News: ECE

Eilyan Bitar, ECE associate professor and David Croll Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow, weighs in on how a Bitcoin mining operation is drawing criticism from people who say the natural gas burned to make the cryptocurrency is causing too much pollution. According to Bitar, "Inevitably, that would drive an increase in the supply of generation or electricity from more dispatchable generators, like natural gas, which produces greenhouse gas emissions." Listen to the full NPR episode. Read more

Cornell researchers are pioneering an innovative approach for the wireless charging of electric vehicles and other machines while they remain in motion. Read more

Eilyan Bitar, ECE associate professor and David Croll Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow, has published an op-ed in the Albany Times Union arguing that "the transition to an all-electric car future won't be possible without careful planning and coordination with the power grid and the companies that manage its operation." In response to Volvo and GM's recent announcements to completely phase out all gasoline-powered cars by 2030 and 2035 respectively, he describes some of the most pressing challenges and opportunities that the increased adoption of electric vehicles will present to the power grid... Read more

Kirstin Petersen, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, received a U.S. National Science Foundation Early Career Development (NSF CAREER) Award from the Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS). The award supports her research proposal “Environmentally-Mediated Coordination in Natural and Robot Swarms” for a five-year period from 2021 through 2026 with a total amount of $520,490. “Our project looks beyond robots working in parallel and towards actual swarm intelligence leveraging both explicit and implicit computation through software, morphology and embodiment into... Read more

A Cornell collaboration has found a way to grow a single crystalline layer of alpha-aluminum gallium oxide that has the widest energy bandgap to date – a discovery that clears the way for new semiconductors that will handle higher voltages, higher power densities and higher frequencies than previously seen. The collaboration was led by co-senior authors Debdeep Jena and Huili Grace Xing, both professors in electrical and computer engineering and in materials science and engineering. The team also included David Muller, the Samuel B. Eckert Professor in Applied and Engineering Physics, who... Read more

Ziv Goldfeld, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, recently received a U.S. National Science Foundation Early Career Development (NSF CAREER) Award from the Division of Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF). The award supports his research proposal “ Smooth statistical distances for a scalable learning theory” for a five-year period from 2021 through 2026 with a total amount of $641,761. “The smooth statistical distances framework, around which the proposal was written, is something I have been developing for the past year and a half since joining Cornell,”... Read more

Thomas Parks, emeritus professor of electrical and computer engineering, passed away on December 24, 2020 at the age of 81. He was a Life Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a recipient of the prestigious IEEE Jack S. Kilby Gold Medal for his work on interpolation and the 'Parks-McClellan algorithm.' In 2010, Parks was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, honored for "contributions to digital filter design, fast computation of Fourier transforms and education." “In addition to his impressive accomplishments, he was an excellent colleague,” said... Read more

Engineers received an $880,000 National Science Foundation grant to design a new class of radio devices capable of operating across a large portion of the wireless spectrum while adaptively suppressing interferences. Read more

Students and faculty in the College of Engineering are leveraging the university’s robust entrepreneurial ecosystem to launch a variety of tech startups. Read more

The AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems, established in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, aims to meet growing food supply demands by using AI and bioinformatics to increase efficiencies across the entire food production system, from growing crops through consumption. Qing Zhao, the Joseph C. Ford Professor of Engineering, is leading the Cornell team, with co-principal investigators Jayadev Acharya, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering; Martin Wiedmann, professor in the Department of Food... Read more