News: ECE

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

Amal El-Ghazaly, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, is among 20 faculty members named Engaged Faculty Fellows. She is developing a new course to assist new Ph.D. students in their transition to Cornell with the goal of strengthening the community and increasing retention for Ph.D. students from underrepresented minority groups. The course, titled Succeeding in the Graduate Environment, will introduce students to on-campus resources and equip them with the skills needed to succeed in research, academia and their future careers. El-Ghazaly, who joined the ECE faculty in... Read more

ECE faculty welcome new and returning students. Stay connected and reach out if you have questions, or if you need someone to talk to. And please wear your mask and follow social distancing guidelines! Special thanks to the faculty members who donated their time to help create this video: Alyssa Apsel, Jayadev Acharya, Chris Batten, Amal El-Ghazaly, Debdeep Jena, José Martínez, Al Molnar, Francesco Monticone, Kirstin Petersen, Edward Suh, Stephen Wicker and Grace Xing. ECE 2020 Welcome — A semester like no other {"preview_thumbnail":"/sites/default/files/styles/video_embed_wysiwyg_preview... Read more

Zhiru Zhang, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, has received a $50,000 award from Facebook Research for his proposal titled “Algorithm-Systems Co-Optimization for Near-Data Graph Learning.” Facebook launched the AI Systems Hardware/Software Co-Design request for proposals (RFP) at the Machine Learning and Systems conference last March. This research award program is aimed at strengthening ties with academics working in the wide range of AI hardware and algorithm co-design research. “We received 132 proposals from 74 universities, which was an increase from last year’s... Read more

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... Read more