Faculty

Congratulations to Professor Thomas Lee. He has been awarded the IEEE Gustav Robert Kirchhoff Award for "pioneering CMOS technology for high-performance wireless circuits and systems."

The IEEE Gustav Robert Kirchhoff Award recognizes an outstanding contribution to the fundamentals of any aspect of electronic circuits and systems that has a long-term significance or impact.

Tom is the principal investigator of the SMIrC Lab, which has been a driving force in developing the theory of radio frequency (RF) CMOS integrated circuit design as well as in educating tomorrow's RFIC designers.

Please join us in congratulating Tom for this well-deserved recognition.

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Congratulations to Professor Andrea Goldsmith, Stephen Harris Professor of Engineering. She has been awarded the IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award. Her citation reads, "For educating, developing, guiding, and energizing generations of highly successful students and postdoctoral fellows."

The IEEE Leon K. Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award recognizes inspirational teaching of graduate students in the IEEE fields of interest.

Andrea's research interests are in information theory, communication theory, and signal processing, and their application to wireless communications, interconnected systems, and neuroscience. She is the director of Stanford's Wireless Systems Lab.

Please join us in congratulating Andrea!

Related News

• Andrea Goldsmith named dean of engineering at Princeton University

• Andrea Goldsmith wins the 2020 Marconi Prize

• EE125 Anniversary Event Videos

We are proud of our history of innovation and entrepreneurship, and of our ongoing mission to address major societal challenges. This includes diversity in research interests, research styles, and providing supportive mentorship. EE recognizes that we have significant work to do in these areas and we look to the entire EE community to improve our future.

The Department of Electrical Engineering supports Black Lives Matter, inclusion, and diversity. 

As engineers, engineers-in-training, and staff, we build upon and apply systems-thinking to major societal challenges, including climate change, health, and better communication.

 The Department of Electrical Engineering strives to continue its success in innovation and research through the participation and inclusion of students, post-docs, and faculty from diverse backgrounds, experiences, religions, ethnicities, identities, genders, sexual orientation, and perspectives. We recognize diversity as central and critical to our mission to provide an inclusive environment and culture where all are welcomed, respected, and valued. Diversity in EE.

The following links are from our students, colleagues and friends. We include them to provide education and support to our community. 

If you have questions, insights, or edits, please contact us via info@ee.stanford.edu.

RELATED RESOURCES

• Diversity in EE statement 
• Black Lives Matter, Stanford Student Affairs
• Coalition of Black Student Organizations Asks to University Administration on Campus Police 

Educational resources for anti-racism:

• The New Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
• Biased by Jennifer Eberhardt
• The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Anti-racism resources for white people: Resource guide compiled by Sarah Sophie Flicker and Alyssa Klein for white people to deepen their anti-racist work.
• Confronting white supremacy: Educational resource sheet put together by educators to discuss and dismantle white supremacy in the classroom.
• Resource Hub for Black History and Activism: Google Drive compiled by Charles Preston, filled with books and other important work by Black activists and readings on a range of topics.
• Beyond the Hashtag: How to Take Anti-Racist Action in Your Life: Article written by Zyahna Bryant about how to take steps towards non-performative activism and anti-racist actions.
• Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
• When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America by Ira Katznelson
• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
• Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Foreman
• The Red Record by Ida B. Wells
• The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois

Support for Stanford students: 

• Centers for Equity, Community, and Leadership
• Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) is available regardless of location. Students can call CAPS 24/7 at 650-723-3785.
• The Bridge Peer Counseling Center offers counseling by trained students 24/7 at 650-723-3392.
• The Graduate Life Office (GLO) is available during office hours at 650-736-7078 or 24/7 at 650-723-8222, pager ID number 25085.
• The Office for Religious Life offers spiritual guidance for students at 650-723-1762.
• If you are aware of someone in distress, contact CAPS or the Office of the Dean of Students.

Call for reform: Call to reform criminal justice system, police practices and to the end of police brutality:

• Campaign Zero
• Fight against the dehumanization and devaluation of black people: Blacklivesmatter.com
• The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund

Demand justice for George Floyd's murder:

• Call the following Minneapolis officials or email them using this template:
• Mayor Jacob Frey: (612) 673-2100
• DA Mike Freeman: (612) 348-5550
• Hennepin County Attorney Office: (612) 673-2100
• Join a phone bank organized by Stanford Students for Workers' Rights
• Sign this petition organized by Color Of Change demanding the prosecution of the officers involved in the murder of George Floyd.

To support and learn more about the following organizations:

• Color Of Change: https://colorofchange.org/
• Voting While Black
• ACLU, which provides legal services to civil rights complaints.
• George Floyd Memorial Fund
• Tony McDade GoFund Me started for black transgender man who was murdered by the police last week.
• The national bail fund network has a list of community bail funds.
• List of bail funds by city: Bail funds are a way to support frontline protesters who are being arrested - as well as building towards a movement to end cash bail and free hundreds of thousands of people who are in pre-trial detention during a pandemic.
• NorthStar Health Collective: NorthStar is a Minnesota-based street medic collective, offering first aid and medical support to people on the frontlines right now.
• Reclaim the Block: Reclaim the Block is a Minneapolis community org providing supplies and support to protesters, as well as pushing Minneapolis to spend less on policing and more on healthcare, housing and education.
• The Black Visions Collective and Legal Fund: Black Visions Collective, a Black, trans and queer-led organization, is helping lead the protests and advocating to defund the police in Minnesota.
• Rebuild Lake Street: Lake Street Council is donating 100% of these proceeds to the local business and nonprofits affected by the fires and helping them continue to serve their communities.

Professor Gordon Wetzstein and first authors Isaac Kauvar (EE PhD candidate) and postdoctoral researcher Tim Machado, have developed an optical technique that can simultaneously record the activity of neurons spread across the entire top surface of a mouse's cerebral cortex, a key part of the brain involved in making decisions. Their article, "Cortical Observation by Synchronous Multifocal Optical Sampling Reveals Widespread Population Encoding of Actions" was published in the journal Neuron.

The researchers call their system Cortical Observation by Synchronous Multifocal Optical Sampling, or COSMOS. In addition to studying motor control and decision making, the team is also using COSMOS to study sensory perception in animals and as a screening technique to develop better psychiatric drugs.

The prototype COSMOS system is relatively simple to build and costs less than $50,000, which is hundreds of thousands of dollars cheaper than other optical systems for recording neural population dynamics. To encourage further adoption and development of the technique, the authors have built a website with instructions to help other researchers build their own COSMOS systems.

The bifocal microscope uses a single camera to capture two movies of neural activity at the same time: one focused on the sides of the brain, and the other focused on the middle, to provide a side-by-side view shown in a video. The researchers then computationally extract signals – reflecting the timing, intensity and duration of when neurons fire – from both of these movies to obtain a comprehensive measurement of neural activity across the whole surface.

Excerpted from Stanford News, "Stanford researchers develop an inexpensive technique to show how decisions light up the brain", June 2, 2020.

"COSMOS Reveals Widespread Population Encoding of Actions", first authors Isaac Kauvar, EE PhD candidate (photo credit: Daphna Spivack) and Tim Machado, Bioengineering postdoctoral researcher.

Professor Shanhui Fan and Sid Assawaworrarit (PhD candidate) recently published "Robust and efficient wireless power transfer using a switch-mode implementation of a nonlinear parity-time symmetric circuit" in Nature Electronics.

They have been working on improving the distance of a wireless charger. Previously they were able to transmit electricity as an object moved, but it wasn't practical.

In their new paper, the researchers show how to boost the system's wireless-transmission efficiency to 92%. The key, Sid Assawaworrarit explained, was to replace the original amplifier with a far more efficient "switch mode" amplifier. Such amplifiers aren't new but they are finicky and will only produce high-efficiency amplification under very precise conditions. It took years of tinkering, and additional theoretical work, to design a circuit configuration that worked.

The new lab prototype can wirelessly transmit 10 watts of electricity over a distance of two or three feet. Shanhui says there aren't any fundamental obstacles to scaling up a system to transmit the tens or hundreds of kilowatts that a car would need. He says the system is more than fast enough to re-supply a speeding automobile. The wireless transmission takes only a few milliseconds – a tiny fraction of the time it would take a car moving at 70 miles an hour to cross a four-foot charging zone. The only limiting factor, says Shanhui, will be how fast the car's batteries can absorb all the power.

Though it could be many years before wireless chargers become embedded in highways, the opportunities for robots and even aerial drones are more immediate. It's much less costly to embed chargers in floors or on rooftops than on long stretches of highway. Imagine a drone, says Shanhui, that could fly all day by swooping down occasionally and hovering around a roof for quick charges.

Excerpted from "Stanford researchers one step closer toward enabling electric cars to recharge themselves wirelessly as they drive"

Related

• Wirelessly Transmitting Electricity
• Shanhui Fan and Avik Dutt "trick" photons into acting like electrons
• Shanhui Fan's radiative panels cool fluids below air temp with zero evaporative losses and almost no electricity use

Professor Jelena Vučković announced as the CLEO 2020 James P. Gordon Memorial Speaker. Jelena is the Jensen Huang Professor in Global Leadership in the School of Engineering, Professor of Electrical Engineering and by courtesy of Applied Physics. She leads the Nanoscale and Quantum Photonics Lab, and is a director of Q-FARM, Stanford-SLAC Quantum Science and Engineering Initiative.

Jelena's research focuses on studying solid-state quantum emitters, such as quantum dots and defect centers in diamond, and their interactions with light. Her team is transforming conventional nanophotonics with the concept of inverse design, by designing arbitrary optical devices from scratch using computer algorithms with little to no human input. These efforts aim to enable a wide variety of technologies ranging from silicon photonics to quantum computing.

The Optical Society (OSA) Foundation memorial speakership pays tribute to Dr. James P. Gordon for his numerous high-impact contributions to quantum electronics and photonics, including the demonstration of the maser.

CLEO 2020 is an all-virtual web conference this year. All are invited to view Dr. Vuckovic's talk and ask questions remotely. There is no fee for CLEO attendees, simply register for online participation. You can also watch previous talks from Gordon speakers by visiting osa.org/Gordon.

Jelena's talk will be on 11 May 2020 at 2pm PDT.

Related

• "Jelena Vučković and Olav Solgaard are creating an accelerator that fits on a chip," January 2020
• "Jelena Vučković has been awarded the 2019 IET A F Harvey Engineering Research Prize", December 2019
• "Jelena appointed inaugural Jensen Huang Professor in Global Leadership", June 2019

Electrical Engineering Professor Andrea Goldsmith has won the prestigious Marconi Prize of the Marconi Society for "her ground-breaking work to deliver high-performing cellular and wifi services."

Andrea's technical innovations that have shaped the fundamental performance of cellular and WiFi networks, combined with her leadership to radically improve diversity and inclusion in engineering, have changed both the consumer experience and the profession.

Andrea is the first woman to win the Marconi Award in the 45 years that it has been given.

"Andrea has enabled billions of consumers around the world to enjoy fast and reliable wireless service, as well as applications such as video streaming and autonomous vehicles that require stable network performance," said Vint Cerf, Chair of the Marconi Society and 1998 Marconi Fellow. "As the Stephen Harris Professor of Engineering at Stanford University, Andrea's personal work and that of the many engineers who she has mentored have had a global impact on wireless networking."

About the Marconi Society - The Marconi Society envisions a world in which all people can create opportunity through the benefits of connectivity. The foundation celebrates, inspires and connects individuals building tomorrow's technologies in service of a digitally inclusive world.

Please join us in congratulating Andrea for her numerous contributions to the field.

Excerpted from "Shattering the Silicon Ceiling: 2020 Marconi Prize Awarded to Wireless Innovator Dr. Andrea Goldsmith," The Marconi Society.

Related

• Andrea Goldsmith named dean of engineering at Princeton University
• Andrea Goldsmith: Diversity is essential to success in technology
• Andrea Goldsmith receives Qualcomm Faculty Award (QFA)

Congratulations to Professor Balaji Prabhakar. He has been awarded the 2020 IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award for outstanding contributions to the integration of computers and communications. His citation reads:

"For contributions to the theory and practice of network algorithms and protocols, in particular Internet routers, data centers, and self-programming networks."

The IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award was established by the IEEE Board of Directors in 1986. The Award is named in honor of Dr. Koji Kobayashi, who was a leading force in advancing the integrated use of computers and communications.

Please join us in congratulating Balaji for this well-deserved recognition.

Related News

• "Merging technologies enable a new era of high-speed, next-generation finance," April 2019
• "Research by EE PhD candidates Geng, Liu, and Yin featured in NYT Tech article," July 2018
• "Balaji's Research is Improving Commutes for Millions," October 2018 
• "Balaji Prabhakar has been named ACM Fellow," December 2017

Congratulations to Professor Arogyaswami J. Paulraj for his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS).

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences was founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock, and others who believed the new republic should honor exceptionally accomplished individuals and engage them in advancing the public good.

Two hundred and forty years later, the Academy continues to dedicate itself to recognizing excellence and relying on expertise – both of which seem more important than ever.

"The members of the class of 2020 have excelled in laboratories and lecture halls, they have amazed on concert stages and in surgical suites, and they have led in board rooms and courtrooms," said Academy President David W. Oxtoby. "With today's election announcement, these new members are united by a place in history and by an opportunity to shape the future through the Academy's work to advance the public good."

Please join us in congratulating Paulraj on this well-deserved recognition.

Excerpted from AAAS 2020 Member Announcement.

Related News

• Paulraj receives the 2018 IEEE RCC Technical Recognition Award, February 2019
• Arogyaswami Paulraj inducted into the USPTO National Inventors Hall of Fame, January 2018
• Paulraj wins Marconi Prize, January 2014

Professor Shan X. Wang helped author a paper titled, "A mountable toilet system for personalized health monitoring via the analysis of excreta" that was published in Nature Biomedical Engineering.

The 'smart toilet' is fitted with technology that can detect a range of disease markers in stool and urine, including those of some cancers, such as colorectal or urologic cancers. The device could be particularly appealing to individuals who are genetically predisposed to certain conditions, such as irritable bowel syndrome, prostate cancer or kidney failure, and want to keep on top of their health.

"Our concept dates back well over 15 years," said lead author Sanjiv "Sam" Gambhir, professor and chair of radiology. "When I'd bring it up, people would sort of laugh because it seemed like an interesting idea, but also a bit odd." With a pilot study of 21 participants now completed, Gambhir and his team have made their vision of a precision health-focused smart toilet a reality.

Gambhir's toilet is an ordinary toilet outfitted with gadgets inside the bowl. These tools, a suite of different technologies, use motion sensing to deploy a mixture of tests that assess the health of any deposits. Urine samples undergo physical and molecular analysis; stool assessment is based on physical characteristics.

The toilet automatically sends data extracted from any sample to a secure, cloud-based system for safekeeping. In the future, the system could be integrated into any health care provider's record-keeping system for quick and easy access.

Excerpted from "'Smart toilet' monitors for signs of disease," Stanford Medicine News Center, April 2020

Related

• EE News, "Shan helps develop blood test that screens for colorectal cancer," April 2019
• EE News, "Using magnetic nanotechnology (GMR), Shan Wang has Developed a Mobile Device that can Detect Multiple Substances in Saliva," September 2016