News: ECE

Cloud computing has become synonymous with the internet itself. If you watch Netflix, call an Uber, or meet on Zoom, a cloud data center is delivering the processing power and data storage to make your experience possible. “But cloud systems have a serious problem,” says Christina Delimitrou, Electrical and Computer Engineering, “—unpredictability.” As a business service, cloud computing has provided the infrastructure for a veritable tech explosion in the past decade. An internet startup can purchase a small plot in the cloud and then expand as business grows, all without buying or... Read more

Faculty, students and staff in the College of Art, Architecture and Planning joined the College of Engineering to assist an urgent request by Weill Cornell Medicine to rapidly 3D-print visors to protect doctors at the forefront of the COVID-19 health crisis. Jenny Sabin, the associate dean of AAP, told The Sun that Prof. Kirstin Hagelskjaer Petersen, electrical and computer engineering, contacted her to help Weill Cornell Medicine. They estimated that they needed 20,000 to 50,000 visors daily and needed them from anyone who could help. Read more

Eric Lei ’20, a student of ECE Associate Professor Christoph Studer, has been awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students pursuing degrees in STEM fields. The program’s goal is to help ensure the vitality and diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States. The GRFP provides three years of educational support for individuals whose research has demonstrated potential for significant achievements in their fields. The program... Read more

Using Weill Cornell Medicine’s specifications, faculty, staff, students, alumni and community members are 3D printing frames for face visors, ideally with PET or PETG (polyethylene terephthalate, or polyethylene terephthalate glycol-modified) filament, which can be sterilized under ultraviolet light. In fewer than three days, she said, the effort grew from two labs printing at AAP into a network of faculty, staff, students, alumni and other institutions and architecture departments across the country. Read more

Aaron Wagner, professor of electrical and computer engineering, received a Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF) award from the National Science Foundation for his project titled "A Theoretical Foundation For Practical Communication with Feedback." The project will develop practical methods to improve communication system performance by using feedback links and mathematically characterizing optimal methods for using feedback links. The improved understanding of how to use feedback should improve wireless communication technologies... Read more

Ziv Goldfeld, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, received a Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Research Initiation Initiative (CRII) award from the National Science Foundation for his project titled “New Paradigms in Generalization and Information-Theoretic Analysis of Deep Neural Networks.“ The project will study how information is processed in deep neural networks (DNNs) classifiers to make the decisions of AI mechanisms more transparent to end users and other stakeholders. The main objective is to shed light on the process by which DNNs... Read more

The award was announced at MODEX 2020, a supply chain logistics conference organized by the Material Handling Institute (MHI) and held in Atlanta, Georgia this month. This year, a record number of applicants from 30 leading universities submitted proposals for the research grant funding program, now in its fourth year. Afridi’s was one of two proposals chosen, and concerns cost effective wireless charging of autonomous material handing vehicles (AMHVs). Warehouses and factories are being transformed by electrically powered AMHVs, which swiftly pick and carry material from one place to another... Read more

Last month, Cornell partnered with the University of Rochester and New York University to visit the New York delegation. Cornell was represented by Sophia Rocco, Ph.D. student in the Laboratory of Plasma Studies. “Professors, researchers, students and representatives from start-ups come together in Washington, D.C.,” Rocco explained, “to meet with policymakers and get them excited about the importance of fusion energy and how vital it will be to the energy security of the planet.” Specifically, they asked for a $715 million increase to the budget of the Office of Fusion Energy Science (FES), a... Read more

For the second year in a row, ECE Assistant Professor Christina Delimitrou has received a Google Faculty Research Award. The awards recognize and support faculty pursuing cutting-edge technical research in Computer Science, Engineering, and related fields. Delimitrou’s proposal aims to address the performance implications of new cloud programming frameworks, such as microservices. Cloud services increasingly consist of a large number of inter-dependent components (microservices), with performance issues in one application tier propagating to others. Manually diagnosing such correlated... Read more

"Feeding our growing population in a more sustainable and cost-effective way is one of the biggest challenges facing humanity," according to ECE Assistant Professor Kirstin Petersen. "This new era in 'digital agriculture' is dependent on technologies that span engineering disciplines, plant sciences, farming practices, and consumer needs. The CIDA Hackathon is exactly the effort we need to bootstrap these critical and radical innovations." Read more