Twelve EE Alumni Have Taken Academic Positions Worldwide

The Electrical Engineering department is making great strides in preparing the next generation of academic scholars. Twelve of our recent EE Ph.D. graduates have accepted the academic positions worldwide. Those include:

Dr. Qun (Jane) Gu, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida(Advisor, Prof. Frank Chang)

Dr. Jane Gu graduated from our department in 2007. Her research interests include RF/mm-wave and mixed signal integrated circuit and system designs.
Prof. Frank Chang recalls: "Jane was both talented and disciplined in ultra-high frequency circuit and system designs. She was the first to demonstrate a CMOS oscillator with output signals beyond one Tera Hertz based on harmonic cancellation techniques developed in our High Speed Electronics Lab."

Dr. Bryan Hu graduated from our department in 2009. His research interests include: architectures and CAD tools for field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and their applications on accelerating massive scale data processing and data mining.  Prof. Lei He recalls: "Bryan was the key student for our radiation-hard FPGA synthesis project, and demonstrated great research skills and wonderful ownership. The research outcomes have profound scholarly and practical impacts, and have attracted lots of attention from places such as Cisco, JPL and Xilinx."

Dr. Hao Yu graduated from our department in 2007. His research interests include design exploration of analog/RF circuits beyond 60GHz, and 3D cyber-physical computing systems. Prof. Lei He recalls: "Before joining UCLA, Hao was an intern at ADI and performed so well that ADI granted a research gift to partially support his study at UCLA. He continued to be a great performer in his post-PhD employment, becoming a key developer of the best analog simulation tool available today.

Dr. Yiyu Shi's research interests include renewable energy applications and 3D IC. His work has been recognized with multiple best paper nominations in top conferences. Prof. Lei He recalls: "Yiyu received PhD within 4 years after getting his BS degree with no. 1 ranking from Tsinghua Univ. When he interviewed for academic positions, the only concern about him was that he might be too young to be a professor. His story has become a recruitment highlight for my group."

Dr. Tsia graduated from our department in 2009.His research interests includes: silicon photonics for optical interconnect applications and microscopy for biomedical applications. Prof. Jalali recalls: While at UCLA, Kevin published several high quality papers on integration of energy harvesting in silicon photonics. In the final stretch of his thesis, he made a seminal contribution to the development of the STEAM camera, the world's fastest imager.

Dr. Shalabh Gupta graduated from our department in 2009. His research interests include: high-speed CMOS analog/RF/mm-wave integrated circuits and systems, and optical fiber communication systems and microwave photonics.
Prof. Bahram Jalali recalls: "Shalabh's industry experience and his creativity were the key to the success of a DARPA-funded consortium that was led by our group. His work resulted in many publications and praise from our government and industrial partners. He was a pleasure to work with."

Dr. Amarjeet Singh graduated from our department in 2009. His research interests include: using mobile phones for critical applications including healthcare, education and energy monitoring and low cost technologies for sustainable development. Prof. Bill Kaiser recalls: "the remarkable progress in Amarjeet's research combining embedded systems and wireless networking have enabled new mobile healthcare capabilities that also address worldwide, urgent needs."

Dr. Heemin Park graduated from our department in 2006. His research interests include: multimedia, sensor networks, ubiquitous and entertainment computing.
Prof. Mani Srivastava recalls: "In his thesis research, Heemin Park collaborated with researchers at UCLA's School of FIlm, Theater, and Television to develop distributed wireless sensor platforms and software systems for intelligent light control and sensor-augmented multimedia recording in theater and film production."

Thomas Schmid, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah(Advisor, Prof. Mani Srivastava)

Dr. Thomas Schmid graduated from our department in 2009. His research interests are wireless communication, sensor networks, routing strategies and embedded systems. Prof. Srivastava recalls: "Thomas Schmid's thesis research led to the development of novel algorithms and hardware mechanisms for ultra-low power, low-cost, high-accuracy and fine-resolution time synchronization and clocks in wireless embedded sensor networks in extreme ambient environments."

Dr. Hyunggon Park's research interests include: game theoretic approaches for distributed resource management and multi-user transmission over wireless/wired/peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Prof. Mihaela van der Schaar recalls: "Hyunggon was a very hard working, dedicated, focused student, who always knew that he wanted to join academia and worked hard to achieve this goal. He was always ready to teach and help others with their research and aimed at gathering international experience."

Dr. Songsiri graduated from our department in 2010. She was a recipient of the Royal Thai scholarship while studying at UCLA during 2005-2010. Her research interests include convex optimization in machine learning, signal processing, and control theory. Prof. Vandenberghe recalls: "Jitkomut's research has led to new algorithms for building graphical models of time series.

Dr. Yeung graduated from our department in 2010. His research interests are: multi-antenna systems, miniaturization techniques for RF/Microwave passive circuits, and computational electromagnetics. Prof. Ethan Wang recalls: "Lap is dedicated in innovative designs of miniaturized and integrated wireless communication front-ends. In particular, he demonstrated the first 4-antenna coupling free MIMO front-end in an area of 0.1 x 0.1 wavelength with the mode-based array concept developed in our Digital Microwave Lab."