by Thane Himes Liang Dong recently completed research on a device that can help scientists find more effective ways to protect crops and combat Parkinson’s disease by studying, of all things, worms. Nematodes possess simple nervous systems, but still share important characteristics with the nervous systems of humans. By studying nematode nerves, researchers can learn more …Continue reading “ECpE researcher completes lab on a chip device”
Meng Lu, who will be joining the ECpE department as an assistant professor in January 2013, believes that label-free biosensors, which use biological or chemical receptors to detect analytes, will make the leap from laboratory research to applications in a variety of disciplines, including medical screening, pharmaceutical research, and environmental testing. “In the past decade, …Continue reading “Meng Lu: taking label-free sensing from research to practice”
Faxian Xiu, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and his senior postdoctoral fellow Lihong Bao have published successive works on topological insulators in the Nature Journal Scientific Reports. The original article, published on September 18, discussed findings that indicate unique electrical charge carrier transport exists on the surfaces of topological insulator thin films. The …Continue reading “Xiu advances discovery on emerging topological insulators; paper featured in Nature Journal—Scientific Reports”
by Thane Himes High-performance semiconductors are individually tested to guarantee quality before they can be shipped to customers. This is done by inputting precisely known data values into a part, and measuring how the part responds to the input data. As Moore’s law continues to push up performance and push down prices, test time has …Continue reading “Texas Instruments adopts ECpE researcher’s testing algorithm”
Iowa State University (ISU) is setting up a product-security test and evaluation lab where university students will be assessing network security products’ strengths and weaknesses in a formal program supervised by faculty and a newly named lab director. “We have a large pool of students interested in cybersecurity,” says Dr. Doug Jacobson, director of ISU’s …Continue reading “Students will be doing vulnerability tests on security products at Iowa State University’s new lab”
From the office of the CIO at Iowa State University The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Iowa State University a $1.8 million grant for a high-performance computing (HPC) system. Nearly all of the grant will go directly to purchasing computer equipment for science and engineering. Iowa State will provide an additional $780k as a …Continue reading “New NSF award for high-performance computing”
The research of Faxian Xiu, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and his first PhD student Nicholas Meyer attracted global attention when it was published in Scientific Reports, a primary research publication from the publishers of Nature. As part of this research, Xiu and his team have grown high-quality topological insulator thin films on …Continue reading “Xiu’s research on topological insulators published in Scientific Reports, hosted on Nature.com”
by Thane Himes Subhadarshi Sarkar, grad student in electrical engineering, was awarded first prize at the 2012 IEEE PES General Meeting Student Poster Contest in July for his presentation on optimal renewable energy. Sarkar presented his poster to judges, professors, students, and professionals at the general meeting. The next day, he found out that he …Continue reading “ECpE grad student wins IEEE poster contest”
by Thane Himes Vijay Vittal (PhD EE ’82), former distinguished professor of electrical engineering at ECpE, has been named the 2013 recipient of the IEEE Herman Halperin Electric Transmission and Distribution Award. Vittal’s work includes a number of projects in several areas, including online dynamic security assessment, the application of a new analytical methods to …Continue reading “ECpE alum, former professor honored by IEEE”
Around 2 p.m. on August 14, 2003, an overhead transmission line carrying 345 kilovolts of electricity near Walton Hills, Ohio sagged too close to a nearby tree and shorted out. By 4 p.m., more than 50 million people were affected by one of the largest blackouts in history. In September 2011, an Arizona Public Works …Continue reading “Quantifying Cascading Failure”
ECpE lost one of its most treasured alums last week. Richard Kohler (RK) Richards died Tuesday, June 26, 2012 at Mary Greeley Hospital. He was 90. RK graduated from Iowa State with an Electrical Engineering degree in 1943 and, after serving in the army Signal Corps during World War II, obtained a PhD in theoretical …Continue reading “ECpE mourns loss of alum”
Manimaran Govindarasu, Professor and Associate Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Doug Jacobson, University Professor, and Koray Celik, ECpE graduate assistant, were featured this week in EEWeb, one of the premier online communities for electrical engineering hardware designers. Govindarsu discusses how he first became interested in the engineering field and what is on his book shelf. …Continue reading “ECpE engineers featured in EEWeb”
Written by Perry Beeman Des Moines Register The way you type on your computer’s keyboard is as unique as your handwriting, and may even be a matter of national security, says an Iowa State University engineering professor. The U.S. Department of Defense, looking for better ways than hacker-prone passwords to protect its systems, is betting a …Continue reading “Keystrokes yield ID clues”
Four researchers in the Iowa State Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering were awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award in 2012. Santosh Pandey, Aditya Ramamoorthy, Umesh Vaidya and Joseph Zambreno each earned awards and pushed the department’s total number of NSF CAREER Awards to 16. The four awards represent …Continue reading “Four from ECpE earn NSF CAREER Awards”
Traditionally, graduate students and their major professors become very well acquainted. They spend hours together furthering research and exploring new theories. Every now and again, a passion outside of academics crops up, just as it has for Doug Jacobson and Joseph Idziorek, who formed a unique bond over foot races that have had them doing …Continue reading “Engineering professor and student bond over shared interests”
