CURRENTS - Texas A&M University · CURRENTS • Fall 2010 CURRENTS • Fall 2010 The Department of...

News from the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering • Texas A&M University • Fall 2010

Message from Department Head-Dr. Costas Georghiades

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In this issue of Currents, like in previous ones, you will get a glimpse of what our students, faculty and staff have accomplished over the past year. We also have a few stories on our past students who are our ambassadors to the world. If you are one of our alumni read-ing this issue of Currents, please do con-tact us with any news you deem should be shared with others. We take pride in our students and enjoy hearing of their success.

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Texas A&M University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering held its second annual summer camp, ECE Unplugged, hosting 30 high-school students. ECE Unplugged, showcases the different opportunities available for students in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

During the camp, the high-school students had access to the labs and equipment including oscilloscope’s and soldering machines and built speakers, etched a wafer similar to making microchips, built an antenna out of a can and built robots as some of their projects during the camp.

Electrical and Computer Engineering Hosts Summer Camp

Of the many activities presented in this issue that our department, faculty and students have been involved with, I will focus on one that re-lates to our undergraduate student recruiting efforts. You may know that ECE enrollment nationally declined slowly but steadily over the last few years. This trend does not seem to relate to any lack of job opportunities for our graduates, as indeed our profession is very di-verse, but rather it seems to be part of a cycli-cal trend. To help get the message out to high school students about what ECE is, our depart-ment has organized several events throughout the year that brought our faculty, staff and some of our students in contact with prospec-tive high school applicants. These events in-clude Aggieland Saturday, Discover ECE Day and, during the summer, ECE Unplugged. This

summer was the second time we organized ECE Unplugged, a week-long camp in which selected high schools students visit our labo-ratories, do hands-on projects relating to ECE and visit local industry. Thirty students participated this past summer with expens-es paid partly by departmental funds and partly through funding from the state. By all accounts students have enjoyed the experi-ence and left with a better understanding of ECE as a profession. All of our recruiting ac-tivities seem to have paid off, as this fall our freshman class is almost 30% larger than the year before. I believe this is a trend that will continue at some positive rate, although only time can tell. I will be sure to address this is-sue in our next issue of Currents.

Stay tuned until the next issue.

They also were given an industry tour of National Instruments in Austin as part of the camp experience.

“The camp is aimed to help participants understand what they can do with degrees in electrical or computer engineering,” said Jackie Perez, the department’s senior undergraduate academic advisor.

Faculty members Dr. Jean-Francois Chamberland, Dr. Kamran En-tesari, Dr. Paul Gratz, Dr. Rusty Harris, Dr. Gregory Huff, Dr. Deepa Kundur, Dr. Sam Palermo, Dr. Srinivas Shakkottai and Dr. Steve

CURRENTS

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CURRENTS • Fall 2010CURRENTS • Fall 2010

The Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University would like to thank the follow-ing supporters for their contributions to our Annual Fund. This fund was established for scholarships, recruit-ing and other items not covered by state or tuition in order to compete for the retention of the finest students and faculty. Support of our annual fundraising campaign in the past six years has been very helpful to the growth of the department. FriendsThomas G. Atlee, Jr.James R. BiardWilliam CaughlinCharles C. (Cliff) ClarkDixon W. CoulbournRobert CowgillElmer ElkinsGary A. HamiltonRandy G. HerreraJohn E. HooverG. Holman KingMichelle Lenis

Mark D. LeonardRudy H. MatthaeiDavid MeehGrady M. MuldrowJoseph N. OwensRichard PayneJames ReimundKen RouthDewey TiptonKoichi TsukihashiMonty Wilkins

I WILL DONATE $__________ YES! I Want to Support the Department Of Electrical & Computer Engineering

BY CHECK (Enclosed) Payable to: The Texas A&M Development Foundation Name_________________________________________

E-Mail Address__________________________________BY MONEY ORDER (Enclosed)

Payable to: The Texas A&M Development Foundation Address________________________________________

City___________________ State_______Zip__________ Class Year______________________________________

If you haven’t received our Annual Fund request and would like to make a donation, please fill out and send in the follow-ing form to Dr. Costas Georghiades, Department Head, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, TAMU 3128, College Station, TX 77843-3128

SupportersAnthony CalleJohn R. CaylorJohn W. HammDavid A. White

BenefactorsWray M. BarnettCharles E. BrandtMichael J. LarsenMark MorrisCharles D. WickerAnthony J. Wood

U.S. News & World Report ranks Texas A&M’s electrical & computer engineering programs The Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering’s graduate and undergraduate programs at Texas A&M University were among the top schools ranked nationally according to The U.S. News & World Report’s release of America’s best graduate and undergraduate schools for 2010-2011. For undergraduate schools, electrical engineering is ranked 18th overall and 9th among public schools. Specialty rankings are based solely on nomination by educators at peer schools, with the department heads asked to judge the overall academic quality of programs in their field on a scale of 1 (“marginal”) to 5 (“outstanding”), and the average scores were used for rankings.For graduate schools, electrical engineering is ranked 22nd among 185 Ph.D.-granting engineering schools and 14th among public schools. Computer engineering is ranked 20th overall and 13th among public schoolsIn addition, the graduate engineering program at Texas A&M was ranked 13th nationally (7th for public institutions.) This is up from 14th nationally and 8th for public institutions the previous year. For more information, see www.usnews.com.

2009/2010 Annual Fund Donors

PatronsAllen B. CunninghamErvin F. LyonRobert & Terri PittsCarlton & Shari SmithDelbert Whitaker

Dr. Le Xie joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in January 2010 as an assistant professor. Since his arrival he has developed a new course, “Engineering and Economics of Competitive Power Systems.” He also has received research grants from both the National Science Foundation (NSF) and industry to work on systems engi-neering problems for cost-effective and reliable integration of large-scale renew-able energy resources. His research was

featured in MIT Technology Review (Oct 2010). Xie is affiliated with the Electric Power and Power Electronic Group in the department. He received his B.E. in electrical engineering from Tsinghua Uni-versity, Beijing, China in 2004, and his S.M. in engineering sciences from Harvard University in June 2005. He obtained his PhD from the electric energy systems group (EESG) in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in 2009. Xie’s industry experience includes an internship in 2006 at ISO-New England and an internship at Edison Mission Energy Mar-keting and Trading in 2007. His research interests include modeling and control of large-scale complex systems, smart grid applications in support of renewable energy integration and electricity markets.

plugged-in

Le XieElectrical and computer engineering welcomes new faculty

Alouini elected to Fellow of IEEEDr. Mohamed-Slim Alouini recently from the De-partment of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, Qatar, recently was elect-ed to the rank of Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). Alouini received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasa-dena, CA, in 1998. He was an associate professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Minnesota.

Madden to present fourth lecture of Dis-tinguished Lecture Series Dr. John D.W. Madden, associate professor of elec-trical and computer engineering at the Advanced Materials and Process Engineering Laboratory of the University of British Columbia, presented the fourth lecture of the Texas A&M at Qatar Distinguished Lec-ture Series in March. The lecture, “Protein-based So-lar Cells, Plastic Electronics and Other Carbon-based Devices,” presented three cases: the use of proteins in solar cells, conducting polymers in low-cost electron-ics and nano-structured materials in supercapacitors.

International Conference on Telecommunica-tions comes to the Middle East Texas A&M at Qatar, in collaboration with Qatar University and Qatar University Wireless Innova-tion Center, hosted the International Conference on Telecommunications (ICT2010) in April. The conference featured advances in the changing world of wireless technology, offering tutorials and six keynote speakers on the topics of wireless communications.

Qaraqe to present paper at LEAFAMarwa Qaraqe, electrical engineering gradu-ate student, presented “Broadband Wireless Systems in Education” at the International Con-ference on e-Learning for All (LEAFA 2010) in Tunisia in June. With the help of her co-author, Dr. Abdelaziz Fakhroo, her paper focuses on the advantages of broadband wireless systems in education. Her work also includes a case study done in Jordan regarding WiMax imple-mentation and enhancement in education, as well as Texas A&M’s University’s launch of mo-bile applications.

News from TAMU Qatar

Dr. Robert Balog joined the Depart-ment of Electrical and Computer En-gineering in 2009 as an assistant pro-fessor. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in 1996 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Uni-versity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana in 2002 and 2006 respectively. From 1996 to 1999, Balog was an en-gineer at Lutron Electronics, Coopers-

burg, PA. and from 2006 until 2009, he was a senior engineer at SolarBridge Technologies Inc., Champaign, IL. While at Solar-Bridge Balog lead a team of more than 10 engineers and consul-tants and was responsible for the research and development of a transformative technology in the power electronics inverter of a photovoltaic (solar) energy system. He holds three issued U.S. patents with seven additional U.S. patents pending and is a registered professional engineer. He was the first Fellow of the International Telecommunications Energy Conference. His current research interests include power electronics converters for solar energy, particularly microinverters for ac photovoltaic (ACPV) modules

Robert Balog

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Wright assisted with the tours and design projects along with current students in the department.

In addition to participating in hands-on activities, the students toured departmen-tal laboratories such as the Magnetic Resonance Systems Laboratory, Chip Fabrication Laboratory and Thin Film Lab-oratory.

Participants also toured the campus and learned some of the Texas A&M traditions and attended presentations on re-search in computer and elec-trical engineering. They also enjoyed some recreational ac-tivities at the university’s Rec Center, Mount Aggie and a BV Bomber baseball game.

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Richard Templeton, chief ex-ecutive officer of Texas Instru-ments, discussed the value of an engineering education as a powerful tool for problem solv-ing and making a difference to an audience of engineering stu-dents during TI Day.The focus of TI Day is to illus-

trate the progress of the part-nership between Texas A&M University’s Digital Signal Pro-cessing (DSP) and Mixed Signal Processing (MSP) programs in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering with Texas Instruments.During his lecture Templeton

also talked about some of today’s biggest challenges – providing greater access to health care, uncovering new energy sources and reducing power consump-tion – and discussed the impact engineers can have by developing new technology solutions.Templeton is chairman, president and chief executive officer of Tex-

as Instruments. He became chairman of the board in April 2008, and president and chief executive officer in May 2004. He has served on

Texas Instruments CEO addresses students during TI Day

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering sponsored the First Annual Texas A&M University Nano/Micro Poster Sympo-sium Series(http://nano.ece.tamu.edu).

The purpose of the poster symposium was to promote multidisciplinary interaction and scientific communication among students and faculty in the field of nano/micro technol-ogy. The symposium started with an invited talk titled “Three Dimensions of Individual-

ized Nanomedicine” from Dr. Mauro Ferrari, a world-renowned expert in nano-medicine. He is currently a professor & chairman of the Department of Nano-medicine and Biomedical Engineering (nBME), pro-fessor of Internal Medicine, at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, as well as a pro-fessor of Bioengineering at Rice University and presi-dent of the Alliance for NanoHealth in Houston.

Following Ferrari’s talk was a poster session, which included more than 65 posters from various disciplines, where more than 150 people from 16 departments across campus participated. This also was the inaugural talk for the newly launching monthly Texas A&M Nano/Micro Seminar Series.

Other titles in the series include: “Nano-structured Thermoelectric Materials For Power Generation And Cooling” by G. Jeffrey Snyder,

a faculty associate at The California Institute of Technology; “Magnetic Microsystems for Bio-logical Separations” by A. Bruno Frazier of the Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Elec-trical & Computer Engineering; “Towards Low-Cost, High Efficiency, and Scalable Organic Solar Cell Fabrication with Nanoimprinted Transpar-ent Metal Electrode and Improved Domain Morphology,” by L. Jay Guo of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sci-ence, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and “Progress toward Atomic Scale Imaging in Living Cells with Diamond,” by Philip Hemmer of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University.

The steering committee was lead by Dr. Arum Han, assistant professor in the department. Other committee members included: Arul Jayaraman from The De-partment of Chemical Engineering; Mike McShane from The Department of Bio-medical Engineering; Dong Hee Son from The Department of Chemistry; Winfried Teizer from The Department of Physics; and Choongho Yu from The Department of Mechanical Engineering.

ECE sponsors Texas A&M University Nano/Micro Poster Symposium

the company’s board of direc-tors since July 2003.From April 2000 through April

2004, Templeton was chief op-erating officer of TI. He was ex-ecutive vice president of the company and president of TI’s Semiconductor business from June 1996 through April 2004.Templeton joined the com-

pany in 1980 after earning a bachelor’s of science degree in electrical engineering from Union College in New York. He spent his operational career in the company’s Semiconductor business, beginning in sales and eventually becoming pres-ident of the entire business. He recently topped the list of Insti-tutional Investor’s Best Semi-conductor CEOs in America for 2007 and 2008.

In addition to his TI duties, Templeton serves on the board of the Semiconductor Industry Association, the board of directors of Cata-lyst, and the board of trustees of Southern Methodist University. He is also a member of the Business Roundtable and the Dallas Chief Executive Roundtable.

Imagine a tiny funnel—a funnel so small that only individual molecules can go through it, one at a time.

That’s the basic idea behind research being done on molecules that play a role in the growth of cancer by Texas A&M University’s Dr. Jun Kameoka, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Dwight Look College of Engineering, and his colleague, Dr. Mien-Chie Hung of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Kameoka and Hung are working in a new specialty called bio-nanotechnology which involves fabrication of micro- and nanostructures that are designed to sense and manipulate biological molecules. The researchers have developed a Nanochannel Protein Complex Detection System which detects multi-protein interactions (theoretically up to eight proteins) and dissects the dynamics and complexity of cancer-related signal pathways. This new system will be useful in clinical molecular diagnosis of cancer as well as anti-cancer drug development.

The advance of modern molecular biology has provided researchers with many essential

facts about cancer, especially regarding cancer-related signal pathways that play important roles in tumor progression, including cancer cell proliferation, survival, metastasis (the spread of cancer from its point of origin in the body to other areas), and anti-cancer drug resistance. Understanding and identifying these signal pathways in terms of multiple protein interactions is critical for developing new methods in early diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. But current techniques for determining protein-protein interactions usually have limitations – for example, the inability to detect multiple target molecules within a protein complex. In fact, most current knowledge of protein complexes has come from detecting only two-protein interactions – yet many protein complexes contain more than two proteins involved in interactions. In short, scientists still have much to learn about how cancer grows and spreads.

In Kameoka’s and Hung’s new system, nanochannel devices – essentially, tiny hollow tubes with an especially narrow space in the middle, like the hole in a funnel – are fabricated on fused silica wafers in a ‘clean room,’ using lithography, etching and fusion bonding

techniques. Molecules that may be involved in cancer growth are taken from cells drawn from cancer patients at M.D. Anderson and are directed, one at a time, into these nanochannels. Kameoka and his colleague then focus a 375-nanometer laser on the wafers which detects specific fluorescent signals from target molecules passing through the laser’s focus. Those signals reflect the specific identity of the single molecule in the nanochannel at a given moment – and also identify interactions of that molecule in the protein complex of which it is a part.

This method promises to yield a lot of information that can be applied in developing new, more-focused cancer drugs that will be effective against cancer while also being less harmful to the body, and in screening drugs for their effectiveness more quickly than has been possible in the past. And time saved in screening drugs will mean quicker, more accurate prescription of those drugs for cancer patients—saving them valuable time and reducing drug resistance, and hopefully improving their chances for survival.

Contributed by John Holder

Tiny Funnels, Huge Advances

An old man walks down the stairs in his home. Suddenly, he trips and falls. No one is home to help him. But soon he hears the reassuring clang-ing of approaching sirens. The surveillance system installed in his home worked: It alerted emergency services, and now, help is on the way.Surveillance systems that monitor an environment can be quite useful

and are becoming increasingly common. Arrays of strategically placed cameras and sensors can monitor an area and convey information to a node or “sink.” These systems, called distributed multimedia sensor net-works (DMSNs), are being used in homes with older people, hospitals and geriatric facilities to monitor activities, spot gait irregularities, and signal that someone has collapsed.These systems could also be useful in warzones. Once deployed, these

networks could transmit important information about enemy location and activities, which could help military personnel strategize better.But engineering complex surveillance systems that smarten up the

environment is tricky. There are security, efficiency and privacy is-sues to consider. Tackling these issues is Dr. Deepa Kundur, an as-sociate professor at Texas A&M’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She is analyzing lightweight algorithms that could help improve DMSNs.Kundur said that directional communications using free space optics

is one technology currently being considered for advanced surveillance because of its high data capacity suitable for real-time video communica-tions. One major problem facing directional communications for DM-SNs is ensuring connectivity of such networks.“The sensors use lasers to ‘talk’ with each other,” Kundur said. “To get

the message across clearly, they need to be lined up correctly, which can be a housekeeping challenge. Think of a television remote. If you use it to change channels from the wrong angle, it doesn’t work.”

ECE’s Kundur working to improve monitoring systemsAnother hurdle is keeping the network powered. The sensors

handle large amounts of data, which can include visual and audio components. Communicating such complex data requires a lot of power, making it necessary to keep the sensors plugged in. This, in turn, leads to mounds of wires cluttering up the environment. The challenge lies in developing sensors that communicate wirelessly, without dropping messages and ensuring that the battery life is suf-ficiently long.Ensuring privacy is another concern.“We don’t want these systems to just gather data. We need them

to gather it and then selectively transmit only the relevant parts. If someone falls down, emergency services do not need to know what the person was wearing when he or she fell. The angle of the fall and the person’s fallen position are more important,” Kundur said.By transmitting only relevant information, the volume of data being com-

municated is reduced, thereby speeding up transmission.Protecting DMSNs from attacks is another focus of her research. The

lightweight algorithms she studies are also useful in this aspect of security. Kundur measures the probability with which these algorithms can detect attacks and distinguish them from false alarms.Kundur said she hopes that understanding the limits and suitability of

lightweight algorithms will help provide a framework for enhancing their performance with sensors.“Security translates into safety, but efficiency is important too” Kundur

said. “Achieving that crucial balance between security and efficiency is what will help improve DSMNs.”

Contributed by Marissa Doshi

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plugged-in

Aggie Formula Hybrid car wins second place in international competitionAggie engineering students have placed second in the 2010 inter-

national Formula Hybrid race car competition.This is the second year the Aggies have competed in the hybrid

race car contest, which they won in 2009 on their first try.The team scored perfectly in the presen-

tation and unrestricted acceleration portions of the contest, and scored a total of 939.4 points out of a possible 1,000 points to place second against 38 other teams from colleges and universities in the United States, Canada, India, Taiwan and Russia with a hybrid gaso-line-electric powered formula-style race car. The competition was held May 3-6 in Loud-on, N.H.

The Italian team, Politecnico De Torino, placed first.

The students designed and built the formula-style vehicle in a two-semester se-nior design course. Texas A&M teams have taken part in the international Formula SAE

competition since 1999 and won that competition in 2000, 2006 and 2007.

The students spent about 15,000 man-hours designing, building and testing the vehicle.

William “Bill” Coskey, Chairman and CEO of ENGlobal Corp. and graduate of the Department of Electrical Engineering, was awarded the Ernst & Young En-trepreneur Of The Year® Award in the Energy Services category for the Houston & Gulf Coast Area.

According to Ernst & Young LLP, the awards program recog-nizes entrepreneurs who dem-onstrate extraordinary success

in the areas of innovation, financial performance and personal commitment to their businesses and commu-nities. Coskey was selected as a finalist from nearly 550 nominations by a panel of independent judges. He was among four distinguished finalists in the Energy Servic-es category.

As a Houston and Gulf Coast Area award winner, Coskey was eligible for consideration for the Ernst & Young LLP Entrepre-neur Of The Year national program. .

Coskey, P.E., founded ENGlobal Corp. in 1985 and has been its Chief Executive Officer since April 3, 2007. He is a Registered Professional Engineer and a member of the Instrument Society of America. Coskey also has served on the ECE Advisory Council since 1999 and he currently is Chair of the council. He received a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering in 1975 from Texas A&M where he was an honors graduate.

ENGlobal provides engineering, automation, construc-tion, land and regulatory services principally to the energy sector throughout the United States and inter-nationally. The Company employs approximately 2,200 employees in 20 offices and occupies over 500,000 square feet of office and fabrication space. ENGlobal has been named one of the fastest growing engineering firms in the United States and Canada by ZweigWhite in each of the last six years. Further information about the Company and its businesses is available at www.EN-Global.com.

Celebrating its 23rd anniversary, Ernst & Young`s En-trepreneur Of The Year Award is the world`s most pres-tigious business award for entrepreneurs. The award makes a difference through the way it encourages en-trepreneurial activity among those with potential and recognizes the contribution of people who inspire oth-ers with their vision, leadership and achievement. As the first and only truly global award of its kind, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year award celebrates those who are building and leading successful, growing and dynamic businesses, recognizing them through region-al, national and global awards programs in more than 135 cities in 50 countries.

To see more about the award, visit http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS84099+22-Jun-2009+BW20090622.

ECE Alumnus named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year

on the circuit

We want to hear from you!!!

If you are a graduate in electrical or computer engineering from the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Texas A&M we would love to hear how you’re doing. You can E-mail your information to [email protected], or if you prefer, you can mail us news about

your career, family or anything else to:

Deana Totzke, Currents EditorDepartment of Electrical & Computer Engineering

TAMU 3128Zachry Engineering Center

College Station, TX 77843-3128

Please notify us of any address changes so we can continue giving you news from the department.

Dr. Zhuo Li ‘05 Dr. Zhuo Li currently works at the IBM Austin Research Lab to research

and develop the next generation of EDA software for microprocessor, game chips and ASIC. Recently he received the IBM Outstanding Research Accom-plishment award for the work on next generation physical synthesis design flow with the team in Austin Research Lab.

Dan Hinde ‘93 Dan Hinde ‘93 was appointed Judge of the 269th District Court of Harris

County, Texas. U.S. by Governor Rick Perry. District Judge Sim Lake ‘66 ad-ministered the Oath of Office to Judge Hinde. Hinde is the seventh Aggie to serve as a state district judge in Harris County, Texas.

This section features alumni news

ECE Connect is a new initiative from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University. ECE Connect is focused on improving first year retention, motivation and success of current ECEN students. Former Texas A&M Engineering students will mentor one to three first generation college freshmen students. The department hopes to expand the program to all incoming freshmen students by fall 2012, but needs at least 75-80 mentors to make that happen. All students will sign a release form authorizing the ECEN department permission to provide their contact information to the mentor. The undergraduate advising of-fice will strive to match student’s interests with the mentor’s experience. The success of ECE Connect depends on the mentor’s commitment to the program and our students. For more information about the program or to sign up to be a mentor, visit http://www.ece.tamu.edu/Undergraduate/ECEConnectProgram.php.

ECE Connect Mentor Program

Joe Utay, a graduate of the Department of Electrical Engineering, was posthumously named a Distinguished Alumni by the As-sociation of Former Students.

Utay, Class of 1908, received a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University and went on to earn a Bachelor of Laws degree from the Cumberland School of Law at Samford Uni-versity in 1912. As a student, he was a mem-ber of the Corps of Cadets, Ross Volunteers, the “T” Association, the Athletic Council and the Dallas Club and was captain of the var-sity football team.

Utay returned to Texas A&M in 1912 and served as a freshman football coach and was director of athletics. He is recognized as a pioneer of football in the Southwest. He was the president of the Texas Officials Association from 1912 until 1936 and was instrumental in establishing the Southwest Officials Association, which helped organize the Cotton Bowl Athletic Association, start-ing the tradition of the Southwest Confer-ence appearing in the Cotton Bowl. He was also a practicing attorney in Dallas for more than 55 years.

Utay was inducted into the Texas A&M Athletic Hall of Fame in 1972 and the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 1984. He was a found-ing member of the Texas A&M Letterman’s Association and a charter member of the Na-tional Football Hall of Fame.

Utay served on the Texas A&M Board of Directors (now the Board of Regents) from

Electrical Engineering former student posthumously named Distinguished Alumni1935 to 1941. He was a contributor to The Association of Former Students’ Century Club. Dormitory 12 (Utay Hall) is named in his honor.

Other recipients of the 2010 Distin-guished Alumnus Award include:

• Dudley J. Hughes, Class of 1951, of Jackson, Miss.;

• Charles W. Soltis, Class of 1955, of Houston, a mechanical engineering graduate;

• Dr. Fred A. Palmer , Class of 1959, of God-ley, Texas;

• Don H. Davis, Jr., Class of 1961, of Sedona, Ariz, a mechanical engineering graduate;

• William H. “Bill” Flores, Class of 1976, of Bryan, Texas.

Texas A&M University and The Association of Former Students also recognized another recipient posthumously:

• Robert L. Acklen, Jr., Class of 1963.

Established in 1962, the Distinguished Alumnus Award is the highest honor be-stowed upon a former student of Texas A&M University. Since its inception, 197 individu-als have been recognized for their significant contributions to their professions, Texas A&M and their local communities.

“This tremendous class of Distinguish Alum-ni exemplifies what is possible with a degree

from Texas A&M University,” said Texas A&M President Dr. R. Bowen Loftin, Class of 1971. “Even more impressive than their individual accomplishments, however, is that they have based their lives on the core values that are interwoven into each and every Aggie. These former students are true exemplars of the Aggie Spirit across our state and country, as well as around the world.”

The Association of Former Students will further honor Texas A&M University’s 2010 Distinguished Alumni in formal events and ceremonies throughout the year. The Association honored all recipi-ents of this award during its annual Dis-tinguished Alumni Gala October 15. In addition, the 2010 recipients were hosted for dinner by Loftin and recognized dur-ing the Texas A&M football game against Missouri October 16.

The Association of Former Students, estab-lished in 1879, is the official alumni organi-zation of Texas A&M University. The Associa-tion connects the nearly 500,000 members of the worldwide Aggie Network with each other and the University, and provides more than $6.4 million a year in impact to Univer-sity scholarships, awards, activities and en-richment for students, faculty, staff and for-mer students. For more information about the Distinguished Alumnus Award and The Association of Former Students, visit http://tamunews.tamu.edu/2010/04/09/texas-am-university-announces-2010-dis-tinguished-alumni/.

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making waves<faculty awards>

S.P. BhattacharyyaDr. Shankar Bhattacharyya, along with Aniruddha Datta and L.H. Keel from Tennessee State University, wrote a major and comprehensive graduate textbook in the area of Control Engineering. Bhattacharyya also visited the De-partments of Electrical and Comput-er Engineering at the University of Texas in San Antonio as a reviewer of its Ph.D. program, and Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada as an external evaluator of its gradu-ate program. He also is serving as a reviewer of courses in Automatic Control for the Government of India’s Pedagogy Project for Undergraduate Engineering Curricula. Bhattacharyya, the Robert M. Ken-nedy Professor, joined the faculty in 1980. Prior to this he was profes-sor and head of the electrical engi-neering department at the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Honors include being chosen as a NASA Research Fellow in and a Fel-low of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Bhat-tacharyya won a Fulbright Lecturing Award, was chosen as a TEES Fellow and TEES Senior Fellow, a Hallibur-ton Professor and won a Boeing “A.D. Welliver” Faculty Fellowship from Boeing Corporation. Bhattacharyya’s research focus is control theory, a field in which he has solved several fundamental synthesis and design problems, published six books and more than 200 papers. His current research is directed at developing new ap-proaches for Computer Aided Control System Design (CACSD) for multivariable systems that will en-able advanced control theory to be applied to real world systems.

K. Butler-PurryDr. Karen Butler-Purry received the E.D. Brockett Professorship Award from the Dwight Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M. Butler-Purry, professor, joined the department in 1994. She received a B.S. degree from Southern Uni-versity, Baton Rouge in 1985, a M.S. degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1987 and a Ph.D. degree from Howard University in 1994, all in electrical engineering. In 1988-1989,

Butler was a Member of Technical Staff at Hughes Aircraft Co. in Culver City, California. She was a recipient of a 1996 Faculty Early Career Award and a 1999 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award. Other honors include being named recipient of the American Associa-tion for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Mentor Award and receiving a Shell Oil Company Faculty Fellow from the Dwight Look College of Engineering. She is also a Center for Teaching Excellence Montague Scholar and is a member of the IEEE Power Engineering Society, the American Society for Engineering Education and the Louisiana Engi-neering Society. She is a registered professional engineer in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.Her research focuses on the areas of computer and intelligent sys-tems applications in power distri-bution automation, and modeling and simulation of vehicles and power systems.

J-F. ChamberlandDr. Jean Francois Chamberland re-ceived a TEES Select Young Faculty Award from the college.Chamberland also received the Outstanding Faculty Award from the department for outstanding work performance. Chamberland, an associate pro-fessor, joined the department in 2005. He received his B.Eng. de-gree from McGill University, Mon-treal, Canada, in 1998, his M.S. degree from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, in 2000 and his Ph.D. degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in electrical engineering in 2004. His research interests are in the area of com-munication and control theory and the efficient design of wireless sensor networks in the context of decentralized detection.Honors include winning a Best Paper Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society.

A. DattaDr. Aniruddha Datta was elected to the rank of Fellow of IEEE “for contributions to control tech-niques in cancer genomics.” Datta, a professor in the department, along with Shankar Bhattacharyya and L.H. Keel from Tennessee State University, also wrote a major and

comprehensive graduate textbook in the area of Control Engineering. Datta joined the faculty in 1991. He received the B. Tech degree in elec-trical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 1985, the M.S.E.E. degree from Southern Illinois University in 1987 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Southern California in 1991. His areas of interest include robust adaptive control, PID control and more recently, Genomic Signal Processing and Control. He has pub-lished numerous books and more than 100 refereed journal and con-ference papers on these topics. Hon-ors include being named a Eugene E. Webb ’43 Faculty Fellow by the Dwight Look College of Engineer-ing, a TEES Special Research Fellow and the J. W. Runyon, Jr. ’35 Profes-sor II . He also has been a member of several program committees, has been an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control and has served as the General Chair for the IEEE International Workshop on Genomic Signal Processing and Statistics (GENSIPS).

E. DoughertyDr. Ed Dougherty was selected a TEES Fellow by the college.Dougherty, the Robert M. Kennedy ’26 Chair Professor in the depart-ment, is considered a pioneer in the study of translational genomics via the use of engineering techniques such as signal processing, pattern recognition, and control theory. He is the director of the Genomic Sig-nal Processing Lab at Texas A&M, director of the Computational Bi-ology Division of the Translational Genomics Research Institute, in-terim director of the Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Program of the Greehey Children’s Cancer Re-search Institute of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and adjunct professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Dougherty, holder of the Robert M. Kennedy ’26 Chair in the depart-ment, has been awarded the Doc-tor Honoris Causa from the Tam-pere University of Technology and is both a Fellow and recipient of the Presidential Award from the Inter-national Society for Optical Engi-neering. Other honors include be-

ing named a Distinguished Lectur-er by Texas A&M and being named a Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) Fellow at Texas A&M. He is author of 14 books and more than 200 journal publications.

M. EhsaniDr. Mehrdad Ehsani received the IEEE Outstanding Service Award at the 2009 IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, “In recognition of found-ing and providing outstanding lead-ership for the IEEE Vehicle Power and Propulsion conference (VPPC).”Ehsani, the Robert M. Kennedy ‘26 Professor II in electrical engineering and director of the Texas Applied Power Electronics Consortium (TAPC), joined the department in 1981. He has received more than 100 awards and recognitions from IEEE and other programs. Ehsani is the first Fellow of both IEEE (1994) and SAE (2005). He is a pioneer in several power electron-ics technologies and he developed an entire family of converters for su-perconducting magnets and their applications for which he later wrote a book on this topic in 1988. Ehsani also developed an entire area of ad-vanced switched reluctance motor (SRM) drives, for which he is inter-nationally known. His original ideas, patents and publications in sen-sorless control of SRM drives, their noise and vibration control and their vehicle traction applications, led this field. His work in SRM and perma-nent magnet (PM) motor drives stim-ulated an entire genre of research in sensorless motor controls. More recently, Ehsani is a pioneer in the development of the power electronic systems of modern elec-tric and hybrid electric vehicles. His design methodologies, drives and control architectures have been widely adopted by the industry and referenced in other research and publications. One of his books on the topic, “Modern Electric, Hybrid and Fuel Cell Vehicles – Fundamentals, Theory, and Design”, CRC Press, 2008, is in second edition and is an inter-national best seller as the standard book for engineers and academics and is translated into Chinese. He also has produced other books, pub-lications, patents, IEEE and industrial short courses on the topic.

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making wavesEhsani also was the founder of one of the first university power elec-tronics teaching and research pro-grams in the U.S. in 1981 and he was selected for an IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award. He holds several professorship titles at Texas A&M and other Universities, including an endowed chair at Texas A&M. Ehsani is a consultant to more than 50 companies in the U.S., Europe and Asia and he has a long list of original contributions to the tech-nology and applications of power electronics that span more than three decades. He is recognized as a leading academic in the field, with more than 300 publications, 13 books and book chapters, more than 20 patents, an IEEE Standards book and numerous short courses and lectures worldwide.

O. EknoyanDr. Ohannes “John” Eknoyan re-ceived a TEES Faculty Fellow Award from the college.Eknoyan, a professor in the depart-ment, joined the faculty in 1975. He received his BS and MS from Texas A&M in 1969 and 1970 respectively, and he received his M.Phil and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1975. He has served as chairman of the Graduate Advisory Committee and a member of the Graduate Advisory Committee, and has been a mem-ber and chair of various committees at the department and college level. Eknoyan has served as an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Components and Packaging Tech-nology, he has been a member of the IEEE-Solid Circuit Council and also served as a member of the R&D Committee of the IEEE-United States Activities Board. He also chaired the Semiconductor Devices and Process-ing Committee of the IEEE Electronic Components Conference (IEEE-ECC) five times, and prior to that had served as a member of the Technical Program Committee for that confer-ence for three consecutive years. Eknoyan has participated in a num-ber of University-Industry-Gov-ernment cooperative programs and has held appointments in that capacity at Bell Telephone Labora-tories, the Air Force Avionics Labo-ratory, Sandia National Laboratory and the Optical Science Division of the Naval Research Laboratory.

P. EnjetiDr. Prasad Enjeti and two Texas A&M at Qatar faculty were among a team of investigators leading a $4 million NSF project to design new materials with enhanced capabilities for effi-cient energy conversion.Enjeti, professor and associate de-partment head in the department, along with mechanical engineering professors Richard Griffin and Annie Ruimi, will collaborate with research-ers from Texas A&M, Georgia Tech and the University of Houston for the development of the International In-stitute for Multifunctional Materials for Energy Conversion (IIMEC). Honors include receiving a TEES Select Young Fellow Award and a Texas A&M University Faculty Fellow Award. He is the recipient of a uni-versity level Distinguished Achieve-ment Award for Teaching from the Association of Former Students.Enjeti, who is the holder of the TI Pro-fessorship in Engineering, joined the faculty in 1988. He is the lead devel-oper of the Fuel Cell Power Systems Laboratory and Power Electronics and Power Quality Laboratory at Texas A&M and does consulting work in the area of power electronics, power quality and clean power util-ity interface issues. Enjeti’s research focuses on power electronics and power quality; advancing switching power supply designs and solutions to complex power management is-sues in the context of analog mixed-signal applications; exploring alter-native designs to meet the demands of high slew rate load currents at low output voltages; power conditioning systems for fuel cells, wind and solar energy systems; and design of high temperature power conversion sys-tems with wide bandgap semicon-ductor devices.Enjeti holds four US patents, has li-censed two new technologies, and has written six book chapters and more than 100 journal and confer-ence papers. Enjeti was elected as an IEEE Fellow and received a Ford Mo-tor Co. Fellow award.A registered professional engineer in Texas, Enjeti received his bach-elor’s degree from Osmania Uni-versity in India, his master’s from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Kanpur) and his doctorate from Concordia University in Canada, all in electrical engineering.

A. HanDr. Arum Han, assistant professor in the department, along with Dr. Paul de Figueiredo (PI) from the plant pathology and microbiology department, have received a grant from the NSF to develop a micro-bial fuel cell (MFC) array for bioen-ergy research. Han will develop a microfabricated MFC array, a com-pact and user-friendly platform for the identification and characteriza-tion of microbes capable of direct electricity generation. Han, in collaboration with Dr. Ji-anrong Li in the Department of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences, also received a grant from the Na-tional Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a microsystem that will enable unique new capabilities in studying neurons in the central nervous system associated with several neurological disorders. Han and a team of researchers in the Texas A&M Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology (College of Agriculture), have also received a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Dr. Won-Bo Shim from the plant pathology department, is the principal investigator.Han, director of the NanoBio Sys-tems Lab and an expert in nano/micro technologies for bio/medical applications, joined the biomedi-cal area of the department in 2005. He received his bachelor’s degree from the Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea in 1997 and his mas-ter’s degree from the University of Cincinnati, OH in 2000. In August 2005, he received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA. His research interests lie in the development of minia-turized systems for cellular and molecular analysis using micro and nano fabrication technologies. His research area includes Lab-on-a-Chip (µTAS), BioMEMS, NanoBio Systems, Micro and Nano Fluidic Systems and Bioenergy.

P. HemmerDr. Phillip Hemmer and several co-authors had their paper accepted for advanced online publication on the prestigious research publi-cation, “Nature’s Materials.”

The paper titled “Ultralong Spin Coherence Time in Isotopically En-gineered Diamond” can be found at http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v8/n5/full/nmat2420.html.Hemmer and several co-authors also had another paper published in the prestigious research publi-cation, Nature Nanotechnology.The paper titled “A diamond nanowire single-photon source” can be found at http://www.na-ture.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2010.6.html.Hemmer, a professor in the depart-ment, joined the faculty in January 2002. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Day-ton in 1976 and his Ph.D. in Physics from MIT in 1984. His interest areas are in solid materials for quantum optics, especially “dark resonance” excitation, materials and tech-niques for resonant nonlinear op-tics, phase-conjugate-based tur-bulence aberration and compensa-tion, spectral holeburning materi-als and techniques for ultra-dense memories and high temperature operation, quantum computing in solid materials, quantum com-munication and teleportation in trapped atoms, holographic optical memory materials, smart pixels de-vices, optical correlators, photore-fractive applications, atomic clocks and laser trapping and cooling. Other honors include receiving the Ruth and William Neely ‘52/Dow Chemical Fellowship, an out-standing faculty award from the department, an NSF Fellowship, the Air Force Research Labora-tory Chief Scientist’s award and the AFOSR Star Team Award three times. He also is a member of the Optical Society of America, S.P.I.E. and American Physical Society.

J.W. HowzeDr. Jo Howze received the Charles Crawford Distinguished Service Award from the college.Howze, a professor in the depart-ment and senior associate dean of engineering academic programs for the college, came to Texas A&M in 1972 as an assistant professor of electrical engineering. He headed the department from 1986 to 1992 and has been coordinator for the department’s graduate and undergraduate programs. He is holder of a Ford Professorship.


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CURRENTS • Fall 2010 CURRENTS • Fall 2010

making wavesHis research interests are in the ar-eas of automatic controls and en-ergy systems, including dynamical systems modeling and engineer-ing systems design and design methodologies. Applications in-clude hybrid vehicles, fuel cell en-ergy systems, power electronics, semiconductor processing controls and automotive control systems. Howze is a member of the American Society for Engineering Education, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and Sigma Xi, the nation-al scientific research society, and a senior member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engi-neering. He holds two bachelor’s degrees in mechanical engineering and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, all from Rice University.

G. HuffDr. Gregory Huff was named a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) for his work on multifunctional antennas and multimodal sensing systems. Huff’s research through this award will focus on multifunctional an-tenna systems and smart structures for high performance radiating sys-tems and other critical components that support the dynamic opera-tion of current and emerging DoD platforms (unpiloted or unattended platforms (UAVs, etc.), space-based systems, and structurally morphing air, ground and space platforms.Huff also received the 2010 Donald G. Dudley, Jr. Undergraduate Teach-ing Award from the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society. He is rec-ognized “For creative and innovative approaches to electromagnetic edu-cation, undergraduate research ex-periences, and student mentoring.”Huff also received an Outstanding Faculty Award from the department for outstanding work performance. Huff and his Ph.D. student, S. An-drew Long, also received the Best Paper Award in Reconfigurable Hardware from the NASA/ESA (European Space Agency) Confer-ence on Adaptive Hardware and Systems, (AHS-2009) for their pa-per titled “A Substrate Integrated Fluidic Compensation Mechanism for Deformable Antennas.” Huff, an assistant professor in the department, joined the Electro-

magnetics and Microwaves group in September 2006. He received his Ph.D., his M.S. and his B.S., all from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in 2006, 2003 and 2000 respectively. Other recent honors include receiving an NSF CAREER award and a Young Scientist Award from L’Union Radio-Scientifique Internationale (URSI) - the Interna-tional Union of Radio Science.Huff’s research interests include biologically inspired mechanisms and dynamic material systems (mi-crofluidics, nanoparticles, etc.); the theory, design and application of reconfigurable antennas and cir-cuits (sensors, phase shifters, filters, etc.); multifunctional (structural, electromagnetic, etc.) RF, micro-wave and millimeter-wave radiat-ing systems and smart skins; study-ing the role of reconfigurable/multifunctional antennas in spread spectrum digital communication techniques; multiple antenna tech-niques; and the placement and electromagnetic interference (EMI) issues arising from the conformal integration high speed devices and radiators into host chassis.

S. KhatriDr. Sunil Khatri was named recip-ient of the Association of Former Students Distinguished Achieve-ment Award in Teaching.Khatri, an associate professor, joined the department in 2005. From Janu-ary 2000 to June 2004 Khatri was an assistant professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He complet-ed his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1999. Be-fore this, he worked with Motorola, Inc. on the designs of the MC88110 and PowerPC 603 RISC Microproces-sors. He obtained his M.S from the University of Texas at Austin and his B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur. Khatri’s research is in the areas of VLSI CAD (logic as well as physical design automation), VLSI Design (tech-niques to address specific Deep Sub-micron issues like crosstalk and pow-er) and cross-disciplinary topics (VLSI implementation of LDPC codes, em-bedded systems design and sched-uling approaches, wavelength-di-vision multiplexed (DWDM) optical network routing and wavelength assignment (RWA), VLSI applications

in IP networking). Some recent areas of interest are design automation for datapath circuits, cross-talk avoid-ance in on-chip buses, leakage-pow-er reduction, extreme low power circuit design, asynchronous circuit design methodologies, approximate Compatible Observability Don’t Care computation, hierarchical logic syn-thesis, timing estimation, efficient test generation, fast logic simulation and cross-talk immune VLSI design. Honors include receiving the Out-standing Faculty Award from the department.

M. KezunovicDr. Mladen Kezunovic was voted onto the first Smart Grid Interop-erability Panel (SGIP) Governing Board which helps coordinate and accelerate development of standards for the evolving Smart Grid. He also was elected to the Smart Grid Testing and Certifica-tion Committee (SGTCC), one of the two main committees of SGIP.Kezunovic also chaired an execu-tive forum on the business oppor-tunities for smart grid develop-ment and the challenges in deploy-ing one. He was also the lead mod-erator during the forum, which was presented as a service to industry.Kezunovic also is a part of a team awarded a Key Project by the NSF of China, which is considered strategic for China’s future development.The project titled “Phasor Assess-ment and Corresponding Estima-tor of Wide Area Measurement System” will comprise of a funda-mental study of the Synchrophasor technology and its applications, the main smart grid technology for monitoring the transmission grid. Kezunovic, the Eugene E. Webb Professor in the department, is the Site Director of Power Engineering Research Center (PSerc), an NSF I/UCRC at Texas A&M. Before joining Texas A&M he worked for Westing-house Electric Corp., Pittsburgh, PA, 1979-1980 and the Energoinvest Company in Europe 1980-1986. Ke-zunovic has published more than 350 papers in journals and confer-ence proceedings, and has given numerous seminars, short courses and tutorials. He was invited to give more than 100 lectures world-wide and is listed as a Distinguished Speaker of the IEEE PES. While at

Texas A&M, Kezunovic has been the principal investigator on more than 60 research projects and su-pervised 40 graduate students. Kezunovic is a Fellow of the IEEE, a member of CIGRÉ and a registered professional engineer in Texas.

P. LiDr. Peng Li was given an Outstanding Faculty Award from the department for outstanding work performance. Li, an associate professor, began working in the department in 2004 in the computer engineering group. Prior to that, he was a post-doctoral research associate from December 2003 to July 2004 at Carnegie Mellon.Li received his Ph. D. degree in elec-trical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2003, and his M.E. and B.E. degrees from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Chi-na in 1997 and 1994, respectively. His research interests are in the general area of VLSI Design and CAD with an emphasis on analog/RF optimization and test, circuit simulation, parallel CAD algorithms, design and analysis of power and clock distribution networks, inter-connect and timing analysis, statis-tical circuit analysis and optimiza-tion. Other honors include receiving NSF CAREER Award, the Inventor Recognition Awards from the Semi-conductor Research Corporation (SRC) and from the Microelectron-ics Advanced Research Corporation (MARCO). He also received a Best Paper Award from the IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference.

T. LiuDr. Tie Liu, assistant professor in the department, received the presti-gious Faculty Early Career Develop-ment (CAREER) Award sponsored by the NSF for his proposal titled “Information Theory and Coding for Wireless Broadcast Networks.”Liu, who joined the department in 2006, received his B.S. and M.S. de-grees, both in electrical engineering, from the Tsinghua University, Beijing, China in 1998 and 2000 respectively. He received his M.S. degree in Math-ematics in 2004 and his Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineer-ing in 2006, both from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.


struments, where he worked on the design of mixed-signal integrated circuits for high-speed serial data communication. In 2006, he joined Intel Corporation where he worked on high-speed optical and electrical I/O architectures. His research inter-ests include high-speed electrical and optical links, clock recovery sys-tems, and techniques for device vari-ability compensation. He is a mem-ber of IEEE and Eta Kappa Nu.

N. ReddyDr. A.L. Narasimha Reddy, professor in the department, has been ap-pointed to the J.W. Runyon, Jr. ‘35 Professorship. He also was elected to the rank of Fellow of IEEE “for contributions to multimedia stor-age and network support.”Reddy, the computer engineering group leader, began working for the department in 1995. Before joining Texas A&M he was a research staff member at IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose. His research in-terests are in Computer Networks, Storage Systems and Multimedia. Reddy holds five patents and was awarded a technical accomplish-ment award at IBM. He received an NSF Career Award and was named a faculty fellow of the college. Other honors include an outstanding pro-fessor award by the IEEE student branch, an outstanding faculty award by the department, a Distin-guished Achievement award from the AFS and a citation “for one of the most influential papers from the 1st ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Multimedia conference.” Reddy is a senior member of the IEEE Computer Society and is a member of ACM. He received his B.Tech. degree in electronics and electrical engi-neering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, in August 1985 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Ur-bana-Champaign in May 1987 and August 1990 respectively.

R. RighettiDr. Raffaella Righetti and Biren Par-mar received a second place award at the National Meeting for Human Performance for their poster titled “New Ultrasound Imaging Tech-niques To Visualize Bone Fractures.”

making wavesLiu’s research interests are in the field of information theory, wireless communication and signal process-ing. He is a recipient of the M. E. Van Valkenburg Graduate Research Award from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Best Paper Award from the Third Interna-tional Conference on Cognitive Ra-dio Oriented Wireless Networks and Communications.

C. MadsenDr. Christi Madsen received a TEES Faculty Fellow Award from the college. Madsen, professor and group leader for the Solid State Electronics, Pho-tonics and Nano-Engineering area, joined the department in 2005. Previously she was a Distinguished Member of the technical staff in the Integrated Photonics Research De-partment at Lucent Technologies, Bell Laboratories. Madsen received her Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1996, her M.S. from Stanford University in 1987 and her B.S. from UT, Austin in 1986, all in electrical engineering. Her research interests are in Pho-tonic signal processing using Inte-grated optics, Fiber-optic intrusion sensor/perimeter monitor, Opti-cal filters (synthesis, analysis and adaptive filters), Microwave pho-tonics, Polarization optics, Optical ring resonators and Dispersion and high-speed optical signals.She is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and an IEEE LEOS Distin-guished Lecturer. She also has been named a Shell Fellow by the college.

S. MillerDr. Scott Miller was selected as a recipient of the Texas A&M Univer-sity System Student Led Award for Teaching Excellence (SLATE), which allows students to recognize teach-ers who go above and beyond the typical expectations to deliver a first-rate education. He also re-ceived the Caterpillar Teaching Ex-cellence Award from the college.Miller, a professor and graduate coor-dinator in the department, received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Uni-versity of California at San Diego (UCSD) in 1985, 1986 and 1988 re-spectively. In August 1998, he joined the department at Texas A&M.

Miller has published more than 75 refereed journal and conference pa-pers on a variety of topics in the area of digital communication theory. Miller is a Fellow of IEEE and he was chair of the IEEE Communications Theory Technical Committee. He also was named a Eugene E. Webb ‘43 Faculty Fellow by the college and received an Outstanding Fac-ulty Award from the department.

K. NarayananDr. Krishna Narayanan received a Halliburton Professorship from the college.Narayanan is a professor in the department. His research interests are in the areas of communication theory, channel coding, informa-tion theory and signal process-ing. Specifically, he is interested in codes on graphs, iterative decod-ing, joint source and channel cod-ing, the interplay between coding and queuing and joint physical layer and network layer design and applications to wireless com-munications and data storage.Honors include the Outstanding Pro-fessor Award from the department, an NSF faculty early CAREER devel-opment award and a Select Young Faculty Award from the college.Narayanan also is the area editor for the coding theory and applications area of the IEEE transactions on com-munications and one of the Techni-cal program chairs for the 2010 IEEE International Symposium on Infor-mation Theory. He has served on the editorial board of the IEEE transac-tions on wireless communications and the IEEE communications letters and has been on the technical pro-gram committee for several confer-ences in the past.

S. PalermoDr. Sam Palermo received a grant from The Texas Analog Center of Excellence at UT Dallas, to develop analog technology that enhances public safety and security.Palermo joined the Analog and Mixed Signal group in the depart-ment in 2009. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical en-gineering from Texas A&M in 1997 and 1999, respectively, and his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 2007. From 1999 to 2000, he was with Texas In-

Righetti joined the department in 2007 as an assistant professor. She received her doctor of engineering from the Universitá degli Studi di Firenze, Florence, and her M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Houston.Righetti’s formal training is in ultra-sound imaging with special empha-sis in cancer imaging applications. She has published articles in leading journals in the area of ultrasound and elasticity imaging and serves as a reviewer of several major journals in the field of biomedical imaging.

B.D. RussellDr. B. Don Russell has been pro-moted to Distinguished Professor in the department.Russell, the Harry E. Bovay, Jr. En-dowed Chair Professor in the col-lege, is a nationally recognized electric power engineer. His spe-cialty is in the automation, control, and protection of power systems.Other honors include being named a Fellow of the National Academy of Forensic Engineers and being elected Vice-Chair of the Electric Power and Energy section of the National Academy of Engineering. He is past president of the IEEE Power and Energy society.Russell is a Fellow of IEEE and Fel-low of IEEE of England. He also is a Fellow of the National Society of Professional Engineers.Russell previously held the J.W. Ru-nyon Professorship in the depart-ment and is a Regents professor. He is a recipient of the University Faculty Distinguished Achievement award in research and formally served as Executive Associate Dean of the col-lege and Associate Vice Chancellor of the Texas A&M System.

E. SanchezDr. Edgar Sánchez-Sinencio, the TI Jack Kilby Chair Professor, along with Hesam A. Aslanzadeh, Erik J. Pankratz and Heng Zhang pub-lished two IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits papers which were among the top 100 most-accessed documents in IEEE’s main publica-tions database IEEEXplore.The papers were titled “A 1-V +31dBm IIP3, Reconfigurable, Continuously Tunable, Power-Adjustable Active-RC LPF” and “A Low-Power, Linearized, Ultra-Wideband LNA Design Technique.”


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making wavesSánchez-Sinencio’s research inter-ests are in the areas of continuous-time integrated circuits, analog built-in testing, low-voltage/low-power mixed signal circuits and RF communication circuits. He leads the analog and mixed-signal group and is director of the TEES Analog and Mixed- Signal Center.Sánchez-Sinencio is a Fellow of the IEEE. Among his numerous awards are the IEEE Circuits and Systems (CAS) Darlington Award, the IEEE CAS Outstanding Young Author Award (with graduate student Alex Reyes) and the IEEE CAS Guillemin- Cauer Award for his work on cellular networks. He also received a Texas Senate Proclamation for outstand-ing accomplishments in recognition of his research. INAOE awarded him its first honorary doctorate in 1995.

S. SavariDr. Serap Savari has discovered a way to construct the most efficient fix-free codes more than 50 years after David Huffman developed Huffman coding, an entropy en-coding algorithm used for lossless data compression in computer sci-ence and information theory.Savari, an associate professor in the department, has developed the first approach to finding the optimal fix-free code, variable length codes in which no codeword is the prefix or suffix of another codeword. Savari joined the department in 2008. Her research interests in-clude information theory, network coding, data compression and computer and communication systems. She also was an associate editor for Source Coding for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory and was the Bell Labs rep-resentative to the DIMACS council.

E. SerpedinDr. Erchin Serpedin, associate pro-fessor of electrical engineering, and Dr. Qasim Chaudhari, assistant professor of electrical engineer-ing at Iraq University, have co-au-thored “Synchronization in Wire-less Sensor Networks: Parameter Estimation, Performance Bench-marks, and Protocols,” a research monograph published recently by Cambridge University Press. Serpedin joined the department in 1999. He received his Diploma of

Electrical Engineer from the Poly-technic Institute of Bucharest, his Specialization Degree in Transmis-sion and Processing of Information, L’Ecole Superieure d’Electricite, in Paris, his MS degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology, ECE School in Atlanta and his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. His research interests are in the areas of signal processing for wire-less communications, equaliza-tion/synchronization of commu-nication channels, statistical signal processing, spectral analysis, and antenna array signal processing.Honors include receiving the Best Paper award at The International Conference on Computing, Com-munications and Control Technolo-gies and receiving a TEES Faculty Fellow Award and being awarded the prestigious Faculty Early Ca-reer Development (CAREER) Award sponsored by the NSF. He also is the associate editor for several journals and has authored numerous jour-nals and other publications.

S. ShakkottaiDr. Srinivas Shakkottai received a Young Investigator Award from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a part of the Department of Defense and the U.S. Strategic Command.Shakkottai joined the computer engineering group in 2008 as an assistant professor. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2003 and 2007 respectively. He was a postdoctoral associate at Stanford University until December 2007.Shakkottai’s research interests center around communication networks, with an emphasis on the Internet. He has collaborated with several different research centers specializing in both analytical and measurement based approaches. His focus areas include graphi-cal models for networks, wireless ad-hoc networks, peer-to-peer systems, pricing approaches and game theory, congestion control and the measurement and analy-sis of Internet data.

J. Silva-MartinezDr. Jose Silva-Martinez from the Analog and Mixed Signal Group was among 10 recipients of a grant from The Texas Analog Center of Excel-

lence at The University of Texas at Dallas, to develop analog technol-ogy that enhances public safety and security. He also was elected to the rank of Fellow of IEEE.Silva-Martinez joined the depart-ment in 1999. He received his M.Sc. from the Instituto Nacional de As-trofísica Optica y Electrónica (INAOE), Puebla, México and his Ph.D. from the Katholieke Univesiteit Leuven, Leuven Belgium in 1992.From 1981-1983, he was with the electrical engineering department, INAOE. From 1983-1993 he was with the Department of Electrical Engi-neering, Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. He pioneered the gradu-ate program on Opto-Electronics in 1992 there. In 1993, he re-joined the INAOE electronics department and from 1995-1998, was the head. His current field of research is in the design and fabrication of integrated circuits for communication and bio-medical application.Silva-Martinez has served as IEEE CASS vice president Region-9, and as associate editor for IEEE Transac-tions on Circuits and Systems part-II and IEEE TCAS Part-I, and currently serves in the board of editors of six major journals. He was the inaugu-ral holder of the Texas Instruments Professorship-I in Analog Engineer-ing, recipient of the Outstanding Professor Award in the department and co-recipient of the European Solid-State Circuits Conference Best Paper Award.

C. SinghDr. Chanan Singh has been se-lected as the recipient of the Roy Billinton Power System Reliability Award from the IEEE Power & En-ergy (PES) Society. Singh, former department head and Regents Professor, is an IEEE Fellow and is internationally rec-ognized as an expert on the reli-ability and security of power sys-tems. He began working at Texas A&M in 1978. As department head, Singh helped with the continued improvement of the graduate program, helped ob-tain two competitive grants worth $1.2 million to enhance the qual-ity and quantity of the department’s undergraduates as well as a $5.1 million gift from Texas Instruments to expand and enhance the depart-ments’ analog design and research

program. During his tenure he also helped with building the faculty strength of the computer engineer-ing program and quadrupled the de-partment’s endowed chairs, as well as initiating the allocation of 19 new faculty positions through the univer-sity’s faculty reinvestment plan. Other honors include the Merit Award by the Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems Interna-tional Society, the IEEE Outstanding Power Engineering Educator Award, being holder of the J.W. Runyon, Jr. Professorship II, the Halliburton Professorship, the Dresser Professor-ship, the University Level Association of Former Students’ Distinguished Achievement Award for Research and the University of Saskatchewan awarded him a D.Sc. Singh’s research interests include power system reli-ability and stochastic optimization.

A. SprintsonDr. Alex Sprintson, assistant pro-fessor in the department, received the prestigious NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award for his proposal titled “Wireless Network Coding: Analy-sis, Complexity, and Algorithms.”Sprintson, who joined the depart-ment in 2006, received the B.Sc. degree (summa cum laude), M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical en-gineering from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Isra-el, in 1995, 2001 and 2003, respec-tively. From 2003 to 2005 he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the California Institute of Technology. Honors include the Prof. Andrew Viterbi post-doctoral fellowship, the Wolf Award for his Ph.D. studies, the Miriam and Aaron Gutwirth Fellow-ship for Special Excellence in Gradu-ate Studies and numerous academic awards of excellence.Sprintson’s research interests are in the broad area of communi-cation networks with a focus on algorithmic and Information-the-oretic aspects of networking, net-work coding and its applications in communication networks, and Quality of Service (QoS) routing.

H. ToliyatDr. Hamid Toliyat, along with re-searchers at GE Corporate Re-search and Development and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,


<Staff awards>

making waveswere awarded a three year grant by the Department of Energy for their work titled “Ultra-reliable Deepwater Electrical Power Distri-bution System and Power Compo-nents, Prognostic Health Monitor-ing of Subsea T&D Systems.”Toliyat, the Raytheon Company Professor, also was recognized with a Best Paper Second Prize by the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society Electrical Machine Technical Com-mittee. Toliyat, along with Salih Baris Ozturk, won for their paper titled “Sensorless Direct Torque and Indirect Flux Control of Brush-less DC Motor with Non-sinusoidal Back-EMF.” Toliyat came to Texas A&M in 1994 after being an assistant pro-fessor at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1991. He is an IEEE Fellow and has re-ceived the prestigious Cyrill Vei-nott Award in Electromechanical Energy Conversion from the IEEE Power Engineering Society. Other honors include a best paper award at IECON-2008, a TEES Fellow Award, an Outstanding Professor Award from Texas A&M, a Distin-guished Teaching Award, The E.D. Brockett Professorship Award, The Eugene Webb Faculty Fellow Award and the Texas A&M Select Young Investigator Award.Toliyat has also received the Space Act Award from NASA and two Sch-lumberger Foundation Technical Awards. He is an editor of IEEE Trans. on Energy Conversion and was an as-sociate editor of IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, as well as the chair of IEEE-IAS Industrial Power Conver-sion Systems Department of IEEE-IAS and a member of Sigma Xi. His main research interests and expe-rience include analysis and design of electrical machines, variable speed drives for traction and propulsion ap-plications, fault diagnosis of electric machinery, and sensorless variable speed drives. Toliyat has published more than 325 technical papers and has presented more than 50 invited lectures all over the world. Toliyat also is an inventor and has 10 issued and pending U.S. patents in these fields. He is the author of DSP-Based Electromechanical Motion Control and the co-editor of Handbook of

Electric Motors. He was the general chair of the IEEE International Electric Machines and Drives Conference in San Antonio. Toliyat is also a Profes-sional Engineer in the State of Texas.

H. WangDr. Haiyan Wang, associate professor in the department, received the Pres-idential Early Career Award for Scien-tists and Engineers for her work with high-temperature superconductors.Wang also was named a TEES Se-lect Young Faculty by the college.Honors include receiving a re-search grant awarded by the Air Force Research Office’s Young Investigator Research Program and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award.Wang joined the department in 2006 and is a researcher with TEES.Before A&M, Wang was on the staff of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. She holds a BS from Nanchang Uni-versity (China) and a master’s degree from the Institute of Metal Research (China). She received her Ph.D. in ma-terials science and engineering from North Carolina State University.Wang’s research interests lie in the area of functional oxide and ni-tride thin films for microelectron-ics, optoelectronics, high-temper-ature superconductors, magnetic and structural applications. Her expertise is thin-film growth and structural characterizations.

S. WrightDr. Steven M. Wright was elected to the rank of Fellow of IEEE “for con-tributions to parallel magnetic reso-nance imaging methods and sys-tems.” and Fellow of the Internation-al Society of Magnetic Resonance Medicine (ISMRM) for his contribu-tions to MR engineering and RF coil design. Wright also was elected to the Board of Trustees of the ISMRM as scientist of North America. Wright is a professor in the depart-ment with a joint appointment to the Department of Biomedical Engi-neering. He holds the Royce E. Wisen-baker Professorship II in Engineering.Wright’s research interests are in the areas of magnetic resonance imag-ing, antenna theory and electromag-netics. He directs the department’s Magnetic Resonance Systems Lab. Prior to joining A&M, Wright was a research engineer for magnetic

resonance imaging at Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, Ill., and an adjunct assistant professor of elec-trical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Wright also is a Fellow of the Ameri-can Institute of Medical and Bio-logical Engineering (AIMBE) and a member of the ISMRM and the IEEE in Medicine and Biology Society.

X. ZhangDr. Xi Zhang, associate professor in the department, won the prestigious Best Paper Award at the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference 2010 and an IEEE Globe-com 2009 Best Paper Award.Zhang and his student co-author, Hang Su, won the award for their paper titled “Power-Efficient Peri-odic Spectrum Sensing for Cogni-tive MAC in Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks.” Zhang and Su, won the IEEE Globecom 2009 Best Paper Award for their paper titled “Secondary User Friendly TDMA Scheduling in Opportunistic Spec-trum Access Networks.” Zhang began working for the de-partment in 2002 upon receiving his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from The Univer-sity of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Honors include receiving the NSF CAREER Award, a Best Paper Award in the IEEE Globecom 2007, and a TEES Select Young Faculty Award for Excellence in Research Perfor-mance college. He is serving or has served as editor for IEEE Transac-tions on Communications, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Commu-nications, IEEE Transactions on Ve-hicular Technology, and IEEE Com-munications Letters; a guest editor for IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (IEEE J-SAC) and IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, etc. He also has served as the Technical Program Commit-tee Chair for IEEE Globecom 2011, TPC Vice-Chair for IEEE INFOCOM 2010, TPC Chair for IEEE INFOCOM 2009 – Mini-Conference, TPC Co-Chair for IEEE Globecom 2008 – Wireless Communications Sym-posium, TPC Co-Chair for IEEE ICC 2008 – Information and Network Security Symposium, the Steering Committee Chair for ACM QShine 2009-2011, among others.

Carl BennerCarl Benner, a researcher with the de-partment, was named to the Bryan Texas Utilities Board Of Directors. Benner, a senior research engineer in the department and assistant direc-tor of the Power System Automation Laboratory, will serve a three-year-term. Benner, who has worked for the department 21 years, is the only engineer currently on the Board.Benner and his co-researchers hold multiple patents for his re-search and won an R&D 100 Award, dubbed the “Oscars of Invention,” in 1996 from R&D Magazine.Benner’s research focus is on devel-oping a computer-based real-time monitoring system to detect and in-dicate that line hardware is nearing a point of failure before it happens. In addition to his role at A&M, Benner is a senior member of the IEEE Power and Energy Society. He is a frequent speaker at industry trade meetings and serves as a peer reviewer for multiple professional trade journals. Benner also is a registered profes-sional engineer in the state of Texas.

Janice AllenJanice Allen received an Outstanding Staff Award from the department for outstanding work performance. Allen received her BBA in market-ing from Texas A&M in 1978. She worked in accounting positions in the oil and gas industry before joining Texas A&M in 1987. At A&M Allen worked in electrical engineer-ing, civil engineering, the Dean’s Of-fice, mechanical engineering and returned to electrical engineering in 2007. Her favorite pastimes include walking and hiking trails with her new Brittany puppy, Kara.

Linda CurrinLinda Currin received an Outstand-ing Staff Award from the department for outstanding work performance. Currin started in the department in 1994 as an accounting assis-tant, where she worked with Tex-as Engineering Experiment Sta-tion accounts. She was promoted in 2006 to Business Coordinator II in payroll. Previously she worked for nearly 15 years in TAES Animal Science.

making waves

ECE Grad nominated for Marshall ScholarshipJacob McDonald, a graduate student in the department, has been nominated for the prestigious Mar-

shall Scholarship. The Marshall Scholarship is tenable for two years of study at any university in the Unit-ed Kingdom. More than 1,000 students apply and approximately 40 are chosen.

McDonald, of Denton, completed his bachelor’s degree in three years. He has been president of Eta Kappa Nu and Tau Beta Pi honor societies and has played for the Texas A&M club soccer team. He has interned at Sandia National Labs and Raytheon. He is also the author of several conference papers on radio antennas for biomedical applications. If chosen as a Marshall Scholar, he will study for a Master of Philosophy degree in technology and innovation management at the University of Sussex.

The Marshall Scholarship began in 1953 as a gesture of thanks from the British Government for the U.S. assistance in rebuilding Europe after World War II. Former Marshall Scholars include Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and New York Times Foreign Affairs columnist Thomas Friedman. According to the Marshall Scholarship Foundation, as future leaders, Marshall Scholars are “expected to strengthen the enduring re-lationship between the British and American people, their governments and their institutions. Marshall Scholars are talented, independent and wide-ranging, and their time as scholars enhances their intellectual and personal growth. Their direct engagement with Britain through its best academic programs contrib-utes to their ultimate personal success.”

Contributed by: Lauren Kern

ECE graduate student wins prestigious university awardMohammad Asad Rehman Chaudhry, a Ph.D. student in the department, was given

the “Texas A&M University Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges” award. The awards were presented by University President, Dr. Elsa Murano, Lt. Gen. Joe Weber, USMC (Ret), Dr. Bill Stackman and other dignitaries.

The “Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges” award is one of the most prestigious awards offered by Texas A&M to its students. The selection was done by a committee formed by the Vice President Student Affairs. The selection committee consisted of faculty, staff and students.

Chaudhry is a member of IEEE, INFORMS and he was selected a member of the Pinnacle National Honor Society by Texas A&M. Other honors include session winner and tax-onomy level first place prize at Texas A&M’s Student Research Week 2009, session winner and taxonomy level second place prize at Texas A&M’s Student Research Week 2008 and he received a grant to attend the workshop “Next Generation Networks” at the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS) at Rutgers University. His research interests include network coding and its applications, algorithmic and information-theoretic aspects of network-ing and algorithm design.

15 14


ECE Undergrad Wins Outstanding Thesis AwardElizabeth Wells, a student un-der the guidance of B. Don Rus-sell, distinguished professor in the department, received the Outstanding Thesis Award from the Division of Research and Graduate Studies for her thesis titled “Optimization of Surveys for Detection of Ener-gized Structures to Eliminate Electrical Hazards to the Public in New York City.”Wells, an electrical engineering major from Fort Worth, went to Southwest High School. She is a member of Kappa Delta so-rority, the Student Engineers’ Council and Tau Beta Pi. Wells, whose fiance attends Texas Tech as a mechanical en-gineering major, says she plans to attend graduate school at Texas A&M in electrical engi-neering. Honors include being a session winner and winning first place for her topology for her thesis during Student Re-search Week. Wells interned at Bell Helicopter.

Sarah Emich (left) and Nahomi Morales (right) from the department each received a Gulf Coast Power Association (GCPA) Scholarship.

Emich started college as an applied math-ematical sciences major, but after work-ing for an electrical contracting firm she changed her mind and switched to electri-cal engineering. She became interested in power and power distribution systems while working for Walker Engineering, Inc. in Fort Worth, Texas on power fault testing and fault coordination studies. After graduation, Emich will return to the electrical construction industry and work to get her P.E. license or attend graduate school at Texas A&M.

Morales is a senior electrical engineering student from The Woodlands. Her academic focus is power and has industry experience in this area as an intern for Entergy Corporation and Chevron Corporation.

During her time at Texas A&M University, Morales has been involved with the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). She is

currently SWE-Region C Collegiate Senator and collegiate coach. She also will serve as SWE-TAMU president for 2010-2011. In ad-dition, she is a current member of the Insti-tute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), Phi Eta Sigma National Honor Soci-ety and the National Society of Collegiate Scholars.

This is the fifth year that the GCPA has given scholarships to Aggie engineers. To be consid-ered for a scholarship, the students must have

prior experience with the power industry and/or have a commit-ment to work in the industry.

The GCPA was formed in Houston in 1983 as the Gulf Coast Cogeneration Association, by a handful of individuals from de-velopment companies and suppliers of goods and services in-volved in the new industry spawned by passage of the Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act of 1978 (PURPA). It embraces virtu-ally every aspect of the electric power industry.

ECE Students Receive Prestigious GCPA Scholarship

making waves

Two students from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering were selected as the 2009-2010 Who's Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges at Texas A&M University. Talal Sleiman El Awar (left) and Thierry Tambe (right) were the two ECE students selected among eight undergraduate students and two graduate students in the Dwight Look College of Engineering. They were recognized at the All-Univer-sity Awards Ceremony during Parents' Weekend.Thierry Tambe was born and grew up in Douala, Cameroon in West Africa. He will graduate with honors with a bachelor degree in electrical engineering in May 2010 from Texas A&M. Before transferring to Texas A&M, Tambe attended Navarro College, in Corsicana, Texas where he was inducted as life member of Phi Theta Kappa. He's been a student member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) since 2007, and is current-ly serving as the service chair of the Texas A&M chapter of Eta Kappa Nu. He also is a Texas A&M ECE undergraduate student ambassador, assisting the ECE department in high school recruiting and freshman retention programs.

Tambe is the recipient of the 2009 under-graduate research award from the depart-ment and started graduate school in the fall to study mixed-signal data converters.El Awar is originally from Lebanon, where he went to high school. He moved to Qatar in 2006 where he found out about Texas A&M at Qatar where he started his college career. During his sophomore year at TAMUQ, El Awar was selected to be one of eight students who participated in a Leadership Exchange Trip to Texas A&M at College Station. El Awar said he fell in love with the university and decided to trans-fer during his junior year.

While attending TAMUQ El Awar was the vice president of the Student Government Association (called the student body government), and represented his class in the electrical engineering department and he was a member of the 12th man club. In College Station El Awar was the vice chair of MSCC-FLI (freshman leadership international), was a member of SLATE (student led awards for teaching excellence) and was a counselor in Fish camp ‘09. He graduated in December 2009 with a BS in electrical engineering in three and a half years summa cum lade (GPA 3.9). El Awar is currently continuing his education, pur-suing a master’s degree in electrical engineering.

Two ECE students selected as Who's Who Among Students at Texas A&M

An undergraduate student in the Department of Electrical and Com-puter Engineering at Texas A&M University was named a Microsoft scholarship recipient.Shell Zhang, an international stu-dent from China, received the scholarship from Microsoft for the 2009-2010 school year. “This is impressive considering we had applicants from all across North America,” said Rian Sammy

Sacquitne, Microsoft recruiter. “Texas A&M should be proud of this accomplishment.”Zhang transferred from Michigan Technical University. She is a co-chair for the engineering summer camp programs for the Society of Women Engineers A&M Chapter, and last summer she worked for Gentex Cor-poration as a project engineering intern. Her interest area is Artificial Intelligence and she hopes to go to graduate school doing research in a related field.“I am very excited about winning the Microsoft scholar-ship,” Zhang said. “It's an acknowledgment of my passion and work on software technology; also it is a bit of finan-cial relief for me.”

ECE undergraduate student receives Microsoft scholarship An undergraduate student in the Department of Elec-

trical and Computer Engineering was named winner of the Gathright Award at Texas A&M University for his academic accomplishments.Derek Johnson was named the outstanding junior in the College of Engineering and received the Gath-right Award during the Parents' Weekend All University Awards Ceremony.The award is sponsored by the Association of Former Students and was named in honor of Texas A&M's first president, Thomas S. Gathright. It was established in 1973 by the Student Government in order to recognize

superior academic achievement and is presented to the sophomores, juniors and seniors with the highest grade point average in each academic college.Johnson’s major is electrical engineering with minors in both physics and math. He has a 4.0 cumulative GPA, which includes more than 30 honors hours.Originally from San Antonio, Johnson is the eldest of four children. His hobbies include playing tennis, the acoustic guitar and PC gaming, and he attends a Fellowship Church and is heavily involved in A&M Christian Fellowship where he serves on the leadership team of a homegroup and has the opportunity to mentor younger students.During the summer and fall of 2008, Johnson interned with Hewlett-Pack-ard at Texas A&M’s Research Park. Honors include valedictorian of his high school graduating class, being named a National Merit Finalist and being the Sophomore recipient of the Gathright Scholar Award for the College of Engineering. His interests include computer hardware design down to the semiconductor level.

ECE undergrad named Gathright Award winner

NONPROFIT ORG.U.S. POSTAGE PAIDCOLLEGE STATIONTEXAS 77843PERMIT NO. 215

Department of Electrical & Computer EngineeringDwight Look College of EngineeringTexas A&M UniversityCollege Station, TX 77843-3128

CURRENTS is published by the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering Dwight Look College of EngineeringTexas A&M UniversityCollege Station, TX 77843-3128Phone: (979)845-7441 Fax: (979) 845-6259Web: http://www.ece.tamu.eduE-mail: [email protected]

Written and compiled by Deana Totzke

Gift and Endowment Information Gifts and endowments help in attracting and educating top quality students, rewarding and retaining top quality faculty and promoting the growth of the department. We would be delighted to discuss further with you how to make a gift or establish an endowment in your own name or the name of a loved one. Endowments may also take the form of naming a laboratory or the department. Gifts of any size may also be made to the Electrical & Computer Engineering Development Fund to help the growth of the department.

Brittany Borden ‘06 Dr. Costas GeorghiadesAssistant Director of Development Department Head-ECEDwight Look College of Engineering Dwight Look College of EngineeringTexas A&M University Texas A&M UniversityCollege Station, TX 77843-3126 College Station, TX 77843-3128

Phone (979) 845-5113 Phone (979) 845-7408

E-mail [email protected] E-mail [email protected]

Rachel Oyler, an undergraduate student in the de-partment, was recipient of the Craig C. Brown Out-standing Senior Engineer Award from The Dwight Look College of EngineeringOyler is an electrical engineering major from Sun-

down, Texas. She is a member of the Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu and Phi Eta Sigma honor societies, and the Society of Women Engineers.Oyler has been a leader in her sorority, Gamma

Phi Beta, earning two of its highest awards for ex-emplifying the core values of love and learning. Since 2005 she has continued to volunteer at a lo-cal camp for handicapped, disabled and terminally ill children. Her summers at Texas A&M have been well spent, including a summer internship with

The Boeing Company’s International Space Station electrical power system group, Study Abroad in Italy and a summer internship with the IT Design Systems group at Texas Instruments.She is repeatedly described as exceptionally intelligent and an outstanding leader

and role model with a superb work ethic and enviable time management skills—a person who exemplifies the honor and tradition of Texas A&M.Also honored were seniors Colin Bailie, Mark Deimund, Alexandra (Sandra) Iacob and

Rodrigo Garza Urquiza. All received the annual award due to their academic achieve-ment, character and leadership abilities.Each of the seniors received an engraved medallion and a $5,000 educational grant.

Their names appear on a plaque in the Zachry Engineering Center.The Engineering Faculty Senior Award was renamed the Craig C. Brown Outstanding

Senior Engineer Award in 1996 in recognition of Brown’s endowment for the award. He received the award as a Class of 1975 civil engineering senior. Currently, Brown is chief operating officer, owner and president of Bray International Inc. as well as chair-man and president of the Craig and Galen Brown Foundation.

ECE student receives achievement awardA team of Texas A&M Aggies won the Sixth Annu-

al Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC), among them was several computer engineering students.The team members were Travis Carr (general

studies); Nick Mai (computer engineering, electri-cal engineering track); Captain Matthew Mullins (computer engineering); Luke Murray (computer engineering, computer science track); Ankur Nand-wani (computer science and engineering graduate student); Robert “Red” Schumacher (computer en-gineering, computer science track); Kyle Willmon (computer science); and Sandeep Yadav (computer engineering graduate student).This is Texas A&M’s fifth win of the Southwestern Re-

gional Competition. During his opening address, Willis Marti, director

of networking at Texas A&M and competition host said, “This competition is all about defense. Attack-ers only need one good day, but defenders are charged with constantly protecting the network.”CCDC is truly a defensive competition. Teams of

eight students are given a “corporate” network of computers and asked to defend it from the Red Team, network security professionals that act as attackers. In addition to defending the network, student teams must maintain the services needed for a business to run, and complete tasks requested by “Management.” This competition required detailed network plan-

ning to create seven identical networks and integrate them into the central network for scoring.

Ags win cyber defense regional

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