Duke/ECE

Light on Silicon Better than Copper?

Step aside copper and make way for a better carrier of information light.

P R AT T S C H O O L O F E N G I N E E R I N G E L E C T R I C A L & CO M P U T E R E N G I N E E R I N G . AY 2 0 1 1

CHAIRS LETTER

Welcome to the 2011 Duke ECE Newsletter. As I write

my first Chairs Letter for this publication, Im struck by all the evidence that were having an impact. Our revised undergraduate curriculum, with a focus on integrated sensing and information processing, is giving freshmen exciting and stimulating hands-on experiences in their first year. And that excitement is translating into more challenging and ambitious senior design projects. Weve launched a new breed of masters program the master of engineering designed for students who want to pursue applied engineering careers in industry. And our doctoral students such as Souvik Sen are winning awards at top conferences such as MobiCom, and publishing significant research contributions in top journals. For example, I encourage you to read about the metamaterial optics research by doctoral students Alec Rose and Da Huang at the end of this newsletter. Our faculty continues to win highly competitive research grants. The Department of Homeland Security recently awarded $8M to David Brady for a three-year project to develop explosive-specific x-ray tomography systems. Jeff Glass was awarded $5.5M for a three-year effort to develop compact computational mass spectrometers for trace element detection. And I want to congratulate Adrienne Stiff-Roberts and Chris Dwyer on their promotions to associate professor with tenure. As always, our alumni are rising to positions of leadership. As one example of many, alumnus Richard Alfonsi is nurturing an engineering-centric culture as vice president at Google. During the over 16 years I have been at Duke, I have seen our engineering school transformed, with ECE a leading light of that transformation. With the Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering and Applied Science, we have world-class teaching and research facilities; the SMIF cleanroom facility, led by ECE professor Nan Jokerst, is a Dukewide resource and a model for other universities. While facilities are critical to our success, our progress is driven by the efforts of our people. The excellence reflected in these pages is a product of tireless efforts by our faculty and staff, and by the special talents of our students. Enjoy. Sincerely,
Lawrence Carin WILLIAM H. YOUNGER PROFESSOR AND CHAIR

Professor Leslie Collins has completed her four-year term as chair on July 1 to return to the lab and refocus her efforts on research. Her research group of 4 professionals and 8 PhD students is pioneering signal processing in applications ranging from land mine detection to brain-computer interfaces. She made great strides in raising the stature of the department by attracting talented students, productive faculty members and research funding. In particular, enrollment in the Ph.D. program jumped 15 percent and in the masters program, enrollment jumped an impressive 30 percent. Also during her time as chair, research faculty increased from two to nine, and research funding increased from $15 to $20 million. Collins took great pride in supporting junior faculty members by ensuring that they received all the resources they needed to be successful. She was also instrumental modernizing our curriculum. Working with Lisa Huettel, associate professor of the practice and director of undergraduate studies, and with the support of a National Science Foundation grant, they developed what has become a national model. Closer to home, she has served as faculty leader for our new education and research building, a role in which she will continue. Please join me in extending my thanks to Dr. Collins for her outstanding service.
Tom Katsouleas

Professor and Dean

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COVER

... story continued:

Thin Film Integrated Structures on Silicon

s good as the metal has been in zipping information from one circuit to another on silicon inside computers and other electronic devices, optical signals can carry much more, according to Duke University electrical engineers. So the engineers have designed and demonstrated microscopically small lasers integrated with thin film-light guides on silicon that could replace the copper in a host of electronic products. The structures on silicon not only contain tiny light-emitting lasers, but connect these lasers to channels that accurately guide the light to its target, typically another nearby chip or component. This new approach could help engineers who, in their drive to create tinier and faster computers and devices, are studying light as the basis for the next generation information carrier. The engineers believe they have solved some of the unanswered riddles facing scientists trying to create and control light at such a miniscule scale. Getting light onto silicon and controlling it is the first step toward chip scale optical systems, said Sabarni Palit, who this summer received her Ph.D. while working in the laboratory of Nan Marie Jokerst, J.A. Jones Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Dukes Pratt School of Engineering. The results of teams experiments, which were supported by the Army Research Office, were published online in the journal Optics Letters. The challenge has been creating light on such a small scale on silicon, and ensuring that it is received by the next component without losing most of the light, Palit said. We came up with a way of creating a thin film integrated structure on silicon that not only contains a light source that can be kept cool, but can also accurately guide the wave onto its next connection, she said. This integration of components is essential for any such chip-scale, lightbased system. The Duke team developed a method of taking the thick substrate off of a laser,

Sabarni Palit, left, and Professor Nan Jokerst

and bonding this thin film laser to silicon. The lasers are about one one-hundreth of the thickness of a human hair. These lasers are connected to other structures by laying down a microscopic layer of polymer that covers one end of the laser and goes Getting light off in a channel to onto silicon and other components. controlling it is Each layer of the the first step laser and light channel is given its toward chip specific characteristics, or functions, scale optical through nano- and systems. micro-fabrication processes and by selectively removing portions of the substrate with chemicals. In the process of producing light, lasers produce heat, which can cause the laser to degrade, Sabarni said. We found that including a very thin band of metals between the laser and the silicon substrate dissipated the heat, keeping the laser functional. For Jokerst, the ability to reliably facilitate individual chips or components that talk to each other using light is the

next big challenge in the continuing process of packing more processing power into smaller and smaller chip-scale packages. To use light in chip-scale systems is exciting, she said. But the amount of power needed to run these systems has to be very small to make them portable, and they should be inexpensive to produce. There are applications for this in consumer electronics, medical diagnostics and environmental sensing. The work on this project was conducted in Dukes Shared Materials Instrumentation Facility, which, like similar facilities in the semiconductor industry, allows the fabrication of intricate materials in a totally clean setting. Jokerst is the facilitys executive director. Other members of the team were Dukes Mengyuan Huang, as well as Dr. Jeremy Kirch and professor Luke Mawst from the University of Wisconsin at Madision. This research was supported by a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant, "Large Lattice Mismatched Materials," through the Army Research Office.
DUKE ECE NEWSLETTER

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FEATURE

Novel Synthetic Material Could Facilitate

Wireless Power
superlens, which is in fact a metamaterial, electrical and computer engineering at lectrical engineers at Duke directs waves within the bulk of the lens Dukes Pratt School of Engineering. University have determined that between the outside surfaces, giving However, larger amounts of energy, such unique man-made materials researchers a much greater control over as that seen in lasers or microwaves, should theoretically make it poswhatever passes through it. would burn up anything in its path. sible to improve the power transThe metamaterial used in wireless Based on our calculations, it should be fer to small devices, such as laptops or power transmission would likely be made possible to use these novel metamaterials cell phones, or ultimately to larger ones, of hundreds to thousands depending on to increase the amount of power transmitsuch as cars or elevators, without wires. the application of individual thin conted without the negative effects, This advance is made possible by the ducting loops arranged into an array. Each Urzhumov said. recent ability to fabricate exotic compospiece is made from the same copper-onThe results of the Duke research were ite materials known as metamaterials, fiberglass substrate used in printed circuit published online in the journal Physical which are not so much a single substance, boards, with excess copper etched away. Review B. Urzhumov works in the laborabut an entire man-made structure that These pieces can then be arranged in an tory of David R. Smith, William Bevan can be engineered to exhibit properties almost infinite variety of configurations. Professor of electrical and computer enginot readily found in nature. In fact, the The system would need to be tailored neering at Pratt School of metamaterial used in earlito the specific recipient device, in essence Engineering. Smiths team er Duke studies, and which the source and target would need to be was the first demonstrate would likely be used in tuned to each other, Urzhumov said. that similar metamaterials future wireless power transThis new understanding of how matemcould act as a cloaking mission systems, resembles aterials can be fabricata miniature set of tan ed and arranged should Venetian blinds. Theoretically, this metamaterial help make the design Theoretically, this metaof wireless power material can improve the can improve the efficiency of transmission systems efficiency of recharging devices without wires. As recharging devices without wires. more focused. perThe analysis power passes from the formed at Duke was transmitting device to the inspired by recent receiving device, most if studies at Mitsubishi Electric Research device in 2006. not all of it scatters and Labs (MERL), an industrial partner of the Just as the metamaterial dissipates unless the two Duke Center for Metamaterials and in the cloaking device devices are extremely close Integrated Plasmonics. MERL is currentappeared to make a volume together. However, the Yaroslav Urzhumov ly investigating metamaterials for wireof space disappear, in the metamaterial postulated by less power transfer. The Duke researchers latest work, the metamaterial would the Duke researchers, which would be sitsaid that with these new insights into the make it seem as if there was no space uated between the energy source and the effects of metamaterials, developing actubetween the transmitter and the recipirecipient device, greatly refocuses the al devices can be more targeted and effient, Urzhumov said. Therefore, he said, energy transmitted and permits the enercient. the loss of power should be minimal. gy to traverse the open space between The Duke University research was supUrzhumovs research is an offshoot of with minimal loss of power. ported by a Multidisciplinary University superlens research conducted in Smiths We currently have the ability to transResearch Initiative (MURI) grant laboratory. Traditional lenses get their mit small amounts of power over short through the Air Force Office of Scientific focusing power by controlling rays as distances, such as in radio frequency idenResearch and the U.S. Army Research they pass through the two outside surtification (RFID) devices, said Yaroslav Office. faces of the lens. On the other hand, the Urzhumov, assistant research professor in
DUKE ECE NEWSLETTER

FACULTY

John Board

David Brady

Martin Brooke

April Brown

Robert Calderbank

Larry Carin

Krishnendu Chakrabarty

John Board is an associate professor, interim chair for the department, and serves as associate chief information officer at Duke. He specializes in embedded sensors networks and power and resource management and conservation. In his unique role in the university, Board leads campus-level computing initiatives and oversaw the technical architecture, identity management and Duke Card technical operations offices this year during IT staff transitions. He is also a faculty adviser for the Duke Smart Home Program, co-teaches the Smart Home course with Director Jim Gaston, and serves on the programs board of directors.

Martin Brooke, associate professor, specializes in mixed signal integrated circuit design for applications in sensors, signal processing and sensor networks. His current research ranges from optical imaging of breast tumor margins to nanoprobe arrays and low noise optical amplifiers for cancer detection. Brooke gave an invited presentation nanoscale particle imaging using near-field subwavelength nanometer probe arrays at the 2010 National Science Foundation-Electrical, Computer and Cyber Systems Grantees Conference in December, 2010.

April Brown,

the John Cocke Professor, specializes in the synthesis and design of nanostructures for microelectronic devices, and surface science applications of molecular beam epitaxy. Brown completed her three-year term as Senior Associate Dean for Research at the Pratt School of Engineering and has returned to the faculty ranks and her research full time. A recent publication titled Adsorption and desorption kinetics on Ga and GaN (001): Application of Wolkenstein Theory, was published in Physics Review B 82(7), 2010. Brown is now serving as associate editor for the Journal of Crystal Growth.
Robert Calderbank, professor, and Dean of Natural Sciences at Duke, specializes in coding and information theory. He was named the Philip Griffiths Professor of Computer Science. He was recently awarded a $7,513,286 grant from the Department of Homeland Security, with co-PI David Brady, for a project focusing on x-ray scatter and phase imaging for explosive detection. Larry Carin,

David Brady,

the Michael J. Fitzpatrick professor, specializes in computational imaging and new applications of spectroscopy. He launched a new $27 million DARPA program this year titled Maximally Optical Sensor Array Imaging with Computation (MOSAIC). The project goal is to 0.02 cubic meter 50-gigapixel camera. In other research, Brady is working on combining imaging and non-imaging observations to improve space object identification, and lenseless high resolution wide-field imaging. He taught a short course on computational optical imaging at the SPIE Defense and Security Conference in 2010, and was awarded U.S. patent 7,773,218 for technology titled spatiallyregistered wavelength coding.
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the William Younger Professor, specializes in statistical signal analysis, subsurface sensing, wave-based signal processing and advanced pattern recognition applications. Carin published 10 refereed journal articles in 2010, ranging from low-dimensional signal models to detecting viruses via statistical gene expression analysis to a logistic stick-breaking process designed to cluster data by proximity in order to identify patterns.

Krishnendu Chakrabarty, professor, specializes in the design, testing and optimization of integrated circuits, embedded microsystems and networks. In 2010, he was awarded the Capers and Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising by Dukes Engineering Alumni Association. Chakrabarty was recently awarded research grants from the National Science Foundation, Cisco Systems, and the Semiconductor Research Corporation on projects ranging from 3D stacked integrated circuits to fault isolation technology. He published 12 refereed articles in 2010 and two books focused on integrated circuits and digital microfluidic biochips respectively.

Leslie Collins,

professor, specializes in integrating phenomenological models with statistical signal processing techniques to address signal detection and identification problems such as improving cochlear implant function, detecting and neutralizing land mines in cluttered environments, and subsurface object detection and identification. She was recently awarded a $1,674,195 National Institutes of Health grant titled "Towards Clinical Acceptability: Enhancing the P300-based Brain-Computer Interface." The projects focuses on individuals with severe physical limitations who may be unable to use augmentative and assistive communication devices since these devices often require neuromuscular control. Collins' work aims to further of use of an EEG-based speller, which has been shown to provide a viable communication option for this population because it relies on brain activity to control the device. The goal of increasing home and clinical use of the P300 Speller may be better facilitated by improving the speed and accuracy of the Speller.

Leslie Collins

Steve Cummer

Chris Dwyer

Richard Fair

Jeff Glass

Michael Gustafson

Lisa Huettel

Steve Cummer, Jeffrey N. Vinik Associate Professor, specializes in electromagnetic wave propagation modeling and inversion for remote sensing, and electromagnetic materials. His work on metamaterials acoustic cloaking was recently featured in Science News, PC Magazine, BBC News, Physicsworld.com, MSNBC, The Week Magazine, and numerous international news outlets. He published 17 refereed journal articles on topics ranging from multi-instrumental observations of gigantic jet lightning to transformation optics to metamaterials used in waveguide-fed phased array antennas. Cummer serves as the departments Director of Graduate Studies.

Lisa Huettel

Chris Dwyer

was promoted to associate professor. He specializes in self-assembled nanostructures for integrated computation, communication and sensing. In 2010, Dwyer was one of a select group of young engineers invited to attend the Indo-American Kavli Frontiers of Science symposium sponsored by the Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum in partnership with the National Academy of Sciences. He is a 2010 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) winner, and is working on research to create novel sensing devices out of inexpensive, programmable, selfassembled nanosensors. He serves as a member on the DARPA Computer Science Study Group.

Richard Fair,

Lord-Chandran Professor, specializes in microfluidic systems with an emphasis on bio-fluidic detection, transport and chemical synthesis. His team recently discovered a novel voltage-driven droplet transport mechanism that will enable the integration of electronic, optical and microfluidic technologies. In addition, Fair is working with the Stanford Genome Center and Advanced Liquid Logic, Inc.a Duke start up company founded by Fairto develop a pyrosequencing hip for massively parallel onchip DNA sequencing. This work is supported by the National Institutes of Health. Fair was awarded two patents in 2010 for droplet-based pyrosequencing and methods for performing microfluidic sampling.

is an associate professor of the practice and director of undergraduate studies for the department. In this capacity, she worked with implement an ECE Semester at the Marine Lab to encourage students to study at the Beaufort, NC facility run by Dukes Nicholas School for the Environment. She revamped the student independent study poster session to involve more faculty in order to improve the experience for student participants. She developed new lab projects for ECE 180: Fundamentals of Digital Signal Processing based on National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenge themes, emphasizing cross-disciplinary applications. And her presentation on enhancing the undergraduate design experience with surface mount soldering and printed circuit board techniques at the 2010 Annual Conference of the American Society of Engineering Education was a Best Paper Award Nominee.

Jeff Glass,

professor and Hogg Family Director of Engineering Management and Entrepreneurship, has completed his term as the Senior Associate Dean for Education at the Pratt School of Engineering. He led the faculty in developing the schools Master of Engineering offerings. The Master of Engineering program is a unique and well-tailored approach to graduate education for those intending to pursue professional engineering careers in industry. He will be on sabbatical for the coming year, and will focus his efforts on some recent promising research on new carbon nanotube structures with applications in supercapacitors and drug delivery.

Michael Gustafson,

associate professor of the practice, serves as the core computational engineering methods instructor for all incoming Duke engineering majors. He is the founder of Pratt Pundit a wiki specifically devoted to answering questions Pratt students may have about computational methods, MATLAB, LaTeX and other software or hardware tools typically used in engineering classes. The URL for the resources is http://pundit.pratt.duke.edu. Gustafson is also the adviser for the Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society.

William Joines, professor, specializes in electromatnetic field and wave interactions with materials and structures, particularly microwave and optical frequency range wavelengths that impact structures such as antennas, circuit elements, body parts, fibers and biological cells. Joines was awarded a $137,000 grant from the Army Research Office to pursue software solutions for direct antenna modulation. And he recently published research on 3D microwave image reconstruction from experimental data in layered media in the journal IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 58, no. 2, Feb. 2010.

DUKE ECE NEWSLETTER

FACULTY

William Joines

Nan Jokerst

Tom Katsouleas

Jungsang Kim

Jeff Krolik

Benjamin Lee

Qing Liu

Nan Jokerst,

J.A. Jones Professor, specializes in integrated micro and nano systems, integrated optoelectronics, integrated sensing, photonics, THz and optical metamaterials. Jokerst continues to expand use of Duke s cleanroom research resources through class-based explorations of the Shared Materials Instrumentation Facility for which she is an executive director. Her research on using lasers as opposed to wires on computer chips was featured in news outlets such as Science News, International Business Times, Photonics.com, and WUNC radio.

Tom Katsouleas,

professor and dean, was awarded the 2011 Plasma Science Achievement Award from IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society for fundamental contributions to the field of plasma-based accelerators. Katsouleas leadership in the field of plasma-based accelerators has helped thrust plasma science into the forefront of science. Recent progress in both laser-driven and beam-driven plasma wakefield concepts have stemmed from accomplishments of Katsouleas and researchers he has taught or mentored. In the early years of plasma accelerator research, his theoretical and simulation work was the first to show to a skeptical community that plasma accelerators could (even in principle) fulfill the many different conditions (such as energy, energy spread, emittance, current) imposed on the accelerated beam for a high energy accelerator and provided design criteria for how to accomplish these conditions. Later he played a seminal role in building a collaboration between the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and groups at UCLA and USC that culminated in the energy doubling of electrons from the 3 km long SLAC accelerator from 42 GeV to 85 GeV in less than a meter of plasma. Following this confirmation of plasmas potential to dramatically shorten a future high-energy collider, he played a lead role in a number of DoE and NRC panels to successfully make the case for phase II funding to take plasma accelerators to the next level of demonstration for a future collider.
Benjamin Lee, assistant professor, specializes in computer architecture, computer engineering and high performance computing. He joined Dukes Pratt School of Engineering in 2010. He holds a doctorate from Harvard University, and a bachelor of science from the University of California at Berkeley. He has held visiting research positions at Microsoft Research, Intel Corporation, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; and a National Science Foundation Computing Innovation Fellowship at Stanford University. Lees research titled Phase Change Technology and the Future of Main Memory, was selected as a Top Picks From Computer Architecture Conferences by IEEE Micro Magazine. And his work titled on phase change memory and scalability was selected as a research highlight in the Communications of the Association for Computer Machinery.

Jeff Krolik,

Jungsang Kim,

an associate professor with appointments also in physics and computer science, specializes in engineering highly multi-functional complex systems. His main research focus has been in developing technologies for constructing practical quantum computers. He is leading a $22M Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity/Army Research Office funded program titled "Modular Universal Iontrap Quantum Computer (MUSIQC)," to develop an 80qubit quantum computer in collaboration with nine other participating institutions. In collaboration with another group of nine institutions, he recently kickedoff $9M IARPA funded program titled "Optimized Resources and Architectures for Quantum aLgorithms (ORAQL)," which aims to construct software tools for simulating the performance of a quantum information processor.
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professor, specializes in signal processing applications such as surveillance radars and microwave remote sensing, active and passive sonar and medical imaging. He recently launched a new project for the Naval Research Laboratory focused on over the horizon radar clutter mitigation with 2D arrays, and continues exploration of adaptive wide area sonar clusters for surveillance applications using autonomous underwater vehicles. And he recently published research on maneuverable towed sonar arrays in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vo. 128, no. 6, December 2010.

Qing Liu,

professor, specializes in computational electromagnetics and acoustics, and applies his fast algorithms to high-speed electronic packaging design, oil exploration, biomedical imaging, and nanodevices. He launched a new project in high resolution near-field scanner for Intel Corporation. Liu and his team published 19 refereed journal articles in 2010.

Hisham Massoud, professor, specializes in silicon microelectronics. He is particularly focused on the design, device physics and characteristics, and device technology of metal/oxide/semiconductor field-effect transistors, and the physics and technology of ultrathin dielectrics. He also pioneered an innovative new lab project in ECE 51 Microelectronic Devices and Circuits in

Hisham Massoud

Loren Nolte

Doug Nowacek

Matt Reynolds

Romit Roy Choudhury

David Smith

Daniel Sorin

which students developed a smart cane for electronic navigation to assist the blind. He is currently working on an introductory textbook focused on the fundamentals of microelectronic devices that will include software modules to facilitate the computational aspects of this area of solid-state devices and integrated circuits.
Loren Nolte,

Romit Roy Choudhury was promoted to associate professor this year. He specializes in wireless networking and mobile computing. He was recently awarded a new National Science Foundation grants for research PHy informed networking, and Internet architecture. He presented 9 papers in the most selective networking, mobile computing and distributed systems conferences in 2010, and undergraduate students working under his direction won the ACM Mobicom Student Research Competition in 2010.

professor, specializes in signal detection and estimation theory and applications using physics-based models. His research encompasses Bayseian optimal decision and sensor fusion with applications to problems in detection, estimation, classification and tracking in biomedical engineering, medical imaging, systems biology, and ocean acoustics. In 2010, Nolte was honored with an Excellence in Review from the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, which honors the efforts of reviewers in the previous year.

David Smith, William Bevan Professor, specializes in metamaterials, transformation optics, plasmonics, nonlinear optics, microwave and optical devices and general electromagnetics. Smiths metamaterials work was selected as an Insight of the Decade by Science magazine. In the December 17, 2010 issue, his research was called a pioneering way to guide and manipulate light, creating lenses that defy the fundamental limit on the resolution of an ordinary lens and even constructing cloaks that make an object invisible at certain wavelengths. Smith and his team published 29 refereed articles in 2010, including a Nature Materials paper, two papers and a cover in Physical Reviews Letters. Smith is also the leader of a Multi Institutional Research Initiative titled Transformation Optics funded by the Army Research Office.

Doug Nowacek, the Repass-Rodgers University Associate Professor of Conservation Technology and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, specializes in sound in the ocean environment, is studying the link between acoustic and motor behavior in marine mammals, primarily cetaceans and manatees, specifically, how they use sound in ecological processes. Nowacek spent six weeks on a research cruise along the Western Antarctic Peninsula as part of a three-year project titled Multi-scale and Interdisciplinary Study of Humpbacks and Prey or MISHAP. A typical day on the trip involved finding and tagging a whale, mapping krill, conducting visual surveys, and then measuring the physical properties of the water and mapping krill while tracking the whale during the night. One goal of the research is to support special protection for the Wilhelmina Bay for whales, krill and other krill predators as part of the Antarctic Treaty.

Matt Reynolds

was named the Nortel Networks Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He specializes in low power, distributed sensing and communications with an emphasis on RFID technology. In 2010, he was awarded the CETI (Celebration of Engineering and Technology Innovation) award from FIATECH for his SmartHat project. FIATECH is the construction industrys research consortium. His technology scavenges power from ambient radio waves to operate a buzzer that lets the wearer know when dangerous equipment comes too near on the construction site. He also won a Best Paper Award at the 12th ACM International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing in Copenhagen, Denmark for a project titled ElectriSense: Single-Point Sensing Using EMI for Electrical Event Detection and Classification in the Home. Reynolds was awarded four U.S. patents this year.

Daniel Sorin, associate professor, specializes in computer architecture. His research was selected as a Computing Research Highlight of the Week (Feb 11-18, 2011) by the Computing Research Association. The featured research is a hardware-free scheme, called Detouring, for tolerating permanent faults in microprocessors. His research titled Specifying and Dynamically Verifying Address Translation-Aware Memory Consistency, presented at the 15th Annual International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS) in March 2010, was chosen as one of the ten best papers published in all computer architectures conferences in 2010. Sorin delivered the keynote address on Verification-Aware Architecture and Fractal Coherence at the Design for Reliability conference in Herklion, Crete, Greece in the spring of 2011. He was also awarded the Lois and John L. Imhoff Distinguished Teaching Award by the Duke Engineering Alumni Association.

DUKE ECE NEWSLETTER

FACULTY

Adrienne Stiff-Roberts

Kishor Trivedi

Rebecca Willett

Gary Ybarra

Tomoyuki Yoshie

Adrienne Stiff-Roberts,

associate professor, specializes in the growth and characterization of hybrid organic/inorganic nanocomposite thin film materials; and the design, fabrication and characterization of multispectral photodetectors for applications such as infrared imaging and solar energy conversion. Stiff-Roberts is leading a $1 million Office of Naval Research effort focused on multi-spectral photon detection in polymer/nanoparticle composites as part of her Presidential Early Career Aware for Scientists and Engineers grant, won in 2010. Stiff-Roberts is the author of a book chapter entitled Quantum dot infrared photodetectors, which was published in Comprehensive Semiconductor Science and Technology in 2011. She is also a coauthor of an invited article to Applied Physics A:Materials Science and Processing in 2011 that reviews a novel deposition technique for polymer/nanoparticle composites known as matrixassisted pulsed laser evaporation.

And Kishor Trivedi, the Fitzgerald S. Hudson Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, specializes in high computing availability, software reliability, security quantification, and cloud computing performability. He won a $50,000 research award from the Cisco University Research Program fund, a corporate-advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. His project will focus on availability, performance and cost analysis of cloud systems. He was recently awarded a three-year National Science Foundation grant to explore analytical modeling and enhancement of vehicle ad hoc networks for safety critical applications.
Rebecca Willett, assistant professor, specializes in network and imaging science with applications in medical imaging, wireless sensor networks, astronomy, and social networks, with particular emphasis on data-starved inference for point processes and the development of statistically robust methods for analyzing discrete events. She is one of 43 scientists selected in 2011 through the Air Forces Young Investigator Research Program. These prestigious awards are given to scientists and engineers across the U.S. who received their degrees in the last five years and show exceptional ability and promise for conducting basic research. She co-authored a book chapter on compressive optical imagingarchitectures and algorithmsin a book titled Optical and Digital Imaging Processing Fundamentals and Applications, to be published in 2011. Gary Ybarra,

Tomoyuki Yoshie,

assistant professor, specializes in nanophotonics technology for information processing, optical sensing, solid-state lighting, energy science, quantum optics and condensed matter physics. His research encompasses current-injection nanolasers, novel photonic materials based on complete photonic band gap materials, and oneway propagation of light. Yoshies research group works on theory, modeling, fabrication, and characterization of nanophotonic devices and materials. He recently published work on optical microcavities clad by low-absorption electrode media in the IEEE Photonics Journal, Vol. 2, 2010.

professor of the practice, specializes in K-12 enigneering. He directs several pre-engineering programs that utilize inquiry and project-based learning. His programs include TASC: Teachers and Scientists Collaborating; MUSIC: Math Understanding through the Science Integrated with Curriculum; Techtronics: Handson Exploration of Technology in Everyday Life; TechXcite: Discover Engineering, among others. The TeachEngineering Digital Library that Ybarra has worked on since 2003 was recently recognized by the National Science Foundation activities as the most learning application-ready collection at the National Science Digital Library. The collection includes more than 900 classroom-tested K-12 engineering lessons.

Staff Kudos
Laboratory Manager Kip Coonley was one of the 10 top winners of the Agilent Technologies Give One Get A Hundred Contest. Their winning entry was published alongside those of approximately 100 other institutions worldwide for teaching purposes. In the winning laboratory experiment that Kip and his team developed, students get to see first-hand just how fast microchips can be. Using Agilent Technologies equipment, the chips waveforms are instantaneously captured and analyzed in real-time. The laboratory experiment itself is part of the overall ECE curriculum reform effort led by Professor Leslie Collins. Kips immediate team, including Professor Hisham Massoud and Associate Professor Martin Brooke, won a $450.00 Agilent U1241B Handheld Digital Multimeter. Other team members include Professor of the Practice Gary Ybarra, Director of Undergraduate Studies Lisa Huettel, and Associate Professor John Board.
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UNDERGRADUATEHIGHLIGHTS

Pratt Undergraduate Engineering Research Fellows

Corinne Horn
Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mathematics ADVISER: Rebecca Willett, assistant professor, electrical and computer engineering PROJECT: Estimation of Dynamic Social Network Structure
MAJOR:

Tanmay Prakash
Electrical and Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering ADVISER: Jeffrey Krolik, professor, electrical and computer engineering PROJECT: Microphone Array Feedback Suppression for Room Acoustics
MAJOR:

Consider a dynamic network of individuals where the network topology, or more broadly, the influence of each individual on the remaining members of the network, may vary with time. We collect sequential observations of individuals behavior with the goal of inferring the structure of the network in real time. In the social network context, we limit our graph to the class of Ising models where vertices exhibit the pairwise Markov property. Traditional methods for evaluating our estimated model prove intractable, so we utilize the pseudolikelihood metric to reduce an NP hard optimization problem to the sum of p logistic regressions, which are easily computable. We utilize online convex programming techniques to update parameters of our graphical model to balance between the most recent observation, and those observed in the past. If we compare our sequence of estimates to the best time-varying offline comparator, we obtain a sublinear regret that depends on the speed of variation of the comparator. We test our method in simulations, and on the Senate voting records and Enron email database. Corinne graduated with Departmental Distinction in May 2011.

The objective of this project was to use a standoff microphone array to suppress feedback for a microphone-loudspeaker system in an indoor environment. When the gain on the amplifying loudspeaker is too high, the sounds from the loudspeaker that are picked by the microphone keep being re-amplified until there is a loud squeal in a process called feedback. This limits the amount of gain that can be put on the microphone-loudspeaker system. In this project, minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) beamforming was used to focus a microphone array on only the source and attenuate the sound from the loudspeaker, thereby suppressing the feedback loop. The maximum gain that could be applied to the loudspeaker without inducing feedback was measured experimentally for MVDR and compared to that of conventional beamforming and no beamforming. The experiments were performed on a system that processed the output of 4 microphones from an NIST MK3 array online in Java and output the processed signal to the loudspeaker. The results showed that MVDR allowed for a greater gain than both conventional beamforming and no beamforming. Tanmay graduated with Departmental Distinction in May 2011.
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UNDERGRADUATEHIGHLIGHTS
Pratt Undergraduate Engineering Research Fellows...continued

Datamining Champion

Karthik Seetharam
and computer engineering PROJECT: Polymer Superlattices for Enhanced Charge Transport in Organic Solar Cells Commercially available silicon-based inorganic photovoltaic (IPV) cells currently have a conversion efficiency of approximately 15-25% with a theoretical limit at 31% for Si devices. Other IPVs based on compound semiconductors have achieved efficiencies up to 41% using multi-layer tandem structures, but have not penetrated the terrestrial market due to the prohibitive cost of mass production. Organic materials offer an exciting economical alternative because of their flexibility and low manufacturing cost. Since organic photovoltaics (OPVs) are much cheaper to fabricate, improving OPV efficiency might provide an economical and sustainable solution for growing energy demand. This study aims to design and to build an efficient OPV using a polymer superlattice nanostructure that improves charge transport via miniband formation. A superlattice model based on elementary solid state physics was developed to understand and predict the current-voltage (IV) behavior of a polymer superlattice. The model predicts that it is possible to significantly enhance power output in a superlattice OPV due to resonant tunneling as compared to a standard bulk heterojunction OPV. The fabrication of ultrathin (~ 3nm) multilayer polymer films is a current topic of investigation. Karthik graduated with Departmental Distinction in May 2011. He also received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
MAJOR: Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Physics ADVISER: Adrienne D. Stiff-Roberts, assistant professor, electrical

lectrical and computer engineering student Benjamin Hamner has won the international UC San Diego Datamining Contest for 2010. Hamner, whose adviser is Professor Leslie Collins, won a whopping $750. In this years competition sponsored by FICO, Hamner tested his data mining skills on a real-world data set involving electronic retailer customer and non-customer data. The competition attracted 575 participating teams, of whom over 100 submitted solutions, most of them many times: the total number of solutions was close to 5000. Best algorithms achieved nearly 3-fold improvement over baseline solutions in predicting traffic congestion and jams. This is the second year in a row Hamner has won the contest. Last year he won the IEEE ICDM Contest: TomTom Traffic Prediction for Intelligent GPS Navigation where he developed algorithms to predict traffic, congestion and traffic jams.

From left: Pawe Gora, Marcin Wojnarski (organizers), ukasz Romaszko, Benjamin Hamner, Carlos J. Gil Bellosta (winners), Ralf-Peter Schfer (TomTom)

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The spring 2011 ECE 27 Fundamentals of Electrical and Computer Engineering Smart Home Integrated Design Challenge event held in the FCIEMAS atrium.

Giving Freshmen a Head Start

First year students (l-r) Katherine Krieger, Austin Ness, Jeffery Chen, and Glen Rivkees prepare their Smarthome Bots for the ECE 27 spring 2011 integrated design challenge.

n May 2011, freshmen teams competed in an autonomous robotics contest and sniffed out rotten food and cheesecake in a refrigerator, measured solar energy coming from panels on a smart home, and figured out what was on three TVs in a media room. It was all part of ECE 27, Fundamentals of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Our goal is to give students an introduction to all aspects of electrical and computer engineering (ECE)and not have them wait until their upper division courses to find out how all the pieces fit together, said Kip Coonley, undergraduate laboratory manager. When students arent in the dark about what ECE really is, they are able to make much better choices about which study concentrations they want to pursue, he said. The department offers undergraduates the choices of several areas of concentration including: computer engineering and digital systems; signal processing, communications and control systems; solid-state devices and integrated circuits; electromagnetic fields; and photonics. The course is lab based and hands on in part because students are hungry for such experiences, but also because its a powerful way to learn. After 8 weeks of lectures and labs that provide in-depth study of the departments integrated sensing and information processing focused curriculum, two-person student teams then spend 6 weeks designing, building, collaborating and getting ready to compete. Their goal is to design robots that can autonomously complete specific tasks and to travel through a customized course that simulates the layout of The Home Depot Smart Home at Duke University dorm. Specific tasks include measuring the wind energy being generated by a microturbine, making a judgment on food quality in a Smart Fridge, figuring what shows were playing on three plasma screen TVs in the media room, telling the time of day using a sundial, and determining the energy production from photovoltaic panels and number of growing plants on a green roof. In addition to designing and building the robots, the teams also learned important project management skillsdeveloping Gannt charts of their progress, budgets and a final defense of their design. This is excellence preparation for senior design courses, said Coonley. The course has been a tremendous success and students are better prepared for follow on courses because they understand how to put new information into context. Weve essentially turned what was traditionally a weed out course into a weed in course, Coonley joked.
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UNDERGRADUATEHIGHLIGHTS

Up, Up and Away:

Autonomous weather balloon for low-altitude atmospheric monitoring

n ECE 51L Microelectronic Devices and Circuits, students designed a weather monitoring electronic device capable of measuring atmospheric conditions at three distinct heights above the ground: 50 ft, 100 ft, and 150 ft. The design required that devices be clipped to large helium-filled balloons capable of lifting one pound of weight. Balloons

were tethered to the ground for recovery, and to minimize environmental impact. Teams had a budget of $200 for parts not already stocked in the lab room. Part of the challenge was to include as many meteorological measurements at each height as possible, such as temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, wind speed, wind direction, GPS coordinates,

or cloud formations. And meteorological data had to be delivered to users on the ground in a coherent, easily understandable format. Each device also had to clearly indicate when it had completed its objectives and was ready to be retrieved. The course was taught by Professor Hisham Massoud and Undergraduate Laboratory Manager Kip Coonley.

ECE 51 Microelectronic Devices and Circuits Smart Balloon launch on the Pratt Engineering quadrangle (spring 2011). Center, Chen Zhao, Boying Chui, Tanner Schmidt, Aaron Joseph, Matthew Block, Kim Coonley (lab manager). Background (with balloons): Albert Oh (teaching assistant), and Hisham Massoud (professor and course instructor).

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Matthew Block, Boying Shui, Kip Coonley (Lab Manager), Albert Oh (TA)

An under the hand look at one of the SmartBalloon circuity systems, including altitude, temperature, humidity, and pressure sensors.

Foreground (l-r): Kip Coonley (lab manager), Tanner Schmidt, Boying Shui, and Matthew Block investigate the data retrieved by their SmartBalloon. Background (l-r): Michael Ross and Chen Zhao.

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GRADUATEHIGHLIGHTS Lim Wins in Photonics Poster Session

Electrical and computer engineering doctoral student Sehoon Lim took third place in the Fitzpatrick Institute for Photonics 9th Annual Meeting poster contest. Lim, who is working with Professor David Brady, won for his research on compressive holography. He aims to enable snap-shot holographic tomography using compressive sensing.

New Masters Programs

Sehoon Lim

he Department is now offering two new graduate degree opportunities: a Master of Engineering in either electrical and computer engineering or photonics and optical sciences. The goal of the program is to offer an alternative to the traditional, research-focused Master of Science curriculum and give students a competitive edge in their careers. Ideal candidates for a master of engineering are early career professionals or recent B.S. graduates who know they want to go into practicing engineering positions in industry and are interested in product development, engineering support and technology innovation. The non-thesis M. Eng. curriculum takes between 18 to 24 months to complete, and exposes students to a core of preparatory business courses and either an internship or applied research experience. So students gain business acumen to help them navigate corporate environments and better prepare for project management and also gain real world, practical research skills. The technical engineering courses reflect the research strength of the department and there is a high degree of flexibility to customize course selection. The M. Eng. degree was started because there is an increased interest in masters level engineering education. ASEE reports a 38% increase in the number of masters degrees awarded over the past 10 years, said Brad Fox, associate dean for professional masters programs. Additionally, industry has placed significant emphasis on the need for innovation in order to be competitive. By innovation, companies are not just referring to invention but also implementation of that invention into practice. We crafted the M. Eng. degree to address both aspects of the innovation equation. The Electrical and Computer Engineering M. Eng. curriculum gives students a choice to study in one of following areas: micro-nano systems, photonics, computer engineering, sensing and waves, and signal processing and communications. The Photonics and Optical Sciences M. Eng. curriculum allows students to gain greater technical depth through Dukes Fitzpatrick Institute for Photonics. Major areas of research biophotonics; nano/micro systems; quantum optics and information photonics; photonic materials; advanced photonic systems; nanophotonics; systems modeling, theory & data treatment, and novel spectroscopies. For more information about our new programs, visit http://www.ece.duke.edu/ece_
meng

Souvik Sen wins ACM MobiCom 2010 Research Award

Computer science doctoral student Souvik Sen won the Association for Computing Machinery MobiCom graduate research award for 2010. Sen works with assistant professor Romit Roy Choudhury, who has joint appointments in the departments of ECE and CS. His work, titled Listen Before You Talk, But on the Frequency Domain beat out 35 other contenders. He will now compete in the ACM grand finals across all subfields of computer science and engineering. For more information, see
http://src.acm.org/winners.html.

Souvik Sen 16
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A Fractal Design Approach to Ease Verification

n 1994, a small glitch was uncovered in a floating point unit in the Pentium P5 microprocessor. Unfortunately, it wasnt detected until after it had been installed in countless computers, which forced the company to take a $475 million charge to replace the faulty components. Somehow, the defect slipped past the companys rigorous testing procedures. These instances, though extremely rare in the industry, demonstrate how important it can be for manufacturers to ensure that computer components perform up to design expectations. The process of ensuring that a computer component or a piece of software operates as expected is known as verification. Meng Zhang, a graduate student working with Associate Professor Daniel Sorin is taking a novel design approach to ease the verification process. Traditionally, two distinct groups are involved in the creation of a new product, such as a central processing unit (CPU) for a computer, said Zhang, a third-year graduate student. Typically, the designers create a component for a specific need, and then pass the finished product on to the verification specialists, whose tests ensure that it functions properly. The verification is usually an isolated step performed on the more or less finalized design, she explained, adding that it is highly likely that later a design is discovered to be very difficult to verify specifically because its verifiability was not considered in the design stage. Zhang is working on an approach that helps breaks down the barriers that often separate the designers from the verifiers.

We are investigating strategies that encourage the designers to consider verifiability early in the design stage and design the system in a way that is amenable to verification, she said. That could streamline the process and make it more reliable. The Intel case of 1994 illustrates how important the verification process can be, especially as computer components become increasingly complex and are integrated into myriads of devices. One form of verification, known as formal, involves exploring all the states a system can have to uncover bugs, a useful way to prove the correctness of system and very important in life-critical areas such as medical devices but also a process that is very time-consuming and expensive. To achieve the completeness of such a formal verification process, Zhang and Sorin believe that components could be designed with fractal theories in mind. That means that the architecture of a component is made up of smaller, and identical, building Meng Zhang blocks. Each building block is a reduced size copy of the whole. Their goal is to explore how to design processors and their memory systems to make them more amenable to verification.

Using this fractal-based approach to architecture design, if we can verify the correctness of the smallest building block, we can prove the correctness of the whole system by induction, Zhang said. Since each part looks and acts like the whole, we can be confident that there are not any errors in the whole system. Specifically, she is applying this fractalbased approach in cache coherence, which refers to the consistency of shared data, such as that stored on multiple CPUs within a laptop computer. You need to verify that the different CPUs are reading the latest data in a coordinated way, she explained. We dont want any of them working off Since each part looks and acts like stale data. Zhang was the whole, we can drawn to this field be confident that of research because there are not any it straddles two errors in the whole disciplines that have not always system. been known to work closely together designers of computer architecture and those responsible for proving the component works. She experienced a steep learning curve, since before coming to Duke, she primarily had been studying systems-level computer architecture. She expects to complete her PhD in 2013, and hopes to be able combine her interests in architecture and verification. She came to Pratt in 2008 after obtaining her M.S. and B.S. degrees from Beihang University in China.
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GRADUATEHIGHLIGHTS
R. Smith, William Bevan Professor of electrical and computer engineering at Dukes Pratt School of Engineering. As an example, he used the crystal in some laser pointers, which transforms the normal laser light into a beam the output cant be any stronger than the input beam in another color, such as green, which would be the second-harmonic. Though they contain nonlinear properties, designing such devices requires a great deal of time and effort to be able to control the direction of the second harmonic, and natural nonlinear materials are quite weak, Rose said. Normally, this frequency-doubling process occurs over a distance of many wavelengths, and the direction in which the second-harmonic travels is strictly determined by whatever nonlinear material is used, Rose said. Using the novel metamaterials at microwave frequencies, we were able to fabricate a nonlinear device capable of steering this secondharmonic. The device simultaneously doubled and reflected incoming waves in the direction we wanted. The results of the Duke research were published online in the journal Physical Review Letters. The research was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Smiths team was the first to demonstrate that similar metamaterials could act as a cloaking device in 2006 and a next generation lens in 2009. This magnitude of control over light is unique to nonlinear metamaterials, and can have important consequences in alloptical communications, where the ability to manipulate light is crucial, Rose said. The device itself, which measures six Alec Rose, foreground, and Da Huang. inches by eight inches and about an inch high, is actually made up of row upon row of individual pieces arranged in parallel rows. To be able to Each piece is made of the be engineered to exhibit control light in the same fiberglass material used properties not readily found in circuit boards and is in nature. The structure used same manner that etched with copper circles. in these experiments resemelectronics control Each copper circle has a tiny bles a miniature set of tan currents will be gap that is spanned by a Venetian blinds. an important step diode, which when excited When light passes through in transforming by light passing through it, a material, even though it may be reflected, refracted or weaktelecommunications breaks its natural symmetry, creating non-linearity. ened as it passes through, it is technologies. The trend in telecommustill the same light coming nications is definitely optiout. This is known as linearity. cal, Rose said. To be able to control For highly intense light, however, cerlight in the same manner that electronics tain nonlinear materials violate this rule control currents will be an important step of thumb, converting the incoming enerin transforming telecommunications techgy into a brand new beam of light at nologies. twice the original frequency, called the Duke graduate student Da Huang was second-harmonic, said Alec Rose, a gradalso a member of the team. uate student in the laboratory of David

Manipulating Light at Will

uke electrical engineers have developed a man-made material that they say literally allows them to manipulate light at will. They say that the results of their latest proof-of-concept experiments could lead to the replacement of electrical components with those based on optical technologies, which should allow for faster and more efficient transmission of information, much in the same way that replacing wires with optical fibers revolutionized the telecommunications industry. The breakthrough revolves around a novel man-made structure known as a metamaterial. These exotic composite materials are not so much a single substance, but an entire structure that can
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September 2010 - May 2011 Graduates

September 2010
Xi Cai, Ph.D. Dissertation: Reconfigurable Bitstream Processor for Smart Sensor Systems Adviser: Martin Brooke Ryan Goldhahn, Ph.D. Dissertation: Waveguide Invariant Active Sonar Target Detection and Depth Classification in Shallow Water Adviser: Jeff Krolik Lin Luan, Ph.D. Dissertation: Chip Scale Integrated Optical Sensing Systems with Digital Microfluidic Systems Adviser: Nan Jokerst Jeffrey Rogers, Ph.D. Dissertation: Localization of Dynamic Acoustic Sources with a Maneuverable Array Adviser: Jeff Krolik Lingling Tang, Ph.D. Dissertation: Subwavelength-scale Light Localization in Complete Photonic Bandgap Materials Adviser: Tomoyuki Yoshie Peng Li, M.S. Adviser: Jungsang Kim Sarah Oraby, M.S. Thesis: Malignancy Detection Performance Using Excised Breast Tumor Margin Spectroscopic Data and an Optimal Decision Fusion Based Approach Billyde Brown, Ph.D. Dissertation: Growth, Characterization, and Modification of Vertically Aligned Carbon Nanotube Films for Use as a Neural Stimulation Electrode Adviser: Jeff Glass Sara Duran, M.S. Thesis: Stream Segregation on a Single Electrode as a Function of Pulse Rate in Cochlear Implant Listeners Adviser: Leslie Collins Lingbo Li, M.S. Adviser: Larry Carin Abhijit Mehta, M.S. Adviser: Jungsang Kim Matthew Roberts, M.S. Project: A Comparison of 3 Parallel 8-Bit DACs Adviser: James Morizio Arpan Roy, M.S. Thesis: ACT: Towards Unifying the Concepts of Attack and Defense Trees Adviser: Kishor Trivedi Ritika Singh, M.S. Adviser: Nan Jokerst Pantana Tor-Ngern, M.S. Adviser: Tomoyuki Yoshie Zhengming Xing, M.S. Adviser: Larry Carin Arnak Aleksanyan, Ph.D. Dissertation: Wide Dynamic Range Continuous-Time Delta-Sigma A/D Converter for Low-Power Energy Scavenging Applications Adviser: Martin Brooke Kalyani Krishnamurthy, Ph.D. Dissertation: Spectral Image Processing Theory and Methods: Reconstruction, Target Detection, and Fundamental Performance Bounds Adviser: Rebecca Willett Mengqing Yuan, Ph.D. Dissertation: 3D Microwave Imaging through Full Wave Methods for Heterogenous Media Adviser: Qing Liu Yun Lin, Ph.D. Dissertation: Spectral Integral Method and Spectral Element Method DDM for Electromagnetic Field Analysis Adviser: Qing Liu Hongxia Fang, Ph.D. Dissertation: Design-for-testability and Diagnosis Methods to Target Unmodeled Defects in Integrated Circuits and MultiChip Boards Adviser: Krishnendu Chakrabarty Ivan Borzenets, M.S. Adviser: Jungsang Kim Chao Chen, M.S. Adviser: Martin Brooke Alexander Mrozack, M.S. Adviser: David Brady Christopher Potts, M.S. Adviser: Jeff Krolik Yunfei Shen, M.S. Adviser: William Joines Bhawana Singh, M.S. Adviser: Martin Brooke Eric Wheeler, M.S. Adviser: Chris Dwyer Yin Xiao, M.S. Adviser: Loren Nolte LingZhao Xie, M.S. Adviser: Martin Brooke Fangming Ye, M.S. Adviser: Martin Brooke Jie Yin, M.S. Adviser: Loren Nolte Songtao Zhang, M.S. Adviser: Loren Nolte Hong Zhang, M.S. Adviser: Matt Reynolds Huifeng Zheng, M.S. Adviser: David Smith Yu Jia, M.S. Project: Fast Analytical Solution for Triaxial Induction Tools in a Layered Anisotropic Medium Adviser: Qing liu Yun Liu, M.S. Project: Prototype Implementation of Component-Based Availability Modeling Framework for Cloud Service Management Adviser: Kishor Trivedi Cong Wu, M.S. Project: Program Optimization Utilizing Parallel Computing Technologies Adviser: Qing Liu Yiwen Wu, M.S. Project: Statistical Inference Implementation in SHARPE Adviser: Kishor Trivedi Ruofan Xia, M.S. Project: System Modeling and Optimization Using Markov Decision Process Adviser: Kishor Trivedi Chih-Hao Yu, M.S. Project: Absorption Enhancement in Hybrid Nanocomposite Near-Infrared Photodetectors via Surface Plasma Resonance in Metallic Gratings Adviser: Adrienne Stiff-Roberts

May 2011 December 2010

Jeifu Chen, Ph.D. Dissertation: A Hybrid SpectralElement/Finite-Element Time-Domain Method for Multiscale Electromagnetic Simulations Adviser: Qing Liu Sabarni Palit, Ph.D. Dissertation: Thin Film Edge Emitting Lasers and Polymer Waveguides Integrated on Silicon Adviser: Nan Jokerst Chunping Wang, Ph.D. Dissertation: Non-parametric Bayesian Learning with Incomplete Data Adviser: Larry Carin Tao Zhou, Ph.D. Dissertation: Shielded Metal Waveguides with Uniform Electric Field Distributions Adviser: William Joines Yang Zhao, Ph.D. Dissertation: Unified Design and Optimization Tools for Digital Microfluidic Biochips Adviser: Krishnendu Chakrabarty Caleb Knoernschild, Ph.D. Dissertation:Scalable Optical MEMS Technology for Quantum Information Processing Adviser: Jungsang Kim Feng Han, Ph.D. Dissertation: Midlatitude D Region Variations Measured from Broadband Radio Atmospherics Adviser: Steve Cummer Shiuan-Yeh Chen, Ph.D. Dissertation: Plasmonic Nanostructures for Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering Adviser: David Smith, Anne Lazarides Haojun Chen, Ph.D. Dissertation: Inference of Low-Dimensional Latent Structure in High-Dimensional Data Adviser: Larry Carin Jeffery Allen, Ph.D. Dissertation: Application of Metamaterials to the Optimization of Smart Antenna Systems Adviser: David Smith

Pallavi Daggumati, M.S. Adviser: Nan Jokerst Yanchi Fan, M.S. Adviser: Loren Nolte Tianyu Feng, M.S. Adviser: Stacy Tatum Ming Gao, M.S. Adviser: Martin Brooke Hao He, M.S. Adviser: Qing Liu Adam Jacobvitz, M.S. Adviser: Daniel Sorin Xintong Li, M.S. Adviser: Leslie Collins Luyao Li, M.S. Adviser: Qing Liu Taodun Li, M.S. Adviser: Loren Nolte Meng Li, M.S. Adviser: Loren Nolte Guy Lipworth, M.S. Adviser: David Smith Olugbade, Morakinyo, M.S. Adviser: Dan Sorin

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Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering

129 Hudson Hall Box 90291 Durham, NC 27708-0291

Non-Profit Org. US Postage PAID Durham, NC Permit No. 60

Google Exec Thrives in Engineering-Driven Culture

and Tellme Networks, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2007 for s a self-professed nerd in college, Richard Alfonsi (ECE 93) more than $800 million. Ironically, many friends and colleagues is now probably at the coolest place there is to work from those earlier ventures are now at Google as well. Google and in probably one of the coolest places to live While the uncertainty of starting and running a new venture the San Francisco Bay area. satisfied both his technical and business aspirations, Alfonsi said It seems his engineering studies at Duke, and subsequent studies that Google for a large company is an inspiring place to work. at business school and work in start-up technology companies were I serve as vice president of global online media sales, he said. all leading to this an upper management position at Google, a My team is responsible for a big chunk of advertisements that firm that is not only a company, but a verb. reach beyond the core search ads we show on Google.com. These It was an Angier B. Duke scholarship that lured the Salisbury, areas include display ads on partner websites, ads on mobile N.C. native to Durham. And while he always had a keen interest devices, and video ads on YouTube. We handle the in science and mathematics, he tried to maintain mid-market clients not the Fortune 500 compaa balance between academic and outside interests, nies or really small businesses but those in whether by participating in intramural sports or between. Google has had a lot of success in these taking humanities classes. It also didnt hurt that markets my team is responsible for several biltwo of his four fours year at Duke coincided with lion dollars in annual revenue, serving clients national championship mens basketball runs, across the Americas, Europe, and Asia, so it keeps most of the games he witnessed personally at us pretty busy. Cameron Indoor Stadium. The future for Google depends on many of I initially came to Duke as a Trinity freshman, these newer business areas. Were making big Alfonsi said. At the time I wasnt really sure what investments in areas such as mobile, which as a I wanted to do. I took a lot of science and math business has been on fire, he continued. Its hard courses in that freshman year, like calculus and to imagine a more exciting time than now in this chemistry. However, when it came time for sophospace. Smart phones have become so ubiquitous more year I transferred to engineering. In a way, that theyve practically become invaluable extenI was swimming against the tide. Many kids were sions of ourselves and fundamentally change how transferring out of the engineering school after we interact with information and each other. their first year because it was so hard. He recalled In all his journeys throughout the entrepreneura saying going around at the time at Duke that EE did not necessarily mean electrical engineerGoogle is a company that is ial world, Alfonsi finds that his engineering training has served him well. ing, but eventually economics as a major. remarkable in how highly it Google is a company that is remarkable in how A lot of eyebrows were raised when I transferred to engineering, he continued. At the time, prizes and values engineering highly it prizes and values engineering and innoand innovation. vation, he said. It is an engineering-driven culit was unusual. I enjoyed science, but I was deterture. Even though Im on the business side now mined not to be one-dimensional so each semesmy engineering and product management backter I made sure I took one class just for the soul. ground make it easier to connect very well with the product guys In fact, between his junior and senior years he spent a summer at too, which is critical. Oxford studying English literature. More broadly, the analytical thinking and problem solving As it turns out, his engineering background proved invaluable as skills that come from an engineering background have been comhe combined his love of technology with a growing interest in the mon threads throughout my entire working career, he added. business side of technology development. With his Duke degree in Though he personally hasnt been on campus for recruiting trips hand, he spent the next two years in the Atlanta offices of McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm, before head- for Google, he does have a word of advice for current Pratt students. Google is famous for asking off-the-wall questions to see how ing off to the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. It potential recruits can think on their feet, Alfonsi said. So be prewas then the West Coast bug bit, and hard. Though he tried on pared. Also, academic performance is important some people are several occasions to move back to the East Coast, California always surprised how important that can be. The recruiters look at your beckoned. overall performance just be ready to tell your story and what disAfter another stint at McKinsey, he served as vice president at a tinguishes you from the others. number of high-tech start-ups, including Zaplet, Inc., Velant, Inc.,