ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING • TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY • SPRING/SUMMER2001
One to One: From the Department Head
On The Shoulders of Giants...
Highlights
○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○
3 Kerkman
Discusses IGBTs
4 Nortel Provides
Scholarships
4 Chew Lectures on
Fast Solvers for
Electromagnetic
Simulations
6 Poor Discusses
“The Wireless
Revolution”
8 Annual Fund
9 Alumnus News
9 Bovic Lectures on
AM/FM Models
I joined Texas A&M University in the fall of 1978. At that time I would often run into a
tall, unassuming electrical engineering professor that I came to know as Jack Kilby. I knew that
he was the inventor of the integrated circuit at Texas Instruments (TI) in 1958, but little did I
know that he would be the recipient of the greatest honor that a scientist can have, the Nobel
Prize in Physics, for this invention.
Jack has had a long relationship with Texas A&M. Besides being a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering from 1978 to 1985, Texas A&M conferred upon
him an Honorary Doctor of Science degree to recognize his contributions to science and
engineering in 1995. In 1998, TI endowed the TI/Jack Kilby Chair in our department to recognize
the long-term relationship between Jack, TI and the department.
In light of this long-term relationship, our department and TI jointly sponsored a symposium to honor Jack. This symposium, “The Integrated Circuit and its Legacy” was held on
March 27, 2001, on the Texas A&M campus. The inaugural speeches were given by Dr. Ray
Bowen, President of Texas A&M, and Tom Engibous, CEO of TI, who presented Jack with the
Engineering Program Lifetime Achievement Award. Roland Haden, Dean of Engineering, also
participated in the ceremony.
This is a singular event, which is a source of pride to many—colleagues at TI felt pride
as Jack invented the integrated circuit while he was there and we feel proud that one of our
faculty members received the Nobel Prize in Physics. After all, how many electrical engineering departments in the world can claim such an honor. In fact, the whole electrical
engineering profession feels pride as Jack is perhaps the only Nobel Laureate who had all
his degrees in electrical engineering.
- Chanan Singh
Former Electrical Engineering Distinguished
Professor Awarded Nobel Prize In Physics
Kilby, who also was co-inventor of the
A former distinguished professor in the
pocket calculator, shares the $915,000 Award
Department of Electrical Engineering at Texas
with Zhores I. Alferov of the
A&M University recently
A.F. Ioffe Physico-Technical
was awarded one of the
Institute in St. Petersburg,
highest honors for a
Russia, and Herbert Kroemer,
scientist—The Nobel Prize
a German-born researcher at
in Physics.
the University of California at
The Royal Swedish
Santa Barbara. They were
Academy of Sciences
honored for their work in
presented Jack St. Clair
developing technology used
Kilby, distinguished
in satellite communications
professor for the departand cellular phones.
ment from 1978 to 1985, the
Kilby’s microchip, now the
Award in October for his
electronic heart of products
part in the development of
ranging from supercomputers,
the integrated circuit at
space probes and medical
Texas Instruments, a
diagnostic equipment to
design said to have
cellular phones, was designed
revolutionized the electronby Kilby soon after he joined
ics industry.
Texas Instruments (TI) in
“It is a worthy inven1958. It was fabricated from a
tion,” said Dr. Ohannes
single piece of semiconductor
Eknoyan, professor of
material about half the size of
electrical engineering at
Kilby with his chip
a paper clip.
Texas A&M. “It is the
Kilby said in an Associated Press article
building block for everything that we have
that he was surprised by the Award because
now. Although it was a very fundamental and
he worked in engineering and not physics, a
basic thing at the time, without it we wouldn’t
trend fellow colleagues hope will continue.
have anything.”
See KILBY- page 2
KILBY-continued from page 1
a member of the Academy.
electrical engineering Department Head,
“It had an impact on all our communiDr. Chanan Singh.
“Here’s a case where the Nobel
cations,” Eknoyan agreed.
“I joined the department in 1978,”
committee recognized some things that
“ It’s good they don’t draw the lines
said Singh. “(Kilby) gave advice freely
have happened in solid state physics
that sharply,” Parker said. “I’m glad he
to graduate students and faculty about
that have really impacted everyone’s
got it. It’s hard to say where we would be
their research topics and to the adminlife,” said Dr. Frederick Strieter, electrical
without the integrated circuit.”
istration about the shape of technoloengineering adjunct professor and fellow
Kilby grew up in Great Bend, Kansas
gies to come. He played an important
colleague of Kilby at TI.
and his interest in electronics can be
role in shaping the agenda of the
“It is encouraging (to engineers),”
traced to his youth. His father ran a
department’s future in research.”
Eknoyan agreed. “The award was
power company that served a wide area
At present, Kilby maintains a schedule
given to three people. All three
in this rural area of Kansas, and he used
of work and travel on industry and
contributed to engineering, so it is
amateur radio to keep in contact with
government consulting assignments
giving more recognition to engineers’
customers during emergencies. During an
throughout the world and serves as
contributions.”
ice storm, Kilby saw firsthand how
director of several corporations.
Kilby also said he had no idea during
electronic technology could positively
He also is the recipient of two of the
the microchip’s development that it
impact peoples’ lives.
nation’s most prestigious honors in
would become a linchpin of modern
With B.S. and M.S. degrees in
science and engineering. In 1970, in a
information technology. “I thought that it
electrical engineering from the Universities
White House ceremony, Kilby received
was important when I did the work,’’ he
of Illinois and Wisconsin respectively,
the National Medal of Science. In 1982,
said, but added that he did not realize
he began his career in 1947 with the
he was inducted into the National
that it would revolutionize electronics.
Centralab Division of Globe Union Inc.
Inventors Hall of Fame, taking his place
According to fellow colleagues, this
in Milwaukee, developing ceramic-base,
alongside Henry Ford, Thomas
unassuming attitude was
Edison and the Wright Brothers
normal for Kilby.
in the annals of American
“Jack’s a pretty modest
innovation.
guy,” said Streiter, adding that
He also holds more than 60
Kilby was part of the reason he
U.S. patents, is a Fellow of the
decided to work at A&M. “I’ve
Institute of Electrical and
heard him say that if I hadn’t
Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and
invented it someone would, but
a member of the National
Jack was there first. Without
Academy of Engineering (NAE).
him we wouldn’t have a lot of
He has been awarded the
things.”
Franklin Institute’s Stuart
“He’s very humble—easy to
Ballantine Medal, the NAE’s
work with, but he expected
Vladimir Zworykin Award, the
results,” agreed Dr. Don Parker,
American Society of Mechanical
electrical engineering profesEngineers’ Holley Medal and the
sor. “He’s a walking encyclopeIEEE’s Medal of Honor, Cledo
dia on research and he has a
Brunetti Award and David
pretty good feeling on what will
Sarnoff Award.
work and won’t work. He’s
On the 30th anniversary of
always reading both technical
the invention of the integrated
and non-technical books,
Kiby’s first integrated circuit was comprised of only a transistor and other circuit, the Governor of Texas
which makes him a good
components on a slice of germanium,it was7/16-by-1/16-inches in size.
dedicated an official Texas
inventor.”
historical marker near the site of
And his invention revolusilk-screen circuits for consumer
the TI laboratory where Kilby did the
tionized the industry. Worldwide, the
electronic products.
work that eventually won him his
semiconductor market has since grown
After his stint at TI, Kilby left in 1970
greatest honor, the Nobel Prize in
into a $137 billion industry, fueling
to become a freelance inventor, exploring,
Physics.
explosive growth of the communications,
among other subjects, the use of silicon
The Nobel Prize is the first internacomputer and consumer electronics
technology for generating electrical
tional award given yearly since 1901 for
industries. Sales of electronic devices
power from sunlight. This project started
achievements in physics, chemistry,
around the world amounted to $900
his research in electrical engineering at
medicine, literature and peace. The prize
billion in 1997.
Texas A&M, and later earned him a
consists of a medal, a personal diploma
The Royal Swedish Academy of
distinguished professorship there.
and a prize amount. According to
Sciences, which also chooses chemistry
“When he worked on research
founder, Alfred Nobel, they are given to
and economics winners, invited nominaprojects he would get involved,”
those who, “shall have conferred the
tions from previous recipients and
Eknoyan said. “He was not the type to sit
greatest benefit on mankind” and that
experts in the fields before whittling
behind the desk.”
one part be given to the person who
down its physics choices. Apparently
“He really cared about the research,”
“shall have made the most important
they agreed with the assessment of
Parker agreed. “He talked to the graduate
discovery or invention within the field of
Kilby’s invention and that of his costudents and whenever anyone needed
physics.” So far, 160 laureates have
nominees since this year they decided to
help, he was there.”
received Nobel Prizes for achievements in
award the Nobel Prize in Physics to
In 1995 Kilby earned an honorary
physics and now Kilby joins their
scientists and inventors whose work has
doctorate degree from Texas A&M. In
distinguished ranks.
laid the foundation of modern informa1998 Texas A&M and TI honored him
“It feels good to recollect that this
tion technology.
with an endowed chair in his name in the
humble man I used to run into in the
“Without Kilby, it would not have been
Department of Electrical Engineering.
coffee room is now a Nobel Laureate,”
possible to build the personal computers
Both well-deserved honors according to
Singh said.
we have today,’’ said Hermann Grimmeiss,
2
3M Pledges Grant To Texas A&M
A new educational alliance recently announced by 3M, will
help Aggie engineers hit the ground running when they enter
the workforce.
The $522,000 grant aims to develop and integrate interdisciplinary design education in senior-year and graduate programs, according to Dr. C. Roland Haden, Texas A&M University dean of engineering and electrical engineering professor.
Dr. Arthur C. West, technical director of the Fiber Optics &
Electronic Materials Technology Center at 3M and an electrical
engineering external advisory board member, said they chose
A&M for several reasons, including the engineering curriculum and students who’ve graduated from A&M to work for
their company.
“Engineering schools across the country have wrestled for
decades with how to effectively integrate real-world design
challenges into academic curricula. Thanks to 3M, we have a
unique opportunity for Texas A&M to lead the way and create
a model that others can emulate,” Haden said.
Leading the initiative from Texas A&M are electrical
engineering professor, Dr. Jo Howze, and Dr. Christian Burger
and Dr. Ravi Chona from mechanical engineering.
“Companies want engineers who can start work and contribute
immediately, rather than after several months or even years on the
job,” Howze said. “3M was obviously impressed with our
students’ ability to contribute quickly and effectively.”
Last fall 3M and Texas A&M created a first-time interdisciplinary design class for senior mechanical and electrical
engineering students. Howze and Chona co-teach the twosemester course while 3M engineers present projects and
provide feedback on student solutions.
“We’ve been focusing too heavily on discipline-specific
engineering science. That’s where students are assigned a welldefined problem, along with the data and process to find a specific
answer,” Howze said. “But in industry many problems are not well
defined. A need is expressed—like a new power source to
See GRANT- page 8
IGBTs: Boon or Bane
EE Student Awarded Fellowship
Recently a graduate student
in the Department of Electrical
Engineering at Texas A&M
University received a prestigious
fellowship for his research in
hybrid electric vehicles.
Jean Yves Routex has been
awarded the 2000 CONVERGENCE Fellowship, an award
presented jointly by the IEEE
Vehicular Technology Society
Routex
and Society of Automotive
Engineers. He received the award for his research interests, which
include design of electromechanical devices such as more electric
cars and hybrid electric vehicles, using equivalent circuit modeling.
The CONVERGENCE Fellowship offers a stipend of $12,000. It
was established to highlight the growing importance of transportation electronics, a field that applies the design and development
of electronic devices to the increasing need for safety and
convenience features in highway and off-road vehicles.
Candidates are selected on the basis of their potential to contribute to the profession of electrical and/or electronics engineering with
a preference for studies involving transportation electronics.
Routex was considered highly qualified for this fellowship
according to Dr. Mehrdad Ehsani, professor in the department of
electrical engineering and director of the Advanced Vehicle
Systems Research Program at A&M, a program established for
interdisciplinary research and development in advanced vehicle
systems. Currently, this program is developing new electric and
hybrid vehicle propulsion systems for commercial applications.
Ehsani is Routex’s supervising professor.
“Routex is one of the most outstanding graduate students in
our vehicle system research group over the past eight years,”
Ehsani said in his nomination letter. “He has made outstanding
technical and leadership contributions for our center.”
Among Routex’s accomplishments considered was a VTC-2000
paper he co-authored entitled “Modeling of Hybrid Electric Vehicles
See ROUTEX- page 8
System efficiency and productivity
improvements attainable through variable
frequency drives have resulted in an increasing percentage of low voltage induction
motors operating with pulse width modulated
voltage source inverters according to Russel
Kerkman, distinguished lecturer for the
electrical engineering department. This has
Kerkman
been made possible by the decreasing cost
of increasing power capability of IGBTs.
Kerkman said with IGBT switching speeds less than 400 ns and
associated reduction in switching losses, drive size has decreased and
performance increased. However, the fast switching speeds has been
accompanied by unintended and often unforeseen consequences. He
addressed these problems by presenting field data demonstrating the
problems, modeling and analyses techniques that are representative of the
observed phenomena, and mitigation techniques to reduce the adverse
effects on drive performance.
Kerkman received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in from Purdue
University, in 1971, 1973 and 1976, respectively. He is currently an
engineering consultant at Rockwell Automation / Allen Bradley Company,
Mequon, WI.
His current interests include: modeling and control of general purpose
industrial drives, adaptive control applied to field oriented induction
machines, application of observers to ac machines, design of ac motors for
adjustable speed applications, and EMI from PWM inverters. He is a coholder of twenty-four patents, all in the adjustable speed drives and is the
recipient of seven IEEE Prize Paper Awards. He is a member of Industry
Applications Society, Industrial Electronics Society and Power Electronics
Society.
Schlumberger Gives Gift to TAMU
Dr. Hamid Toliyat, associate professor for the Department of Electrical Engineering, was among two engineering
faculty members to receive a $60,000 gift from the global
engineering firm Schlumberger.
Gas hydrates and “smart motors” are the target of the gift
to Texas A&M University. Toliyat will be awarded $30,000 for
his work to develop electromechanical and power electronics
technologies. Dr. Yuri F. Makogon, research engineer in
petroleum engineering, will receive $30,000 for research on the
kinetics and morphology of gas hydrates.
“We have started a new effort Electromechanical, Power
Electronics and Control Laboratory to build on the expertise that we have in these areas,” said Dr. Chanan Singh,
electrical engineering department head. “Dr. Toliyat is an
internationally known expert in electric machines and will
play a leading role in this initiative. We are grateful to the
Schlumberger Foundation for strengthening this effort.”
Toliyat’s expertise has helped make Texas A&M a world
leader in the novel electric machine design and variable speed
drive technology that is integral to “smart motors” now found
in most industries. His work in the Electric Machines and
Power Electronics Laboratory focuses on a wide variety of
applications including hybrid electric vehicles propulsions,
ship propulsions, washing machines and wind power.
A Texas A&M faculty member since 1994, Toliyat is an
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers senior
See SCHLUMBERGER- page 4
3
Chew Discusses Fast Solvers for
Electromagnetic Simulations
Nortel Provides EE
Scholarships
The Department of Electrical Engineering was one of two departments at Texas
A&M University to receive $250,000 in
funding from Nortel Networks to provide
scholarships to A&M students.
Dr. Costas Georghiades, professor for
the Department of Electrical Engineering
and group leader for the telecommunications and signal processing area, said the
scholarships will be given to both
graduate and undergraduate students
over a two-year period.
“In electrical engineering we are using
the money mostly to attract undergraduate students to telecommunications,
which is the area Nortel is interested in,”
he said. “We very much appreciate Nortel
Networks’ generous offer to provide
funds for scholarships to the electrical
engineering department at Texas A&M
University.
Scholarships provide a way for
departments to attract and/or retain
qualified students in areas of need, as
well as to reward deserving students and
entice them to strive for even higher
achievements, both at the undergraduate
and graduate levels.
All undergraduate students in the
department with a GPA above 3.2 will be
eligible to apply for the scholarships. For
graduate student applicants, a minimum
3.5 GPA will be required. Applicants for
scholarships must fill an application and
include a copy of their latest resume. The
application form will include, among other
things, information on the student’s GPA
and year of study (i.e. junior, senior,
graduate, etc.).
Additionally, applicants will be asked
to write a one-page essay on their
professional interests. The resume must
contain information on internships and
extra-curricula activities. Selection of
scholarship recipients will be based on
academic achievement, other experience,
acquired for example through internships,
and involvement in extra-curricula
activities.
Nortel Networks is a global leader in
telephony, data, wireless and wireline
SCHLUMBERGER-continued from page 3
solutions for the Internet. Today, Nortel
member. His honors include the Space Act Award from the NASA Inventions and
Networks is creating a high-performance
Contributions Board and a Select Young Investigator Award from the Texas Engineering
Internet that is more reliable and faster
Experiment Station. His professional interests also include simulation techniques and
than ever before.
electric and hybrid electric vehicles traction motor drives.
Schlumberger is a leading supplier of services and technology to the international
It is redefining the economics and
petroleum industry, with service locations in more than 100 countries, and research and quality of networking and the Internet
development facilities around the world.
through Unified Networks that promise a
The Schlumberger Foundation, founded in 1954 by the Schlumberger family, is a
new era of collaboration, communications
separate, not-for-profit organization. The foundation supports educational research and and commerce. Nortel Networks has
charitable organizations in the United States and Canada.
offices and facilities in Canada, Europe,
Specifically, the Schlumberger Foundation provides scholarships, fellowships and
Asia-Pacific, Caribbean and Latin
technical grants for research to universities with a long-standing Schlumberger recruiting
America, the Middle East, Africa and the
relationship.
United States.
Contributed by TEES Communication
Fast Solvers for Electromagnetic Simulations—
Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Science, was the
topic in the Distinguished Lecture Series presented by
Dr. Weng Cho Chew, director for the Center for
Computational Electromagnetics in the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
During his lecture, Chew gave an overview of the
development of solution techniques for Maxwell’s
equations as an analysis tool, which reviews the solution
techniques that were prevalent around the beginning of
the 20th century. He said during that period, closed form
solutions were sought for simple shape objects such as
spheres, cylinders, half-planes, half-spaces, among other
things. That was the age of simple shapes.
Dr.Kai Chang presents Chew with
As the demand of science and engineering called for a plaque of appreciation.
solutions to more complex problems, Chew said
scientists and engineers developed approximate methods to solve Maxwell’s equations. This was often the combined use of asymptotic and perturbation methods.
Consequently, a larger class of solutions can be sought by such techniques, empowering the solutions available to Maxwell’s equations.
Chew said the most recent developments of analysis methods for Maxwell’s equations
are the fast solvers, which have been developed for electrostatics, electrodynamics, as well
as fast solvers that are continuously valid from static to electrodynamics; for the frequency and time domains, as well as for layered media. He said these fast solvers use
resources that are orders of magnitude smaller than traditional numerical solvers. Their
importance in electromagnetic simulations is as important as fast Fourier transforms in
signal and image processingand that it is quite certain that these solvers will precipitate a
revolution in analysis methods in electromagnetics. Problems that required 10 years of
computer time to solve in the past can now be solved within a day.
Weng Cho Chew was born in Malaysia. He received the B.S. degree in 1976, both
the M.S. and Engineer’s degrees in 1978 and the Ph.D. degree in 1980, all in electrical
engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. His recent
research interest has been in the area of wave propagation, scattering, inverse
scattering, and fast algorithms related to scattering, inhomogeneous media for
geophysical subsurface sensing and nondestructive testing applications. Previously,
he has also analyzed electrochemical effects and dielectric properties of composite
materials, microwave and optical waveguides, and microstrip antennas.
From 1981 to 1985, he was with Schlumberger-Doll Research in Ridgefield, Connecticut. While he was there, he was a program leader and later a department manager.
From 1985 to 1990, he was an associate professor with the University of Illinois. He
currently is a professor at the University of Illinois.
Chew has authored a book and has published more than 220 scientific journal
articles and presented over 300 conference papers. He is an IEEE Fellow and was an
NSF Presidential Young Investigator in 1986. Chew also is presently an associate
editor of the several publications.
The Department of Electrical Engineering presents this year-long program of
lectures to broaden the horizons of faculty, students and friends interested in the
progress of electrical engineering.
4
EE Briefs
Shankar Bhattacharyya
Designation as a TEES Senior Fellow
was awarded to Bhattacharyya, professor for the department. A faculty member
permanently retains the title of TEES
Senior Fellow after twice achieving the
rank of TEES Fellow based on outstanding research achievement.
Bhattacharyya, who has been with
Texas A&M since 1980, has interests in
control systems and robust control. He
is an IEEE Fellow, Fulbright Lecturer, has
won the prestigious Halliburton Award
and serves on the editorial board of the
Birkhauser Series on Circuits, Signals
and Systems. Bhattacharyya received his
bachelor’s and master’s degrees from
Indian Institute of Technology in
Bombay and his doctoral degree from
Rice University.
Karen Butler-Purry
Butler-Purry, associate professor for
the department, was presented the B. P.
Amoco for Teaching Excellence Award.
She joined the electrical engineering
department in 1994 and serves as
assistant director of the Power Systems
Automation Laboratory. Her research
interests are in the areas of distribution
automation and intelligent systems for
power quality, state estimation, equipment deterioration and fault diagnosis.
Butler-Purry has received several
recognitions, among them the 1999 Office
of Naval Research Young Investigator
Program Award and she was named a
1998-99 Montague Center for Teaching
Excellence Scholar. She received her
bachelor’s degree from Southern University, a master’s degree from the University
of Texas at Austin and her doctoral degree
from Howard University.
Andrew Chan
Chan, professor for the department, was
awarded the Halliburton Professorship. His
research interests include Digital Signal
Processing, Image Processing, Wavelets,
Nonlinear Optical Propagation and
Numerical Methods.
Chan has been at A&M since 1976.
He received his bachelor’s, master’s and
doctoral degrees from the University of
Washington and is a member of several
professional societies.
Mehrdad Ehsani
Ehsani, professor for the department,
was named a Ruth and William Neely ‘52/
Dow Chemical Fellow.
Ehsani joined Texas A&M in 1981.
He founded the power electronics and
motor drives program in the department
during his tenure there.
Ehsani has authored more than 300
publications, two books, an IEEE standards book, has more than 13 patents and
numerous technical reports. He also has
served as chairman and organizer of
various IEEE committees, conferences and
administrative committees.
Ehsani is a fellow of IEEE, distinguished
speaker of the IEEE Industrial Electronics
Society and distinguished lecturer of the
IEEE Industry Application Society. He
earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees
from the University of Texas in 1973 and
1974 respectively and his Ph.D. from the
University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1981.
Lynette Huval
Huval, administrative assistant for the
department, received the 2000 EE
Outstanding Staff Award. Recipients of
this award are nominated by their fellow
co-workers for their outstanding work
performance. The objective of this award
is to recognize support staff for their
continuous endeavors towards excellence
and promotion of the continued success
of the department. Huval has been with
the department since 1996.
John Fleming
Fleming, senior lecturer for the department, received the 2000 EE Outstanding
Faculty Award. Recipients of these awards
are nominated by their fellow co-workers
for their outstanding work performance.
The objective of this award is to recognize
faculty members for their continuous
endeavors towards excellence and
promotion of the continued success of the
department.
Fleming received his Ph.D. from Cornell
University in 1977 and has been with the
department since 1978
Nasser Kehtarnavaz
Kehtarnavaz, professor for the department, received the 2000 EE Outstanding
Faculty Award. Recipients of these awards
are nominated by their fellow co-workers
for their outstanding work performance.
The objective of this award is to recognize
faculty members for their continuous
endeavors towards excellence and promotion of the continued success of the
department.
His research interests include Digital
signal processing, image processing,
algorithm implementation on DSP
processors, medical image analysis and
pattern recognition. Kehtarnavaz is editor
of several journals and has had many
papers and journal articles published. He
received his Ph.D. from Rice University in
1987 and has been with the department
since 1986.
Michael Russell Grimaila
Grimaila, lecturer for the department,
received the Outstanding Professor of the
Year from the A&M branch of IEEE.
Grimaila received his Ph.D. (1999),
M.S.E.E. (1995) and B.S.E.E. (1993) degrees
in electrical engineering at Texas A&M.
He worked in the Research and
Development Group of Rockwell
International’s Lightwave Transmission Systems Division located in Dallas
from 1984 through 1990. During this
time, he was responsible for the design,
testing and system integration of VLSI
ASIC’s for use in high-speed digital
transmission systems.
Grimaila also received the 1999-2000
Outstanding Professor of the Year award
from the A&M chapter of IEEE and Eta
Kappa Nu and the best paper award from
the IEEE VLSI Test Symposium in 1999 as
lead author for his work on the commercial
experiment of novel ATPG methods.
His research interests include the
design, analysis, and testing of mixedsignal systems; microprocessor system
design and interfacing; VLSI CAD and
simulation; and defect-oriented test pattern
generation and analysis.
Debbie Hanson
Hanson, administrative assistant for
the department, received the 2000 EE
Outstanding Staff Award. Recipients of
this award are nominated by their fellow
co-workers for their outstanding work
performance. The objective of this award
is to recognize support staff for their
continuous endeavors towards excellence and promotion of the continued
success of the department. Hanson has
been with the department since 1984.
Franco Maloberti
Maloberti, professor for the department
and inaugural holder of the TI Jack Kilby
Chair in Analog Engineering, was honored
by the world’s largest technical professional society with the Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Third
Millennium Medal.
He joined the faculty in March. In 1992
he received the XII Pedriali Prize for his
technical and scientific contributions to
national industrial production. He was corecipient of the 1996 Institution of Electrical
Engineers (U.K.) Fleming Premium. Other
honors include the 1999 IEEE CAS Society
Meritorious Service Award and the 1999
CAS Society Golden Jubilee Medal.
Maloberti received the Laurea Degree in
physics (summa cum laude) from the University of Parma in Italy and the Doctorate
Honoris Causa in electronics from the
Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica, Optica y
Electronica (Inaoe), Puebla, Mexico.
Krzysztof Michalski
Michalski, associate professor for
the department, was elected to the rank
of Fellow by IEEE, one of the highest
distinctions for the organization. This is
considered a significant honor since
the number of IEEE members who may
be advanced to Fellow grade in one
year is 0.10 percent of the total 320,000
Institute membership.
See BRIEFS- page 10
5
Young EE Graduate Receives Prestigious Scholarship
The National Science Foundation
(NSF) seeks to ensure the vitality of the
human resource base of science,
mathematics and engineering in the
United States and to reinforce its
diversity. To do this, a competition is
conducted for Graduate Research
Fellowships, with additional awards
offered for women in engineering and
computer and information science.
While approximately 900 outstanding
graduate students receive this fellowship
throughout the nation, few are as
outstanding as Texas A&M University’s
electrical engineering graduate student
Lori Dalton, who began work on her
master’s degree at the early age of 18.
Dalton, who began working on her
Master’s degree during the spring 2001
semester, began taking college courses at
an early age at Texas Accounting of Math
and Science (TAMS) in Denton.
Dalton said she graduated a year early
from high school, but she had also earned
two years of college credits while at
TAMS, which helped her earn her
Bachelors degree from A&M quickly, with
an interest in telecommunications.
“We got her resume and I thought
there was something wrong here,
because she listed her date of birth and
she said she was going to graduate
sometime this year and she was going
to be 18,” said Dr. Costas Georghiades,
Dalton’s advisor and area leader in
telecommunications. “I helped
her apply for the
NSF fellowship,
it’s a very prestigious fellowship.
She could have
taken this fellowship and gone
anywhere and
nobody would
have said no.
Dalton
Fortunately she
decided to stay—it was great for us.”
Dalton said she looked at other
schools, but she preferred A&M.
“I compared all the schools and it turned
out to be the best choice,” she said. “The
location is pretty close to home and the cost
was pretty good and the school itself had a
good reputation. Everything put together it
ended up beating all the other schools.”
While at A&M, Dalton said she hopes to
pursue research in Space-time coding, something she worked on as an undergraduate.
“Space-time coding is an area that is
very important right now,” Georghiades
said. “I have several students working on
a very interesting problem, so I figured
this would be good for her to work on a
problem of current recent interest. It is in
the forefront of this research.”
Dalton said she is enjoying the
research because she is a more hands-on
type of person. “Class is interesting, but I
get more excitement trying to figure out
something by myself, which is what you
do in research.”
With a goal of graduating with her
Ph.D. by the time she is 21, Dalton said
she hopes to carry on her research in a
teaching position.
“I would like to teach in a place like
A&M, one of the best things about A&M
is the atmosphere. Everyone is more laid
back and happier.”
And Georghiades believes Dalton can
accomplish whatever she attempts, even
teaching students several years older
than her.
“She’s doing great in my class,” he
said. “I’ve talked to other faculty, who tell
me by far she is the best student in their
class. We have students who come from
the top schools all over the world and she
is the best. She’ll do well after graduation
with whatever she tries.”
The National Science Foundation
(NSF) is an independent agency of the
U.S. Government. It consists of the
National Science Board of 24 part-time
members and a Director (who also serves
as ex officio National Science Board
member), each appointed by the President
with the advice and consent of the U.S.
Senate. Other senior officials include a
Deputy Director who is appointed by the
President with the advice and consent of
the U.S. Senate, and eight Assistant
Directors.
“The Wireless Revolution: A Signal Processing Perspective”
The Wireless Revolution: A
Signal Processing Perspective, was
the topic discussed by Distinguished Lecturer, Dr. Vincent Poor,
professor in the Department of
Electrical Engineering at Princeton
University.
Poor explained how during the
19th and 20th centuries, communications underwent revolutionary
changes as first the telegraph and
Poor
then the telephone, emerged and
transitioned to wireless transmission. Now, at the advent of the
21st century, an even more revolutionary transition is taking place
as the Internet moves into the wireless domain.
He said like its predecessors, today’s wireless revolution is
being made possible by major strides in electro-technology. In
particular, the current drive to push system capacity, quality of
service and mobility, well beyond their preconceived limits, is
being enabled by striking innovations in signal processing
methods and technology.
These innovations include direct developments, such as
multimedia compression, multi-user detection, space-time processing and coding and turbo decoding, as well as indirect
developments, such as the use of signal processing techniques to
push practical micro-lithography beyond its current limits. Poor
also provided an overview of these developments in the context
of their impact on emerging and future wireless communications
applications such as third-generation cellular telephony, broadband wireless local loop, high-speed wireless local area networks
and wireless information appliances.
6
Prior to joining the Princeton faculty
in 1990, Poor was on the faculty of the
University of Illinois from 1977-1990. He
also has held visiting appointments at a
number of universities and research
institutes in the United States, Britain
and Australia, including Imperial College
in London, where he has spent his two
sabbatical leaves. His research interests
are in the area of statistical signal
processing, with applications primarily in
wireless multiple-access systems.
Among his publications in this area is the 1998 book “Wireless
Communications: Signal Processing Perspectives.”
Poor also is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America,
the American Association for the Advancement of Science and
the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). In
1990, he served as President of the IEEE Information Theory
Society, and in 1991-1992 he served on the IEEE Board of
Directors. Among his honors are the Terman Award of the
American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) in 1992, the
Distinguished Member Award of the IEEE Control Systems
Society in 1994, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal in 2000 and
the IEEE Graduate Teaching Award in 2001.
At Princeton, he has recently developed a course - “The
Wireless Revolution: Telecommunications for the 21st Century”
– to teach students from diverse disciplines about the ongoing
revolution in wireless communications.
The Department of Electrical Engineering presents this year-long
program of lectures to broaden the horizons of faculty, students
and friends interested in the progress of electrical engineering.
Scholarship and Fellowship Winners
Congratulations to the following graduate and undergraduate students chosen to receive Department of Electrical Engineering
fellowships and scholarships.
Graduate Fellowships and Scholarships
TexTEC Scholarships
Jing Li
Ben Lu
Navneet Malpani
Daryl Reynolds
Dong Xuan
Ikjun Yeom
EPPE Fellowships
Sasa Jakovljevic
Sangsun Kim
Jiansheng Lei
Chris Nail
Hokeun Shim
Nortel Scholarships
Deepak Gilra
Shengjie Zhao
Zeming Zhu
EE Scholarships
Pankaj Bhagawat
Yoon Cheung Chang
Kaushik Chosh
WooCheol Chung
Sumantra Dasgupta
Deepak Gilra
Saurabh Gupta
Sung-Ling Huang
Sai Ingale
Bharat Iyer
Sasa Jakovljevic
Vijay Kappagantula
Omar Khaswawneh
Namjin Kim
Ryoung-Han Kim
Ching-Fu Lan
Hui Lui
Samer El-Haj Mahmoud
Pankaj Pandey
Vijaya Patil
Sathyanarayan Raman
Ray Shubhankar,
Stephen Robertson
Jean Routex
Attoor Sanju Nair
Anand Selvarathinam
Narayanan Swaminathan
Raja Venkatesh Tamma
Undergraduate Scholarships and Fellowships
Nortel Scholarships
Ryan Hamilton Brown
Lori Dalton
Ana Laura Garza
Jonathan Hansen
Jeff Holly
Na Lei
Juan Manuel Lopez
Bryan Thomas Murray
Wayne Allen Pellerin
Andrew Puryear
Alan Rankin
Benjamin Paul Swan
Feng-Kun Tang
Thrassos Thrasyvoulou
Johnny Tran
Ching-We Wang
Nokia Scholarships
Lori Dalton
David Walker Guidry
Johnny Tran
EPPE Scholarships
Leslie Fraley
Derrick Haas
Carmela L. Herrera
Collin Martin
Kenneth N. McBurnett
Andrew Meier
Raymond Van Hook
Jeffrey Cobb
Jennifer Gullickson
Amanda Ott
Adam T. Snider
Zachariah Sulak
Keith A. Wilson
James Wingfield
Marvin W. Smith
Gaurav Garg
Laura Gurley
Aaron Patton
Brandon Turner
Wesley Weibel
TxTEC Scholarships Willard P. Worley
Lori Dalton
Huu-Loi Phan
Mohammed Pulak
Lindsay Ann Clem
Jayson David Roe
Currents is published by the
Department of Electrical Engineering
Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas
77843-3128
Phone (979) 845-7441
Fax (979) 845-6259
Web http://ee.tamu.edu
Email currents@ee.tamu.edu
Writer, Editor and Photographer
Deana Totzke
Robert D. Chenowith
Brian Jeffrey Whitaker
Fred D. Lege III
Crystal Coe
Carl Peter Walther
Lewis M. Haupt
Tyler J. Beers
Timothy Fischer
Kevin D. Faske
Andrew Meier
M.J. Pickett
Ruchna Bhagat
Gregory Collins
David Dorsey
Elizabeth Fausak
Jeff Holly
Ji Hoon Kang
Eric Lasmana
Jeremy Ross
Eric Schendel
Sigil Simon
Brian Steele
Russell Wedelich
Reid Wilbur
Rajeshwary Tayade
Siridhar Vellanki
Gurumurthi Venkatraman
Aleksander Wojcik
Zhu Ye
Zeming Zhu
Nokia Scholarships
Vivek Gulati
Yogen N. Deshpande
Department Fellowships
Shanfeng Cheng
Xiaohua Fan
Deepak Kumar
Sunitha Venkataraman
Jianhong Xiao
Bolton Scholars
Darren Ahr-Kennedy
Idan Anis-Whitaker
Rida Assaad-Whitaker
Anand Chawla-Kennedy
Brian Hargraves-Whitaker
Dun Ngoc Hoang-Whitaker
Deepak Janakiraman-Kennedy
Chiranjib Mukherjee-Whitaker
Wayne Pellerin-Kennedy
Clinton Rand-Kennedy
Ramy Sabet-Kennedy
John Sublette-Thigpen
Albert Wewengkang-Kennedy
Schlumberger Foundation
George Bukmaster
Karl Jablonski
Corporate Sponsored
Steven Campbell-Fluor Daniel
Kurt Champion-Chevron
Cory Cress-Chevron
Iris Foyt-CPL
Adrian Gonzalez-CPL
Derrick Haas-Fluor Daniel
Gregory Hajovsky-CPL
Eric Schrock-CPL
Gift and Endowment Information
Gifts and endowments help in attracting and educating top quality students, rewarding and retaining top quality faculty and promoting the growth of the department. We
would be delighted to discuss further with you how to make a gift or establish an
endowment in your own name or the name of a loved one. Endowments may also take the
form of naming a laboratory or the department. Gifts of any size may also be made to the
Electrical Engineering Development Fund to help the growth of the department.
For more information, contact:
Dr. Chanan Singh, Deparment Head
David Wilkinson, Director of Development
Dwight Look College of Engineering
Department of Electrical Engineering
Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-3126
College Station, TX 77843-3128
Phone (979) 845-5113
Phone (979) 845-7589
Email d-wilkinson@tamu.edu
Email singh@ee.tamu.edu
7
GRANT-continued from page 3
improve fuel efficiency and emissions. There are
many interdisciplinary approaches. Our
challenge is to teach students the design
process to find a superior solution.”
3M is a diversified manufacturing company
with annual sales of about $16 billion in 1999.
With operations in more than 60 countries and
employing more than 70,000 people worldwide,
3M sells products in more than 200 countries
around the world. 3M is headquartered in St.
Paul, Minn., and manufactures a wide variety of
products serving industrial, commercial and
consumer markets.
Austin is the global headquarters city of the
3M Electro and Communications Markets,
which is comprised of five line divisions:
Telecom Systems, Electronic Products, Electronic Handling & Protection Products,
Interconnect Solutions, and Electrical Products.
The 3M Visual Systems Division also has its
global headquarters in Austin.
ROUTEX-continued from page 3
Using Gyrator Theory: Application to Design,”
and several reports.
“I found him to be a serious, dedicated,
enthusiastic and capable student,” agreed Dr.
Shankar Bhattacharyya in his nomination
letter. “I have no doubt he will be successful
as a scientist and engineer.”
Routex received his Diplôme d’Ingénieur in
Electrical Engineering from the Institut National
Polytechnique de Grenoble (INPG) in France.
Currently, he is working towards his Master’s
degree in electrical engineering, specializing in
Power Electronics and Advanced Vehicle
Systems. He also is working towards another
French Technical Degree in Power Electronics.
He plans to graduate next May and is looking
for a career opportunity as an automotive
engineer. He was awarded the fellowship during
the CONVERGENCE 2000 International meeting
in October, the premier automotive electronics
conference in the world.
Distinguished Lecturer Discusses Large Video
Database Research
Video Browsing Environment (ViBE), a unique
browseable/ searchable paradigm for organizing
video databases, was among the research issues in
the deployment and management of large video
databases discussed by Dr. Edward J. Delp,
distinguished lecturer for the Department of
Electrical Engineering at Texas A&M University.
The lecture was titled “Image and Video Databases:
Who Cares?”
Delp, professor at Purdue University, said the
ViBE system first segments video sequences into
shots by using the Generalized Trace obtained from
the DC-sequence of the compressed data stream.
Each video shot is then represented by a hierarchical
tree structure of key frames, and the shots are
automatically classified into predetermined pseudosemantic classes. Finally, he said the results are
presented to the user in an active browsing environDelp
ment using a similarity pyramid data structure.
The similarity pyramid allows the user to view the video database at various levels of
detail, according to Delp, who said the user can also define semantic classes and
reorganize the browsing environment based on relevance feedback.
Delp received his B.S.E.E. (cum laude) and M.S. degrees from the University of
Cincinnati, and his Ph.D. degree from Purdue University. From 1980-1984, Delp was
with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of
Michigan. Since August 1984, he has been with the School of Electrical and
Computer Engineering at Purdue.
His research interests include image and video compression, multimedia security,
medical imaging, multimedia systems, communication and information theory. Delp also
has consulted for various companies and government agencies in the areas of signal
and image processing, robot vision, pattern recognition and secure communications.
He has published and presented more than 250 papers and in 1990 he received a
Fulbright Fellowship to visit the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya in Barcelona,
Spain, as well as the Honeywell Award.
In 1992 he received the D.D. Ewing Award for excellence in teaching and he was
selected a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Signal Processing Society in 2000. He
is the program co-chair of the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing
that will be held in Barcelona in 2003.
The Department of Electrical Engineering presents this year-long program of
lectures to broaden the horizons of faculty, students and friends interested in the
progress of electrical engineering.
Electrical Engineering’s Annual Fund Donors
The Department of Electrical Engineering at Texas A&M University would like to thank the following supporters for their
contributions to this year’s Annual Fund. This fund was established for scholarships, recruiting and other items not covered by state
or tuition in order to compete for the retention of the finest students and faculty. The unrestricted gift categories were as follows:
Sponsor $5,000 +
Robert Alaniz- Supporter
Stas J. Andrzejewski- Friend
Wray M. Barnett- Friend
William Barnhart, II- Friend
J. R. Biard- Friend
Wayne Bibeau- Friend
John E. Boelte- Benefactor
Jane & Clay Booker- Friends
Richard Booton- Friend
Geoffrey Brehmer- Supporter
Arthur Brown- Friend
Anthony W. Calle- Supporter
Richard Chamrad- Friend
Howard C. Choe- Supporter
Timothy Cook- Friend
Steven L. Cowart- Friend
8
EE Patron $1,000-$4,999
EE Benefactor $500-999
EE Friend EE Supporter Up to $250
$250-$499
Allen B. Cunningham- Patron
Melvin Kalmans- Supporter Manford Noster- Supporter
Frank A. J. Parma- Friend
John Dodge- Friend
W.N. Keisling- Friend
Elmer Elkins- Friend
Mrs.Jeptha M. Kent- Friend Virgil Peacock- Supporter
Jim Rector- Friend
R. William Ezell- Friend
G. Holman King- Friend
Antonio Serbia- Friend
Darren Ray Faulkner- Supporter David Kratochvil- Friend
William Small- Friend
Alex and Rilda Ford- Patrons
George Lee- Supporter
E.F. Smith- Supporter
Humberto M. Fossati- Friend
Scott A. Little- Friend
Manning D. Smith- Friend
Michehl R. Gent- Friend
Richard Machos- Friend
Charles E. Swearingen- Supporter
Ernest E. Godsey- Supporter
Chau Mai- Friend
Dewey R. Tipton- Friend
Victoria Gonzalez- Friend
Marc Marini- Friend
Randy Washington- Friend
Quy Ha- Supporter
Ford Mays II- Friend
James & JoAnn M. Webster- Friend
Gary Hamilton- Friend
Bruce Moore- Friend
Herb Hilburn- Friend
Joseph Nabicht- Supporter C. B. Wilson- Friend
Anthony Wood- Benefactor
Thomas F. Johnston- Friend
Hideo Nagumo- Friend
Samer G. Younis- Sponsor
Sunitha Kadirvel- Friend
Jeffrey A. Nill- Friend
Alumuni News
Charles “Chaz” J. Daly
Daly was born in Philadelphia, PA in
1957 and is currently a Major in the
United States Air Force. He has been
serving in the Air Force for more than
two decades.
In his enlisted days, he was a Chinese
and Korean linguist at Osan Air Base,
Republic of Korea. In 1988, Daly earned
an undergraduate degree, Summa Cum
Laude, in electrical engineering from
Texas A\&M University. He was then
commissioned and went to Vandenberg
AFB, CA, where he worked as a technical
engineer on Minuteman and Peacekeeper
missile systems.
Daly next earned a Master’s Degree in
electrical engineering from the Air Force
Institute of Technology, Dayton, OH.
His Master’s thesis is entitled “Emph{An
Analytical and Experimental Investigation
of FM-by-Noise Jamming}”.
He next went to the Air Force
Information Warfare Center where he
worked on space-support to operational
forces and modeling and simulation of
satellite communications.
Daly earned his Ph.D. in Imaging
Science from the Rochester Institute of
Technology, Rochester, NY in 1998. His
dissertation is entitled “Emph{The Arccos
and Lommel Diffraction Formulations}”. He
remains on active duty in the USAF and
has published a book entitled “Scalar
Diffraction from A Circular Aperture,” with
N.A.H.K. Rao in March, 2000.
Pradeep Tapadiya
Tapadiya just finished writing a book
entitled “COM+ Programming - A
Practical Guide Using Visual C++ and
ATL.” The book is about developing
software using COM+ technology to
address enterprise level requirements
such as scalability, robustness, security,
transactional support, etc. COM+
technology was first introduced with
Windows 2000. The book was released in
September 2000.
Dan Hinde
Hinde is an associate with Vinson &
Elkins, LLD.
Distinguished Lecturer Discusses AM-FM
Models: New Image Representations
AM-FM Models: New Image
Representations, was the topic of the
Distinguished Lecture by Dr. Al Bovik,
professor in the Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering at the
University of Texas at Austin and
associate director of the Center for
Vision and Image Sciences.
During his lecture, Bovik described a
powerful class of image models known as
AM-FM Image Models, focusing on the
application of these models to problems
involving visual signals applicable to all
kinds of multimedia signals: speech,
images, video, and sound.
He said AM-FM models are intended
to represent nonstationary signals (or
subsignals) that have been variously
described as locally stationary, locally
narrowband, locally quasi-monochromatic or locally sinusoidal. Thus,
signals (images) are modelled as sums
of sinusoidal components with
nonconstant amplitudes (AM signals)
and/or non-linear phases (FM signals).
He began with the simplest model
where an image is modelled as a singlecomponent AM-FM image function, and
described how the AM and FM functions are extracted – an ill-posed
problem. He then extended the problem
to representing images with multiple
summed AM-FM components, which
requires methods for separating and
individually estimating the several AMFM components. Three algorithms are
presented – the first algorithm, the
Bovik
Dominant Component Algorithm (DCA)
extracts the strongest single AM-FM
component from any image. The second
algorithm, the All Channels Algorithm
(ACA), sums all the AM-FM components extracted from the responses of a
spatially diverse filterbank. The third
algorithm, the Component Tracking
Algorithm (CTA), seeks to represent any
image with as few AM-FM components
as is physically meaningful.
Bovik concluded his discussion by
showing three applications of AM-FM
image analysis: Shape-from-FM, Stereo
Ranging-from-FM and Latent Fingerprint
Analysis.
Bovik received his B.S. degree in
computer engineering in 1980 and his
He joined the litigation section of
the law firm of Vinson & Elkins, L.L.P.
in Nov. 99. Prior to that, He clerked for
the U.S. District Judge Sim Lake ‘66 for
two years.
Arvid K. Hassinger
After living in Port Authur for 53
years (47 years in the same house),
Hassinger and his wife moved to
Houston and are happily located in a
patio home in order to be near three of
their four children.
Michael D. Vajdos
Vajdos was named deputy program
manager of Aeromedical Evacuation at
Brooks AFB in Texas. He completed Air
Command and Staff College in July 2000.
Arild Kolsrud ’95, ’97 masters
Kolsrud is an MTS (member of the
technical staff or Engineer) of Lucent
Technologies, Inc. He received the 1999
Lucent Technologies Rise and Shine
Award and has a 2000 patent number
6.053,646 “keyball”.
M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and
computer engineering in 1982 and 1984,
respectively, all from the University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
He also is the General Dynamics
Endowed Fellow in his department at
the University of Texas. His current
research interests include digital video,
image processing, computer vision,
wavelets and computational aspects of
biological visual perception. He has
published more than 300 technical
articles in these areas and holds two
United States patents.
Bovik also is a recipient of the IEEE
Third Millennium Medal (2000), the
IEEE Signal Processing Society
Meritorious Service Award (1998) and
was named Distinguished Lecturer of
the IEEE Signal Processing Society
(2000). He is a Fellow of the IEEE and
has been involved in numerous
professional society activities, including: editor-in-chief, IEEE Transactions
on Image Processing; and editorial
board, Proceedings of the IEEE. He was
the founding general chairman of the
First IEEE International Conference on
Image Processing, held in Austin in
November 1994.
Bovik is a registered Professional
Engineer in the State of Texas and is a
frequent consultant to industry and
academic institutions.
The Department of Electrical
Engineering presents this year-long
program of lectures to broaden the
horizons of faculty, students and
friends interested in the progress of
electrical engineering.
9
BRIEFS-continued from page 5
Nominations are initiated by IEEE
members and the public, then reviewed by
a panel of peers. Their recommendations
are submitted to the IEEE Awards Board for
approval by the IEEE Board of Directors.
Michalski’s research interests include
numerical and analytical methods for the
solution of electromagnetic boundary value
problems, electromagnetic theory, Green’s
functions, integral and differential equation
methods, method of moments, finite
element and finite difference techniques,
electromagnetic scattering and radar crosssection analysis, antennas and scatterers
embedded in stratified media, microstrip
antennas and transmission lines, dielectric
resonators, analog effects in high-speed
digital circuits, radiated emissions from
printed circuit boards, electromagnetic
interference and compatibility, radio wave
propagation, microwave and radio frequency engineering and borehole induction logging tools.
Michalski received his Ph.D. from the
University of Kentucky in 1981 and his
master’s degree from the Technical
University of Wroclaw in Poland. Other
honors include being named a Texas
Engineering Experiment Station (TEES)
Fellow in 1991, earning the Oliver Lodge
Premium, winning best EMP Paper Award
in 1984 and he was a U.S. delegate to the
21st General Assembly of the International
Union of Radio Science (URSI) in 1984.
Krishna Narayanan
Narayanan, assistant professor for the
department, received the prestigious
Faculty Early Career Development
(CAREER) Award sponsored by the
National Science Foundation (NSF).
The NSF established the CAREER
program to support junior faculty within
the context of their overall career development, combining in a single program the
support of research and education of the
highest quality and in the broadest sense.
Through this program, the NSF emphasizes
the importance on the early development of
academic careers dedicated to stimulating
the discovery process in which the
excitement of research is enhanced by
inspired teaching and enthusiastic learning.
Narayanan’s research involves
iterative decoding of concatenated
codes. He said the discovery of turbo
codes and the recent rediscovery of low
density parity check (LDPC) codes or
Gallager codes are two of the landmark
developments in this area.
Narayanan received the award
through his research activities, which
include interference rejection for TDMA
and CDMA systems, equalization and
coding for magnetic recording and
wireless communications and VLSI
architecuters for turbo decoders.
Narayanan joined the department in
1999 in the area of Telecommunications
10
and Signal Processing. He received his
Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology, his M.S. from Iowa State University
and his B.S. from Coimbatore Institute of
Technology in India.
Other recent achievements include
earning the Advanced Technology
Program (ATP) Award from the Texas
Higher Education Coordinating Board.
Robert Nevels
The Association of Former Students at
Texas A&M University recently recognized
Nevels, professor for the department, with
the Distinguished Achievement Award for
his excellence in teaching.
The association says these awards
“are the most prestigious awards that can
be presented to a faculty or staff member
at Texas A&M.” A campus-wide
committee composed of faculty, staff and
students chooses recipients.
Nevels began working at Texas A&M
in 1978 as an assistant professor, quickly
moving to associate professor then
professor. During his tenure at Texas
A&M he established the Electromagnetics and Microwave Laboratory
and organized an undergraduate microwave lab/lecture course for which he
wrote the lab manual and obtained
equipment funding. In 1998 he became
the assistant department head.
His interest areas include Mathematical and Numerical Techniques in
Electromagnetics, Electromagnetic
Scattering, Antennas and Waveguidance.
Other distinctions include being
named the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineering (IEEE) Region 5
Outstanding Educator Award for 1997,
the Clear Lake Council of Technical
Societies Technical Educator of the Year
in 1996, the Outstanding Professor
Award from the IEEE Texas A&M
Student Chapter in 1994 and 1998 and the
Amoco Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1995.
In addition to many other professional
activities through IEEE and other
organizations, Nevels has authored many
papers and was associate editor for a
book entitled “Handbook of Microwave
and Optical Devices.”
He received his bachelor’s degree from
the University of Kentucky in 1969, his
master’s degree from the Georgia Institute
of Technology in 1974 and his Ph.D. from
the University of Mississippi in 1979.
B. Don Russell
Russell, professor for the department
and the Texas Engineering Experiment
Station (TEES) deputy director, has been
named a Regents Professor by The Texas
A&M University Board of Regents.
Russell, who is also the associate vice
chancellor for engineering research
programs for the Texas A&M University
System and the associate dean for
research in the Texas A&M Dwight Look
College of Engineering, joined 10 other
faculty members in receiving the systemwide regents service awards.
He received a bachelor’s degree in 1970
and a master’s degree in 1971, both in
electrical engineering, from Texas A&M
University and he earned a doctorate in
electrical engineering from the University of
Oklahoma in 1975 before joining the Texas
A&M electrical engineering department in
1976 as an assistant professor.
Russell is a member of the National
Academy of Engineering and a fellow of
IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional society. Russell has served as
president, vice-president and secretary of
the IEEE Power Engineering Society and
also is a member of the National Society of
Professional Engineers and the American
Society of Engineering Education.
Among his many awards and honors is
1997 “R&D 100” award - the “Oscars of
invention” - for inventing one of the 100
most technologically significant new
products. Russell also won the IEEE
Herman Halperin Electric Transmission and
Distribution Award, the society’s highest
honor, in 1997 for his outstanding contributions to power engineering. The National
Society of Professional Engineers honored
him in 1991 with its Outstanding Engineering Achievement Award.
The Regents Professor Service Awards
and the Regents Fellow Service Awards are
among the highest honors given by the
A&M System Board of Regents.
Russell also was granted diplomate
status in the American Board of Forensic
Engineering and Technology, a state
research agency and a member of the
A&M System.
Diplomate certification is a peer review
process that recognizes excellence in the
profession of forensic examination. Diplomates frequently testify in criminal and
other court cases often of national
significance.
Among the advisory bodies for
certification are the American Board of
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Forensic Examiners and the American
Board of Forensic Medicine. The ACFE,
formed in 1992, is a member in the
Specialty and Service Society of the
American Medical Association (AMA).
Another honor Russell recently
received was the IEEE Third Millennium
Medal. To celebrate the third millennium,
IEEE is awarding about 3,000 millennium
awards to individuals among its global
320,000 membership.IEEE societies,
sections, regions and boards selected the
recipients based on their outstanding
contributions.
Edgar Sanchez-Sinencio
Sanchez-Sinencio, professor for the
department, was selected as a William
and Ruth Neely/Dow Chemical Faculty
Fellow for 2000-2001 by the Dwight Look
College of Engineering.
The Faculty Fellows Program was
established to recognize recipients’
overall contribution to the engineering
program, including classroom instruction, scholarly activities and professional service.
The William and Ruth Neely/Dow
Chemical Fellowship was made available by a donation from Ruth and Bill
Neely ’52. Mr. Neely is a retiree of Dow
Chemical.
Sanchez joined the electrical engineering department in 1984 after
serving as a visiting professor. He
currently is group leader for the Analog
and Mixed Signal Group.
Other recent recognitions include the
Golden Jubilee Medal commemorating the
50th anniversary of the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE) Circuits & Systems Society
(CASS), being named the inaugural TI
Analog Chair. He also has received the
Halliburton Professorship Award of
Excellence and the IEEE GuilleminCauer Award.
Sanchez’s research interests include
continuous-time filters and oscillators,
switched capacitor networks, computeraided analysis and design, neural
networks hardware implementations,
design and construction of MOS
integrated circuits, applications of
operational transconductance amplifiers,
current-mode techniques, CMOS
implementations of neural networks and
fuzzy logic circuits.
He received his doctoral degree in
electrical engineering from the University
of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, his
master’s degree from Stanford University
and a Communications and Electronics
Engineer professional degree from the
National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico.
Erchin Serpedin
Serpedin, assistant professor for the
department, received the prestigious
Faculty Early Career Development
(CAREER) Award sponsored by the
National Science Foundation (NSF) for
his research on “An Integrated
Cyclostationary Signal Processing
Framework for Optimized and Robust
Wireless Communications.”
The NSF established the CAREER
program to support junior faculty within
the context of their overall career development, combining in a single program the
support of research and education of the
highest quality and in the broadest sense.
Through this program, the NSF emphasizes
the importance on the early development of
academic careers dedicated to stimulating
the discovery process in which the
excitement of research is enhanced by
inspired teaching and enthusiastic learning.
Serpedin’s research involves the
development of a general and novel
framework for designing robust and
optimal spectrally efficient channel
estimation, synchronization and equalization algorithms.
Key elements of the work include
development of a unified framework for
designing and analyzing non-data
aided joint carrier frequency-offset/
Doppler shift and symbol timing
estimators in time-selective and flatfading channels, development of a
robust non-data aided framework for
estimation and equalization of time- and
frequency-selective fading channels
and development of a robust non-data
aided space-time signal processing
framework for synchronization and
estimation of multipath signals arriving
at an antenna array. The proposed
research offers a wealth of innovative
educational projects for course and
laboratory instruction.
Serpedin began working for the
department in 1999. He received his
Diploma of Electrical Engineer from the
Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, his
Specialization Degree in Transmission
and Processing of Information, L’Ecole
Superieure d’Electricite (SUPELEC), in
Paris, his master’s degree from the
Georgia Institute of Technology, ECE
School in Atlanta and his Ph.D. from the
University of Virginia.
His research interests are in the areas
of signal processing for wireless communications, equalization/synchronization
of communication channels, statistical
signal processing, spectral analysis, and
antenna array signal processing.
Zixiang Xiong
Xiong, assistant professor for the
department, was named a Eugene E.
Webb ’43 Fellow by the college of
engineering. He began working at A&M
in 1999 after a stint at the University of
Hawaii as an assistant professor.
He also has received a Young
Investigator Award from the Office of
Naval Research (ONR) and the United
States Army Research Office (ARO), and
the CAREER Award from the National
Science Foundation.
Xiongreceived his bachelor’s degree at
Wuhan University in P.R. China, his
master’s degrees at the University of
Kansas and the Illinois Institute of Technology and his doctoral degree from the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Xiadong Wang
Wang, assistant professor for the
department, was named a TEES Select
Young Faculty member, an honor that
goes to promising young researchers.
Wang has worked in the areas of
digital communications, digital signal
processing, parallel and distributed
computing, nanoelectronics and
quantum computing. His publication
record includes 19 refereed journal
papers and 28 refereed or invited
conference papers.
He also spent the summer of 1997 at
the Wireless Communications Department of the AT&T Labs - Research, in
Red Bank, NJ, where he worked on
performance analysis of dynamic
frequency hopping techniques for the
third generation wireless cellular
systems. Wang also was named
recipient of the prestigious Faculty
Early Career Development (CAREER)
Award, which is sponsored by the NSF.
Wang joined the faculty in electrical
engineering in 1998. He received his
Ph.D. from Princeton University, his
master’s degree from Purdue University
and his bachelor’s degree from Shanghai
Jiao Tong University, China.
Karan L. Watson
Watson, professor and associate dean
in the Dwight Look College of Engineering, was honored with IEEE’s Third
Millenium medal.
Watson, a Texas A&M Regents
Professor, also was honored in 1998 by
the world’s largest federation of scientists and engineers with the American
Association for the Advancement of
Science’s Mentor Award. Watson also
has received a Presidential Award for
Excellence in Science, Mathematics and
Engineering Mentoring at the White
House in 1997. She was nominated by the
IEEE Education Society.
The only female dean in the college’s
100-plus years, Watson has been at
Texas A&M since 1983. An IEEE Fellow,
Watson has joint appointments as
professor in the computer science
department. Her professional interests
include real-time knowledge-based
systems, diagnostic systems and expert
systems. Watson earned her bachelor’s,
master’s and doctoral degrees from Texas
Tech University.
11
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