Our department continues to grow in new and exciting directions and this year’s theme reflects that growth with its sections.
GROWING INTO NEW SPACES: Our cover features Ethan Ahn and sophomore undergraduate Virginia Nardelli in the new Nanofabrication Facility (NFF) at our SciTech Campus in Manassas. Ethan has been involved in the development of this facility including the clean room, which he used in the spring 2024 semester to teach his new graduate course Nanoelectronics. The Mason Autonomous Robotics Center (MARC), the newest research center within the college, had its official grand opening in April. Located in a newly renovated space in Research Hall, the MARC involves faculty from across several departments including ECE faculty members: Cameron Nowzari Filipe Veiga, Xuan Wang, and Ningshi Yao Fittingly, MARC director Missy Cummings has a joint faculty appointment Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Mechanical Engineering, and Computer Science. At the Mason Square Campus in Arlington, Liling Huang has been developing a new Smart Grid lab for research and teaching with the help of equipment donations from Amazon and Dominion Energy.
GROWING INTO BIG PROJECTS captures recent achievements of our ECE faculty including Maryam Parsa’s NSF project on the development of a 3D chip that mimics the cognitive functions of the human hippocampus, Kai Zeng’s project on Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) testing funded by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and Piotr Pachowicz’s new NASA Landholt Mission project. In this section, you will also find a profile of Jill Nelson who began her new role as the College of Engineering and Computing (CEC) Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies in fall 2023.
Our final section, FOSTERING STUDENT GROWTH highlights recent achievements of some of our students and alumni. This section also includes an article on an ongoing project focused on inclusive teaching of core ECE undergraduate courses.
The past year has also been a time of transition. At the end of spring 2024, Yariv Ephraim, Qiliang Li, and Andre Manitius retired and transitioned to emeritus status. Xiang Chen returned to his home country of China, joining Peking University as a faculty member. Qiliang Li will also be returning to China and joining Peking University in fall 2024. Each of them has made outstanding and lasting contributions to ECE. We wish them all the best in their future endeavors and hope they stay connected to ECE.
Prior to the fall 2023 semester, Monson Hayes stepped down as the ECE chair after nine productive years in this role. He remains an active ECE faculty member, having developed and taught a new undergraduate course ECE 427 Introduction to Machine Learning and AI in spring 2024. In the meantime, I have had the honor and privilege to serve as the interim ECE chair. A search for the next ECE chair begins in fall 2024.
I invite you to learn more about what’s been happening in ECE within the pages of this report.
Sincerely,
Brian Mark, Phd Professor and Interim Chair
Research Grants
Our faculty research continues its forward momentum with total expenditures in 2022 exceeding $4M and 36 awards of greater than $100K, sponsored by federal agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF), DARPA, Office of Naval Research, Army Research Office, Air Force Research Laboratory, and private industry such as Intel Corporation. This research positions ECE as a valuable contributor to overall growth in research and development at the college and university levels.
Xiang Chen NSF
NSF/MLWiNS: Deep Learning
Xiang Chen Duke University Duke/AFRL/machine learning
Xiang Chen NSF
Robert James Elder National Security Innovations (NSI), Inc.
Robert James Elder U.S. Department of the Air Force (U.S.AF)
Krzysztof M. Gaj National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST)
Krzysztof M. Gaj NSF
Bijan Jabbari NSF
Weiwen Jiang NSF
Weiwen Jiang NSF
Jens-Peter Erich Kaps NIST
Khaled Khasawneh NSF
Khasawneh Khaled NSF
NSF/CAREER: AI Liquid Intelligence
NSI/DoD-SMA: Strategic Outcomes
AFRL/CL/MADD/NC3-JADC2
NIST/Post-Quantum Cryptography
NSF/Post-Quantum Crypto Algorithms
$499,999
$130,000
$224,542
$397,832
$322,999
$500,000
$450,000
NSF/Collab.Res: IRNC: Testbed: Bridges $2,036,291
NSF/CyberTraining/Quantum Systems
NSF/Coll Res/NISQ-era Devices
NIST/Light Crypto in Hardware
$300,000
$330,000
$499,970
NSF/CollabRes: SaTC: CORE: Med:Infrast $616,000
NSF/Coll Res: Accelerator Design $195,362
Khasawneh Khaled Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority VIPA/VT/NextG Cryptography $100,000
SecureTextingin5G $750,000
Kai Zeng U.S. Department of the Navy Navy/Wave Communications $1,000,000
Pelin Kurtay Trenchant Analytics, U.S. CDAO AI Scholars Program $150,000
Qiliang Li N5 Sensors Inc N5/NASA/Hybrid Gas Sensors $250,000
Brian L. Mark NSF
NSF/CCSS: Wireless Networking
Brian L. Mark Kryptowire LLC KLLC/DARPA/IoT Cryptography
Cameron Nowzari U.S. Department of the Navy ONR/LTA Swarm System
Cameron Nowzari Office of Naval Research ONR/AVIARE
Bernd-Peter Paris NSF
Bernd-Peter Paris Arizona State University
$241,361
$751,667
Cameron Nowzari U.S. Department of the Navy ONR/The Cycle of Emergence $510,000
Maryam Parsa NSF
$100,000
NSF/Collab: SWIFT: LARGE: AIR SynCD $220,000
ASU/DARPA/DR-DASH PROWESS $100,000
Maryam Parsa University of Michigan UMICH/ARMY: ARC $126,000
Nathalia L. Peixoto Rhein Tech Laboratories Inc. RheinTech/USAF/IMLDS $224,770
Sai Manoj Pudukotai Dinakarrao NSF
Sai Manoj Pudukotai Dinakarrao NSF
Sai Manoj Pudukotai Dinakarrao Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority VRIF/NoVANodeFY22: VehicularNetworks $125,000
NSF/Collab: EAGER: IC-Cloak: RevEng $140,976
Sai Manoj Pudukotai Dinakarrao Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority VIPA/VT: Hub: Cyber Sentinel $100,000 $1,352,742
NSF/CNS Core: Small: NV-RGRA: Non $325,261
Kai Zeng U.S. Department of the Army U.S. Army/mmWave Testbed $250,000 NSF
NSF/CollabRes: SaTC: CORE: Med:SECURIS $268,300 Michigan State University MSU/U.S. DOC/5G Radio Access Networks $700,000
Nanofabrication Facility Offers New Learning Opportunities
George Mason University officials, faculty, regional economic leaders, government, and business partners gathered at SciTech Campus on May 3, 2024, to cut the ribbon on the new $3.75 million NFF.
Vice President for Research, Innovation, and Economic Impact, Andre Marshall welcomed guests. President Gregory Washington and other special guests followed. After the ribbon cutting, attendees enjoyed a first-hand look at the new state-of-the-art space.
The NFF is the only cleanroom facility and resource for partners in Northern Virginia. It offers handson nanofabrication workforce training in research applications that will accelerate the growth of hightech companies.
Newly appointed Virginia Microelectronics Consortium Professor and ECE faculty member, Ethan Ahn, sees the new facility as a perfect opportunity to give students the chance to receive
“The NFF will play an important role in education and research, which is integral to securing the supply chain, bringing greater transparency to the microelectronics ecosystem, training tomorrow’s leaders, and ensuring our long-term national security.”
hands-on experience. Ahn taught George Mason’s first-ever Nanoelectronics Fundamentals course during the spring 2024 semester.
Tannia Telento, Regional Director for U.S. Senator Mark Warner’s Office offered remarks from the Senator. In the remarks, Senator Warner said, “The NFF will play an important role in education and research, which is integral to securing the supply chain, bringing greater transparency to the microelectronics ecosystem, training tomorrow’s leaders, and ensuring our long-term national security. I am excited to see the advancements that will come from the establishment of this facility right here in Virginia. The NFF will serve as a core laboratory for innovative research and development on the microand nano-scale.
Faculty from the CEC and the College of Science have already taught classes in the facility. This summer the facility will host camps, and in the fall workforce training will begin.
Industry executives, campus leaders, faculty, donors, and alumni attended the official opening of the CEC’s Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center (MARC), but the star of the show was a Boston Dynamics quadruped. As the bright yellow doglike robot held one end of the green ribbon, George Mason President Gregory Washington, MARC co-directors Professors Missy Cummings and Jesse Kirkpatrick cut the ribbon. Afterward, the quadruped roamed the event, opening doors for attendees and demonstrating its capabilities.
The event showcased Mason’s strength in important, emerging fields. In his welcoming remarks, Dean Ken Ball said, “MARC is the focal point for our research in autonomy, robotics, and AI. Mason truly is a pacesetter in these areas.”
Attendees explored the new facility in Mason’s Research Hall on the Fairfax Campus. The space includes a 1,649-square-foot, two-story aviary for testing drones, areas for lab experiments, faculty offices, collaboration and study areas, and a student lounge.
“People don’t want autonomy to do their creative jobs,” she said. “They want to do their art, they want to write their stories what they want is the robot maid.”
New Center Focuses on Autonomy, Robotics, and Responsible AI
During her remarks, Cummings addressed the evolving role of robots in society. “People don’t want autonomy to do their creative jobs,” she said. “They want to do their art, they want to write their stories... what they want is the robot maid. Once we hit world peak population in 55 years, we won’t have enough people to do the jobs we need. The dull, dirty, dangerous jobs are a great place for robots.”
“We do autonomy, we do robotics, we do AI...but we do it responsibly and that’s in our core,” said Kirkpatrick. “It’s in our principles, policies, practice, and people. It’s across the research enterprise, and it’s in our teaching. The leaders of today, tomorrow, and the day after have to get this right because it’s so absolutely critical.”
“Not just for engineering, MARC will be used by numerous colleges and departments across the university for many multidisciplinary projects. This is a collaborative space for our students to work,” said Ball. “And it’s really important they have the opportunity to work in close proximity to our faculty.”
A Current of Research Runs Through Smart Grid Lab
The lab continued to expand, with a RealTime Digital Simulator (RTDS) in place and staff trained in its use. By the end of July, the lab was equipped with a heat exchange module; a digital fault recorder; two server racks; and six workstations, allowing users to drill down on data related to wind, solar, microgrids, highvoltage direct currents, and pump storage. The lab is generously supported by Dominion Energy and Amazon Web Services.
The lab is being used for teaching and research and hosts events and demonstrations, including one for the university’s President’s Innovative Advisory Committee. In April, the Schar School of Policy and Government cohosted the National Capital Area Chapter of the United States Association for Energy Economics North American Conference. The daylong seminar’s theme was, “Ensuring Reliability: The Right Energy in the Right Places at the Right Times.” Liling Huang, who directs the lab and is an associate professor in ECE and Dominion Energy Faculty Fellow, presented on the lab’s ability to enable students and researchers to conduct various hands-on experiments, work with hardware-in-theLoop (HIL) simulations, and analyze simulation data related to power and energy systems.
In summer 2024, the lab hosted a weeklong summer camp titled, “Exploring Renewable Energy Engineering.” Rising high school sophomores and juniors learned about renewable energy technologies, ideally sparking an interest for environmental stewardship and engineering excellence.
In summer 2024, the lab hosted a week-long summer camp titled, “Exploring Renewable Energy Engineering.” Rising high school sophomores and juniors learned about renewable energy technologies, ideally sparking an interest for environmental stewardship and engineering excellence. Amazon Web Services provided funding for the camp.
The hippocampus stores memories and makes connections between them, recognizing trends and helping the brain to learn and adapt to its environment.
One professor has joined a cross-university, interdisciplinary team to create a chip that can do the same.
Maryam Parsa an assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering, is one of the four principal investigators on a three-year, $2.4 million project funded by the NSF to create chips that processes information like the hippocampus.
The project, DEJA-VU, involves four principal investigators: Maryam Parsa from George Mason, Akhilesh Jaiswal from the University of Wisconsin, Madison (project PI), Babak Shahbaba, and Norbert Fortin both from the University of
“The project has potential disruptive applications in the field of robotics and autonomous systems spanning industrial, consumer and defense sectors,”
Maryam Parsa Joins Three-Year, $2.4 Million 3D Chip Creation Project
California, Irvine. Each collaborator will contribute their special skills to create 3D Solid-State Learning Machines for Various Cognitive Use-Cases. The project will model and quantify key information processing steps in the hippocampus. These key hippocampal functions will then be embedded on to solid-state computing chips through state-of-the-art hardware design techniques. A hippocampal-aware, hardware-aware algorithmic framework will augment the chip design efforts to enable online learning and decision-making in resource constrained environments.
“The project has potential disruptive applications in the field of robotics and autonomous systems spanning industrial, consumer and defense sectors,” said Parsa. She added, “The transformative potential of the project emerges from research conducted at three different levels of abstractions of neuroscience, hardware, and algorithm.”
Parsa’s portion of the project is $550,000 for the development of the hippocampal-aware, hardwareaware learning algorithm.
Two CEC faculty members are part of a project awarded $1.7 million by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund.
Kai Zeng, a professor in the electrical and computer engineering department, and Vijay K. Shah, an assistant professor in the cyber security engineering department, are part of a team led by researchers from Michigan State University to test O-RAN components using AI.
Zeng, Shah, and their colleagues will use AI to guide the process of running hundreds of millions of test cases within complex O-RAN systems.
“We can accelerate the testing process and make it automatic [with AI],” said Zeng.
The team’s testing includes three objectives: test for whether the O-RAN is secure, test the O-RAN’s performance (i.e., its capacity for users in different app environments), and, finally, test for interoperability when a system passes these myriad tests.
Inherently interoperable, O-RAN architecture is designed to comprise open and standardized interfaces for disaggregated RAN functions to lower the barrier for different vendors and third-party software developers to contribute to RAN innovation.
Multidisciplinary Team Earns $1.7 Million NTIA Wireless Innovation Fund Project
Zeng’s 5G/NextG wireless expertise and Shah’s O-RAN research and development work in the NextG Wireless Lab@George Mason University positioned the pair perfectly to join this project. The project grew from Zeng’s working relationship with Michigan State and AT&T researchers, with whom he completed an earlier project funded jointly by the NSF and the Department of Defense’s Securely Operating Through 5G Infrastructure program. That project developed a product called WindTexter based on generative AI. Shah’s O-RAN work began late in 2020 with seed funding from the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative xG Testbed. He went on to secure a separate NSF grant, Open AI Cellular, which resulted in the development of a novel AI-driven controller to automatically control or configure O-RAN system parameters.
If the project goes well, Zeng said, the research team would like to see their hardware and software tools guide private industry in purchasing, testing, and, ultimately, adopting O-RAN.
Optimizing Teaching and Learning
Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs Jill Nelson sees her role through the lens of mathematics and likens it to an optimization challenge. In the simplest terms, optimization is making a process or system as fully perfect, and effective as possible––she wants to optimize undergraduate programs and student experiences.
Nelson became associate dean at the CEC in the summer of 2023 after a career teaching and researching in the ECE department and a threeyear stint as a program director in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the NSF.
“The job at NSF exactly aligned with what I do now,” she said. As a program lead for NSF’s Improving Undergrad STEM Education (IUSE) Program, she and her team explored everything from how students learn math in a way that can be applied to engineering, to questions about how to increase the number of students from different backgrounds, and the look of the cohort process.
Her work with IUSE also focused on institutional and community transformation. “Organizational change was fascinating to me because we don’t learn this. None of us (in STEM) study this unless we move to it later. The Division of Undergraduate Education at NSF brought in colleagues in psychology and the social sciences who have different ways of thinking about student learning,” she said.
As she managed and followed ideas, proposals, and then projects at NSF, she discovered similarities to following students, courses, and accreditation at CEC. “You ask what’s the guidance you can give along the way what do you do to assess success, how do you make this process as painless as possible,” she said. “I’m sure that both students and NSF PIs wouldn’t say that it’s painless, but in both cases, we try to have accountability. Obviously, students are different than projects, but they are going through a pathway, and we try to help them.”
At George Mason, she says policy lives in the catalog where she looks for answers to policy questions. When she needs clarification on policies, she works with legal and the provost’s office to provide guidance. These gray areas interest her. “It’s an optimization and I like to optimize. With policy appeals the like, they can’t lay out every use case, so we have to look at how we can improve and how to best think about what’s going to happen moving forward,” she said.
As she moves forward, Nelson will be working on the ABET accreditation self-study and site visit for CEC engineering programs and much more. “The self-study is an opportunity to see how different departments approach their structure and their assessment. Through detailed reading and editing, I might find that different approaches between departments could lead to improvement throughout the entire college, and that’s exciting.”
George Mason will be the home of the $19.5 million recently approved Landolt NASA Space Mission that will put an artificial “star” in orbit around the Earth. This artificial star will allow scientists to calibrate telescopes and more accurately measure the brightness of stars ranging from those nearby to the distant explosions of supernova in far-off galaxies. By establishing absolute flux calibration, the mission will begin to address several open challenges in astrophysics including the speed and acceleration of the universe’s expansion.
George Mason faculty and students from the College of Science and CEC will work together with NASA and NIST and nine other organizations for a first-ofits-kind project for a university in the Washington, D.C., area. Piotr Pachowicz associate professor in ECE said, “This is an incredibly exciting opportunity for George Mason and our students. Our team will
“This is what is considered an infrastructure mission for NASA, supporting the science in a way that we’ve known we needed to do, but with a transformative change in how we do it.”
Space Mission Seeks to Uncover the Secrets of Dark Energy
design, build, and integrate the payload, which— because it’s going very high into geostationary orbit—must handle incredible challenges.”
Scientists know the universe is expanding, which is measured by calculating the brightness of numerous stars and by the number of photons-per-second they emit. According to Landolt Mission Primary Investigator Peter Plavchan, an associate professor of physics and astronomy in the College of Science, more accurate measurements are needed for the next breakthroughs.
Named for late astronomer Arlo Landolt, who assembled widely used catalogs of stellar brightness, this mission will launch a light source into the sky in 2029 with a known emission rate of photons, and the team will observe it next to real stars to make new stellar brightness catalogs. The satellite (artificial star) will have eight lasers shining at ground optical telescopes in order to calibrate them for observations. The effort will not make the artificial stars so bright to see with the naked eye, but one can see it with own personal telescope at home.
The artificial star will orbit earth 22,236 miles up, far enough away to look like a star to telescopes back on Earth. This orbit also allows it to move at the same speed of the Earth’s rotation, keeping it in place over the United States during its first year in space. “This is what is considered an infrastructure mission for NASA, supporting the science in a way that we’ve known we needed to do, but with a transformative change in how we do it,” Plavchan explained.
The payload, which is the size of a bread box, will be built in partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a world leader in measuring photon emissions. “This calibration under known laser wavelength and power will remove effects of atmosphere filtration of light and allow scientists to significantly improve measurements,” explained Pachowicz, who is leading this component of the mission.
The team also includes Blue Canyon Technologies; California Institute of Technology; Lawrence Berkeley National Lab; Mississippi State University; Montreal Planetarium and iREx/University of Montreal; the University of Florida; the University of Hawaii; the University of Minnesota, Duluth; and the University of Victoria.
Faculty Achievements 2023-24
A new endowment, established by Dominion Energy, named ECE Associate Professor Liling Huang the Dominion Energy Faculty Fellow in Power and Energy Engineering. The Dominion Energy Faculty Fellow endowment is a first for ECE and recognizes the strong relationship that Liling has established with Dominion Energy and her leadership and efforts in building the power engineering program within ECE, including the power engineering concentrations in the BS EE, BS CpE and MS EE programs and the Smart Grid and Renewable Energy Labs.
Gerry Tian was elected Editorin-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, the premier journal in the broad area of signal processing. Her new role as EiC began January 1. 2024
This is a tremendous achievement for Gerry, which recognizes her outstanding record as a researcher, contributor, and leader within the IEEE Signal Processing Society. Gerry’s position as EiC will bring greater recognition and visibility not only to her, but also to the ECE department, the CEC, and George Mason.
Bijan Jabbari was elected Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Communications and Networks (JCN)! Bijan’s appointment to this role was effective January 1, 2024. This is a great recognition for Bijan within the communications and networks research community and reflects very positively on ECE and George Mason.
Kathleen Wage was awarded the Rossing Prize in Acoustics Education from the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) acousticalsociety.org. The award recognizes “an individual who has made significant contributions toward furthering acoustics education through distinguished teaching, creation of educational materials, textbook writing, and other activities.” John Buck (ASA Fellow and chancellor professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth) cited Wage’s “exceptional classroom instruction, championing active learning, pioneering assessments and videos, and mentoring the next generation in acoustic signal processing” in his nominating letter.
Monson Hayes was the general co-chair of the ICASSP conference held in Seoul, South Korea. ICASSP is the world’s largest and most comprehensive technical conference focused on signal processing and its applications. It offers a comprehensive technical program presenting all the latest developments in research and technology in the industry that attracts thousands of professionals annually.
Maryam Parsa is helping to organize the International Conference on Neuromorphic Systems (ICONS) as Program Co-Chair. This will be held at Mason Square Arlington campus from July 30 – August 2, 2024. ICONS is one of only two conferences on neuromorphic computing held annually in the U.S.
For 2023, DCCEAS honored Kafi Hassan as the recipient of the “Engineer of the Year Award”. Kafi, a Principal Technology Development Strategist at the Advanced and Emerging Technologies at T-Mobile USA, and an adjunct professor in the ECE department was recognized for his achievements in industry, academia, and professional services to the community. north-virginia.chapters.comsoc.org/news
Two department faculty earned honors at the CEC Dean’s Faculty Awards reception. They were:
Excellence in Teaching: Liling Huang
Excellence in Service or Outreach: Alok Berry
Agroup of electrical and computer engineering faculty spent the spring 2024 semester discussing inclusive teaching strategies and applying them in two foundational courses: Introduction to ECE taught by Cameron Nowzari and Introduction to Signals and Systems taught by Kathleen Wage and Jill Nelson. In addition to these instructors, the team included Khaled Khasawneh Craig Lorie, Peter Paris and Smriti Patwardhan. They won an Inclusive Excellence in Teaching Mini-Grant from George Mason’s Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning for their proposal, “Volts, Wires, and Waves: Charging Up, Building Connections, and Breaking Through”. The group met weekly throughout the semester to brainstorm ideas and share what worked and what didn’t work in the classroom.
Inspired by Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom by Kelly Hogan and Viji Sathy, Wage wanted to try new approaches aimed at providing all students with the strong foundation they need to succeed in ECE programs. “That book sparked the idea in me, and I was looking for a group to work with on it. Luckily, I found a fun group of colleagues who were willing to try new teaching methods,” Wage said. The team experimented with new in-class exercises and several different approaches for assessing student learning, including daily online quizzes and iclicker classroom response systems.
“There’s been a lot of focus on metacognition,” said Nelson. For example, the team has prompted students to think about their optimal learning approach.
Department Faculty Team Incorporates Inclusive Teaching Practices
Nowzari explained to his class why they were practicing these new methods of learning, which helped get students to buy into the effort. Students seem to have responded well to the team’s strategies thus far and realize that there are a lot of different ways to learn.
Nowzari added that he encourages his students to take control of their own learning, “I’ve stressed this a lot in my classes: They’re going to have better professors than I am. They’re going to have worse professors than I am. And if the professor affects their learning, that’s not in the position they want to be in. So, ideally, they will be able to find a way to have control over their own learning, regardless of the figurehead at the front of the room.”
Wage added that some of their inclusive teaching practices have aided the team in identifying ways to handle students coming to class with varying levels of preparation from high school, as well as ways to convey best practices to students who are part of the first generation of their family to attend college.
Though the microgrant ended this semester, they plan to continue their efforts next year. The group hopes that these initial efforts will help to develop the department’s strategic plan for broadening participation in computing and engineering.
Their next step is comparing data on student success from prior offerings of ECE 101 and 201 to data from this spring 2024.
“Ideally, we’d like to give students a strong foundation, so more of them can succeed in the higher-level courses,” said Wage.
Upneet Singh Pays it Forward with VEX Robotics
Recent graduate in electrical and computer engineering Upneet Singh is dedicated to bringing practical engineering experiences to students in elementary and high school.
Singh, who is continuing to earn a Master’s degree via his department’s Bachelor’s to Accelerated Master’s (BAM) program, got his own start in engineering by participating in VEX Robotics competitions in middle school. Despite his high school not offering VEX Robotics, Singh took the initiative to start his own team, continuing his participation throughout high school. Now, he participates in VEX Robotics as a mentor and volunteer.
“I am who I am today because of VEX Robotics. I did it for seven years of my life, and it took me from knowing nothing about technology to knowing everything that I know today,” said Singh. “So I love trying to give back to it.”
At the 2024 VEX Robotics Championship for the Commonwealth of Virginia, Singh coordinated with one of his mentors, Associate Professor
Tolga Soyata, to present two hands-on demonstrations of electrical and computer engineering concepts to attendees.
“We showed off last semester’s senior design project winner and one of Professor Soyata’s personal projects to engage and interest students in continuing STEM beyond high school,” said Singh. The senior design project was a self-balancing robot, which amazed students with its ability to stabilize itself after being pushed. The other project involved a computer-vision application for playing rockpaper-scissors.
“We wanted to pick projects that the students could really touch and get a feel for,” Singh emphasized. “The goal is to show students that STEM is everywhere and to inspire them to continue pursuing STEM education.”
After earning his Master’s next spring, Singh intends to pursue just such a practical, impactful career in engineering, as he aims to combine technology with meaningful interactions that improve people’s lives.
“From the time that I started robotics, I really just wanted to get in the workforce,” said Singh. He mentioned defense and biotech as industries of interest.
Singh’s story is both a testament to the impact of hands-on learning and a brilliant example of a member of the Mason nation giving back to the community that shaped him. He plans to continue bringing George Mason’s robotics-related research to students at VEX Robotics events. In fact, at next year’s Virginia championships, he hopes to include demonstrations from other schools such as Virginia Tech and University of Virginia as well.
Alumnus Long Jiao Reflects on Lessons as First-Year Professor
Long Jiao who received his doctorate in electrical and computer engineering in 2023, is finishing up his first year as a college professor. As a faculty member in the Computer and Information Science Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Jiao has continued his research while learning the ropes of curriculum design and student engagement.
Jiao’s research aims to fortify the digital world.
“We’re trying to develop security measures for the physical layer of wireless networks, which often gets overlooked,” he said. Jiao earned both his master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from George Mason. Spending seven years as a graduate student in Professor Kai Zeng’s lab, Jiao delved deep into the intricacies of securing the physical layer of wireless networks. His work not only addressed theoretical concerns but also ventured into practical implementations, thanks to fruitful collaborations and continuous funding support.
Jiao’s transition from doctoral student to both researcher and faculty member came with new challenges, particularly in managing large classes and catering to diverse educational backgrounds. Seeking guidance, he turned to his former advisor, Zeng, who provided invaluable insights.
As an alum of George Mason, Jiao remains committed to nurturing the next generation of scholars, determined to foster academic excellence and pay it forward.
“Teaching is like solving a puzzle,” Jiao reflected. “Sometimes, what works in your head doesn’t quite click with the students.”
Flexibility emerged as a cornerstone of Jiao’s teaching philosophy, allowing him to adapt his methods to suit students’ needs effectively. By incorporating comprehensive reviews, interactive lessons, and flexible syllabi, Jiao not only enhanced learning outcomes but also fostered meaningful connections with his students.
Jiao’s early strides in academia serve as an inspiration to aspiring researchers and educators alike. His journey underscores the transformative power of perseverance, mentorship, and a relentless pursuit of knowledge.
As an alum of George Mason, Jiao remains committed to nurturing the next generation of scholars, determined to foster academic excellence and pay it forward.
Taking a Byte Out of Apple
A2020 graduate of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Iranian-born Farnoud Farahmand works for tech giant Apple in Silicon Valley doing a job he hadn’t thought about as an undergrad or even a grad student. Farahmand’s journey to California covered more miles than an American pioneer’s and his attitude mirrored the same qualities of curiosity, grit, and determination as those of Western settlers.
Farahmand said he chose George Mason because he had family living in Virginia and found George Mason a good match for his goals, and his interest in digital design and embedded systems. “Mason had a good program. I saw there were some specializations in digital design and that was a great fit for me,” he said. Farahmand credits his PhD advisor, Professor Krzysztof (Kris) Gaj for teaching him the value of teamwork and nurturing his burgeoning curiosity.
“What I learned from Dr. Gaj was to be dedicated, do the hard work, and keep learning different topics. And we used to have very long weekly meetings with him instead of meeting with each of his students separately, he pulled us all together in one room at the same time,” said Farahmand. Sitting in long meetings with lab mates, he learned about related topics and said that experience led him to his internship with Google.
Before the internship, Farahmand was focused on hardware implementation, but other people were working on side-channel analysis, and applied to Google online. “The thing is you don’t know the positions. The job descriptions are very general when you apply for internships at Google. “The internship was mostly related to side-channel analysis but because I was in those meetings with Dr. Gaj and others for 2-3 years, I learned all these topics and then when I went for an interview when they asked all these questions, I was ready to answer.”
Farahmand advises current students to stay curious and to not be afraid to learn about a different topic; take every chance you can to learn something new and different. “If I wanted to just focus on what I worked on from the beginning, which was doing digital design and implementing ciphers in hardware, then maybe I wouldn’t have had the confidence for my internship interviews,” he said.
Farahmand thought that after interning successfully at Google he would be a good fit and applied for a job. Covid’s trajectory and downturn in the tech industry caused a detour that led him elsewhere.
Farahmand advises current students to stay curious and to not be afraid to learn about a different topic; take every chance you can to learn something new and different.
When he interviewed for a permanent position with Google, he said everything went well but at the height of the pandemic, the company wasn’t hiring. While he waited for Google’s hiring freeze to thaw, Apple came through with an offer.
That detour, and Farahmand’s new job, led to an opportunity in still another topic. The new job deals with modeling power based on the features that will be added in future generations of Apple electronics.
Farahmand had never worked on power optimization in his research but through his internship experience with side-channel analysis, its relationship to evaluating the power consumption of a chip, and power analysis and simulations, the hiring committee made the connection and offered him the position.
“It was a very good fit for the position and now that I’m working on it, I really like it. One thing that I see from students and for myself as well, we know general topics like digital design, verification, and physical design. Positions related to these topics are more widely available, but sometimes there are niche positions available in good companies. We don’t search for them, so we don’t find them.” By keeping his options open and looking for jobs in unexpected areas Farahmand discovered an unexpected path to success.
Chair Search
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at George Mason will be starting their search for a new department chair this fall. This is an exciting and highly impactful position within a growing and dynamic department in Virginia’s largest public research university. The job posting describing further details about the position is expected to be available by mid-September and candidates are invited to submit their CV together with other supporting materials through the University’s career application portal at listings.jobs.gmu.edu/jobs/search
Please use the keyword “ECE” within the portal to access the posting.
