News: ECE

Ziv Goldfeld, assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering, received an IBM 2020 University Award for the theoretical machine learning research he is doing jointly with collaborators from the IBM-MIT Watson AI Lab. Goldfeld was nominated by his IBM collaborators, and the award affirms IBM's interest and commitment to their work. “We are looking at several machine learning projects,” Goldfeld said. “All revolve around and work towards developing a comprehensive statistical learning theory that can explain and provide strong performance guarantees for modern machine learning... Read more

The paper, titled “A truly one-way lane for surface plasmon polaritons,” is published in Nature Photonics, the premiere journal of optoelectronics, laser science, imaging and communications in the field of photonics. While conventional photonic devices are typically made with dielectric materials such as glass, plasmonic devices take advantage of the optical properties of metals. The field of plasmonics is sometimes referred to as “metal optics.” “The advantage of plasmonic devices,” Monticone said, “is the possibility to squeeze and confine light to dimensions much smaller than its wavelength... Read more

The Bovay Program in the History and Ethics of Engineering seeks to be a catalyst for consideration of social and ethical issues in the Cornell College of Engineering. Dr. Park Doing, lecturer in electrical and computer engineering, guides the program to introduce ethical concepts to engineering students using real world case studies and current topics. “Usually these issues come up when things go wrong,” said Doing. Examples include the recent Boeing 737 Max disaster, along with historical catastrophes such as the Columbia and Challenger Space Shuttles and accidents at the Three Mile Island... Read more

Zygmunt Haas, emeritus professor in Cornell ECE, has been ranked 315 out of the top 1000 computer scientists in the United States (496th in the world) by Guide2Research. Four other ECE faculty members were ranked as well, including Hsiao-Dong Chiang, Vikram Krishnamurthy, Stephen Wicker, Christoph Studer, among a total of 37 scholars from Cornell. "This honor validates the important contributions of our faculty and the impact of their work," said Alyssa Apsel, ECE director. "I am amazed and impressed by the reach of Cornell ECE, but not at all surprised." Guide2Research is a leading research... Read more

The 1999 Electrical Engineering Advisory Committee agreed with those faculty who suggested the name change in order to attract students who might be unaware that EE was active in the computer field. After some discussion, the faculty voted overwhelmingly in favor. The associate director at the time, Paul Kintner, summarized the rationale in the Spring 2000 issue of Connections: “We live in an age when electrical and computer engineering is primarily characterized by change and innovation. Rapid evolution in materials, devices, communications, information systems and the impact of these... Read more

Professor Edwin Kan, along with Xiaonan Hui and Thomas Conroy, both Ph.D. students in Kan’s research group, are the authors of the paper titled “Multi-Point Near-Field RF Sensing of Blood Pressures and Heartbeat Dynamics.” “Blood pressures measured by an arm or wrist will give you ‘brachial pressures’ instead of the central pressure,” Kan explained. “Brachial pressures can be similar if the cuff is maintained at the height of the heart, but it is an indirect measurement together with the arm condition.” Cuff-based measurements provide an estimate of an average blood pressure over a number of... Read more

Landon Ivy started his Ph.D. work with Professor Amit Lal’s SonicMEMS Lab, developing new processes for micro electrostatic linear actuators which will eventually drive the locomotion of a microbot. He had cultivated an affinity for working on hardware during his undergraduate studies, and when he got to Cornell he spent as much time as he could in the Cornell NanoScale Facility (CNF). Then the pandemic forced Ivy along with all of his SonicMEMS Lab colleagues off campus. “A few days later, Dr. Lal got the word that there would be a ventilator shortage, so he encouraged the group to brainstorm... Read more

A new paper published in Optica, “Focusing on bandwidth: achromatic metalens limits,” details the finding of some fundamental limits on so-called “metalenses,” ultra-thin flat lenses which have shown great promise in their ability to function as ultracompact optical systems for focusing and imaging. Federico Presutti, Ph.D. student in applied engineering and physics, and Francesco Monticone, assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering are the paper’s authors. “Think of any optical system with lenses for focusing and imaging: a camera, microscope, a lens antenna,” Monticone said... Read more

A diverse collection of undergraduates and graduate and professional students, as Cornellians they’ve explored courses far beyond their academic disciplines; pursued firsthand research in labs and in the field; given their time, energy and ideas to serve the public good; and enlivened and entertained campus with their artistic and athletic endeavors. Read more

Computer engineering researchers are starting to grapple with the implications of what has come to be seen as the end of, or the breaking of, Moore’s law. The observation that transistor density on an integrated circuit doubled about every two years is named after Gordon Moore, whose 1965 paper originally described and predicted this performance growth rate. Moore's law allowed the semiconductor industry to transform the world by building ever-smaller transistors with increasing density, creating the ubiquitous and relatively inexpensive computing environment we live in today. Even though... Read more