Student Achievements

“7th place finish in the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon Competition”

ECE Students play important role in Cornell's impressive 7th place finish in the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon competition.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon's website, "The Solar Decathlon challenges 20 college teams from around the globe in 10 contests to design, build, and operate the most livable, energy-efficient, and completely solar-powered house. Solar Decathlon houses must power all the home energy needs of a typical family using only the power of the sun. The winner of the competition is the team that best blends aesthetics and modern conveniences with maximum energy production and optimal efficiency. The first Solar Decathlon was held in 2002; the competition has since occurred biennially in 2005 and 2007."

The final judging competition this year took place October 9-13 & 15-18, 2009, on the National Mall in Washington, DC . [read more]

Congressman Michael Arcuri, center, poses for a photo with Cornell University team members next to their solar-powered house during the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2009.
(Credit: Stefano Paltera/U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon)

“Ph.D. Fellowship Award from Intel Corporation”

PhD student Mark Cianchetti has received a Ph.D. Fellowship award from the Intel Corporation. Mark is a fourth year ECE Ph.D. student in the Computer Systems Laboratory. He graduated with two B.S. degrees from the University at Buffalo in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Summa Cum Laude. Working with Professor David Albonesi, Mark's research examines how integrated photonics can be used for efficient on-chip communication in future generation multi-core processors.

The Intel Ph.D. Fellowship Program is highly competitive. Students must be selected by their university to apply and are then reviewed and hand-selected by the Intel Fellows and their designees. This year a total of 26 fellowships were awarded to outstanding Ph.D. students across the country. The award covers tuition for the 2009-10 academic year, a stipend, an opportunity to connect with an Intel mentor working in the student's area of study, and a travel grant to be used to meet with their Intel mentor.

Read more about this year's Intel Fellowship Program award winners.

“IEEE Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Society 2009 Student Paper Competition Award”

Congratulations to Dr. Hengky Chandrahalim for being presented with the IEEE Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Society 2009 Student Paper Competition Award.

The paper titled “Heterodyne laser-doppler interferometric characterization of contour-mode resonators above 1 GHz” was presented by Dr. Chandrahalim at the 2009 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium in Rome, Italy on September 21, 2009. The paper was co-authored by Dr. Chandrahalim’s Advisor Dr. Sunil Bhave, along with Christian Rembe, Sebastian Boedecker, Ronald Polcawich, and Jeff Pulskamp.

The research and work that was performed in this paper was completed while Dr. Chandrahalim was a PhD student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Cornell University, and was a joint collaboration between Cornell University, the Army Research Labs and Polytec Inc.

Dr. Chandrahalim completed his graduate study and earned his doctoral degree from the Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University in August of 2009; he accepted a Post-Doctoral Researcher position in the Micro and Nanosystems laboratory at ETHZ Zurich in September of 2009. His current research focus is in Carbon Nanotubes based nano-electromechanical signal processors. Dr. Chandrahalim is an active reviewer for refereed publications in the area of micro-/nanosystems, acoustics, ultrasonics, ferroelectrics, and frequency control.

“Popular Science’s online magazine features a most unusual ECE Student Project”

What would appear to be a typical college prank turns out to be serious science involving well... ummm... let's see how do we explain this delicately?

While a 'Fart Detector' seems to be somewhat frivolous, detection of chemicals at low concentrations, combined with heat and sound signatures, have widespread applications in security, animal husbandry, and process control. ECE students Robert Clain and Miguel Salas did a very good job of producing a usable scientific instrument, and certainly with a sense of humor for their final design project as required by class ECE 4760: Introduction to Microcontroller Programming

According to an article wrtten by Bjorn Carey for Popular Science's online magazine, PopSci.com, "Robert Clain and Miguel Salas assembled [the] detector from a sensitive hydrogen sulfide monitor, a thermometer and a microphone and wrote the software that would rate the emission. A 'slight perturbance in the air' near the detector sets it to work'. [According to Cain] the contraption could even have use... as a biosensor for harmful hydrogen-sulfide-producing bacteria in hospitals. Or dentists could use it to measure oral malodor. [The students] also received some interest from doctors with four-legged patients. 'You can test the health of livestock through the quality of their [flatulence],' Salas says. 'Smell and sound can tell you a lot about their bowel movements.' "

“ECE's Global Positioning System research group contributes to the GPS World's January 2009 Cover story titled 'Assessing the Spoofing Threat'”

ECE Professor Paul Kinter explains:
"The first two authors of this article are recent Ph.D. graduates of Cornell's GPS group. The first is Todd Humphreys from Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the second is Brent Ledvina from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering . The last three authors are: Mark Psiaki Professor Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Brady O' Hanlon a current ECE grad student, and myself."

"The article's subject is spoofing of GPS receivers. Spoofing refers to a process of fooling a GPS receiver into accepting one or more false GPS signals that have been generated by a malicious device, the spoofer. The article centers on a new, advanced spoofer that we have developed and tested using real-time software radio technology. This device allows for a new type of sophisticated spoofing attack that is hard to detect. Our aim is to use this device in a sort of "war games" mode as a way of helping us and others to develop improved countermeasures against such attacks. The first two authors have already begun a collaboration with a receiver manufacturer that seeks to evaluate a proposed anti-spoofing system."

Read the article online:
"Assessing the Spoofing Threat"
-Jan 1, 2009 GPS WORLD

Related article:
"Researchers raise uncomfortable questions by showing how GPS navigation devices can be duped"
- Sept. 19, 2008 Cornell Chronicle Online

“ECE Students Classroom Project Receives Patent Consideration”

When Robert Ochshorn and Kyle Wesson submitted their invention disclosure titled, "Low-Cost, High-Fidelity, Adaptive Cancellation of Periodic 60 Hz Noise" to the Cornell Center for Technology Enterprise and Commercialization (CCTEC) on September 17th 2008 they were confident that they had a good idea but were realistic about their chances. However once they were contacted to meet with Martin Teschl the Technology Commercialization & Liaison Officer for CCTEC on Dec. 2nd 2008 they couldn’t help but wonder about the possible outcome. Finally the anxious undergraduate students received a lengthy email from CCTEC on January 12, 2009 delivering the very exciting news of a decision to file a provisional patent application based on their work.

The [class] project was undertaken in the spring semester of 2008 during a five-week design lab for ECE 476 with Professor Bruce Land and teaching assistant Adrian Wong at the School of Electrical and computer Engineering.  The device uses “ a microcontroller such as the ATMega32 to monitor a reference signal and output an out-of-phase signal to cancel the noise”.  “We overcome the limitations of a single-frequency selective notch filter and can achieve at least 15 dB cancellation of 60 Hz component in the contaminated signal. Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) or Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) can be programmed for this purpose, but are substantially more expensive than the ATMega32.” [read more]

According to CCTEC’s website , the Cornell Center for Technology Enterprise and Commercialization (CCTEC) "is responsible for the management of Cornell University's technology". The center is tasked to "leverage Cornell's intellectual property to promote entrepreneurial opportunities and regional economic development” by “protecting and managing intellectual property that arises from Cornell research".

“Animashree Anandkumar receives 2008 SPS Young Author Best Paper Award”

The IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) has announced that Animashree Anandkumar has been selected for the IEEE SPS 2008 SPS Young Author Best Paper Award for her paper appeared in the October 2007 issue of the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. The paper, co-authored with Prof. Lang Tong, is entitled "Type-Based Random Access for Distributed Detection over Multiaccess Fading Channels" The award will be presented to Anima by the President of the IEEE Signal Processing Society at the International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) at Taipei, Taiwan in April 2009.

The SPS Young Author Best Paper Award is selected annually from papers published in the Transactions on Signal Procesisng within a three-year window by authors who are less than 30 years of age on the bases of general quality, originality, subject matter, and timeliness. Anima received her B.Tech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India in 2004. She is a PhD student in the Adaptive Communications and Signal Processing (ACSP) group under the direction of Prof. Lang Tong. Her research is in the areas of inference on graphical models, networking, and information theory. She is the recipient of the IBM Fran Allen PhD fellowship 2008-09 and Student Paper Award at the 2006 International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP). Currently, she is a visiting graduate student at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

“2007-08 Outstanding Chapter Award”

ECE's Honor Society receives the 2007-08 Outstanding Chapter Award

Eta Kappa Nu is the national Electrical & Computer Engineering honor society, with more than 200 college chapters, including the US and Canada. The prestigious Outstanding Chapter Award singles out those chapters that have shown excellence in their activities of service to their fellow students, their department, their school, and their surrounding community. Chapters competing for the award, detail their program of activities in their annual chapter report, submitted after the end of the school year. Winners are determined from these annual reports.

For the school year 07-08, 114 chapters submitted reports, the largest amount ever. Of these, only 18 were selected as winners. The award will be formally announced and presented at the ECEDHA Annual Meeting Award banquet on March 23, 2009.

Photograph: ECE Director Tsuhan Chen (left) receives award on behalf of HKN

Download: HKN Press Release (pdf)

“2008 Fran Allen IBM PhD fellowship”

Animashree Anandkumar is the winner of the 2008 Fran Allen IBM PhD fellowship. As part of the award, the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell also receives a grant of $30,000 towards encouraging and retaining female students in engineering.

The Fran Allen fellowship was instituted by IBM in 2007 in honor of Fran Allen, a pioneer in computer science and the first female scientist to receive the coveted A.M. Turing Award. Dr. Allen presented this year's award to Anima at the Grace Hopper Conference at Keystone, Colorado in Oct. 2008 (see photo on left).

Anima received her BTech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chenai, India in 2004. She is a PhD student in the Adaptive Communications and Signal Processing (ACSP) group under the direction of Prof. Lang Tong Her research is in the areas of inference on graphical models, networking, and information theory. She received the Student Paper Award at the 2006 International Conference on Acoustic, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP). Currently, she is a visiting graduate student at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

“2007 Roger A. Haken Best Student Paper Award”

Dana Weinstein receives the 2007 Roger A. Haken Best Student Paper Award at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) for the paper entitled, "Internal Dielectric Transduction of a 4.5 GHz Silicon Bar Resonator", co-authored with her advisor Assistant Professor Sunil Bhave. The award will be presented at the plenary session of IEDM 2008 in San Francisco.

“Intel Fellowship for 2008-2009”

Xuan (Silvia) Zhang, a member of Professor Apsel's Optoelectronic VLSI research group, receives the prestigious Intel Fellowship for 2008-2009.

"The Intel Foundation provides fellowships to outstanding Ph.D. students in Engineering, Computer Science and other technical majors focusing on semiconductor technologies at selected U.S. universities. In 2007, the Intel Foundation awarded 30 fellowships to Ph.D. students in research areas of interest to the semiconductor industry.

The Intel Foundation Ph.D. Fellowship Program is administered in conjunction with the Intel® Higher Education Program. The Intel Higher Education Program focuses on advancing innovation in key areas of technology, as well as developing a pipeline of world-class technical talent for Intel's future workforce and the global knowledge-based economy. To achieve this goal, Intel collaborates with top universities worldwide to expand university curricula, engage in focused research, and encourage student participation in research throughout their education. For more information, please visit http://www.intel.com/education/highered/index.htm."

This information was provided by the Intel Foundation Ph.D. Fellowship Program web page at http://intelscholarships.intel.com.

“2008 Where's the BOOM? Award”

The 2008 Where's the BOOM? Award, chosen by computer science faculty, went to CUmotive, a project using sensors attached to a person's body to control just about anything from a computer to a music system through body movements.

“IEEE GLOBECOM 2007 Wireless Communication Symposium Best Paper Award”

Mr. Amine Laourine and his co-authors, Mohamed-Slim Alouini (Texas A&M University at Qatar), Sofiene Affes (INRS, Canada) and Alex Stephenne (Ericsson, Canada) receives the IEEE GLOBECOM 2007 Wireless Communication Symposium Best Paper Award for their paper titled "On the Capacity of Generalized-K Fading Channels." The paper presents new results on the capacity of generalized K fading channels along with several transmission techniques.

As one of the two flagship conferences of the IEEE communication society, the 2007 IEEE GLOBECOM is held in Washington DC on November 26-30, 2007

Amine received his BS degree from Ecole Polytechnique de Tunisie and MS degree from University of Quebec. He started the PhD program as a Jacobs Fellow in Fall 2007 and joined the Adaptive Communication and Signal Processing (ACSP) group led by Professor Lang Tong. His research interest includes wireless communications, information theory, and signal processing.

“IEEE Electron Devices Society PhD Student Fellowship”

Tuo-Hung (Alex) Hou is selected to receive the IEEE Electron Devices Society PhD Student Fellowship for 2007

The PhD Fellowship Program was established to promote, recognize, and support graduate study and research within the Electron Devices Society's field of interest.

The fellowship will be presented at the 2007 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) on Monday morning, 10 December, at the Washington Hilton Hotel, Washington, D.C

Alex is Associate Professor Edwin Kan's Ph.D. student.

“Best Student Paper Award (Third Place)”

At the IEEE Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems in Montreal, Canada (August 5-8), Pukar Malla's paper titled "A Digitally Enhanced 2-0 Delta Sigma ADC" received Best Student Paper Award (Third Place).

Pukar is a Ph.D. Candidate and a member of the Cornell Broadband Communications Research Laboratory.

“Best Undergraduate Poster”

Roger Varney '09 ECE won Best Undergraduate Poster at the National Meeting of the NSF Coupling, Energetics, and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions (CEDAR) Program in Santa Fe. A primary objective of CEDAR research is to understand changes in the atmosphere over short and long time scales. Varney works with ECE's James A. Friend Family Distinguished Professor of Engineering Michael Kelley; his poster was titled “Observations of Electric Fields Associated with Internal Gravity Waves.”

Roger is working this summer for SRI International at the Center for GeoSpace Studies, Engineering and Systems Division and will visit Alaska to participate in an experiment to determine the droplet sizes in the highest clouds in the atmosphere, some 85 km (50 miles) high.

“2007-08 Intel Foundation PhD Fellowship Award”

Congratulations to Rajeev Dokania on winning a prestigious Intel fellowship for 2007-2008. This is a highly competitive program with approximately 40 fellowships awarded annually. The two-year fellowship is renewable for up to two years pending review by the Intel Foundation. Rajeev received this award based upon his work in high efficiency optical interconnect within computing systems and low power electronics with Prof. Alyssa Apsel. [more about the fellowship]

“Best Student Paper Award”

Jonathan Felbinger, a first year graduate student under Les Eastman received the Best Student Paper Award at the WOCSDICE (Workshop on Compound Semiconductor Devices and Integrated Circuits) meeting in Venice, Italy. The paper covered a comparison of microwave AlGaN/GaN  HEMT's, designed and fabricated by Felbinger, with substrates of diamond and SiC. The Group4Labs supported the research on diamond, GE supported the research on GaN, and the research on SiC was supported by Northrop-Grumman and a MURI at UC/SB.

“The 31th Workshop on Compound Semiconductor Devices and Integrated Circuits, WOCSDICE 2007, was held in Venice, Italy, May 20-23, 2007.
The symposium is organized by Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padova, Italy, with the aim of bringing together scientists and engineers working in the area of III-V compound semiconductor devices and integrated circuits for microwave, mm-wave, and optoelectronic applications. Both, invited papers and short submitted papers will be presented during the three day meeting, detailing latest results on electronic, optoelectronic, and integrated devices. The idea is to address new results in short presentations to initiate an intensive and fruitful discussion of the relevant topics. Despite of the European character of the workshop series, interested people from all over the world are invited to attend.” [read more]

“NOAA Medal of Appreciation”

General (Ret.) D. L. Johnson head of the National Weather Service presents ECE Student Alex Cerruti the NOAA Medal of Appreciation for his help in supporting the NOAA news conference “RESEARCHERS FIND GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM IS SIGNIFICANTLY IMPACTED BY POWERFUL SOLAR RADIO BURST”.

- Washington DC, April 4, 2007

“Circuit Cellar Magazine Featured Article”

If you’re having trouble soldering small chips, try reflow soldering. Ko and Kashif explain how to design a reflow soldering oven that won’t burn a hole in your wallet. Circuit Cellar magazine, issue #199, Feb 2007, page 46 [read more].

“Circuit Cellar Magazine Featured Article”

Craig and Ricardo designed an RFID-based proximity security system for use with identification cards. The system communicates with an administrator PC via a serial communications link and HyperTerminal. Circuit Cellar magazine, issue #199, Feb 2007, p. 24 [read more]

“Circuit Cellar Magazine Featured Article”

Abigail designed a microcontroller-based, self-powered solar data logger that uses a photodiode to measure solar insolation levels. The system converts the analog signal to a digital value that’s stored in flash memory. Circuit Cellar magazine, issue #198, Jan 2007, p. 12 [read article]

Ms. Krish's work was instrumental in Cornell's decision to install solar panels on the roof of Day Hall. [read more]

“Analog Devices Inc. Outstanding Student Designer Award”

Zhongtao Fu works on power aware RF circuit design in CMOS. As mobility and battery lifetime become every more important for wireless communications and power consumption of clock distribution networks threaten to overwhelm chip power budgets the ability to optimize trade-offs in performance and power becomes ever more important. Zhongtao's recent work explores ways to optimize noise performance in RF communication blocks while maintaining low power operation.

“Student Travel Award”

Alessandro Cerruti received a student travel award to present his paper entitled "Observed GPS and WAAS Signal-to-Noise Degradation Due to Solar Radio Bursts" at the ION GNSS 2006 Meeting, held in Fort Worth, TX in September, and also won the Best Presentation award for Section D3: Atmospheric Effects 1. A fourth-year Ph.D. student, Cerruti obtained his M.Eng. and BS degrees from ECE and is currently researching the effects of space weather on GPS signals under the direction of Professor Paul Kintner.

“DHS Fellowship”

Incoming ECE graduate student Matt Ezovski is the recipient of a 2006 U.S.Department of Homeland Security Fellowship. The program, established in 2003, is intended for students interested in pursuing basic science and technology innovations that can be applied to the DHS mission. As part of this program, Matt will spend the summer of 2007 at a DHS-affiliated facility.

Matt received the B.S. degree in electrical, computer, and systems engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, in May 2006. He is entering the M.S./Ph.D. program in fall 2006 and plans to pursue a Ph.D. in the area of wireless communications and sensor networks in affiliation with the Adaptive Communications and Signal Processing Group. He also recently joined the IEEE-USA Committee on Communications and Information Policy.

“Student Paper Award”

2006 International Conference on Acoustic, Speech and Signal Provessing (ICASSP) held in Toulouse, France, for the paper "Minimax Quantization for Distributed Estimation," coauthored with Prof. L. Tong (Cornell) and Dr. A. Swami (Army Research Laboratory) won the contest in the area of Signal Processing Theory and Methods. ICASSP is the world's largest and most comprehensive technical conference focused on signal processing and its applications.

“Student Paper Award”

2006 International Conference on Acoustic, Speech and Signal Provessing (ICASSP) held in Toulouse, France, for the paper "A large deviation analysis of detection over multiaccess channels with random number of sensors," coauthored with Prof. L. Tong (Cornell) won the contest in the area of Sensor Array and Multichannel Signal Processing. ICASSP is the world's largest and most comprehensive technical conference focused on signal processing and its applications.

“2004 Leonard G. Abraham Prize Paper Award”

Awarded for the paper with S. Adireddy and L. Tong, "Sensor Networks with Mobile Access: Optimal Random Access and Coding," IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications: Speical Issue on Sensor Networks, vol.22, no. 6, pp 1058-1068, August 2004.

“2004 IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award”

Awarded for the paper with L. Tong, "Optimal Design and Placement of Pilot Symbols for Channel Estimation" IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, vol. 50, no. 12, pp. 3055-3069, December, 2002.

“Student Paper Award”

2005 International Conference on Acoustic, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) for the paper with S. Ben-David and L. Tong, "Nonparametric Change Detection in 2D Random Sensor Fields",in Proc. ICASSP 2005, Philadelphia, PA, March, 2005.

“Student Paper Award”

2005 International Conference on Acoustic, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) for the paper with L. Tong, and H. V. Poor, "A Large Deviations Approach to Sensor Scheduling for Detection of Correlated Random Fields," in Proc. ICASSP 2005, Philadelphia, PA, March, 2005.

Best Student Paper Award, 2003 IEEE Radar Conference; L.R. Varshney and D. Thomas, "Sidelobe Reduction for Matched Filter Range Processing," in Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE Radar Conference, Huntsville, AL, 5-8 May 2003.

2002-03 IEEE Outstanding TA of the Year (for ECE 302)

2002-03 SiGe Design Challenge: ECE graduate students Daniel Kucharski, Drew Guckenberger and Jing-Hong Conan Zhan, led by Professor Kevin Kornegay, placed third in phase 2 of the SRC Design Contest for their project, "A 10Gb/s Integrated Optical Transceiver." This same student team also placed third in phase 1 of the competition last spring. Please see www.src.org for detailed information on this award.

2002-03 SiGe Design Challenge: ECE graduate students Daniel Kucharski, Drew Guckenberger and Jing-Hong Conan Zhan, led by Professor Kevin Kornegay, placed third in phase 2 of the SRC Design Contest for their project, "A 10Gb/s Integrated Optical Transceiver." This same student team also placed third in phase 1 of the competition last spring. Please see www.src.org for detailed information on this award.

2002-03 SiGe Design Challenge: ECE graduate students Daniel Kucharski, Drew Guckenberger and Jing-Hong Conan Zhan, led by Professor Kevin Kornegay, placed third in phase 2 of the SRC Design Contest for their project, "A 10Gb/s Integrated Optical Transceiver." This same student team also placed third in phase 1 of the competition last spring. Please see www.src.org for detailed information on this award.

IBM Fellowship

Lockheed Martin Award for Academic Excellence

IBM Ph.D. Fellowship for 2002/2003