Afridi featured in WSJ video on air charging

In this Wall Street Journal Video segment, Khurram Khan Afridi , associate professor in electrical and computer engineering discusses the risks of using infrared transmitters under FCC and FDA safety guidelines. "The general limit these days is about one watt of power, so it's very small. A standard light bulb is 60 watts, so even smaller than that," said Afridi. Companies offering air charging use one of three ways to remotely charge devices; radio waves, microwaves, or infrared light. Infrared light delivers significant power at a distance and while it is a slower charging process than... Read more

Cong Chen Wins Award at IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting

By: Ashley Bohn

Cong Chen, a Ph.D. candidate in Cornell Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), won the Prize Conference Paper Award at the 2023 IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting (PESGM). PESGM accepts over one thousand papers for presentation each year. After review, less than 90 papers are chosen in the Best Paper sessions, from these select few, the awards for Conference Prize Paper are determined. Chen's paper, "DSO-DERA Coordination for Wholesale Market Participation of Distributed Energy Resources," co-authored with Lang Tong, Professor at Cornell Engineering, and Subhonmesh Bose... Read more

Swarming microrobots self-organize into diverse patterns

A research collaboration has found an efficient way to expand the collective behavior of swarming microrobots: Mixing different sizes of the micron-scale ‘bots enables them to self-organize into diverse patterns that can be manipulated when a magnetic field is applied. Read more

Announcing the 2023 ECE Student Award Winners

Cornell electrical and computer engineering students are known for their academic excellence and dedication to service, and this year’s student award winners are no exception. Join us in congratulating them! Ph.D. Student Awards Cornell ECE Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis Research Award Winner: Weizhe Hua Cornell ECE Outstanding Ph.D. Teaching Assistant Award Winner: Yixiao Du M.Eng. Poster Session Winners The ECE M.Eng. Poster Session was held in the Duffield Atrium on Tuesday May 2, 2023. Nine winning posters were selected from 47 posters presented. See the list of winners . Undergraduate Student... Read more

What’s Up with Electric Vehicles?

By: Beth Saulnier

In their latest "Ask the Expert" story, Cornellians tapped Khurram Afridi, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, whose areas of expertise include electronic power systems. All-electric vehicles are growing in popularity. But what are their advantages and drawbacks—and how close are we to kicking the gasoline habit for good? Read more

How millions of electric vehicles can help—not hurt—the grid

Eilyan Bitar, ECE associate professor and David Croll Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow, has published an op-ed in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists arguing "How millions of electric vehicles can help—not hurt—the grid." This week, the Biden Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled groundbreaking climate regulations aimed at clamping down on tailpipe emissions in the US transportation sector. The proposed rules will effectively force automakers to ensure that 67 percent of new passenger cars and 25 percent of new heavy-duty trucks sold in the United States are zero... Read more