NEWs

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Dr. Duy Nguyen Receives a $262,967 Grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) 

Enhance Power Grid Resilience via Artificial Intelligence
Article Preventing Wildfires Sparked by Power Lines by Susanne Clara Bard, July 31, 2023

Dr. Saeed Manshadi, Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study how to improve electrical grid resilience in fire-prone areas. Dr. Manshadi's team uses artificial intelligence to calculate fire risk and help utilities decide when to shut off power.

SDSU's NewsCenter's Susanne Clara Bard had the opportunity to interview Dr. Manshadi and asked how utilities calculate fire risk when making power shutoff decisions. To read the full article, click on Preventing Wildfires Sparked by Power Lines.

Dr. Mahasweta Sarkar Recipient of the 2023 Distinguished Faculty Award

Dr. Mahasweta Sarkar, Professor of Computer Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of the WIreless Networks and Communication (WINC) Laboratory, received the 2023 Distinguished Faculty Award. The award is a symbol of achievement and success presented to distinguished faculty from each of SDSU's seven academic colleges, Library and Information Access, and SDSU Imperial Valley Campus. The Monty Awards honor those who have made significant contributions to San Diego State University, the San Diego community or California, nationally or internationally.

Dr. Sarkar was born and raised in India and came to the U.S. in 1996. She became interested in the world of internet and wanted to make the world a smaller place by connecting people in real-time. Her research focuses on high social impact which will bring connectivity to people, not only in health and education, but also to unconnected areas of the world using drone networking. To learn more about Dr. Sarkar, please click on The Distinguished Faculty Award 2023 - Mahasweta Sarkar.

 

Dr. Chunting “Chris” Mi Recipient of the 2023 IEEE PELS Vehicle and Transportation Systems Achievement Award

Dr. Chris Mi, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering received the 2023 IEEE PELS Vehicle and Transportation Systems Achievement Award "For contributions to the advancement of battery management systems and of electric vehicle charging".

The IEEE PELS Vehicle and Transportation Systems Achievement Award is established to recognize innovators and researchers who have made outstanding technical contributions to the advancement of power electronics in-vehicle and transportation systems.

 

Dr. Tharm Ratnarajah, fred harris Endowed Chair in Digital Signal Processing

Dr. Tharm Ratnarajah joins the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at San Diego State University (SDSU) as the fred harris Endowed Chair in Digital Signal Processing. Dr. Ratnarajah's research interests include signal processing and information-theoretic aspects of 6G cellular networks, full-duplex radio, mmWave communications, random matrix theory, big data analytics and machine learning for wireless networks, statistical and array signal processing, and physical-layer secrecy. He has published over 425 Peer-reviewed papers in these areas and holds four US patents. He was the coordinator of the European Union (EU) projects HARP (4.6M€) in the area of highly distributed MIMO and ADEL (3.7M€) in the area of licensed shared access. Dr. Ratnarajah was also the coordinator of the European Union Future and Emerging Technologies project CROWN (3.4M€) in the area of cognitive radio networks and HIATUS (3.6M€) in the area of interference alignment. Prof Ratnarajah was an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 2015-2017, and Technical co-chair of the 17th IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications, Edinburgh, UK, 3-6, July 2016. Prof. Ratnarajah is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). He has supervised 18 PhD students and 23 post-doctoral research fellows and raised $11.0+ million (USD) of research funding. Dr. Ratnarajah published a book on "In-Band Full-Duplex Radios in 6G Networks: Implementation and Applications", Foundations and Trends® in Networking, 2023 and is also the editor of the book "Spectrum Sharing: The Next Frontier in Wireless Networks", published by Wiley in April 2020 (ISBN: 978-1-119-55149-2).

 

Dr. Naim Ahmed, New ECE Assistant Professor

Dr. Naim Ahmed joins the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at San Diego State University (SDSU) as an Assistant Professor and is a scholar in the field of photonics. His research focuses on developing integrated photonics devices and systems for optical communication, high-speed computing, quantum engineering, and sensing applications. Dr. Ahmed earned his Ph.D. in ECE from the University of Delaware, where he pioneered the development of novel state-of-the-art devices by introducing a hybrid thin-film lithium niobate platform. Prior to joining SDSU, Dr. Ahmed made significant contributions to the field during his three-year tenure at leading integrated photonics companies, including Analog Photonics and Imec, USA."

 

Dr. Bo Zhang, P.E., ECE Adjunct Faculty

Dr. Bo Zhang joins SDSU Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering as an Adjunct Professor. He currently works as a staff scientist III at Idaho National Laboratory. He is the INL lead scientist on wireless R&D, and the principal investigator (PI) of multiple DOE projects. Dr. Zhang is the 2023 DOE Boost Program inventor, and a core member fulfilling U.S. President’s Executive Order 14017 in a high-impact government report “Electric Grid Supply Chain Deep Dive Assessment”. He served as session chairs/committee members for multiple IEEE conferences including ITEC, ECCE, ICPRE, and as a committee member for SAE J2954 Wireless Power Transfer and Alignment Task Force. He has authored more than 30 publications, held six patents, and served as guest editor/reviewers for multiple journal publications. He received B.E. and Ph.D. degrees both in electrical engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and had years of national lab and industry working experience now at INL and previously as team lead/senior electrical engineer at State Grid Corporation of China. His research interests include wireless charging of EV, EV charging infrastructure, electric grid supply chain, and renewable energy to grid integration. He is a U.S. licensed Professional Engineer (P.E.), and an IEEE senior member.

 

Mr. Vidya Rangaswamy, ECE Adjunct Faculty

Mr. Vidya Rangaswamy joins SDSU Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering as an Adjunct Professor. He is a former VP of Engineering at Ohmium International and former Sr. Engineering Manager of General Atomics. Mr. Rangaswamy holds an MSEE degree from the University of Minnesota, MPLS and a Master’s in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Dehli, India.

 

 

2023 Outstanding Faculty Award

Dr. Ashkan Ashrafi, Associate Professor of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering was awarded the 2023 Outstanding Faculty Award in recognition as the most influential university professor in the academic career of Kyle Donoghue (BSEE ’22, Summa Cum Laude).

Dr. Ashkan Ashrafi received his Ph.D. at the University of Alabama, Huntsville in 2006. He has been teaching at San Diego State University since 2007. Dr. Ashrafi’s research areas include Digital Signal Process, Brain Signal Processing, and Estimation Theory.

Dr. Junfei Xi Receives a $314,818 CCRI Grant, National Science Foundation (NSF)

Dr. Junfei Xie, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering received a $314,818 CCRI grant from the NSF to develop an enhanced networked airborne computing platform. The grant is sponsored by the NSF and is titled "Enhanced Open Networked Airborne Computing Platform".

The project aims to develop an enhanced open networked airborne computing platform to facilitate the design, implementation, and testing of an airborne computing platform that seamlessly integrates control, computing, communication, and networking. The project will provide community support based on the flywheel model, and to attract and engage community users through organized support from four regional sites in the nation, hands-on workshops, testbed access, and technical user services.

This collaborative project brings together investigators from the University of North Texas (UNT), the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), San Diego State University (SDSU), and the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez (UPRM). All four participating universities are minority-serving (UPRM) or Hispanic-serving (UTA, UNT, and SDSU) institutions with a large number of underrepresented minority students. The project will reach out to local communities through K-12 activities, and also pursue broad dissemination through organizing student design competitions, tutorials, and workshops, participating in national demonstration efforts, and engaging domain professionals. The proposed education and outreach activities will produce a profound impact on broad communities and benefit a large number of underrepresented minority students. The proposed project on enhanced open networked airborne computing platform will address the design and evaluation needs of many researchers in the CISE community and benefit a wide range of applications in the emergency, energy, environment, and transportation sectors.