ECE CONNECTIONS Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering Magazine Spring 2015 UH Cullen College of Engineering NEW FACULTY RESEARCH BREAKTHROUGHS STUDENT SUCCESS Multidisciplinary Research & Engineering Building (MREB) The UH Cullen College of Engineering has met its fundraising goal of $10 million for the MREB – and the timing couldn’t be better. The Cullen College will be doubling its size over the next 10 years, welcoming more than 4,000 new students and 50 new faculty members by 2025. The MREB will provide the critical infrastructure needed to increase student enrollment, associated faculty and research funding. The MREB is expected to help generate approximately $36 million in research funding annually for the Cullen College of Engineering and to promote an approximate $612 million increase in annual economic activity in Houston alone. It will also allow UH to add more than 250 talented graduate students and hire new National Academy of Engineering faculty. Construction began in November 2014. Completion is scheduled for the summer of 2016. ECE CONNECTIONS I Spring 2015 I www.ee.uh.edu CONTENTS MEET THE NEW FACULTY 4// NEWS BYTES 8// ENGINEERING THE Aaron Becker Xin “Felicity” Fu TECHNOLOGIES OF TOMORROW Assistant Professor Assistant Professor Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Ph.D., University of Florida Research interests: Swarm robotics, distributed robotics, human- Research interests: Computer architecture, energy-efficient swarm interaction, medical robotics, and motion planning. computing, high-performance computing, hardware reliability and variability, mobile computing, heterogeneous computing and emerging technologies. 30// FACULTY Ryan Canolty Julius Marpaung Assistant Professor Instructional Assistant Professor Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley Ph.D., Oklahoma State University Research interests: Local cortical computation, long-range Research interests: Engineering education, robotics, computer 38// STUDENT SUCCESS cortical communication, sparse time-frequency decompositions, architecture, design for testability (DFT), FPGA, hardware synthesizer, cross-level and cross-frequency coupling, and network dynamics. and video game development. Jinghong Chen David Mayerich Associate Professor Assistant Professor 42// ALUMNI Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Ph.D., Texas A&M University Research interests: Design of analog, mixed-signal and RF/ Research interests: Biomedical imaging, microscopy, image mmwave integrated circuits and systems for a variety of processing, parallel computing, GPU computing, visualization and applications. computer graphics. 44// COLLEGE NEWS 46// INFOBYTES ECE CONNECTIONS Office of Communications The University of Houston is an Equal cullen college news ECE Connections is published by the Cullen College of Engineering Opportunity/Affirmative Action institu- University of Houston Cullen College of University of Houston tion. Minorities, women, veterans and @uhengineering Engineering, Office of Communications. E301 Engineering Bldg. 2 persons with disabilities are encouraged uhengineering Houston, Texas 77204-4009 to apply. Communications Director Audrey Grayson Phone: 713-743-4220 Fax: 713-743-8240 UHCullenCollege Managing Editor Melanie Ziems Contact ECE: University of Houston Cullen Those wishing to reprint articles or photographs Phone 713.743.4400 College of Engineering Art Direction & Design Rachel Ward should contact the director. Use the credit line: Website www.ee.uh.edu Photography Carlos Landa Reprinted with permission of the University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering. Clip- Writer/Editor Elena Watts pings are appreciated. Contributing Writer Jeannie Kever 2 ECE Connections University of Houston Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering 3 NEWS BYTES IN THE MEDIA NEWS BRIEFS Award. Wei Shih and Saurabh Prasad won NASA Early our current body of ECE students at the UH Cullen CHAIR’S MESSAGE Career Awards. Our department is home to exceptional College of Engineering is made up of the strongest and teachers. Dave Shattuck won the UH Career Teaching most talented individuals our department has ever had Houston, we have a Connection! Award, the University’s highest teaching award, and the pleasure of educating. Diana de la Rosa-Pohl won the University Teaching IEEE SPECTRUM POINTS TO ELECTRICAL Welcome to the spring 2015 issue of ECE Connections. Award at the instructor level. The ECE department at the Cullen College could not ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING These are exciting times for the department, and we have achieved the level of success that it has without ENGINEERING FIELD AS TOP HIRER welcome the opportunity to share the stories of our Our research and educational programs continue to your continued dedication and support. Thank you NAMED TOP 50 GREAT AFFORDABLE PROGRAM progress with you. grow. Notably, ECE faculty published a record number for being a friend and supporter of our world-class of journal publications last year, wrote new books, and academic and research programs! A recent article published in the IEEE Spectrum points to engineering Last year, we welcomed an extraordinary batch of six were featured internationally in the media, including The new faculty members, who bring exceptional knowl- Discovery Channel, Der Spiegel, Science News, Nature, fields – specifically electrical engineering – as being one of the top edge and major funded programs to the department, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, PBS, and NPR. Sincerely, hiring industries in 2014. including NIH R00 awards, NSF CAREER awards, and the CPRIT Scholar Grant. Houston is a global hub of opportunity, and we benefited According to the article, “Where the Jobs Are: 2014,” the job website from a surge in corporate support last year. Our industry/ CareerBuilder posted 3.5 electrical engineering jobs for every job- Our award winning faculty members have continued university consortiums in Electromagnetic Compatibility, seeking candidate, and demand in semiconductor and telecommu- to bring in new accolades. Zhu Han became an IEEE Electric Power Analytics, Downhole Communications, and Dr. Badri Roysam nications industries is especially high. Fellow and won the Best Paper Award at GLOBECOM. Well Logging set new records for growth last year. Our ECE Department Chair Dmitri Litvinov won the University of Houston’s highest Industrial Advisory Board, led by Alan Goodrum, grew its Hugh Roy & Lillie Cranz Cullen Professor recognition – the Esther Farfel Award. Stuart Long and membership and member commitments to a new level. “We’re seeing an increased demand for [electrical engineers,] specifi- Fritz Claydon were recognized by the U.S. White House cally quality and control engineers. There is also a demand for con- for their exceptional work providing research experience As our enrollments continue to grow, our admission trol engineers in the petroleum industry, and salaries in that industry for teachers. Yan Yao won the ONR Young Investigator standards are also increasing. I am proud to say that are off the charts,” said Jay Rogers, vice president of recruiting at the employment services provider Randstad. The article also states that mobile applications developers, soft- ware developers, and software engineers “will all see a nearly [8] IN THE MEDIA SPOTLIGHT percent hike in salary this year, more than twice the average salary growth across all fields in 2014.” The demand spans to Europe and the Asia-Pacific region as well. In Germany, the unemployment rate TV PRINT for engineers is 2 percent. ABC 13 Eyewitness News Houston Business Journal Houstonia Magazine University of Houston Receives $3.3M Grant to Houston University Breaks Ground on $51 Million This Is Your Brain on Art Promote Women in STEM Fields Research Facility Featuring Jose Luis Contreras-Vidal, Hugh Roy and EEWEB.COM PROFILES ECE CHAIRMAN Featuring UH Cullen College of Engineering Featuring UH Cullen College of Engineering Lillie Cranz Cullen University Professor of Electrical The electrical and computer engineering (ECE) depart- (Aired August 30, 2014) (Published October 7, 2014) and Computer Engineering (Published August 26, 2014) ment at the University of Houston Cullen College of Most Cullen College students recognize Badri Roysam walking down GRADE Camp Sets Girls Up For Bright Future Houston Chronicle the hall. After all, Roysam is the chair of the electrical and computer Featuring Stuart Long, Professor of Electrical and UH Study Measures Babies’ Brain Signals as Start of Phys.org Engineering has been growing in size, raising its stand- engineering department and a popular face in the engineering complex Computer Engineering Autism Research Splitting Water Into Hydrogen and Oxygen Using at the University of Houston. (Aired June 26, 2014) Featuring Jose Luis Contreras-Vidal, Hugh Roy and Light, Nanoparticles ards and climbing national rankings for its world-class Lillie Cranz Cullen University Professor of Electrical Featuring Jiming Bao, Assistant Professor of Electrical academic programs. However, students might be surprised to learn that Roysam loves and Computer Engineering and Computer Engineering (Published November 14, 2014) (Published December 15, 2013) to cook and take photos, and his favorite book in high school was RADIO Now, the Cullen College’s ECE department can add another bragging point to its long “Physics” by Robert Resnick and David Halliday. There are just a Houston Universities Working to Fix ‘Gateway’ Science Daily list of achievements and successes: