florida international university
Department of
Electrical
& Computer Engineering
2014 - 2015
Review
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Community Engagement
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Student Success
Working with K-12 youngsters, faculty and students promote STEM studies while visitors to campus experience a world of innovation.
Whether collaborating in teams or working individually, engineering undergrads exemplify excellence.
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Research
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Educational Enhancement
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Faculty Research Interests
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Faculty News
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Graduate Student Achievement
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Faculty breakthroughs in brain-related and communications technology and work on solar energy have attracted international attention.
An NSA designation in cybersecurity and a universitywide partnership add educational value.
Professors in Electrical & Computer Engineering work in a wide variety of technical areas.
Several important recognitions of existing faculty and the hiring of three new ones reflect the department’s high-quality roster.
Master’s and doctoral students received financial support and recognition.
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A banner year The Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Florida International University continues to make unprecedented progress in research and innovation. The department was awarded a record high of nearly $12 million in sponsored research during the 2014-15 fiscal year. This has been a banner year for the department as we graduated 190 students with bachelor’s degrees, 59 with master’s degrees and six with doctoral degrees. Collaborative relationships with industry have continued to foster new opportunities for faculty and students. In one especially powerful example, made possible through the efforts of Professor Arif Sarwat, Florida Power & Light (FPL) designated FIU as its primary partner in solar energy research. The utility company signed an agreement to install a first-of-its-kind 1.5 megawatt solar research facility at the FIU Engineering Center. And Professor Stavros Georgakopoulos built upon an already existing partnership with ANSYS software to extend benefits across the entire university. Several faculty members and students have been recognized with honors this past year. Professors Ismail Guvenc, Arif Selcuk Uluagac and Shaolei Ren were recipients of National Science Foundation CAREER awards on ideas that received significant industry support. Professor Herman Watson received the Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching through the FIU Faculty Senate. Under the leadership of Professor Alexander Pons, FIU was also designated a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education by the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. January 2016 will also mark the graduation of the first cohort of the fully online M.S. in Computer Engineering: Network Security. Cohort sizes have continued to double.
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2014-2015 Review
Shekhar Bhansali, Ph.D. Alcatel-Lucent Professor and Chair Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Electrical & Computer Engineering
The growth and accomplishments of the department would be unimaginable without the unwavering support and dedication that our faculty, students, advisors, alumni and staff demonstrate on a daily basis across the university. I invite you to read about the accomplishments, work and activities taking place within the department and hope that you too will come to understand the value of what we do here.
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Community Engagement Feeding Future Cities The Future City Competition is a national program that annually encourages middle schoolers to work in teams to solve an engineering problem. For the thirteenth year in a row, FIU Professor Osama Mohammed of the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering hosted the South Florida regional contest. Students participated by taking on this year’s challenge: select one vegetable and one protein and design a way to grow enough of each within your city limits to feed your citizens.
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The power of an “educational village”
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Parents and teachers know that keeping students actively engaged in learning can be a challenge. And sometimes it takes the greater community to make that happen. In a perfect collaboration, a local elementary school, a nearby high school and FIU worked together on an exciting project. John Escobar, a parent who was teaching robotics and technology in an after-school club at David Lawrence Jr. K-8 Center, became intrigued by the idea of having the students build a satellite. He found a sponsor to cover the estimated $8,500 cost and then soon recognized that the complex project would require more expertise than the elementary students possessed. Enter the youngsters at Alonzo
and Tracy Mourning High School, who quickly got on board. With time it became clear that an even more sophisticated level of engineering would be needed, and Escobar approached FIU’s Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Chair Shekhar Bhansali and instructor Wilmer Arellano enthusiastically signed on, and the project eventually became the first in the United States in which the whole educational spectrum participated together to build and launch a satellite. After two years of electronic design and redesign, trials and successes with radio communication, image processing and programming, the project was completed and now awaits launching in late 2015. Once in space, the satellite, which looks like a coffee can and sports retractable measuring tapes on either side, will make an entire revolution around earth every 90 minutes and will be visible for about five minutes at every revolution. It will send back pictures, temperature readings and other data. “This project involved many areas of electrical and computer engineering, and it has the tight constraint that weight must not be greater than one pound,” Arellano explained. “The satellite includes tiny computers called microcontrollers, antennas, transmitters, receivers, modulators and demodulators. It will fly at an altitude of around one million feet with a speed of 17,500 miles per hour.” Back on earth, Arellano reflected on the true value and outcome of the work: “Where the students of these three institutions became really expert,” he said, “is at taking challenges and making them reality.”
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3Virtual reality: White House science advisors John Holdren and Phil Larson, center, met with, Professor Malek Adjouadi, left, and Provost Ken Furton.
High-Profile Visitors The Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering welcomed numerous visitors and guest speakers of note throughout the year. Among the impressive list were former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, co-chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, who spoke with students about career opportunities; White House science and technology advisor John Holdren, who visited the NSF-funded Center for Advanced Technology and Education; and former president of the Ohio State University, Karen Holbrook, who spoke about leadership.
Outside judges grade real-world projects
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2014-2015 Review
Opening doors, opening possibilities: Faculty and students within the College of Engineering & Computing, including those within the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, joined together for the annual Engineering Expo aimed at middle and high schoolers. The event showcases degree programs, student organizations and the Engineering Center’s well-appointed facilities to foster youngsters’ interest in STEM studies and encourage them to apply to FIU.
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Industry professionals came out for the most recent Senior Design Day, which had teams of students in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering showing off projects on which they had worked for months. Elicer Viamontes, a distribution operations manager for Florida Power & Light and two-time FIU alumnus, joined other from local organizations to evaluate the students’ work. “You can see the caliber of the students—very well prepared and very up-to-date with some of the modern
technological practices,” Viamontes said. “You can tell the engineers are more well-rounded than they were 10 years ago when I was in school.” The goal was to have students identify real needs and then work toward creative solutions that bring together their engineering and entrepreneurial skills in a way that prepares them to be successful in their careers. The experience gives them a taste of what the future holds and makes them all the more attractive to would-be employers. A total of 27 projects were displayed, among them a cabinet system that lowers to accommodate users in wheelchairs, a battery-operated skateboard that recharges as the rider moves along, a digital wallet with hightech security features and a robot programmed to work with autistic children. They are the culmination of two semesters of work, which included doing research, looking for industry support, considering legal and marketing aspects, recruiting a professor to serve as a mentor and, not least of all, designing and building the device.
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Student Success
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Sweat off the Stress Students within the Bio-MEMS research group are developing a test to detect in real-time a person’s level of cortisol – widely known as the stress hormone – which could help soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder and others who suffer from cortisol’s effects to manage the impact on their health. Led by Shekhar Bhansali, department chair and professor, the team first announced breakthroughs in their research in 2014. As part of the university’s first I-Corps program – a program funded by NSF that pushes to move basic-research projects beyond the lab – the students developed an application to measure stress levels by detecting cortisol in a person’s sweat or saliva. Since then, the research has evolved and now focuses on a pioneering method to establish cortisol levels using nano-enabled molecular imprinted polymers, which has never been done before. The new technology has shown promising results in terms of reliability and cost-effectiveness when compared to traditionally labor-intensive, laboratory-based analyses. Bhansali’s team is also looking into the possibility of using this new biosensor multiple times, a potential improvement over the current one-use-only sensor. Such multiple-use sensors could be integrated into wearable technology that could transform treatment by providing long-term, real-time data on a given patient. florida international university
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A force for success
Undergraduate Karina Quintana is a trailblazer in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. She has made it her mission to not only be successful, but to help everyone around her become successful too. In the fall of 2014, Quintana was awarded a scholarship from NASA Marshall Space Flight Center through the Great Minds in STEM program. She attended the annual Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Corporation Conference and was awarded an internship with Boeing on the spot. After returning to campus, Quintana started thinking of ways in which she could help her peers pursue similar opportunities. She subsequently took it upon herself to visit every Engineering Orientation class to educate her fellow students on applying for scholarships and internships. Positive feedback to her presentations motivated her to go a step further, and she founded RISE: Research, Internships and Scholarships in Engineering. “Our mission through RISE is to promote interaction between students and faculty from all engineering disciplines and to serve as a platform for industry collaboration, research ideas, internship opportunities and financial aid opportunities,” Quintana explained. Within its first semester of operation, the organization raised and granted $2,000 in academic scholarships, visited more than 1,500 students in grades K-12 through community outreach programs and hosted numerous professional development workshops and industry information sessions. Quintana’s efforts on behalf of others have been recognized with no fewer than three national awards in addition to one conferred by FIU. In 2015 she saw her studies on wireless power transfer published in the proceedings of an international conference. And following her internship with Boeing at the Naval Air Weapons Station in China Lake, California, where she was responsible for supporting systems engineers and software developers, she was offered a fulltime position effective upon completion of her degree in the spring of 2016.
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2014-2015 Review
Some looked like cartoon characters, some like utilitarian transport vehicles and others were not that easily identifiable. But all of the robots in the First Annual Robot Competition were the end result of hours of planning, testing and building by students enrolled in the introductory Engineering Orientation course. Organized by Wilmer Arellano, an instructor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, the competition was a way to engage the creativity of young engineers. Each team received a kit of components to build “autonomous navigation vehicles” that needed to complete a tour of a closed track in the fastest time possible. Gift cards of up to $500 and others prizes and giveaways boosted the stakes a bit. The robots were judged on accuracy, speed and aesthetics as well as a video that was scored for entertainment, creativity and execution. Forty teams demonstrated their homemade robots to a packed house that included FIU President Mark B. Rosenberg. “This room full of students represents the best and the brightest of tomorrow’s engineers,” he said. “I know that with the guidance of our outstanding faculty, our students’ projects will only continue to get better and better.”
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Students turn on creativity to develop robots for competition
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Research
Breakthrough technology holds potential for treating brain disorders
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Florida International University professor and his team in 2015 published news of a scientific breakthrough that could lead to the noninvasive treatment of Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. Researchers remotely manipulated the electric waves that naturally exist in the brains of mice, a feat that has far-reaching implications for medicine. The journal Nanomedicine is featuring the paper by Sakhrat Khizroev, a professor with dual appointments in the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and the College of Engineering & Computing. Using a previously reported FIU-patented technology, researchers began by intravenously administering magnetoelectric nanoparticles, or MENs, in mice. With a magnet placed over the head of each subject animal, the particles were pulled through the blood-brain barrier, where they “coupled” the externally created magnetic field with the brain’s intrinsic electric field. This enabled researchers to wirelessly connect their computers and electronics to neurons deep within the brain. The researchers then sent signals via computer to the MENs, which responded by modulating (or changing from low to high and back again) the frequency of the brain’s naturally occurring electric waves. The resulting pulses created “deep-brain stimulation” that has implications for treating Parkinson’s and other disorders. It stands in contrast to the existing method of deep-brain stimulation, which involves invasive surgery to implant an electrode in the brain and a battery-operated medical device elsewhere in the body.
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Worth noting, while the modulation was taking place, researchers had a view of the electrical activity within the brain. This feedback was sent from the MENs to a computer, allowing the researchers to confirm what was taking place.
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In a nod to the increasingly personalized nature of medicine, Khizroev believes that MENs could one day be programmed to accomplish any number of medically related procedures to treat various disorders, among them Alzheimer’s and autism. When properly targeted, the particles could, for example, be used to repair cells or destroy plaques. Khizroev also believes that MENs could potentially remain in place within the brain for extended periods to release drugs on a set schedule.
“This study is a critical stepping stone to opening a pathway to understanding the brain and treating many neurodegenerative disorders,” Khizroev says. “With this connection, we could see and repair, when necessary, all the electric circuitry deep in the brain.”
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Haiti partners with FIU on solar power The Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering recently partnered with Haiti Energie on an agreement to provide engineering design and plans for future projects. Since the earthquake disaster in 2010, only about 20 percent of the population has access to power, and a majority of Haiti’s electrical energy is coming from imported diesel fuel. To introduce new platforms of solar energy to the residents would radically reduce cost and diesel fuel emissions. The Energy Systems Research Lab at FIU, led by Professor Osama Mohammed, will play a major role in providing batteries, wiring, racking and other materials essential to a solar power energy system. This innovative collaboration will only strengthen Haiti Energie and further benefit the people of Haiti.
Says Haiti Energie President Ed Romain: “The technical support provided by the graduate students at the FIU Smart Grid Test Bed Research Lab will allow us to be even more efficient and reliable. It also enables us to build micro-scaled smart grids in different municipalities throughout Haiti, as well as provide solar systems for small and medium-size businesses such as hotels, schools and hospitals. With this agreement in place, we are gaining a reliable business partner for hassle-free installations.”
Campus solar research facility serves dual purposes Utility company Florida Power & Light and Florida International University have entered into a partnership to build a commercial-scale distributed solar power facility that will both generate electricity for FPL’s 4.8 million customers and serve as an innovative research operation.
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FIU students have already begun gathering information to be used in their research, including historical weather data and energy production and usage patterns. The research will take Florida’s unique weather conditions into consideration and help determine the types of technology that may be needed to ensure the grid’s reliability is not negatively affected by fluctuations in solar energy production due to clouds, thunderstorms and other variables.
2014-2015 Review
“Through this project, our engineering students will make a direct contribution to the growth of solar energy in our state, while gaining invaluable experience working side by side with professionals
When the sun is shining, the approximately 342,000square-foot solar array will provide electricity for FPL customers via the electric grid. Over the course of a year, the installation is expected to produce energy equivalent to the amount used by approximately 34,000 laptop computers. The canopy structures will also create about 600 shaded parking spaces.
Electrical & Computer Engineering
The project involves the installation of more than 5,700 solar panels on 23 canopy-like structures that will be built in the parking lot of the university’s Engineering Center. Using data from the 1.5-megawatt solar array, faculty and students within the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, under the direction of Professor Arif Sarwat, will study the effects of distributed solar photovoltaic generation on the electric grid in real-life South Florida conditions.
from one of the most forward-thinking utilities in the nation,” said FIU President Mark B. Rosenberg.
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Research
Origami antenna
research continues to unfold
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n one short year, the collaboration between FIU researcher Stavros Georgakopoulos and Georgia Tech University to develop unique antennas based on classic origami techniques has rapidly taken off.
Announced in January 2014 with a National Science Foundation grant, the work has evolved out of the pockets of soldiers, who use them in deserts and other areas outside of radio range, and potentially into space vehicles. Georgakopoulos shared the updates with his colleagues at the Second Annual Workshop on Origami Design for Integration of Self-Assembling Systems for Engineering Innovation, presented by FIU in January 2015. The two-day event gathered together origami-engineering experts from industry, government and academia, including Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology.
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“This is a great experience, and it’s a great collaboration,” said Col. Robert Kraus, who spoke at the event and is director for the Basic Research Division of the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, which cosponsored the event with the NSF. “To get this group of people together from all of the different funding agencies and universities, and to share ideas and collaborate results in this cross-pollination of ideas.”
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Origami is based on folding and unfolding. This is an important characteristic when thinking of the multifunctional uses of an antenna in space. For space travel in particular, an origami antenna will be able to solve the traditional launch-and-carry problem. “This gives us the ability to design reconfigurable antennas. Not only can we open one antenna, but once it is out in space, it can fold and unfold to reconfigure itself to change shape and function,” Georgakopoulos says. Instead of having a one-dimensional antenna, this version can dynamically change shape to serve different purposes. It is no longer just an antenna, but an entire radio frequency system that can fold and unfold. Georgakopoulos and his research team continue to collaborate with mathematicians and artists all over the world. They have just started to scratch the surface of origami design possibilities. By blending art and engineering, researchers are creating a new model of art and science.
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Educational Enhancement
PROTECTING OUR COUNTRY.
SECURING YOUR FUTURE
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he National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security have designated FIU a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education through the year 2019. This designation, pioneered by Professor Alexander Pons of the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, will help FIU meet the growing demand for professionals with network and cybersecurity expertise in various disciplines. “A universitywide designation gives us recognition on a national level that we have the academic infrastructure within various units to be a validated source for cybersecurity education,” Pons said.
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The designation will now allow FIU students and faculty to become eligible for more scholarships, grants and research opportunities with government agencies like the NSA. The Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering has made notable waves in cybersecurity over the past year by establishing three brand-new research and teaching labs.
Electrical & Computer Engineering
FIU offers both an undergraduate degree and a new master’s degree in cybersecurity. These programs focus on building expertise in national security information systems, commercial networks and critical information infrastructure in private and public sectors.
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Educational Enhancement
FIU adopts ANSYS engineering simulation solutions campuswide
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tudents at FIU now have access to the full suite of ANSYS multi-physics solutions, which will enable them to better prepare for engineering careers as they rely on the same software used by professionals around the world. University faculty will also be able to conduct research using the campuswide license. “ANSYS is the global leader in engineering simulation solutions. By using ANSYS software, our students have the opportunity to develop practical skills that are highly attractive to many employers,” said Stavros Georgakopoulos, a professor in FIU’s Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. “The opportunity to become proficient with software solutions identical to those they’ll encounter in the workplace can give our students a leg up on their peers at many so-called ‘elite’ schools. Additionally, more than 60 percent of FIU’s students are of Hispanic origin, so the use of ANSYS solutions will help to increase the diversity of individuals who pursue careers in engineering and the sciences.”
The new campuswide license expands a previous agreement and gives all FIU students access to ANSYS engineering simulation solutions for structures, fluids and electronics. Georgakopoulos had been using ANSYS software to pioneer the development of novel origami folding/unfolding antennas and RF systems that are expected to have significant impact on next generation spaceborne and airborne communication systems.
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Faculty and students have already found ANSYS solutions insightful in developing FIU’s Wall of Wind, an open-circuit, 12-fan wind tunnel that simulates conditions of Category 5 hurricanes. The wall tests the structural integrity of buildings and other objects that can be affected by high winds.
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Faculty Research Interests Malek Adjouadi, Ph.D. Center for Advanced Technology and Education (CATE) Lab Focus is on brain research with neuroscience applications and assistive technology research with a focus on visual impairment and motor disability Wilmer Arellano Areas of Interest: Robotics, Vehicle Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) and Swarm Intelligence Kemal Akkaya, Ph.D. Advanced Wireless and Security Networking (ADWISE) Research Lab Wireless and network security, privacy in cyber-physical systems, Internet of things and ad hoc networks Jean Andrian, Ph.D. Areas of Interest: Digital signal processing in communications, theory and application of wavelets to stochastic process and cognitive radio and SDR Ou Bai, Ph.D. Areas of Interest: Cyber-physical systems on robotic/prosthetic optimization/control, smart and connected health research on in home rehab, sensors and real-time sensing Armando Barreto, Ph.D. Digital Signal Processing (DSP) Lab Real-time implementation of digital processing algorithms in specialized DSP chips and the development of innovative DSP algorithms for the processing of specific signals Shekhar Bhansali, Ph.D., Department Chair Bio-MEMS & Microsystems Lab Application of micro/nanotechnology and engineering to address challenges in the area of biomedical sensors Amaury Caballero, Ph.D. Areas of Interest: Electrical communication, control systems and construction management Mercedes Cabrerizo, Ph.D. Center for Advanced Technology and Education (CATE) Lab Focus is on brain research with neuroscience applications and assistive technology research with a focus on visual impairment and motor disability
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Irene Calizo, Ph.D. Quantum Electronics Structures Technology (QuEST Lab) Nanoelectronic materials and devices
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Hai Deng, Ph.D. Areas of Interest: Radar sensor networks, MIMO radar, RFID, adaptive signal processing, biomedical signal processing, computational electromagnetics and VLSI design Stavros Georgakopoulos, Ph.D. ElectroMagnetics Lab (EMLab) Wireless power transfer, novel antennas, wearable antennas, antenna mutual coupling analysis, RFID, reconfigurable and miniaturized antennas Ismail Guvenc, Ph.D. Mobile, Pervasive, and Autonomous Communication Technologies (MPACT) Lab 3GPP LTE and beyond, indoor wireless localization and public safety communications Ahmed Ibrahim, Ph.D. Areas of Interest: LTE small cells, LTE/Wi-Fi integrated small cells, cooperative communications, millimeter wave, D2D & massive MIMO, cognitive radio networks, M2M, video over wireless Sakhrat Khizroev, Ph.D. Center for Personalized NanoMedicine (CPNM) Multi-functional nanoparticles to enable personalized nanomedicine Grover Larkins, Ph.D. Future Aerospace Science and Technology Center for Space Cryoelectronics R&D of cryogenic communications systems intended for space-based applications florida international university
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Osama Mohammed, Ph.D. Energy Systems Research Lab Research aimed at solving the smart grid operation and its communication puzzle for the utility industry and customer-based systems Antoin Nahas, Ph.D. Areas of Interest: Undergraduate education Nezih Pala, Ph.D. Integrated Nanosystems Research (INSYST) Lab Terahertz science and technologies, integrated nanostructures for energy harvesting and storage, integrated biosensors and free optical communication Alexander Pons, Ph.D. Cybersecurity Lab Addresses challenges associated with cybersecurity in the form of vulnerability assessment, digital forensics, malware analysis to support research and education in solving security challenges Gang Quan, Ph.D. Advanced Real-Time and Computing Systems (ARC) Lab Real-time computing systems, power/thermal-aware design, electronic design automation, advanced computing architecture and reconfigurable computing Gustavo Roig, Ph.D. Areas of Interest: Primary interest is within undergraduate education; currently coordinating the use of NI myDAQ in Circuit Analysis and Electronics I and II Arif I. Sarwat, Ph.D. Energy, Power, & Sustainability (EPS) Lab Addresses challenges in energy, power, environment and policymaking; design and development of inventive solutions to train the next generation of professionals Atoussa Hosseini Tehrani, Ph.D., PE Areas of Interest: Computer architecture, embedded systems hardware and software design, data communications and computer networks A. Selcuk Uluagac, Ph.D. Cyber-Physical Systems Security Lab (CSL) Security for cyber-physical systems, Internet of things, security for critical infrastructure networks, wireless and mobile device security, big data structure
Yuri Vlasov, Ph.D. Areas of Interest: Experimental research in solid state physics, nanotechnology, MEMS and sensors Herman Watson, Ph.D. Areas of Interest: Embedded systems, C++ and STL, ARM, wxWidgets, and biomedical sensors, applications and systems Wujie Wen, Ph.D. Areas of Interest: Robust design of emerging nonvolatile memories (eNVMs), low-power circuit and computer architecture, and bio-inspired computing
Kang Yen, Ph.D. Professor/MS Program Director Director of International Program Development
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Subbarao Wuunnava, Ph.D. Graduate and undergraduate education
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Frank Urban, Ph.D. Areas of Interest: Graduate and undergraduate education
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Faculty Awards NSF Early Career Three faculty within the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering in 2015 received Faculty Early Career Development Awards from the National Science Foundation. Each received funding in support of promising projects. Ismail Guvenc will focus on research in the area of broadband and unmanned aerial vehicle-assisted heterogeneous networks for public safety communications; Shaolei Ren, whose research focuses on cloud computing and data center resource management, will work on making colocation data centers greener; and A. Selcuk Uluagac will focus on work related to his specialty in security and networking. Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Ismail Guvenc, director of the Mobile Pervasive and Autonomous Communication Technologies Research Lab, received a 2014 Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award for his research proposal “Toward Next Generation Public Safety Communications.” He was one of 35 awardees chosen from a competitive pool of 134 applicants. The peer review evaluation and selection process is rigorous and involves outstanding scientists from across the nation. Excellence in Teaching Herman Watson received a 2014 FIU Faculty Senate Award for Excellence in Teaching. He was nominated by his peers for his performance as an undergraduate lecturer and program director and, especially, for his leadership and involvement with senior design teams.
New Faculty Professor Ou Bai received his Ph.D. in 2000 from Saga University in Japan and his BA from Tsinghua University in Beijing in 1991. He was recently awarded $901,925 from the National Science Foundation for his project “CPS: Synergy: Sensor Network-Based Lower-Limb Prosthetic Optimization and Control.” This project will design wearable body sensor systems for real-time measurement of amputees’ energy expenditure and will develop computer algorithms for automatic lower-limb prosthesis optimization. He is also interested in smart and connected health research on in-home exercise/rehabilitation, monitoring cybersecurity and privacy in cyber-physical systems sensors, real-time sensor signal processing and recognition multivariate signal processing, detection and classification.
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Professor Ahmed Ibrahim received his master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Maryland and his bachelor’s degree and an earlier master’s degree in electronics and communications from Cairo University in Egypt. His areas of expertise include wireless communications and networking with emphasis on the fifth generation of wireless systems (5G) and the Internet of Things.
Professor Wujie Wen received his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 2015, his master’s degree from Tsinghua University in Beijing in 2010 and his bachelor’s degree from Beijing Jiaotong University. His current research interests include circuit/computer architecture design of emerging nonvolatile memories, electronic design automation, energy-harvest/neuromorphic computing and hardware security. He has held various engineering positions with Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Broadcom Inc. Professor Wen is the recipient of the prestigious 49th Design Automation Conference A. Richard Newton Graduate Scholarship. He also received the bronze medal of the 2014 ACM Special Interest Group on Design Automation in a student research competition, the 2014 DAC best paper candidate nomination and the 2015 DAC Ph.D. Forum best poster presentation award.
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Graduate Student Achievement Ahmed Elsayed
IEEE PES 2014 Conference Travel Support
Ahmed Mohamed
IEEE IECON 2014 Conference Outstanding Poster Paper Presentation Award & Travel Support Scholarship in Dallas, TX
Arash Ahmadivand
1. SPIE Optics and Photonics Education Scholarship 2. UGS Conference Attendance Support 3. Conference presentation MRS Spring 2015 Meeting 4. Chapter publication expected in Summer 2015 on “Plasmonic Photodetectors” to be published in “Photodetectors: materials, devices, applications.” Chowdhury Al-Amin
1. UGS Conference Attendance Support 2. FIU Dissertation Year Fellowship Award 3. Conference presentation at SPIE DSS 2015 - Defense, Security and Sensing in Baltimore, MD
Christopher Lashway
1. IEEE PES 2014 Conference Travel Support 2. Energy Storage Association Scholarship to participate in the 2015 ESA Annual Conference and Expo Hoda Rajaei
2015 Scholarly forum in Engineering I, category Oral presentations
Imtiaz Parves
FIU President’s Scholar Fellowship recipient
Kelly Mesa
National Science Foundation I-Corps fellowship recipient
Mehmet Hazar Cintuglu IEEE PES 2014 Conference Travel Support Mohammed Islam
2014 FIU ECE Best Teaching Assistant Award
Mustafa Karabiyik
Journal Publication in Nature, Scientific Reports, “Tunable Room Temperature THz Sources Based On Nonlinear Mixing in a Hybrid Optical and THz Micro-Ring Resonator”, Scientific Reports 5, Article number: 9422
Saman Sargolzaei
1. 2015 Scholarly forum in Engineering I, category Oral presentations 2. 2014 recipient of the FIU Perry Graduate Scholarship 3. FIU Graduate Student Leadership Award, Outstanding Student Life Award
Shi Sha
2015 Scholarly forum in Engineering I, category Oral presentations
Tan Ma
2014 Best Research Assistant Award
Tarek Youssef
FIU Scholar Award, Outstanding Student Life Award
Xiaokun Yang
Best Ph.D. Forum Paper of the IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI
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Raju Sinha
Electrical & Computer Engineering
1. FIU Doctoral Evidence Acquisition (DEA) Fellowship, Spring 2015 2. Chapter publication expected in Summer 2015 on “Plasmonic Photodetectors” to be published in “Photodetectors: materials, devices, applications.” 3. Chapter publication expected in Summer 2015 on “Terahertz (THz) detectors” to be published in “Photodetectors: materials, devices, applications.”
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Throughout their time at FIU, students in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering participate in hands-on projects and learn the value of collaboration. Coupled with their classroom training, such experiences provide a solid foundation on which to build successful careers. Our alumni go on to work at leading companies throughout the country and abroad. Here is a selected list of organizations that hire our graduates:
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Boeing CarePredict, Inc. Chrysler DOCOMO Innovations Florida Power & Light General Electric Johnson & Johnson Lockheed Martin Lutron Electronics NASA National Security Agency Naval Air Systems Command Aircraft Division (NAVAIR) NAVSEA Ryder SMC Corp State Farm Ultimate Software
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Florida International University 10555 W Flagler Street MIAMI, Fl 33174 Phone: 305-348-2807
ece.fiu.edu
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