Seven ECE ILLINOIS faculty fellows and scholars appointed

Seven new faculty fellows and scholars have been appointed among ECE ILLINOIS faculty. These honors are given to faculty to signify a distinction beyond that implied by a normal professorship, notably for faculty members earlier in their careers.

“The seven faculty members receiving this distinction have demonstrated outstanding commitment to both teaching and research,” ECE ILLINOIS Department Head William H. Sanders said. “Their work has been a valued asset to this department. Their exceptional scholarship and distinction can be recognized thanks to the alumni and friends who generously provided the funds to make these appointments possible.”

Associate Professor Alejandro Dominguez-Garcia, William L. Everitt Scholar in Electrical and Computer Engineering, is a member of the Power and Energy Systems group where his main area of focus is system reliability theory and control. He researches renewable-based generation into the grid, coming up with distributed control approaches to efficiently source power from distributed energy sources, and finding ways to keep tabs on the health of power systems and alert operators when events that might disrupt system operations occur. He has received the NSF CAREER award in 2010 and the IEEE Young Engineer Award in 2012 for his contributions to his field.

Assistant Professor Songbin Gong, Intel Alumni Fellow in Electrical and Computer Engineering, joined the ECE ILLINOIS faculty in 2013 as an assistant professor after a two year stint as a researcher at Carnegie Mellon. His primary research interests include the design and implementation of RF-MEMS devices, components, and subsystems for reconfigurable RF front ends, and engineering hybrid microsystems based on the integration of MEMS devices with photonics or circuits for imaging, sensing, and signal processing. He received the DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2014 for his innovative integrated circuit design.

Associate Professor Pavan Kumar Hanumolu, Intel Alumni Scholar in Electrical and Computer Engineering, researches integrated circuit implementation of analog and digital signal processing, sensor interfaces, wireline communication systems, and power conversion. He currently leads the integrated circuits and systems group in the department as well as being a member of SONIC, a multi-university research center that focuses on the design of intelligent computing platforms using nanoscale devices. He was recently sponsored by the Semiconductor Research Corporation to develop a method to reduce the serial link power consumption, thereby helping data centers and mobile platforms operate more energy efficiently.

Assistant Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski, Helm Fellow in Electrical and Computer Engineering, is a researcher in the Power and Energy Systems group. His areas of interest include renewable energy applications, electric vehicles, energy harvesting, CMOS power management, high density and high efficiency power converters, and advanced control of power converters. For his contributions to the field, Pilawa received the Richard M. Bass Outstanding Young Power Electronics Engineer Award by the IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS) in 2014. He has also led successful research groups that have been featured in events such as Google’s Little Box Challenge and IEEE International Future Energy Challenge (IFEC).

Assistant Professor Maxim Raginsky, William L. Everitt Fellow in Electrical and Computer Engineering, researches theoretical and practical aspects of information processing and decision-making in uncertain environments under resource and complexity constraints. He joined the ECE faculty in 2012 as an assistant professor after spending time as a researcher at Northwestern, University of Illinois, and Duke University. In his research he examines new angles and perspectives at the interface between information theory, learning, optimization, and control. He received the NSF CAREER award in 2013 to develop an information-theoretic approach to machine learning problems that involve multiple resource-constrained learning agents in a large network.

Associate Professor Romit Roy Choudhury, W.J. "Jerry" Sanders III - Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Scholar in Electrical and Computer Engineering, is an associate professor that joined the ECE Faculty in 2013. His research focus is on the wireless protocol design mainly at the PHY/MAC layer, and in mobile computing at the application layer. He has made a significant impact on the mobile computing field by using data collected from smartphones and wearable devices to study human behavior. Roy Choudhury’s work has been recognized with honors that include the NSF CAREER Award, IBM Faculty Research Award, and the Google Faculty Award.

Assistant Professor Lara Waldrop, Y.T. Lo Fellow in Electrical and Computer Engineering, joined the ECE ILLINOIS faculty in 2014 as an assistant professor. Her research is focused on the development of novel ground- and space-based sensing modalities for estimation of key physical parameters of the near-earth space plasma environment, with application to predictive modeling of atmospheric evolution, mapping of orbital trajectories, and mitigation of space weather hazards. She was also a co-developer on the ExoCube satellite, which was launched into space in early 2015. She has also been named a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award in 2015.