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Department News
2009   2008   2007  

2009

November 2009

New York Times Reported an Article in Its Business Page on Assistant Professor Aydogan Ozcan's Group Research

New York Times reported an Article on Assistant Professor Aydogan Ozcan's Group Research.

October 2009

Xiong Liu Gets Best Student Paper Award at ASICON 2009

A 1.5 GHz Linear-in-dB Variable Gain Amplifier with Process and Temperature Tracking in 0.18-?m CMOS, Xiong Liu, Professor Alan Willson, Jr., advisor.

October 2009

Fujitsu Laboratories of America Funds Faculty Research

Fujitsu Laboratories of America funds Professor Lei He on "Post-Silicon Optimization for Analog Circuits".

October 2009

Cisco Funds Faculty Research

Cisco funds Professor Lei He on "Fault Tolerance for FPGA-based Systems".

October 2009

U.S. Army Funds Faculty Research

U.S. Army funds the research of Professor Bahram Jalali and Prof Di Carlo on Rare Cell Detection Using Serial Time-Encoded Amplified Microscopy and Inertial Ordered Cells in High-Throughput Flow.

DARPA funds Pro. Jalali’s research on Components for Ultrafast Real-time Imaging.
NSF funds Prof. Jalali’s research on Enhanced White Light Sources.

September 2009

NSF Funds Faculty Research

NSF has approved a $2.2 M grant in support of graduate student training in Plasma Electronics over a period of 5 years. This grant will be managed by Professors Warren Mori and Chan Joshi. This award is part of a $5M award for a six university collaborative proposal for which UCLA is the lead institution with Professor Joshi as the PI.

September 2009

Professor Aydogan Ozcan receives 2009 NIH Director's New Innovator Award

Aydogan Ozcan has been selected to receive the 2009 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the most prestigious award given to young faculty by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The award amounts to $1.5 million over five years to support highly innovative research projects.

The NIH Director’s New Innovator Award program is different from traditional NIH grants. It is designed specifically to support unusually creative new investigators with highly innovative research ideas at an early stage of their career when they may lack the preliminary data required for traditional grants. The review process emphasizes the individual’s creativity, the innovativeness of the research approaches, and the potential of the project, if successful, to have a significant impact on an important biomedical or behavioral research problem.

September 2009

Two EE graduates become new faculty members

Two EE PhD graduates accepted academic positions. Dr. Hao Yu (PhD'07) will join Nanyang Technological University, Singapore for Fall 2009, and Dr. Yu Hu (PhD'09) will join the University of Alberta for Spring 2010. Both will be tenure-track assistant professors and their advisor is Professor Lei He.

September 2009

NSF Funds Faculty Research

NSF funds research by Professor Robert N. Candler entitled "BRIGE: Time-resolved Surface Damping in Nanoscale Resonators for Monitoring of Biological/Chemical Reactions".

September 2009

Professor Danijela Cabric receives 2009 Okawa Foundation Award

Professor Danijela Cabric has been selected to receive a 2009 Okawa Foundation Award. This year, due to the economic downturn, the Okawa Foundation has limited the number awards to one per university.

September 2009

Two Tools in One - Technique enables simultaneous imaging and laser surgery without mechanical scanning

A new technique invented by Professor Bahram Jalali, post-doc Keisuke Goda, and former lab member Kevin Tsia was featured in the September 2009 issue of Photonics Spectra. This invention is based on a recent publication: K. K. Tsia, K. Goda, D. Capewell, and B. Jalali, "Simultaneous mechanical-scan-free confocal microscopy and laser microsurgery," Optics Letters 34, 2099 (2009). Read more.

September 2009

NSF Funds Faculty Research

Professor Benjamin Williams has received a 3-year NSF GOALI award entitled "GOALI: Terahertz Transmission-Line Metamaterials for Quantum Cascade Lasers". Professor Tatsuo Itoh is a co-PI. Dwight Streit and Qi-Sheng Chen from Northrop Grumman are the industrial co-PIs.

August 2009

Research on a novel 110GHz time stretched analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) application

The research of Professor Bahram Jalali and his graduate student Ali Motaffaker-Fard was featured in a recent article entitled "GigOptix's 100G Mach Zehnder Modulator Enables 110GHz Time Stretched Analog to Digital Conversions at UCLA". This technology has applications in high-frequency communication, instrumentation, and radar systems. Read more.

August 2009

NSF Funds Faculty Research

Professor Abeer Alwan has received a 4-year NSF award entitled "The Effect of Subglottal Resonances on Machine and Human Speaker Normalization".

August 2009

Prof. Razavi's Research Group Sets World Record

Professor Behzad Razavi's research group develops a 300-GHz oscillator in 65-nm CMOS technology. The new oscillator topology significantly exceeds the previous world record, which was 205 GHz in 45-nm CMOS.

August 2009

Prof. Ozcan to co-chair IEEE Winter Topical Meeting

Assistant Professor Aydogan Ozcan is serving as co-chair of the IEEE Winter Topical Meeting on Advanced Imaging in Bio-Photonics.

August 2009

2009 MIT Technology Review for Young Innovators under the age of 35

Assistant Professor Aydogan Ozcan is among the honorees by the 2009 MIT Technology Review for Young Innovators under the age of 35.

August 2009

NSF funds new Center forDomain-Specific Computing led by Computer Science Professor Jason Cong and with the participation of faculty from the UCLA Medical School, UCSB, Rice University, Ohio State University, and UCLA Electrical Engineering Professor Frank Chang.

August 2009

NSF funds research by Professor Sayed

NSF funds research by Professor A. H. Sayed on Explorations and Insights into Adaptive Networks, Animal Flocking Behavior and Swarm Intelligence.

August 2009

Two EE 2009 Ph.D graduates will start faculty positions this Fall

Two EE 2009 Ph.D graduates will start faculty positions this Fall: Shalabh Gupta (PhD '09), Electronic and Electrical Engineering, IIT Bombay, India (Advisor: Bahram Jalali) and Kevin (Kin-man) Tsia (PhD '09), Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Hong Kong University, Hong Kong (Advisor: Bahram Jalali).

August 2009

Prof. van der Schaar Co-organizes the Southern California Symposium on Network Economics and Game Theory

Professor Mihaela van der Schaar co-organizes the Southern California Symposium on Network Economics and Game Theory in October 1-2, 2009.

August 2009

Prof. Itoh Appointed to Advisory Board

Prof. Tatsuo Itoh has been appointed as a member of Advisory Board for the Graduate School of Tokyo Institute of Technology.

July 2009

LaserFocusWorld Features Work of Prof. Jalali's Research Group

The work by Prof. Bahram Jalali's group on the STEAM camera was published in the July issue of LaserFocusWorld.

July 2009

Prof. Gupta Receives SRC Inventor Recognition Award

Prof. Puneet Gupta received the SRC Inventor Recognition Award for a patent "Method for correcting a mask design layout". (US Patent number 7149999).

July 2009

Alumni Receives 2009 ERC Young Investigator Award

Dr. Christina Fragouli (PhD'00, now Assistant Professor at EPFL, Switzerland) received the 2007 Zonta Award given in recognition of outstanding scientific work by a woman scientist across all disciplines in Switzerland. She also received the 2009 European Research Council (ERC) Young Investigator Award (about US$2.5M) for her innovative research work on network coding and connections between communications and computer science. This is the most prestigious European award for young researchers given to selected recipients across all areas of Science, Engineering and Humanities.

July 2009

Professor Alan Willson receives IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award

Distinguished Professor Alan Willson has been selected to receive the 2010 IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award for his "exemplary teaching and curriculum development and for inspirational guidance of PhD. student research in the area of circuits and systems." The IEEE Graduate Teaching Award is a Technical Field Award whose purpose is to honor teachers of electrical and electronics engineering and the related disciplines, for inspirational teaching of graduate students in the IEEE fields of interest. This is an IEEE-wide award and covers all fields of Electrical Engineering.

July 2009

Two New Endowed Graduate Fellowships

Two new endowed graduate fellowships are established by two of our alumni: Dr. Fang Lu (MS '88, PhD '92, currently at Broadcom) and Dr. Mukund Padmanabhan (MS '89, PhD '92, currently at Renaissance Technologies). Both fellowships will support graduate students studying in one of the two areas: Circuits and Embedded Systems or Signals and Systems.

June 2009

OPN Magazine Features Work of Prof. Jalali's Research Group

The STEAM imager technology by Prof. Bahram Jalali's group has been featured in the July issue of Optics and Photonics News (OPN).

June 2009

OPN Magazine Features Work of Prof. Jalali's Research Group

The work by Prof. Bahram Jalali's group entitled Green Silicon Photonics appears on the cover of the June issue of the OPN magazine, the flagship publication of the Optical Society of America.

June 2009

Springer's Computer Science Features Work of Prof. Tabuada

Assistant Professor Paulo Tabuada and his latest book "Verification and Control of Hybrid Systems: A Symbolic Approach" are highlighted in Springer's Computer Science front page.

June 2009

EE Student Awards

Graduating PhD student Zhi Quan (A. H. Sayed, advisor) is awarded the 2009 Outstanding Ph.D. Student Award in Electrical Engineering. His PhD thesis is entitled: "Cooperative Spectrum Sensing for Cognitive Radios".

Graduating MS student Phillip M. Izdebski (Y. Rahmat-Samii, advisor) is awarded the 2009 Outstanding M.S. Student Award in Electrical Engineering.

Undergraduate student Jeffrey K. Akamine is awarded the 2009 Outstanding B.S. Student Award in Electrical Engineering.

Graduate student Kevin Kin-Man Tsia (Bahram Jalali, advisor), is awarded the 2009 Harry M. Showman Prize from HSSEAS.

Undergraduate student Jonathan Chew is awarded the 2009 Christina Huang Memorial Prize.

May 2009

DARPA funds research by Prof. Ozcan

AFOSR funds research by Prof. Aydogan Ozcan on "Design of Resonant Sub-wavelength Metallic Apertures to Enable Higher Resolution Sensor Arrays".

May 2009

DARPA funds seedling proposal by Prof. Jalali

DARPA funds seedling proposal by Professor Bahram Jalali on "Periodically Poled Silicon".

May 2009

Professor Gupta receives 2009 NSF CAREER Award

Assistant Professor Puneet Gupta has been selected to receive the 2009 NSF CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation. The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.

Professor Gupta's award recognizes his career development plan entitled "Co-optimization of Integrated Circuit Design and Manufacturing."

Professor Gupta joined the department in 2007. His research focuses on building high-value bridges between physical design and semiconductor manufacturing for lowered cost, increased yield and improved predictability of integrated circuits. He has authored over 40 papers and is a recipient of IBM Ph.D. fellowship.

May 2009

Qualcomm funds three Graduate Student Fellowships

Qualcomm funds three Graduate Student Fellowships in electrical engineering at $225K thanks to the efforts of Professors R. Jain, W. Kaiser, M. Srivastava, and M. Sarrafzadeh. A ceremony and more information to follow later.

April 2009

World's fastest camera created by Professor Jalali's group

Prof. Bahram Jalali and his Postdoc, Keisuke Goda, recently had major press coverage for their publication in Nature. There was a UCLA press release and the paper has also been featured by Nature News, BBC News, Wired Magazine, Discover Magazine, and many more. Here is a summary of the major press coverages. In addition, Keisuke Goda has been featured by Nature Abstractions too. [More]

April 2009

Professor A. H. Sayed delivered a tutorial at the 2009 ICASSP conference

Professor A. H. Sayed delivered a tutorial on "Adaptive Networks" at the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing in Taipei, Taiwan (April 20-24, 2009).

April 2009

Professor Ozcan receives 2009 Wireless Innovation Competition Award

Assistant Professor Aydogan Ozcan has been selected to share the 2009 Wireless Innovation Competition Award from the Vodafone Foundation for his work on the CelloPhone Project. Professor Ozcan's team shares the Award with two other teams from Berkeley and Columbia.

The CelloPhone is a lens-free imaging platform on a cell phone for disease detection and diagnostics using digital holograms of the cells or bacteria, which is capable of monitoring HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and various other diseases.

The Vodafone Wireless Innovation Project is a new initiative that identifies and funds unique innovations using wireless related technology offering the best potential to address critical social issues around the world. The three winning innovations will share in prizes totaling up to $700K USD to support their next phase of advancement and implementation. The three winners were selected from nearly 100 applicants from U.S. universities and nonprofit organizations for their multi-disciplinary approach using an innovation in wireless related technology to address a critical global issue in the areas of education, health, economic development, the environment or access to communication.

March 2009

Professor Yahya Rahmat-Samii receives 2009 Distinguished Achievement Award

Professor Yahya Rahmat-Samii has been selected to receive the 2009 Distinguished Achievement Award from the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society for his "pioneering contributions to the design, optimization and measurement of modem ground and space-borne reflector antennas and antennas for handheld communication devices."

The award recognizes outstanding career achievements by an individual in the field of antennas and propagation. The award consists of a plaque and a monetary prize.

March 2009

Professor Paulo Tabuada receives 2009 Eckman Award

Assistant Professor Paulo Tabuada has been selected to receive the prestigious 2009 Donald P. Eckman Award from the American Automatic Control Council. The award recognizes outstanding achievements by a young researcher under the age of 35 in the field of control theory. It is considered one of the most prestigious awards in the field.

Professor Tabuada joined the Electrical Engineering Department in July 2006. At UCLA he established and directs the Cyber-Physical Systems Laboratory. His main research interests include the design of networked embedded control systems; modeling, analysis and design of discrete-event, timed and hybrid systems; hierarchical and distributed control design; geometric and algebraic control theory for nonlinear and Hamiltonian control systems; and categorical systems theory. His group is also interested in the modeling, analysis and control of real-time, embedded, networked and distributed systems. Other research interests include geometrical nonlinear control and mathematical systems theory. He also received the 2005 NSF CAREER Award.

March 2009

EE Advisory Board Formed

The department forms a distinguished Department Advisory Board. The objective of the board is to provide the department and its faculty with advice and feedback and to help the department position itself for even greater prominence.

March 2009

ECEDHA Annual Meeting Plenary Session Panelist

Professor Ali H. Sayed was invited to serve as a panelist in a Plenary Session at the ECE Department Heads Association (ECEDHA) Annual Meeting in New Orleans (March 21) on the topic of what should ECEDHA suggest to ABET for change to improve the accreditation process.

March 2009

2009 University Researcher Award

Professor Kang Wang has been awarded the 2009 University Researcher Award from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). According to the SIA Chairman Hector Ruiz, the award "recognizes university researchers who have made significant contributions to solving the obstacles that must be overcome to continue on our technology roadmap." The SIA is the leading voice for the semiconductor industry and has represented U.S. semiconductor companies since 1977.

Professor Kang Wang is Raytheon Professor of Electrical Engineering at UCLA. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and a member of the American Physical Society and the Materials Research Society. At UCLA, he directs two major centers, FENA and WIN. He also directs the UCLA Device Research Laboratory. He has led research projects on silicon carbide (SiC) nano devices, self-assembly of quantum structures, spintronics materials and devices, and other basic research to develop technologies that should enable continued progress in semiconductor technology when the limits of conventional microelectronics technology are reached. His current research focuses on nanoelectronics and optoelectronics, MBE and superlattices, micro-wave and millimeter electronics/optoelectronics, and quantum computing.

March 2009

New patent by Professor Kung Yao

A patent has been issued to Prof. Kung Yao. US Patent US7,499,490 B2 on "Encoders for Block-Circulant LDPC Codes" on March 3, 2009. More patents by Professor Yao at this link.

March 2009

Prof. Pottie has been named a Fulbright Scholar

Prof. Greg Pottie has been named a Fulbright Scholar for his sabbatical visit to the University of Sydney, from July through October 2009.

March 2009

DARPA funds faculty in Electrical Engineering

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) provides faculty in Electrical Engineering with $4.6M to fund the research project "A Self-Healing Mixed-Signal Baseband Processor for Cognitive Radios" under the HEALICs Initiative. The faculty members involved in the project are D. Cabric, D. Markovic, B. Razavi (PI), A. H. Sayed, and J. Woo.

February 2009

Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Korea Research Foundation Recipient

Dr. Kyeong-Sik Shin, a postdoctoral scholar in Professor Chi On Chui's research group, has been selected to receive the prestigious postdoctoral fellowship from the Korea Research Foundation (KRF).

February 2009

2009 Chancellor's Award for Postdoctoral Research Recipient

Dr. Sungkyu Seo, a postdorctoral scholar in Professor Aydogan Ozcan's research group, has been selected to receive the 2009 Chancellor's Award for Postdoctoral Research.

February 2009

Two new patents by Professor Mihaela van der Schaar

Two patents have been issued to Prof. Mihaela van der Schaar. US Patent 7,480,252 on "Method and system for improving transmission efficiency using multiple-description layered encoding" on January 20, 2009 and US Patent 7,463,683 on "Method and apparatus for decoding spatially scaled fine granular encoded video signals" on December 9, 2008. More patents by Professor van der Schaar at this link.

February 2009

The Science Channel's "Brink" cover story

The Science Channel featured a cover story on the group research of Prof. Aydogan Ozcan in their weekly show "Brink". Watch the video.

February 2009

National Academy of Engineering Member

Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Professor Deborah Estrin has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Election to the academy is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature. Professor Estrin is Director of the NSF Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, and she is being honored for the pioneering design and application of heterogeneous wireless sensing systems for environmental monitoring.

Professor Estrin holds the Jon Postel Chair in Computer Networks, and is Founding Director of the NSF-funded Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS). Estrin received her Ph.D. (1985) in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her B.S. (1980) from U.C. Berkeley. She has been co-PI on many NSF and DARPA funded projects. In 2007 Professor Estrin was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also a fellow of the ACM, AAAS and the IEEE. She has served on numerous panels for the NSF, National Academy of Sciences/NRC, and DARPA. She has also served as an editor for the ACM/IEEE Transactions on Networks, and as a program committee member for many networking related conferences.

Professor Estrin was selected as the first ACM-W Athena Lecturer in 2006. The Athena Lectures celebrate women researchers who have made fundamental contributions to Computer Science. She was awarded the Anita Borg Institute's Women of Vision Award for Innovation in 2007.

Since the late 90's Professor Estrin's research has focused on embedded networked sensing systems, with a particular focus on applications to environmental monitoring. Most recently this work includes participatory-sensing systems, based on automated, programmable, and adaptive collection of environmental, physiological, and social parameters at the personal and community level. These systems will leverage the installed base of image and acoustic sensors that we all carry around in our pockets or on our belts-cell phones.

February 2009

CNN article

The research of Professor Aydogan Ozcan on telemedicine was featured in the CNN article "Invention turns cell phone into mobile medical lab".

February 2009

2009 Particle Accelerator Science and Technology Award Recipient

Professor Chand Joshi has been selected to receive the 2009 Particle Accelerator Science and Technology Award from the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Science Society. The award recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the development of particle accelerator science and technology.

Professor Joshi is the Director of the Center for High Frequency Electronics at UCLA Electrical Engineering. He has made many fundamental contributions to the understanding of extremely nonlinear optical effects in plasmas. Most notable are his first experimental demonstrations of four-wave mixing, stimulated Raman forward instability, resonant self-focusing, frequency up-shifting by ionization fronts and nonlinear coupling between electron-plasma waves.

Professor Joshi's research focuses on laser fusion, laser acceleration of particles, nonlinear optics, high-power lasers, and plasma physics. His many distinctions also include the 2008 Advanced Accelerator Concepts Prize and the 2006 Maxwell Prize.

January 2009

Science in Action interview

Professor Aydogan Ozcan was interviewed for BBC International's program Science in Action. Listen to the interview.

January 2009

Prof. Markovic selected to receive 2009 NSF CAREER Award

Assistant Professor Dejan Markovic has been selected to receive the 2009 NSF CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation. The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. Professor Markovic's award recognizes his career development plan entitled "Area-and-Power-Minimized Many-Channel Neural-Spike DSP". The abstract for the project appears below.

Professor Dejan Markovic joined the department in July 2006. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UC Berkeley in 2006, where he was a member of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center. Prof. Markovic's research focuses on rapid prototyping and optimization of power limited digital systems, with emphasis on the next generation wireless communication devices. Topics include digital integrated circuits, power/area-efficient VLSI signal processing architectures, optimization methods, and supporting design automation environments.

Abstract
NSF CAREER Award (Markovic): Area-and-Power-Minimized Many-Channel Neural-Spike DSP

The objective of this research is to revolutionize the digital-signal-processing (DSP) technology used for many-channel electrophysiological recording systems used in both clinical and neuroscientific applications. The approach is to make a tight interaction between algorithms and the underlying technology to optimize the DSP architecture. Improvements by several orders of magnitude in the increased number of channels and decreased hardware cost will be demonstrated.

This project will demonstrate a real-time implantable DSP chip scalable up to 2,000 neural channels. Existing designs provide partial DSP functionality for only up to 30 channels. The chip will be able to isolate activity from individual neurons and reduce the data rate below 800 kbps while maintaining a power density less than 0.8 mW/mm2, as required by safety regulations. The project will also provide a DSP architecture for hardware emulation to demonstrate over a 10,000 times speed-up in data processing compared to state-of-the-art computers.

A successful integration of neural-data processing will significantly advance many applications such as visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive prosthetics. Methods for achieving faster analysis of electrophysiological data will provide neuroscientists quicker access to important research data and improve the overall quality of living. The program intends to train a diverse population of students for careers in industry and academia through relevant and practical design projects, and promote a wider public access to the latest research and educational tools. The far-reaching social and economic impact will be to help sustain the spread and evolution of information technology to new biological and medical applications.

January 2009

Nature Photonics published invited article by Prof. Jalali

Nature Photonics publishes invited article by Professor Bahram Jalali and his team entitled "Silicon Photonics; Silicon's Time Lens". Read more.

January 2009

Prof. Ozcan publishes his first book

Professor Aydogan Ozcan has published his first book, "Non-Destructive Opitcal Characterization Tools: Spectral Interferometry Using Minimum-phase Functions".

January 2009

Faculty member named 2008 International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) Distinguished Lecturer

January 2009

Faculty member named Associate Editor for IEEE Embedded Systems Letters

January 2009

EETimes article

An invited talk Professor Puneet Gupta gave at IEDM 2008, titled "Design and Use of Tweakable Devices for Future Logic Implementation", was covered by EETimes.

January 2009

Outstanding Chapter Award

HKN Student Organization (Professor Alan Willson, advisor) receives Outstanding Chapter Award.