News & Events > Loose Bits
Loose Bits - April 2010
Dear EE
Community,
At
the request of many members of the department, we are bringing back Loose Bits, an
informal yet informative email to the UWEE community highlighting all the
positive achievements and activities happening around the department. Loose
Bits will be a monthly email, however, to get everyone up to
speed, this iteration will include news and information that has happened over
the last quarter. If you have any news items you would like to share, please
continue to send your information to: pr@ee.washington.edu.
Development
Update:
The generous support of our EE
alumni has allowed for the recent establishment of three new endowed funds.
These new funds will provide much needed support for graduate and undergraduate
students, and general department operations.
Don & Joan
Baker Fellowship
EE alumnus, Don Baker (BSEE ’60),
and his wife Joan, have established the Don & Joan Baker Endowed Fellowship.
This generous gift will support graduate students in Bioengineering or
Electrical Engineering who are pursuing biomedical
instrumentation.
A new scholarship in memory of
Leonore Kerkof will provide financial assistance to undergraduate students in
the EE department. This endowment was established by a generous gift from
Leonore Kerkof, the late wife of Vincent Kerkof (BSEE ’49). Leonore wished to
establish this scholarship to convey her gratitude for the education Vincent
received at the University of Washington. Vincent supported Leonore and
himself on the income produced from his employment as an engineer, during the 45
years of their marriage.
The Kenneth J. and Sylvia K. Steen
Endowed Fund, a new fund created in memory of Kenneth J. Steen (MSEE ’72), will
provide discretionary support for both the EE Department and the Foster School
of Business.
Awards &
Honors:
Many of our
community members have received recognition for their exceptional efforts in
research and education. You can click on the links below to learn more
information about the award and recipient. Congratulations to these students,
faculty and alumni!
Five EE
Undergraduate Students win Mary Gates Scholarships. The students
selected are: Cezanne Camacho
(Honors and Space Grant Scholar); Nomin Oyunerdene (Leadership Scholar); Erik
Josberger, Alexander Spott, and Brendan Trimboli (Research Scholars). A full
list of the recipients, mentors, and project titles can be found on the official
Mary Gates Endowment webpage.
www.washington.edu/uaa/mge/about/scholarslist.htm
Graduate student
Sina Nia Kosari was awarded the Natural Sciences
& Engineering Research Council of Canada Fellowship.
Graduate student
Jonathan Lester and Professor Shwetak Patel won the best paper
award at the International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technology and
Healthcare (Pervasive Health) 2010.
Graduate student
Basel Alomair has won the IEEE/IFIP William C.
Carter Award for 2010 for his paper "Scalable RFID Systems: a Privacy-Preserving
Protocol with Constant-Time Identification."
www.ee.washington.edu/news/2010/alomair_carter_award.html
Tim
Kowalewski, an EE Ph.D. student in Blake
Hannaford's BioRobotics Lab, received the Best Doctoral Candidate Award at the
first annual Doctoral Consortium for Medical Simulation and Robotics.
www.ee.washington.edu/news/2010/kowalewski_award.html
Professor Scott Hauck honored with the 2010 Distinguished Teaching Award from the
University of Washington.
www.ee.washington.edu/news/2010/hauck_teaching.html
Alumnus Richard
Citta was awarded the COE Distinguished
Achievement in Industry Award. Over his long career as a research engineer at
Zenith Electronics, Citta played a critical role in the technology
that makes HDTV possible.
http://www.ee.washington.edu/news/2010/sandia_uw_team.html
Team from Professor Brian Otis'
Wireless Sensing Lab has been named a winner at the 2010 Design Automation Conference
(DAC)/International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) Design
Competition.
http://www.ee.washington.edu/news/2010/bumblebee.html
Graduate
students Sidharth Nabar and Tony Wu of the Network
Security Lab received the Pride@Boeing Award.
http://www.ee.washington.edu/news/2009/boeing_pride.html
UWEE In the
News:
The research
and service activities of several of our faculty have gained public interest
through media coverage. Below is a selection of press items that features our
faculty. You can click on the link to read the article.
Michael Hochberg in The New York Times:
www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/business/14novel.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1268758843-xh6h2FXK/paCPMfMVaCh8w
Michael Hochberg in Interconnectworld:
www.interconnectionworld.com/index/display/wire-news-display/142469413.html
Eve Riskin in The (IEEE) Institute:
www.theinstitute.ieee.org/portal/site/tionline/menuitem.130a3558587d56e8fb2275875bac26c8/index.jsp?&pName=institute_level1_article&TheCat=2201&article=tionline/legacy/inst2010/mar10/featureWIE.xml&Affiliate Professor Gary Bernard in UWeek:
http://uwnews.org/uweek/article.aspx?id=55214
Shwetak Patel in UWeek:
http://uwnews.org/uweek/article.aspx?id=55086
Shwetak Patel in Computing Now:
www.computer.org/portal/web/computingnow/archive/news047
Michael Hochberg in The White House blog:
www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/01/14/honoring-scientists-and-engineers
The most recent and up to date news
and events items can always be found on our EE website: www.ee.washington.edu/news/index.html.
Here are some additional departmental items that occurred over the last
quarter.
Each week, one of our successful
alumni shared their insights on the skills, attributes, and approaches that lead
to their outstanding careers. A list of the speakers as well as brief bio’s of
their careers can be found here:
www.ee.washington.edu/cgi-bin/events/series_index.pl?series=2
EEK 2010 is
Online
This year’s issue featured research articles written by our
students and a profile of UWEE’s longstanding partnership with
Intel.
Gary Swofford (BSEE ’68), General
Manager of Swofford Energy Consulting, LLC, and the former Senior Vice President
and Chief Operating Officer for Puget Sound Energy, will deliver EE’s
commencement address on Friday, June 11, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. in Kane Hall
130. With over 35 years of experience in the energy industry, Mr. Swofford
brings a deep understanding of the issues driving power utilities to adopt
networking technologies. He provides insight into what motivates consumers and
the regulatory world to embrace advanced metering programs that encourage
consumers to use energy more efficiently and cost effectively. As the former
Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Puget Sound Energy, which
serves 1.5 million electric and gas customers in Western Washington, Mr.
Swofford was instrumental in implementing one of the USA's first large-scale,
fixed wireless networks for a utility.
Our faculty members continue to be
very successful at bringing in research funding for the department. During the
months of January and February alone, new
grant awards have totaled nearly $2
million. Here are the new awards for the months of January
and February that faculty have received:
Sponsor:
DARPA
Short Title: Thin Chip
Sponsor:
Short Title: NIH FHCRC Diet
Sensor
Blake
Hannaford
Sponsor:
Barron Associates
Short title: Tactile Data
Entry
Sponsor: Air Force Office of
Scientific Research
Short title:
PECASE
Georg
Seelig
Sponsor: National Science
Foundation
Short title: NSF
Career
