2001-2002 News and Awards
2001-2002 Faculty Awards
Assistant Professors Win CAREER Awards
Heydt Achieves Regents' Professor Status
Palais Becomes IEEE Life Fellow
Kiaei Named IEEE Fellow
Tylavsky Earns Faculty Award
Spanias and Painter Write Best Paper
Professors Receive Grants for Semiconductor Research
2001-2002 Student Awards
ARCS, Intel Recognize Doctoral Students
Barker Wins New Sandia Fellowship
University Graduate Scholarships Awarded
Desai Lands Dean's Scholarship
Division of Graduate Studies Supports Master's Students
Faculty Awards
Assistant Professors Win CAREER Awards
Antonia Papandreou-Suppappola and Cihan Tepedelenlioglu won prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Awards for their work in signal processing and wireless communications, respectively. The award recognizes promising young scientists and engineers and provides a total of $350,000 in research funding through December 2006.
"The award is giving me the opportunity to continue doing research in current wireless communication problems," Papandreou said. "The funding supports two doctoral students per year for five years, so it will lead to new graduates and publications in this area."
Tepedelenlioglu said that he was "very pleasantly surprised" to win "because the NSF CAREER proposal was the first proposal I wrote after coming to ASU." He hopes to use his funding "to establish a strong research program in signal processing for wireless communications here at ASU."
Papandreou and Tepedelenlioglu continue the Department of Electrical Engineering's recent history of CAREER Awards. Other CAREER recipients in the past five years include Tolga Duman, 2000; Dragica Vasileska, 1999; Lina Karam, 1999; Jeffrey Capone, 1999; and Bruce Kim, 1997.
Heydt Achieves Regents' Professor Status
Gerald Heydt, director of the Power Systems Engineering Research Center, became one of five new ASU Regents' professors and the third Regents' professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering.
Heydt joined ASU as the director of the National Science Foundation Center for the Advanced Control of Energy and Power Systems in 1994 after nearly 25 years on the faculty at Purdue. Since then, he has garnered several high-profile awards, including being named the IEEE Power Engineering Society Power Engineering Educator of the Year in1995, being elected to the National Academy of Engineers in 1997, and being elected to the Peer Review Committee of the NAE in 1998.
In addition to his research, Heydt has gained national recognition for his mentoring. One of his students placed third in the 1997 IEEE Best Student Paper contest. The next year, another of his students placed second in the Best Student Paper contest, and in 1999, his teaching earned him a mentorship appreciation award from the ASU Preparing Future Faculty Program. Most recently, Heydt and student co-author H. Ni placed second in the IEEE student poster/paper contest held at the 2001 Winter Power Meeting for their presentation "Wide Area Satellite Measurements for Robust Power System Stabilizer Architecture."
Despite previous recognition, Heydt says achieving the rank of Regents' professor came as a surprise: "I did know that I was nominated, and I thought that I would never attain that rank." He then adds, "I feel that this honor is at a par with the National Academy [of Engineers] in my career. It is a real responsibility-and I hope that I can live up to it." Heydt says that he has already found that Regents' Professor status affords new opportunities, which he hopes will translate into larger research grants and programs.
Heydt cites a number of things that have helped him to reach this level in his career: "my interaction with IEEE has been very motivational," he says. "Another interaction that has helped me a great deal has been my work at the National Science Foundation in 1989-90, and subsequent interaction with that agency. Industry support, too, has been a big part of whatever success I might have-companies like SRP locally have really made a difference. Several of these companies have had the foresight of supporting higher education very vigorously, and this has been the foundation of my research."
To students who may be interested in power engineering, Heydt says, "this field has a strong professional camaraderie" and there is "almost a fellowship among power engineers."
"If a student devotes quality time to the professional organizations and to the profession, there will be a payback that may be slow to realize, but very important in one's overall career."
"I would also advise trying to keep sight of the practical and the applied-not to say abandon theory, but do not pursue theory for theory's sake. Applications are where the professional satisfaction occurs."
Palais Becomes IEEE Life Fellow
Joseph Palais, professor and Associate Chair for Graduate Studies, became an IEEE Life Fellow. IEEE reserves the grade for members with long-standing contributions to the organization.
IEEE selected Sayfe Kiaei, director of the Telecommunications and Mixed Signals Research Center, as a 2002 IEEE Fellow for his contributions in integrated circuits with analog and digital circuits on the same chip.
Kiaei is the third ASU professor to become an IEEE Fellow in the last two years. He joins Samir El-Ghazaly and Sethuraman Panchanathan who became IEEE Fellows in 2001.
Daniel Tylavsky, associate professor, received a faculty award form the College of Extended Education for substantive contributions to ASU's off-campus and distance-learning programs. The award acknowledges sustained support of programs scheduled in a non-traditional format and contributions to student learning as an instructor and mentor.
Spanias and Painter Write Best Paper
Andreas Spanias, professor, and Ted Painter, an ASU graduate now with Intel, won the 2002 IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize for their paper titled "Perceptual Coding of Digital Audio" published in the Proceedings of IEEE (Vol. 88, No. 4, April 2000, 451-513). The annual IEEE-wide field series award recognizes an outstanding paper across all societies. The paper was nominated by the speech processing technical committee of the IEEE Signal Processing Society.
Professors Receive Grants for Semiconductor Research
The Semiconductor Research Corporation awarded grants to three ASU professors for their semiconductor research. Martha McCartney from the Center for Solid State Electronics received $67,000, and Samir El-Ghazaly and David Ferry each received a $50,000 grant.
Student Awards
ARCS, Intel Recognize Doctoral Students
Richard Metzger, Stephen Ramey, and Deana Delp were among 16 graduate students from ASU named a 2002 ARCS Scholar by the Phoenix chapter of the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Foundation, which awards $6,000 scholarships to assist graduate research in the sciences. This is the second consecutive year that ARCS has recognized Metzger.
In addition to their ARCS scholarships, Metzger and Ramey also won Graduate Academic Scholarships, which cover resident tuition for graduate students with outstanding academic records.
Besides the ARCS scholarship, Deana Delp also won the Intel Foundation Graduate Fellowship Award, which includes one year of tuition and fees, a 12-month stipend, and provides Delp with an Intel mentor and an Intel PC. "I was honored to submit my nomination to Intel on behalf of ASU and feel privileged to have been selected" Delp said, adding that the fellowship will enable her to complete her degree during the 2002-2003 academic year.
"In addition to the fellowship money I have been assigned a mentor from Intel who will bring practical industrial insight to my research," said Delp whose research focuses on control systems and semiconductor manufacturing capacity analysis with cost considerations. "The fellowship will also provide wonderful contacts in the semiconductor industry."
When asked about her future plans, Delp said, "I would like to continue with a career involving research, either in academia or in the semiconductor industry."
Barker Wins New Sandia Fellowship
Joy Barker, a fourth-year doctoral student, won the new Arizona State University Excellence in Engineering through Diversity Fellowship for the 2002-2004 academic years. The fellowship, which was established by Sandia National Laboratories beginning with the 2002-2003 academic year, includes a $10,000 stipend and full tuition waiver to support a student in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
"In making this pledge, we hope to strengthen our partnership with ASU to encourage a new generation of engineers who can contribute to engineering and high technology in areas of national interest and critical need," said J. Leonard Martinez, vice president of manufacturing systems, science, and technology at Sandia.
Barker, who says her research goals are "to investigate the transport properties of GaN and GaN Heterostructures, specifically, to compare the velocity-field characteristics of different GaN structures," will spend next summer working in Sandia's New Mexico cleanroom where she hopes to fabricate and test many devices.
"The fellowship gives me more access to Sandia resources, material, equipment, and knowledge," Barker said. "They have some of the best people in the GaN field, so now I have access to a huge pool of information." Barker hopes to incorporate the data she gathers into her dissertation, which she plans to complete in 2004.
University Graduate Scholarships Awarded
Matthew Gilbert, James Dankert, Daniel Garcia, Tito Dardon, and Win Ly won three-year merit packages through the University Graduate Scholars Program. In addition to a three-year research or teaching assistantship provided by the department, the scholarship includes a stipend enhancement of $4,000 plus a tuition waiver.
Win Ly and Seth Wilk also received awards from the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training program. IGERT is a National Science Foundation program intended to produce scientists who are well prepared for a broad spectrum of multidisciplinary career opportunities in industry, government, and academia.
Desai Lands Dean's Scholarship
Jennifer Desai won the Dean's Graduate Scholars Award for the 2002-2004 academic years. The scholarship provides exceptional new Ph.D. students with $5,000 each year and is renewable for an additional two years subject to satisfactory performance. In addition, the student receives a research assistantship within the department.
Division of Graduate Studies Supports Master's Students
Maria Medina and Mitchell Medina have each been appointed research assistants as part of the Division of Graduate Studies Support Program. The research assistantships provide an out-of-state tuition waiver and stipend. In addition, both students also won Graduate Academic Scholarships, which will cover the resident portion of their tuition.