Department News and Highlights

News from the ECE Department has notable happenings from "Currently around the Department", milestones of our "Outstanding Alumni," and articles from the Temple Times and other news media.

Currently around the Department

• ECE Junior, Sudarshan Kandi has been awarded the IEEE Philadelphia Section Student Branch Leadership Award for 2009-2010. He was selected as the winner among all IEEE Student Branches in the Philadelphia region.  He was actively involved with organizing two Region II Student Activity Conferences for 2008 and 2009. 
• Several students of the ECE Department won awards at the IEEE Region II 2009 Annual Activities Conference held at Youngstown University, Ohio, April 18, 2009.   There were 170 students from 22 institutions who participated at the competition.  

  
  In the Ethics Competiton, the First prize was awarded to Bill Moser and Nabeel Adeel.
  
  In the MicroMouse Competition, First prize was awarded to Sudarshan Kandi and Joe Gro.
  
  In the Project Showcase Competition, the Second prize was award Michael Korostelev and Zhou Li.

• ECE senior, Michael Korostelev received the IEEE Philadelphia Section Alan Kirsch Award for 2008-2009 for outstanding scholarship.

• Temple ECE students, Son Nguyen and Satyaki Ganguly, received the “Best Paper in Session” award at the 41st IMAPS International Symposium held at Providence, Rhode Island, November 2008.   Their papers are “Novel Approach in Computing with Ultra-High Processing Throughput” by Son Nguyen, Joan Delalic, Bjorn Gruenwald, and Phil Monson, and  “Trade off Between Speed and Defect Tolerance of QCA Designs in the Presence of Different Manufacturing Defects” by Satyaki Ganguly, Z. Joan Delalic, and Son Nguyen.  The students were supervised by Dr. Zdenka Delalic.

• Dr. Zdenka Delalic received a “Certificate of Appreciation” at the 41st IMAPS International Symposium held at Providence, Rhode Island, for organizing the Biomedical Electronics Session and teaching a half day Professional Development Course entitled “Biomedical Materials Devices and Packaging”.  She was also elected as Biomedical Technical Chair for the IMAPS Society. 

• The IMAPS Student Chapter won second prize at the 2008 IMAPS student booth competition at the 41st IMAPS conducted in Providence, Rhode Island Convention Center, November, 2008.  Dr. Joan Delalic is the Faculty Advisor for the Student Chapter.  Participating at the 41th International IMAPS Symposium were Chris Conklin, Kovya Kolla, Yaoyao Huang, Nadia Barakat, and Son Nguyen.

• Dr. Seong Kong's article entitled Recent Advances in Visual and Infraded Face Recognition: A review (Computer Vision and Image Understanding, Vol 97, pp. 103-135, 2005) has been chosen for the Most Cited Paper Award for the period 2004-2006 by the editorial board of the journal.

• Four ECE seniors- John Kosempel, Kyle McDaniel, Dennis Samuel, and Jusin Thomas received the 2nd place award at the “Be Your Own Boss” business plan competition organized by the Fox School of Business, April 2008.

• Several members of the ECE Department won awards at the IEEE Region II 2008 Annual Activities Conference against students from Universities and Colleges from the region. 

  
  In the 2008 Physics Competition, which required solving a physics problem, First Place was awarded to freshman Sudarshan Kandi and Third Place to freshman Joe Gro.
  
  In the IEEE 2008 MicroMouse Competition, First Place in Philadelphia Section was also awarded to freshman Sudarshan Kandi and Joe Gro.
  
  In the 2008 Student Paper Competition the Second Place award went to seniors John Kosempel and Dennis Samuel.   They were also first place winners at the Best Student Paper Contest at the IEEE Philadelphia Section.

• The ECE capstone Senior Design Project of a portable wireless mass transit ticketing system, also by seniors John Kosempel and Dennis Samuel and advised by Dr. Li Bai, received the Second Place award in the 2008 Project Showcase Competition.

• The IMAPS Student Chapter won first prize at the 2007 IMAPS student booth competition.  Dr. Joan Delalic is the Faculty Advisor for the Student Chapter.  Participating at the 40th International IMAPS Symposium were Gena Heng, Navya Koka, Balakumar Ragunathan, Satyaki Ganguly, Asha Seshadri, and Son Nguyen.

• Asha Seshadri was awarded the firse prize in the Best Student Paper Competition at the 2007 IMAPS conference held at San Jose, CA, Nov 2007.  The paper is entitled Synthesis of Super Paramagnetic Iron Oxide (Magnetite) Nanoparticles and their Future Application as Therapeutic Agents, and the advisor is Dr. Zdenka Delalic.

• Temple ECE student Ailar Javadi has been awarded the IEEE Student Branch Leadership Scholarship for 2007-2008 by the IEEE Philadelphia Section.   She has been an active member of Temple IEEE Student Branch since 2005, and served as its chairperson in 2006-2007.    She is also the student representative for IEEE Philadelphia Section in 2007.   

• Temple University's IMAPS student chapter was awarded first prize for the booth competition at the 39th International Microelectronics Symposium in San Diego, in October 2006. This award is a recognition, from the IMAPS organization representing global microelectronics industries and academia, of their work based on technical content and presentation. Dr. Zdenka Delalic is the academic advisor of the IMAPS student chapter.

• Dr. Zdenka Delalic also accepted the plaque for the Outstanding Paper of the IMAPS 2005 Symposium.  The paper was entitled “Packaging and RF Telemetry System for a Biocompatible Wireless Pressure Sensor”, and was coauthored by Shankaran Janardhanan, Zdenka Delalic from Temple ECE, Michael Ruggieri and Alan Braverman from Temple Medical School, and Jeffery Catchmark from Penn State University. 

• A group of ECE seniors won the Grand Prize of the Ninth Annual Innovative Idea Competition organized by the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Institute, Fox School of Business & Management. The students are Corey Floyd, Marcus Kratz, and Darryl O'Mara, and the advisor of the project is Robert Yantorno.

• The Temple IMAPS Student Chapter, supervised by Dr. Zdenka Delalic, was awarded first prize and $500 for booth competition at the 38th IMAPS Annual International Symposium on Microelectronics, held at the Philadelphia Convention Center on September 25-29, 2005. 

• ECE student Thi Uyen Thach won the $5,000 "Leadership Scholarship" from the IEEE Philadelphia section in 2005-2006. It is the third consecutive time a Temple student won this scholarship.

• Dr. Zdenka Delalic and colleagues teach a short course “Nanotechnology: The Future of Technology in Pennsylvania,” to high school teachers.

• Dr. John Helftery supervises the FIRST Robotics Team of senior electrical and mechanical engineering and George Washington Carver high school students.

• IEEE Student Chapter hosts a successful Student Professional Awareness Conference (SPAC).

• Thi Uyen Thach receives the IEEE Philadelphia Section Alan Kirsch Award for outstanding scholarship.

• Katie Schaffold and Aisha Machungo-Sambo receive the First Place award in the IEEE Region 2 Ethics Competition.

• Dr. John Helferty receives the 2005 George Washington Carver Award.

News items from Temple Times and other media

• Philadelphia TV news channel NBC10 interviewed Dr. Robert Yantorno on teaching of life skills to students for financial security.  They also interviewed a number of students of the course including our own undergraduate senior, Jacky Speck, on their perspective on personal finances.  Dr. Yantorno’s course “Investing for the Future” teaches the basics of investing and financial plans for retirement.  

• The INVISSIBLE (pdf) Project of Dr. Brian Butz has been chosen for the Highlights by the National Science Foundation for 2008.  This was one of the 13 winning projects among a total of 42 projects.  Highlights are used by the NSF to evaluate NSF performance of funding activities, and for public relation activities.  The Interactive Virtual Intelligent System for Scientific Inquiry in a Biology Learning Environment (INVISSIBLE) is an intelligent, interactive, multimedia software environment to help high school students better understand and apply scientific methodologies to biology problems, and is authored by Dr. Brian Butz.

• Dr. Dennis Silage was honored with the National Outstanding Teaching Award by the American Association of Engineering Education (Summer 2007 - pdf )

• Temple ECE students win first IEEE ethics competition (Spring 2005)

• Dr. Brian Butz received a grant from the National Science Foundation to develop an interactive high school biology curriculum (Summer 2005)

• Dr. John Helferty supervised the FIRST Robotics Team Competition (Spring 2005)

• ECE Capstone Senior Design Project 'Mars Rover' highlighted (Spring 2004 - pdf)

• Dr. John Helferty honored for sponsoring an aid to the handicapped (Fall 2001 - pdf )

• Undergraduate student Scott Stoffel develops an aid to the handicapped (Spring 2001 - pdf)

• Undergraduate student Scott Huggard: a success story (Spring 2000 - pdf )

• Dr. Robert Yantorno receives the Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award (Spring 2000 - pdf)

• Dr. Dennis Silage establishes the WDC System Chip Design Center (Spring 2000 - pdf )

• Dr. Brian Butz receives the University Great Teacher Award (Spring 2000 - pdf )

Outstanding Alumni

• October 2006: A news article about MIT has featured Mario Valenti's (MSEE 2000) research on unmanned aerial vehicle (pdf) .  Mario has a bachelor degree from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and from the Department of Mechanical Engineering.  He is currently completing a doctoral degree at MIT.
• March 2006: Yusuf Bashir (MSEE 2005) has received several awards from his company, Johnson Controls, including the Chairmans Award, the highest honor given to any employee for his outstanding contributions to the Wireless Solution Team.
• February 2006: Vannia Willis (BSEE 1998) has been recognized as the "Black Engineer of the Year" for her outstanding contributions to engineering and managerial excellence at Northrop Grumman Newport News.
• April 2004: David LaPotin (77 BSEE) founded and served as the Director of the IBM Center for Advanced Studies in Austin.
• October 2003:  Michael Doyle has been elected to the 2003-2004 Temple University Gallery of Success. 
• July 2003: Vincent DiMemmo (86 BSEET, 89 MSEE) is a Senior Vice President for Strategic Development and Solutions Management for SAVVIS Communications.
• March 2002: Brent Synder (95 BSEE) is an information technology specialist for the Department of State.
• March 2002: Kosala Abeywickrema (93 BSEE, 95 MSEE) is an ASIC design engineer for Redback Networks, San Jose.
• December 2001: Michael Fingeroff (91 BSEE, 95 MSEE) is a Technical Manager in the HDL synthesis group at Mentor Graphics.
• September 2001: Li Bai (95 BSEE) receives a Ph.D. in ECE degree from Drexel University and joins the faculty of ECE at TU.
• August 2001: Jeff Weintraub (97 BSEE) is an applications engineer and university program specialist for Xilinx.
• May 2001: James Brennan (85 BSEET) completed his MSEE and is a senior engineer at Motorola, Hatboro, PA.