9/1/2016 Julia Sullivan, ECE ILLINOIS 7 min read
Written by Julia Sullivan, ECE ILLINOIS
Among the many new faces on campus this year are an unprecedented number of new ECE faculty members. Ten new tenure-track faculty members and one new research professor have joined ECE ILLINOIS, bringing with them insights and interests in emerging fields, ranging from Bitcoin and distributed systems to new generation optical sensors.
Additionally, there are 5 new tenure-track faculty who have accepted offers and will arrive by January 2017. This group represents the largest increase of new faculty in a single year in recent memory.
Haitham Al-Hassanieh
PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
His previous work includes building wireless systems and designing networking protocols for low power wireless networks such as RFIDs and implantable medical devices. He also developed algorithms to reduce the power consumption on GPS receivers and build RF radios that can capture GHz of spectrum without sampling at Nyquist while using only a few low speed ADCs.
Subhonmesh Bose
PhD, California Institute of Technology
His current research interests lie in understanding the operation and economics of modern power systems, leveraging tools from convex optimization, control theory, microeconomics, and game theory. Some specific questions include optimizing production costs against Kirchhoff's laws, understanding strategic interaction in electricity markets using networked oligopoly models, characterizing the value of energy storage in power systems, and designing market mechanisms in electricity markets with variable renewable supply.
Peter D. Dragic
PhD, University of Illinois
He is an expert in fiber measurements and has developed new techniques to experimentally characterize both conventional and novel optical fibers with widely-ranging characteristics. Coupled with new modeling approaches, this has led to the development of several new fibers for applications in fiber lasers, communications, and distributed sensing.
Liang Gao
PhD, Rice University
He leads the Intelligent Optics Laboratory (iOptics), developing state-of-the-art imaging and display technologies for intelligent devices, such as smart glasses and drones. Specifically, the iOptics Lab will research multi-dimensional imaging technologies, near-eye 3D display, and biomedical optics. The group has a strong interest in developing innovative imaging solutions for healthcare and biomedicine.
Viktor Gruev
PhD, Johns Hopkins University
Daniel S. Katz
PhD, Northwestern University
Minjoo Larry Lee
PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
He is the author or co-author of over 120 technical papers and conference proceedings, and he holds nine patents. He has received numerous recognitions including the IBM Faculty Award, the North American Conference on MBE (NAMBE) Young Investigator Award, the Lange Lectureship in Materials at UCSB, the DARPA Young Faculty Award, an NSF CAREER award, and the IEEE Electron Device Society George E. Smith Award.
Andrew Miller
PhD, University of Maryland
He has presented nearly 20 talks, including at the 2014 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, where he presented a paper he co-authored focused on repurposing Bitcoin for long-term data preservation.
Alexander Schwing
PhD, ETH Zurich
Specifically, he is interested in inference and learning algorithms for multivariate and structured distributions that model real world data. He focuses on distributed algorithms for high performance computing environments, extracting information from weakly- and un-labeled data, and structured prediction algorithms working with data from multiple modalities. 3D scene understanding from a single image is an important application for all three areas.
Yurii Vlasov
PhD, Ioffe Institute
Prior to joining ECE ILLINOIS, he held various research and managerial positions at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in New York where he led broad company-wide efforts in integrated silicon nanophotonics and more recently in neuromorphic computing architectures.
Zhizhen (Jane) Zhao
PhD, Princeton University
Her research interests include applied and computational harmonic analysis, signal processing, dimensionality reduction, information theory, scientific computing, and their application to imaging sciences and inverse problems in structural biology and atmospheric and oceanic sciences.