 faculty in the department received research funding last year from a proposal written last year. About 5 more faculty received funding from the Motorola center. Hence, 23 of the 30 faculty have active funded research programs.
Our faculty have continued to write scholarly research papers in the major journals and conferences in the field. During the 1998-99 year, our faculty collectively wrote 3 books (compared to 3 in 1997-98), 10 book chapters (compared to 14 last year), 160 journal papers (compared to 100 last year), and 140 conference papers (compared to 136 last year).
This year, we initiated a one-day Research Fair presented by the senior graduate students in our department on May 21, 1999. The Research Fair was attended by members of our ECE Advisory Board, many engineers from local industries, and various McCormick faculty and students.
Our research has made several news headlines and have resulted in various technology transfers. For example, the recent micro-cavity lasers research by Prof. Seng Ho has been transferred to a company called Nanovations Technologies, the work in physical design tools by Prof. Majid Sarrafzadeh has been transferred to a company called Monterey Design Systems, and the research on a MATLAB compiler for adaptive computing systems by Prof. Prith Banerjee, Alok Choudhary, Scott Hauck and Nagaraj Shenoy has been transferred to a company called Integrated Sensors Inc. Prof. Allen Taflove’s work on using computational electromagnetics for alternative imaging techniques for breast cancer research has been transferred to a company called Interstitial, Inc.
Our faculty members have been recognized for their research. For example, Prof. Scott Hauck received a Best Paper Award in the IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems in 1999 and received the NSF CAREER Award. Prof. Seng Ho was elected as a Fellow of the Optical Society of America.
During 1998-99 we prepared for the ABET 2000 accreditation by putting in place the process for defining clear objectives and outcomes of our undergraduate programs in electrical engineering and computer engineering, developing assessment methods for outcomes, taking inputs from various constituencies and putting in a process for continuous improvements of curricula. We collected materials for the various courses that were offered by the department and also prepared an ABET Self-Study Report.
In the area of improving the curricula, we were successful in developing two new and exciting undergraduate curricula in electrical engineering and computer engineering. The new curricula were developed by two different committees headed by Prof. Mike Honig (Director of Electrical Engineering Undergraduate Program), and Prof. Majid Sarrafzadeh (Director of Computer Engineering Undergraduate Program). Our new curricula has reduced the number of required courses from eight to five in both curricula, and we have developed two exciting new courses, Introduction to Electrical Engineering and Introduction to Computer Engineering, which will be taken by freshmen and sophomores to get an overview of the disciplines. These courses will expose freshman to electrical engineering using the design of an audio CD player, and expose students to computer engineering with the design of a robot controller. The new curriculum will be in effect for students entering in Fall 2000 but will be available in pilot form for students entering in Fall 1999.
In the area of improving instructional labs, our goal was to have a strongly lab-based curriculum, make our labs and lectures well connected, and to replace our older labs with newer state-of-the-art equipment. To this end, we were fortunate to receive funds from the university administration (the President and the Dean) to fund our new labs. We also successfully approached Hewlett Packard for donating equipment for our ECE B41/B42, C02 and C53 labs. The new labs now have 15 sets of test-benches consisting of a personal computer controlling digital oscilloscopes, waveform generators, variable power supplies, etc. In addition, we also successfully approached Motorola to donate equipment to start a Wireless Communication lab for freshmen students.
In the area of recruiting better quality students, we took several initiatives. For undergraduate students, we organized an ECE Orientation a few times, and an ECE Open House and Research Fair on May 21, 1999. In order to attract better quality graduate students, we convinced many of our own undergraduate students to consider graduate school by holding several discussion sessions, and by encouraging them to do undergraduate research for C99 credit. We also totally revised the new web page for our department, which details the various exciting research activities in our department. We also produced an Annual Research Report for 1997-98 which we mailed to professors in the top 20 universities, encouraging them to send their students for graduate school at Northwestern.
Our sixth initiative was to increase the enrollment of our undergraduate students. During 1998-99, our undergraduate student enrollment in electrical engineering became 101 (compared to 105 in 1997-98), and our computer engineering student enrollment became 125 (compared to 95 in 1997-98). Our graduate student enrollment increased slightly from 156 in 1997-98 to 163 in 1998-99, (based on Fall 98 enrollment).
In the area of improved student placement, we took several new initiatives. We developed an ECE Resume Booklet which listed one-page resumes of all graduating seniors in electrical engineering, computer engineering, and graduating M.S. and Ph.D. students in ECE. These resumes were mailed to the top 35 ECE related companies in the country, and the recruiting personnel in these companies were urged to recruit students from Northwestern. We set up web page links for new job openings in various companies, and got more involved with the University Placement Center. The result was that during 1999, our B.S. EE and CE students received offers from companies such as Anderson Consulting, Deloitte and Touche, Ernst and Young, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, Lucent, Microsoft, Motorola, Plexus, Price Waterhouse, Tellabs, and Texas Instruments. Our goal is to continue to be involved in the placement of our students in the top ECE companies so that these students can be in leadership roles in these companies and help the ECE department in the future.
We have taken some new initiatives with improving our industrial and alumni relations. One of our first achievements has been the constitution of a new ECE Advisory Board, which consists of 18 members from various top ECE companies, and eight members from various top universities. We had our first ECE Board meeting of the year on May 21, 1999, where we shared the progress made by our department this past year, and asked the Board members to provide feedback about our activities. In the future we wish to develop an alumni endowment program to assist the department in many of these new initiatives. As a first step towards that, next year we plan to develop an alumni database program which would include email addresses of our alums. This would allow us to communicate effectively with our alums and provide ways for them to interact with our current students and provide feedback about the various initiatives we are taking in our department.
Our ninth initiative was on improved publicity. We have developed for the first time an Annual Research Report for 1997-98 in December, which outlined the various research projects that we have in the department, and the research papers that were published by our faculty and students. This report was mailed to more than 200 senior professors in the top 20 ECE departments in the country and to the top 35 ECE companies in the country. In addition, we have developed a new and pro-active web page, which contains up-to-date web pages on all faculty, students, courses, and curriculum. In addition, we set up accurate email lists of various categories of students enrolled in our department, such as ee-freshmen, or co-seniors, and sent targeted emails to these students for various news items. We also started a weekly electronic newsletter for the department that is sent to faculty, staff, students, and members of the advisory board, to update every one of various activities in the department, such as seminars, travel, exam announcements, and honors or awards received by faculty or students.
The final achievement in our department has been in a different style of administration. This past year, the Chairman has been assisted in the execution of his various duties by a Board of Directors, which included:
Prof. Larry Henschen, Director of Graduate Program
Prof. Mike Honig, Director of Undergraduate Electrical Engineering Program
Prof. Majid Sarrafzadeh, Director of Undergraduate Computer Engineering Program
Prof. Allen Taflove, Director of Publicity and Publications
Prof. Prem Kumar, Director of Alumni and Industrial Relations
Prof. Alok Choudhary, Director of Computing Facilities
Prof. Alan Sahakian, Director of Instructional Labs
Ms. Deneen Marie Bryce, Director of Administration
The above group of people met regularly once a month among themselves and once a month with the entire faculty to discuss ways to improve our department. I wish to thank the above people for the support they have provided me in the execution of the initiatives that are described above.
Conclusion
Overall, 1998-99 has been a very exciting year. We have developed a clear mission plan for our department for the next five years, and our faculty members have all started to work towards these common objectives. I would also like to thank the faculty and staff in the ECE department for their support in implementing these objectives.
I am pleased to report that the department’s rapid improvement is being noticed by the outside world. During June 1999, we received word that the U.S.News & World Report now ranks our electrical engineering graduate program as 18th in the U.S., a rise of 7 spots relative to their 1998 assessment (we were ranked 25 last year). Our computer engineering ranking is 21 (we were ranked below 25 last year).
It goes without saying that the foundation for this solid performance was established by the Department’s previous Chairman, Abe Haddad. We are endeavoring to build upon Abe’s achievements to move us toward a ranking near the top-10 U.S. ECE departments over the next five years.
However, this is a formidable challenge. Many of the ECE departments currently ranked ahead of us have double or triple the number of faculty members. Therefore, they can pursue many more technical areas. We cannot and will not compete on this basis. However, we can compete and even excel in the selected technical areas of our concentration. That is, our central goal is to achieve the very top international recognition in every area that we choose to emphasize. Then, we shall let the rankings take care of themselves.
I conclude with my thanks to the upper administration for their continued support, including the past Dean, the late Jerome Cohen, the new Dean, John Birge, Provost Larry Dumas and President Henry Bienen.
I am looking forward to the next academic year.
Prith Banerjee
Walter P. Murphy Professor and Chairman
Faculty Spotlights
Prof. Seng-Tiong Ho was elected a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA) for "Significant Contributions to the Theory and Experimental Realization of Nanometer-Scale Photonic Devices utilizing Spontaneous Emission Control." Election to the OSA fellow is a recognition of serving with distinction in the advancement of optics. Ho was recognized in this field for his pioneering research work on nanoscale photonic devices, including the realization of photonic-wire lasers and microdisk lasers with submicron cavity size, the realization of microcavity optical wavelength multiplexers and switches, and the study of modification of atomic emission in nanoscale dielectric structures. His work was featured in the 1998 March issue of Scientific American.
Seng-Tiong received the B.S. in Physics and Electrical Engineering, and M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. He received the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1989. He was a member of the technical staff at the AT&T Bell Laboratory, Murray Hill, NJ from 1989-1991, and joined the Northwestern Faculty in 1991. Seng-Tiong was the conference chair of the 1999 international conference on "Photonics Technology into the 21st Century" organized by the International Society for Optical Engineering. His current research interests include high-density photonic integrated circuits, optical computing, modeling of active nanophotonic devices, study of photon localization and lasing in random scattering medium, thin-film self-assembled organic and ferroelectric electro-optic modulators, and photonic bandgap structures and lasers.
Thrasyvoulos (Thrasos) N. Pappas joined our department on September 1, 1999. As an Associate Professor, Thrasos received the S.B., S.M., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, in 1979, 1982, and 1987, respectively. He was a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, from 1987 until 1999. His research interests are in image and multidimensional signal processing. He has worked on analysis of medical images and algorithms for image and video segmentation. He has also worked on numerical analysis, optimization, and control. His recent work has been on perceptual image and video compression, model-based halftoning, color printing, and video/audio integration for teleconferencing. Thrasos is an Associate Editor and Editor for Electronic Abstracts for the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing. He is a member of the IEEE Image and Multidimensional Signal Processing Technical Committee. He is also cochair for the Conference on Human Vision and Electronic Imaging, sponsored by SPIE and IS&T.
Assistant Prof. Christopher Jelen also joined our faculty on September 1, 1999. He is an Northwestern Alum who received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from this department. Prior to re-joining Northwestern, Chris was a member of the technical staff of Northrop Grumman Corporation, where he worked in the advanced technology division on electro-optic and infrared applications. His research at Northrop focused on the adaptation of two-color infrared focal plane array technology for use in aircraft missile warning sensor systems.
Chris is the author of more than 25 publications. His current research interests at Northwestern include detectors and sensing systems (including ultraviolet, visible, and infrared detectors), quantum devices, and nano-lithography.