News: ECE

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

Wenshen Li, Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering, is the lead author of the paper published in Applied Physics Letters, titled “Near-ideal reverse leakage current and practical maximum electric field in β-Ga2O3 Schottky barrier diodes.” Devansh Saraswat, Yaoyao Long, Kazuki Nomoto along with Professors Debdeep Jena and Huili Grace Xing are co-authors. “For the first time, we observed an ideal reverse leakage characteristic in Ga2O3 Schottky barrier diodes,” said Li. “With such information, we can accurately determine how large an electric field can be supported in Ga2O3... Read more

From among the accomplished members of the Cornell ECE Class of 2020, two seniors, Katie Bradford and Kevin Ying, have been selected to receive prestigious year-end awards. The William S. Einwechter Award Katie Bradford ’20 will receive the William S. Einwechter Award, presented annually to a member of the ECE Senior Class who has demonstrated distinguished records of service to ECE and its students, to the College and to the University. Bradford’s work in ECE focused on hardware, ranging from UAVs with the CUAir autonomous aerial system project team, to robotics projects in the Maker Lab... Read more

A statistical analysis of all 50 states and Washington, D.C., found that social distancing measures slowed the spread of coronavirus on the whole, but did not reduce the number of new infections per day. Read more