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For all the news, see the newsletters at the bottom of this page.
Two teams with electrical engineering students won awards at the Spring 2012 Project Design Showcase. Titled “The Boeing Company 3 – LED Strobe System” and sponsored by Jason Steiner, the team members included electrical engineering students Peter Gosch, Benjamin Haas, Patrick Lee, and Christina Miceli. The team won 2nd place in the Lockheed Martin Design Award for Best Project.
Titled “Lincoln Labs/PSU Student Space Programs Lab – Emergency Aerial Communications System” and sponsored by Sven Bilen, the team members included electrical engineering student Siwei Feng, mechanical engineering student Greg Brulo, and computer engineering students Ivan Stalev and David Zhang. The team won the Boeing Systems Engineering Award.
Graduate students Sonny Smith and Jose Ramirez were selected to receive a Graham endowed fellowship for the 2012-13 academic year. The fellowship, administered by the Graduate School, recognizes students for their achievements to date and their potential for future success.
Emil Laftchiev, Ph.D. candidate in electrical engineering, won the 2nd place paper award in the College of Engineering Research Symposium on April 5. His paper is titled “Terrain-Based Vehicle Localization From Real-Time Data Using Dynamical Models” and his advisor is Professor Constantino Lagoa.
NSF recently released 2010 rankings of science and engineering research expenditures. The Penn State electrical engineering department ranked 3 among all private and public universities! That is up one from a ranking of 4 in 2009.
Congratulations to Theresa Mayer on her recent promotion to Distinguished Professor.
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The annual Waynick Lecture is April 12, 8:00 p.m. in 22 Deike Building. The speaker is Anousheh Ansari and she will be addressing “Space Commercialization and its Future.” The event is free and open to the public. For more information, see here.
Congratulations Professor Suman Datta for winning the outstanding research award from the Penn State Engineering Alumni Society. Datta will receive his award in a ceremony April 13 in Kunkle Activities Center.
The Industry/University Cooperative Research Center on Optical Wireless Applications (COWA) is holding its first Industrial Advisory Board meeting on May 20-22 to discuss the potentials of the interdisciplinary research center, providing leadership to develop new generation of environment-friendly (GREEN), extremely wideband optical wireless technology applications, employing solid-state devices for communications, networking, imaging, positioning and remote sensing.
The meeting will be of interest to engineers, leaders and executives in visionary companies that have a goal to extend and enhance their products and services with newly designed mm-wave and optical sources, transmitters, detectors and receivers. For more information, please refer to the center website.
The student chapter of IEEE placed 3rd in the Rube Goldberg Machine competition on Feb. 11. Led by team captain, EE senior Erik Bergstrom, and team co-captain, EE junior Grant Vandebrake, and sponsored by Nucor Steel, the team put in about 150 man hours into the building of the project. Held annually, the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest challenges students to use innovative ideas and problem-solving skills to design a machine that accomplishes an otherwise trivial task. This year's challenge was to design and build a machine that inflates and pops a balloon in 20 or more steps.
Mohsen Kavehrad, W. L. Weiss Chair Professor of Electrical Engineering, is co-chairing the “Optical Wireless Systems and Applications” topic for the IEEE Photonics Society Summer Topicals 2012. This conference aims to bring together researchers and engineers in emerging optical wireless communications, using visible lights and RoF technologies in addition to IR and UV communications or free space optics. Paper submission deadline is March 21. For more information, visit the website.
Monthly Newsletters
If you would like to receive the monthly newsletter via email, please contact Cathy McClellan.
Faculty Positions Open
DEPARTMENT HEAD POSITION OPEN. The College of Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University invites applications for the position of Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering. Candidates should possess strong academic credentials and a widely recognized reputation, consistent with regular appointment as a full professor with tenure. An earned doctorate is required.
Faculty Spotlight
Theresa Mayer, professor of electrical engineering, has been a member of the faculty since 1994. Originally from Hampton, VA, Mayer received her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1988 from Virginia Tech. After considering her options, Mayer chose graduate school at Purdue University and received her M.S. and Ph.D. in 1989 and 1993, respectively. Mayer determined that academia was a good choice based on the flexibility of projects and ability to be innovative and create new technology.