EECS: Year in Review by UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering

EECS:

YEAR IN REVIEW Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 2017-18

MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR 2018 marks the 35th year since the inception of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the Samueli School of Engineering at UC Irvine. The department at 35 years

continues to be as vibrant as ever and is still growing rapidly. We hired three new faculty this year and plan to hire three to four more next year. Two of our new hires are in the EECS/human health area and one is in security â&#x20AC;&#x201C; both areas targeted for growth in our department. Important inventions and opportunities often arise at the interface between disciplines; along with these new faculty will

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Facts and Figures Accolades Highlights Computer Science and Engineering Systems Circuits and Devices Alumni Faculty Directory Ingenuity

UCI Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

come new perspectives and opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaborations. In July, we were very excited to witness the groundbreaking for the new interdisciplinary science and engineering building, expected to open in late 2020. Our faculty will play an integral part in this initiative. The quality of our incoming and transfer students, at both undergraduate and graduate levels, continues to increase each year. The average GPA for the Samueli School of Engineering incoming freshman class was 4.07! Faculty recognition also continues to grow, with several of our faculty receiving major grant funding, distinguished lectureships and national and international awards. I am heartened by the fact that many of these talented achievers are among our youngest faculty members. We are working to better engage our Industry Advisory Board, a group of

representatives from industry who offer important insight and guidance on what our students must know to succeed in today’s workforce. In 2018, we conducted several meetings with our IAB members and undergraduate students. These meetings were well attended, and we hope to expand our activities during the coming year. As we work toward engaging both industry and government laboratories, prospective IAB members will note our affiliation with universitywide research centers, including the Integrated Nanosystems Research Facility, the Center for Pervasive Communications & Computing, the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, and the Center for Embedded and Cyberphysical Systems (CECS). We are proud of the first 11 graduates of the new CECS program. EECS faculty members affiliated with these centers work closely with industry to develop

new nanotechnology, communications, IoT, distributed computing and secure network technologies. As I reflect on this year, I want to thank many individuals who have supported the department, including my colleagues and faculty, administrators, and all our students who have chosen electrical engineering and computer science as their career path. I am very optimistic for the near and long-term future of our department. We welcome you and invite you to learn more about our faculty, students and research centers by visiting engineering.uci.edu/dept/eecs or contacting any of our faculty. — H. Kumar Wickramasinghe Nicolaos G. and Sue Curtis Alexopoulos Presidential Chair, UCI Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

EECS: Year in Review is published annually by the Samueli School’s communications staff for the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

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Chair: H. Kumar Wickramasinghe EECS Dept. Administrator: Julie Strope Editor-in-Chief: Shelly Nazarenus Art Direction: Michael Marcheschi, m2dg.com Publisher: Mike Delaney, Meridian Graphics

2017-18 Year in Review

factS and figurES The UCI Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science has two key goals: • Advance the minds of future leaders by providing the finest education to our students • Consistently meet industry needs by developing cutting-edge technology. EECS, home to more than 50 percent of the Samueli School’s engineering student body, has internationally renowned faculty who are top experts in their fields. The department is committed to an integrated view of the electrical engineering field – ranging from microscopic (and even nanoscale) devices all the way to architectures, communications and software design – everything from electrons to programs. More than 20 research groups focus on areas as diverse as embedded systems, computer networks, middleware, real-time systems, micro-electromechanical systems and nanotechnology, communication systems, machine intelligence, and neural and soft computing. Mathematical and natural sciences are applied to the theory, design and implementation of devices and systems for the benefit of our society.

DEPARTMENT HISTORY

1983

Department of Electrical Engineering founded

1990

Department expands to include computer science

EECS 2

UCI Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

STUDENT POPULATION

RESEARCH & EXPENDITURES

1098

$10.4M 37 22 3 4 2 4 1 10 3 2

Undergraduate Students

B.S. degrees Electrical Engineering Computer Engineering Computer Science and Engineering

374

Graduate Students M.S., Ph.D. degrees Electrical and Computer Engineering Networked Systems Masters of Embedded and Cyberphysical Systems

FACULTY & RECOGNITION

Full-time Faculty

2015-16 Research Expenditures Research Thrusts

Circuits and Devices Computer Science and Engineering Systems

World-class Center Aﬃliations

Integrated Nanosystems Research Facility Center for Pervasive Communications & Computing California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology Center for Embedded and Cyberphysical Systems

Aﬃliated Faculty National Academy of Engineering Members National Academy of Inventors Presidential Young Investigator Award NSF CAREER Awards Endowed Chairs Chancellor’s Professors

2017-18 Year in Review

ACCOLADES Aparna Chandramowlishwaran, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, earned the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award. Among the NSF’s most prestigious, the award supports early career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education, and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. Chandramowlishwaran won $500,000 to advance her development of a software program that can help solve large-scale turbulent flow simulation problems in computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Her system, called HiPer, will perform physics-based simulations as well as CFD turbulent flow simulations on massively parallel machines, a feat currently infeasible due to cost and time constraints. “I’m extremely honored to receive this prestigious award and super excited to embark on one of my passionate research projects,” Chandramowlishwaran said. “I’m a big proponent of interdisciplinary research, and I strongly believe this high-risk, high-reward research direction that lies at the intersection of domain sciences and parallel computing has the potential to have a transformative impact if successful.”

Hamid Jafarkhani, Samueli School Chancellor’s Professor of electrical engineering and computer science, earned his doctorate in 1997 from the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering. Last year, a committee of experts at his alma mater unanimously selected him the sole 2017 inductee into its School of Engineering Innovation Hall of Fame. Jafarkhani was elected for pioneering a variety of space-time methods and algorithms for multi-antenna wireless communication systems and networks. In its recommendation, the committee wrote, “It is estimated that space-time block codes have been used in billions of wireless devices worldwide, and some of [Jafarkhani’s] beamforming inventions are used in wireless communication standards.” A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the IEEE, an ISI Highly Cited Researcher and author of the book “Space-Time Coding: Theory and Practice,” Jafarkhani is the Samueli School’s Conexant-Broadcom Endowed Chair and director of its Center for Pervasive Communications and Computing. His research encompasses communication theory, with emphases on coding and wireless communication and networks. 4

UCI Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

G.P. Li was awarded the 2017 Outstanding Alumni Award from the National Cheng Kung University Alumni Association, North America. Li, professor of electrical engineering, biomedical engineering, and chemical engineering and materials science, and director of UCI’s CALIT2, accepted the award late last year at the association’s biannual conference in Washington, D.C. Li arrived in the U.S. to attend graduate school at UCLA and today is a successful academic, innovative researcher and intrepid entrepreneur. He holds 33 patents and has started four companies. His current research interests focus on developing technologies for efficient energy utilization and consumption, and e-health.

Henry Samueli was named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors for 2017. The Broadcom Corp. co-founder and UC Irvine distinguished adjunct professor in electrical engineering and computer science is the Samueli School of Engineering’s namesake. Samueli is UCI’s sixth NAI fellow; he was inducted in April during the Seventh Annual Conference of the National Academy of Inventors in Washington, D.C.

Daniel Gajski, EECS professor emeritus and founder of what is today the UCI Center for Embedded and Cyberphysical Systems, was recognized last year by edacentrum with the EDA Contribution Award for his outstanding lifetime contributions and achievements in research, development and application of electronic design automation (EDA).

The NAI fellow distinction is awarded to academic innovators who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation with outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society. A named inventor in 75 U.S. patents for highspeed communications technology, Samueli’s pioneering advances in the development and commercialization of analog and mixed-signal circuits for modern communication systems led to the explosive growth of the consumer broadband industry.

The edacentrum, an independent institution dedicated to the promotion of research and development of EDA, was founded by the German microelectronics industry. Gajski is an influential EDA scientist with more than 40 years of intensive engagement in industry and academia. He is considered among the founding fathers of new electronic design methods that reach toward higher levels of abstractions and their relationship to system architectures, and he is a leader in establishing the fields of silicon compilation, high-level synthesis and system-level design.

2017-18 Year in Review

ACCOLADES Mohammad Al Faruque, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, has received for the second time in two years an early career award from an IEEE committee or council. In 2016, Al Faruque, who researches system-level design of embedded systems and cyberphysical systems, received the IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA) Ernest S. Kuh Early Career Award. Last month, he won the 2018 IEEE Technical Committee on Cyberphysical Systems Early Career Award, which recognizes a researcher who has received a doctorate within the last 10 years, for demonstrating outstanding contributions to the field of cyberphysical systems. Al Faruque was honored for his work over the past eight years in the areas of energy-efficient and security-aware design automation methodologies for cyberphysical systems. “I am very honored and happy to receive this prestigious award,” Al Faruque said of his most recent accolade. “Thanks to IEEE for recognizing my multidisciplinary research from two different research communities.”

Payam Heydari, electrical engineering and computer science professor, has accrued several recent honors. The IEEE has selected Heydari a 2019-2021 Distinguished Lecturer for its Microwave Theory and Techniques Society. He formerly served as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society. Each year, the IEEE societies carefully select a group of Distinguished Lecturers who are recognized experts in their fields. These scholars give invited seminars to various IEEE chapters and institutions around the world. “Only a handful of electrical engineering scientists across the world have served as the distinguished lecturer of more than one major IEEE society,” said Heydari, who conducts research in analog, radio-frequency, millimeter-wave and subterahertz integrated circuits design. Late last fall, Heydari was elected to the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society’s governing body, the Administrative Committee, and was inducted on January 1 for a three-year term. In early February, the Orange County Business Council named him an Orange County Game Changer at its annual awards dinner and officer installation. Heydari was one of six people recognized for being a leader who is transforming the world. Also in February, Heydari was endorsed by Marquis Who’s Who as a leader in the fields of electrical engineering and higher education. The publisher presented Heydari with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award in honor of his many years of experience, achievements, leadership qualities, credentials and successes. 6 UCI Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited the research of Stuart Kleinfelder, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and his co-authors in the write-up for the 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The chemistry prize was awarded to three European-born scientists (Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson) for their development of cryo-electron microscopy, a new method to assemble precise 3D images of biological molecules like proteins, DNA and RNA. Kleinfelder’s published research involved the creation, optimization and use of complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) active pixel sensor arrays for use in electron microscopy. He explained that by building on existing experience with charged-particle imaging for physics applications, UC Irvine designed among the earliest sensors specifically adapted for direct imaging in electron microscopy. “Rather than photographing a blurry phosphor screen lit by electrons, we placed the sensor directly in the electron’s path, leading to considerable improvements in image sharpness,” said Kleinfelder. “We optimized the image sensors to the point that each individual arriving electron could be detected to sub-pixel resolution. Our inclusion of fast on-chip digitization helped speed image capture to the point that photography by counting electrons became practical, leading to even further improvements in cryo-electron microscopy image quality. I congratulate the Nobel winners and the UCI students and other collaborators who made these important advances possible.”

EECS Professor Syed Ali Jafar has been recognized, for the fourth consecutive year, as among the world’s most influential scientific minds, according to the 2017 Highly Cited Researchers list published by Clarivate Analytics last fall. The list of highly cited scholars includes preeminent researchers from around the world in 20 fields of the sciences and social sciences who have demonstrated great influence as measured by citations to their work. Jafar analyzes the capacity of wireless communication networks, and is best known for his influential work on the idea known as interference alignment. This concept demonstrates how a resource such as network bandwidth can be shared among competing users so that each user gets half of the total bandwidth free from interference from others. The 3,300 researchers on the 2017 list have distinguished themselves by publishing a large number of papers that rank in the top 1 percent most-cited in their fields over an 11-year period. This consistent production of highly cited work indicates these papers have been repeatedly judged by their peers to be of notable significance.

2017-18 Year in Review

HIGHLIGHTS $8 Million Collaboration Furthers Brain-Computer Interface Technology Implantable device offers restorative promise for those with paralysis The National Science Foundation has awarded $8 million to a consortium led by UC Irvine to develop a brain-computer interface that can restore walking ability and sensation in individuals with spinal cord injury. “The goal of this multidisciplinary project is to create an implantable system that by circumventing the damaged portion of the spinal cord can enable patients with these injuries to regain feeling in their legs and walk again,” said principal investigator Payam Heydari, professor of electrical engineering and computer science. “Spinal cord injuries are devastating and have a profoundly negative impact on independence and quality of life of those affected,” he added. “These resulting disabilities cost the U.S. roughly $50 billion per year in primary and secondary health care expenditures, so we hope that our work can solve a major national public health problem.” The five-year grant, sponsored by the NSF’s Cyberphysical Systems Frontier program, is divided among UCI, California Institute of Technology and the University of Southern California. Zoran Nenadic, co-PI and professor of biomedical engineering, said that the UCI research team has been working in recent years to miniaturize brain-computerinterface systems, shrinking them from the size of a desktop computer to pacemaker scale. Nenadic and An Do, a neurology professor, collaborated previously on a proofof-concept study to implement a brain-computer interface that enabled a paraplegic man to walk a short distance. The goal of this new NSF-funded project is to perfect the technology and decrease its size. “Professor Heydari’s lab, which specializes in low-power, nanoscale electronics, designed and implemented several critical integrated circuits that makes scaling to this small size possible,” he added. In 2016, a man whose legs had been paralyzed for five years walked along a 12-foot course using UCI-developed technology that lets the brain bypass the spinal cord to send messages to the legs.

This new initiative focuses on converting existing technology into a fully implantable version, which will be implemented in a manner similar to deep brain stimulators. To test the technology, the UCI team will collaborate with Caltech and USC on clinical studies in volunteers with spinal cord injury.

Top: UCI researchers (from left) An Do, Payam Heydari and Zoran Nenadic will work with collaborators from Caltech and USC on an NSF-funded project to further develop the brain-computer interface. 8 UCI Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Microsemi Donation Enables Electrical Engineering Chair Endowment will help ensure that graduates’ skills match industry needs Microsemi Corp. has donated $1.5 million to UC Irvine that – combined with $500,000 in matching funds from the UC Office of the President – will establish the Microsemi Presidential Chair in Electrical Engineering. The $2 million endowment will support research and teaching, equipment and laboratory setup, graduate fellowships and more. “Microsemi is a great partner for us,” said Gregory Washington, the Stacey Nicholas Dean of Engineering at the Samueli School. “The company’s recent push in innovation and high-quality chips and platforms are in direct alignment with one of our major research thrusts: communications and information technology. This gift will help us recruit the highest-quality faculty to be part of one of the most dynamic programs in the nation.” The Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science is home to more than 50 percent of students in the engineering school. With close ties to industry, the department develops and constantly refines its curricula to meet real-world demands and accommodate rapid changes in technology. “Microsemi is honored to continue our commitment to UCI by ensuring that the Samueli School of Engineering is a recognized leader in higher education, as we rely upon UCI students and graduates to enhance our team with top engineers, scientists and innovators,” said James J. Peterson, chairman and CEO of Microsemi. “Investing in electrical engineering education allows our company to give back to our community while preparing the future workforce’s expertise to be aligned with our company’s unique technology developments in areas such as the internet of things, advanced system on chip and programmable hardware solutions like field-programmable gate arrays.” “UCI attracts some of the world’s most cutting-edge and promising faculty through efforts like the Endowed Chair Program,” said Enrique Lavernia, UCI provost and executive vice chancellor. “We are not only preparing the next generation of students for their future, we are creating a collaborative culture across the university with some of the most talented and sought-after faculty.” Headquartered in Orange County with offices around the world, Microsemi Corp. is a provider of semiconductor and system solutions for aerospace and defense, communications, data centers and industrial markets. It has about 4,800 employees globally.

2017-18 Year in Review

HIGHLIGHTS Three Institutions Launch Joint Technology Development Project Initiative will focus on creation of ‘information processing factory’ computer chips Advanced medical electronics, autonomous vehicles, smart manufacturing – these and other technological innovations call for integrated circuits that can manage complex processes, self-monitor and adapt to rapidly changing requirements. Researchers from UC Irvine and Germany’s Technical University of Braunschweig and Technical University of Munich have launched a joint project to develop next-generation computer components to meet the new challenges of digitization. The goal is to build “information processing factory” chips that bundle numerous functions and capabilities on a single platform. Practical elements of the collaboration, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and the German Research Foundation, include student and faculty exchanges and visits, regularly scheduled trans-Atlantic conferences and virtual work group activities. “We hope to bring about a paradigm shift by creating vastly more complex networked information technology systems that can operate in the emerging environment brought on by advances in cyberphysical systems and the internet of things,” said UCI principal investigator Nikil Dutt, Chancellor’s Professor of computer science. The “information processing factory” chip concept comes from recent innovations in manufacturing in which network-connected tools, robots, sensors and computers act in concert to perform complex processes. The teams from UCI and Germany will work toward incorporating many of the monitoring and control functions of factories into individual computer chips. This will enable components to function independently, adapt to evolving processing requirements and self-repair defects on the fly. These advanced systems will come equipped with on-chip sensors to monitor and control performance and health status – keeping track of temperature, energy consumption, wear and tear, and even security threats. Achieving this will require a holistic methodology that encompasses hardware design, software development and new approaches to network architecture. “We are rapidly nearing a time when networked information technology components greatly outnumber humans, and the complexity of their operations outstrips anything people are capable of today,” said UCI co-principal investigator Fadi Kurdahi, director of UCI’s Center for Embedded & Cyberphysical Systems and professor of electrical engineering and computer science.

10 UCI Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

UCI Engineering Students Demonstrate Ingenuity and Determination All female team hacks its way to victory Four determined UC Irvine undergraduate engineering students took a promising idea, lots of stamina and the will to succeed to a local hackathon, and they emerged 24 hours later with a top prize. The team designed and built a campus security system called WatchDog. Their awardwinning prototype encompasses an app that can quickly summon police, along with a quadcopter that dispatches simultaneously to the scene, barks like a dog to scare off assailants and records video. The team won the Best Big Data Hack prize, sponsored by Neudesic, at AthenaHacks, held in February at the University of Southern California. Team members Farah Arabi, Onalli Gunasekara, Kelly Hong and Floranne Ellington conceived WatchDog because they often work late in campus labs and were uncomfortable walking home alone after dark. The young women arrived at the hackathon with nothing more than the seed of an idea and a suitcase packed with supplies. They coded through the night; designed, soldered and programmed the quadcopter (even dashing to Target for additional necessities); set up the flight controller; and tested, refined and retested the communication signal between the app and the Raspberry Pi single-board computer right up until the final deadline. When their team’s name was called during the awards ceremony, they sat, stunned, until they heard it a second time. “We were like, wait… what?” says Hong, an electrical engineering major.

WatchDog team members hold their prizes after winning Best Big Data Hack honors. From left, Neudesic consultant Karla Benefiel; students Gunasekara, Hong, Ellington and Arabi; and Neudesic consultant Yueying Li. The Neudesic representatives were on the hackathon judging panel.

WatchDog builds on UCI’s Emergency Blue Light system, a network of 150 emergency phones installed around campus. Currently, pedestrians needing help push a button on the emergency phone, which summons police. But the team envisioned a more sophisticated arrangement with a fleet of autonomous quadcopters encased in plastic housing, one of which sits atop each emergency phone. By using an Android app that incorporates GPS, those in need could summon police with a voice command, and simultaneously release the closest quadcopter from its housing, sending it to the caller’s location. “The app can track your GPS location so even if you’re running away from someone, police will know where you are,” says electrical engineering major Arabi. When police arrive, they can dismiss the drone, which would autonomously fly back to its home. The team plans to continue working on WatchDog, with a long-term goal of commercialization. “We are hoping to make a legitimate demo, something we can show to companies,” says Arabi.

2017-18 Year in Review

RESEARCH THRUST:

COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING Transforming Transport Startup based on UCI research takes novel approach to steering the driverless car

UCI Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Anna Lynn Spitzer

Intel is in. Apple, Google, Uber and chipmaker Nvidia are on board, too. Now, a

company called PerceptIn, founded by an entrepreneur who earned all of his degrees, including a doctorate, from UC Irvine, is competing in Silicon Valley’s hottest race: to develop and market autonomous vehicle navigation systems. Autonomous vehicles could outnumber driver-controlled cars by 2040, and PerceptIn’s founder and chairman, Shaoshan Liu, predicts that in the not-so-distant future, autonomous transportation will become a basic utility like electricity and water. While numerous companies are competing to develop the advanced technology, several noteworthy differences set PerceptIn apart, according to Liu. The startup, incorporated in 2016 and headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., has upended the current paradigm. Its product consumes less computing and electrical power, dissipates a much smaller amount of heat and costs a fraction of the price of its competitors’. The company’s methodology, influenced in part by Liu’s UCI doctoral research, is the focus of an August 2017 cover story in IEEE Computing, authored by a team that

includes Liu and his UCI graduate adviser, Jean-Luc Gaudiot. Gaudiot, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, specializes in computer architecture, parallel and distributed processing, and reconfigurable architectures. The latest advances in those fields can be seen clearly in PerceptIn’s modular, highperformance, configurable and dynamic architecture. “Researchers are actively exploring computer architectures that can reduce the cost of autonomous driving to make it affordable for the general population,” says Gaudiot, who also served as the 2017 IEEE Computer Society president. “And this system is also secure; each node has a mechanism that prevents other nodes from impacting it. No one is going to hack into your car.” The team’s software doles out computing tasks using a heterogeneous ARM mobile system on a chip that matches individual workloads to specific computing units. This results in a highly efficient system. The best part: the company can produce the hardware, sensors and software for around $2,000. By comparison, top-of-the-line LiDAR (laser imaging detection and ranging), the backbone of most current autonomous

vehicles, can cost $80,000 or more – twice as much as the vehicle itself. (Smaller LiDAR systems are available for less, but they provide far less information.) In addition to being expensive and unsightly – it looks like a large rotating top positioned on the roof of the car – LiDAR’s acuity diminishes in certain weather conditions because it uses light spectrum wavelengths. LiDAR cannot detect color or contrast, and cannot provide optical character recognition capabilities, important in recognizing and analyzing traffic signs and other roadway symbols. By contrast, Gaudiot and Liu say, their panoramic-stereovision-and-sensorfusion system, besides being smaller, more efficient and less expensive, still delivers highly reliable computing performance with far fewer constraints than LiDAR systems. A fully autonomous vehicle uses numerous sensors to perceive its environment and navigate safely, generating a huge amount of data, which the car must process on board in order to make driving decisions. This high volume of sensor data not only requires a complex computational pipeline, but processing can consume thousands of watts of electrical power.

2017-18 Year in Review

PerceptIn’s vision-based system breaks down the computing tasks, assigning them to multiple platforms and processing solutions, radically reducing the required computational pipeline. Both computing power and energy expenditure are also reduced. The proprietary software figures out the most suitable computing resource for each autonomous driving task – sensing, perception and decisionmaking – and assigns it to that resource. For real-time localization, path planning and obstacle avoidance, the system utilizes central processing units. It controls deeplearning tasks, such as object recognition, with graphics processing units. Field-programmable gate arrays handle object-tracking, lanechange prediction, and data compression and uploading; while digital signal processors process image data. Liu says PerceptIn’s system reduces electrical processing power to a measly 15 watts. Gaudiot, Liu and their collaborators analyzed all the tasks required to produce safe and effective autonomous driving, and determined that some of them need to be performed only sporadically. “We thought, why not start having things that are more tailored to each part of the computation?” says Gaudiot. “So we’ve got specialized architectures, multiple types of cores and we’re doing heterogeneous computing.” Because the system is modular, it is easy to add computing resources as needed. Last fall, PerceptIn began testing a demo vehicle at its R&D facility in Shenzhen, China – Liu calls it the “Asian Silicon Valley” – and results are encouraging.

A comprehensive overview of autonomous vehicles, written by Gaudiot, Liu and other collaborators, was published last October by Morgan and Claypool. “Creating Autonomous Vehicle Systems,” a nine-chapter book, explores the vehicles’ major subsystems and delves into various technologies in development.

UCI Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Liu, who says his company’s complete autonomous vehicle system costs less than $10,000 for hardware, software and chassis, envisions a future where driver-controlled cars are obsolete, and autonomous vehicles are shared and scheduled by a communitywide central system. “Imagine how this would help the environment and alleviate the global-warming problem,” he says. “Thanks to autonomous driving technologies, our future vehicles, roads and even the world at large will be safer, run more efficiently, and suffer far less from combustion-related pollution.” There are still hurdles, however. “We have closely collaborated with the UCI engineering school, mainly with Professor Gaudiot’s group, to develop cutting-edge technologies on AI and autonomous driving, and we have a series of good results coming out,” says Liu. “But this will not be an easy journey. There will be a lot of barriers ahead for us to get around.” Gaudiot, however, thinks advances in computer engineering can successfully challenge those obstacles. “Computing capabilities in the form of denser chips, multiprocessors, heterogeneous computing and power-aware techniques will allow us to meet the intensive requirements for embedded autonomous systems,” he says. “And this system makes it affordable. This is our goal: to make something practical, usable and affordable.”

PerceptIn tested this demonstration vehicle at its R&D facility in Shenzhen, China. The autonomous vehicle navigation system, powered by the NVIDIA Jetson TX system on a chip, employs four HD cameras for panoramic and stereo vision, an inertial measurement unit for visual odometry (estimating changes in position over time), a localization module and interfaces for control and wheel odometry. In addition to China, PerceptIn has offices in Santa Clara, Calif.; the company has around 30 employees serving more than 100 customers.

2017-18 Year in Review

RESEARCH THRUST:

SYSTEMS THE EVOLUTION OF MASSIVE MIMO Researcherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s paper has substantial impact over time Anna Lynn Spitzer Debbie Morales

UCI Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

When Lee Swindlehurst, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and his colleagues first wrote a paper in 2014 about massive MIMO (multipleinput, multipleoutput) in wireless communications, the concept was just becoming popular among researchers. Describing a technique for equipping cellular base stations with a very large number of antennas that could improve spectral efficiency while potentially reducing energy usage, the paper was an overview of the benefits and challenges inherent in the relatively new signal processing approach. Swindlehurst collaborated with researchers from Georgia Tech, Bell Labs and the National University of Singapore on the paper, which was published in the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing in October 2014.

In the three-and-a-half years since, however, massive MIMO has become a hot topic, not only in academia but also in industry. This spring, Swindlehurst received the 2017 Donald G. Fink Overview Paper Award from the Signal Processing Society at the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing in Calgary, Alberta. The award honors a journal article of broad interest to the signal processing community that has had substantial impact over several years on a subject related to the society’s technical scope. Considered an integral component in emerging 5G communications protocols, which should be widely adopted in a few years, massive MIMO (pronounced meye-mo) has advanced

well past its 2014 progress. The current focus, Swindlehurst says, is applying the technique at extremely high millimeterwave frequencies. These shorter, highfrequency waves comprise a section of the radio wave spectrum that is relatively open and available, so scientists are looking at ways to incorporate them into wireless communications. Because of the extremely high frequency of these waves, the platforms they utilize can be many times smaller than those used in current communications architectures. The antennas in these systems will be 10-20 times smaller than current antennas in fact, and Swindlehurst says a cell phone could even house several of them.

more expensive hardware, thus saving production costs and further reducing energy consumption. However, massive MIMO and millimeter-wave technology is expected to comprise just one part of 5G communications. It will be used in conjunction with current lower frequencies to provide users with shortrange and long-range communication options. What does massive MIMO and 5G technology mean for consumers? Higher throughput, Swindlehurst says. “You won’t notice any difference except you’ll be able to download things faster and your coverage should be good no matter where you are.”

The drawback, however, is that signals at millimeter-wave frequencies don’t propagate very far and they are easily blocked. These signals can’t pass through walls, and can even be distorted by the position of one’s hand on the cell phone. The solution, Swindlehurst says, is multiple access points, each containing numerous antennas. “One of the ways to overcome the propagation problem is to add more antennas. That allows the signal to go farther,” he explains. “At higher frequencies, you have to be in an environment where you can almost see the antenna,” he adds, citing interior walls, lampposts, building exteriors and other infrastructure as likely hosts. “We’re talking about massive MIMO systems with maybe tens or hundreds of antennas at each access point.” The fact that massive MIMO involves a large number of antennas in a small space lends itself perfectly to this solution. And the technique will save energy because signals can be directed in specific directions, not widely broadcast, as is the case in current technology. Additionally, researchers are discovering that because there are so many antennas in massive MIMO architectures, lower fidelity hardware is just as effective as

This spring, Professor Lee Swindlehurst received the 2017 Donald G. Fink Overview Paper Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society.

2017-18 Year in Review

RESEARCH THRUST:

CIRCUITS & DEVICES Presto Change-o UCI Researchers Change Transparent Material into a Mirror with Electricity Anna Lynn Spitzer

A mirror reﬂects light, thanks to a thin metallic film attached to the glass, which serves as a conductor. A window lets light

pass through completely; it is an insulator and a transmitter. Now, imagine changing that mirror into a window simply by applying a direct current voltage to it. Or, changing the mirror into a resistive material, one that absorbs energy from light – again, by applying electricity to it. This is a simplified explanation of what Samueli School researchers accomplished recently using a single layer of graphene, a one-atom-thick, transparent and flexible material. In a paper published recently in Nature Communications, electrical engineering and computer science Professor Peter Burke and his graduate student Phi Pham showed that critical transition points in the graphene’s properties – from a reflector of light to a transparent material – can be activated by applying this DC voltage, also called gate voltage.

Professor Peter Burke and his colleagues recently published a paper in Nature Communications, detailing the graphene material research.

UCI Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Previously, researchers believed that a material’s property – whether it was transparent, reflective or absorbing of electromagnetic waves – was based on its geometric structure. Pham, Burke and their collaborators showed that this property can be changed using voltage. Burke explains that certain materials – indium tin oxide, for example – can have different conductive properties based on the thickness of the material when it is deposited on another material. “It can be reflective, like a mirror, or absorptive or be a transmitter,” he says. “But once you deposit that material, its electrical properties are fixed forever.” By contrast, graphene, which is a conductor in its natural state, can be “tuned” to a different state, simply by applying the voltage. “We’ve created this transition point, where the material isn’t a metal and it isn’t an insulator,” Burke says. “And the material is only one atom thin, so that’s the ‘wow’ factor.” The light used in these experiments is not visible light; it is terahertz-wave light, which means it is close to far-infrared

light on the electromagnetic scale. Terahertz waves are smaller and higher frequency than millimeter waves, and larger but lower frequency than visible light.

graphene – at least one millimeter square. Pham grew the graphene on copper foil and then transferred it to glass, making sure it stayed clean at all times because any dirt could turn it into an insulator.

Because the ability of the waves to provide high-resolution images increases as their wavelength decreases, this tuning breakthrough could have applications in a number of areas: millimeter wave and terahertz components and systems, including wireless communications; security cameras that could see through walls in ultrahigh resolution; and possibly even anti-reflection coatings on aircraft for stealth purposes. “You could potentially make a plane disappear from radar and then reappear,” Burke says.

He first did a coarse tune by adjusting conditions as the graphene grew, moving the material closer to the boundary between reflector and transmitter. Then he used the DC voltage to fine tune in and out of the two regions. “He probably did around 1,000 growth runs in the cleanroom to get the material’s properties tuned right,” Burke says.

A lot of work was required in the UCI cleanroom to make this tunable material. First, Pham had to grow the graphene in the lab, one crystal at a time, by applying heat to a single carbon atom seed. And, because of the nature of the experiment and the millimeter size of the light beam, he needed to make large pieces of atomically perfect, single-crystal

“We’ve made this transition point in the material where we can tune it just by turning a voltage,” he summarized. “As far as I know, this has not been done with any other material.” Pham, Burke and their UCI partners collaborated on the paper with researchers Elliott Brown and Weidong Zhang from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio; the latter were responsible for precise THz measurements and analysis. The work was supported by a U.S. Army Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI).

“We’ve created this transition point, where the material isn’t a metal and it isn’t an insulator. And the material is only one atom thin, so that’s the ‘wow’ factor.” 2017-18 Year in Review

ALUMNI A HEALTH CARE GAME CHANGER Alumnus named among top 10 CEOs Lori Brandt transforming medical services

Nick Desai earned a UC Irvine bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering in 1991. This year, he was named one of 10 CEOs who are transforming health care in America by Forbes columnist Robert Reiss. Desai, a member of the UCI Engineering Hall of Fame, co-founded technology-enabled Heal in 2014 with his physician wife to bring back doctor house calls and home-based medical services. With Heal, CEO Desai and his wife are on a mission to fix the broken $3 trillion health care system. According to Desai, getting patients out of the hospital by delivering primary, preventive and urgent care through house calls not only reduces costly and avoidable emergency room trips by 28 percent, but also leads to better medical care. With doctors able to see patients’ medications, environmental factors, lifestyle and diet, Heal has reduced unnecessary prescriptions, tests and referrals by 51 percent –resulting in cost savings of $27 million in just 40,000 house calls.

“By reinventing the digital tools doctors use, Heal is also enabling its doctors to make every visit a proactive interaction with patients, going beyond the issue at hand to identify and close care gaps so that patients spend less time getting well and more time living well,” Desai said in an interview with Reiss. “Increasingly, the future of medicine is at home, and Heal will lead doctors, patients and payers to that future.” After graduating from UCI, Desai earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from UCLA and became an accomplished entrepreneur, launching four venture-funded startups over the last 18 years. A board member of the UCI Alumni Association, he also received UCI’s 2018 Lauds & Laurels Samueli School of Engineering Distinguished Alumni Award. Desai shared the news of his top-10 pick with Samueli School Dean Gregory Washington in an email, writing, “It is what I learned at UCI as an engineering student that launched me into a career of technology innovation and leadership.”

20 UCI Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

2017-18 Year in Review

ALUMNI A systems engineer and technical fellow at the Boeing Co., Joan Wada has had an extensive engineering career in the defense industry.

Q&A

She has 17 awarded patents and was recognized as the Asian American Engineer of the Year in 2007 by the Chinese Institute of Engineering. Wada received her bachelor’s in electrical engineering from UC Irvine and went on to earn her MBA at Cal State San Bernardino. Today, she leads a team that produces training equipment for the U.S. Navy, which helps prepare pilots for deployment on P-8A antisubmarine aircraft. Wada was inducted into the Samueli School’s 2017 Engineering Hall of Fame. How and when did you know you wanted to be an engineer? I found out that I was good in math and science at a young age. It wasn’t until high school, when I was applying to colleges, that I realized there was even an engineering major! Before that, I thought I wanted to go into architecture or something along those lines. Why did you choose UCI for your college education?

with EECS Alumna Joan Wada ’85 Lori Brandt

22 UCI Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Location was a big reason. I grew up in Southern California, so I didn’t have to stray too far. I was able to enjoy the experiences of living on (or near) campus, yet be close enough to family. It was a small, but reputable UC school, where I thought I would not “get lost in the crowd.” It offered the opportunity for more personal interactions with professors and other students. It was all I thought it would be and more.

Who were your mentors at UCI and how did they help you? Definitely Professor Mulligan. He stood out as a person who desired to help outside of the classroom. He had his own idiosyncrasies, but he had a real passion for engineering. He was so accomplished, and I respected him so much. He gave me inspiration to become an electrical engineer, and provided much appreciated help along the way. Any favorite memories from your days as an Anteater? I have many memories from the lectures, labs and projects. But my favorite memories come from the friendships I made along the way – from dorm-mates (if that’s a word) to roommates to student peers to my best friend. Those memories will last long after I retire from the engineering profession. Describe your role at Boeing. I am a systems engineer, and I lead a team that develops acoustic processing training equipment for the P-8A Poseidon Multi-Mission Maritime Aircraft, used by the U.S. Navy to get crews mission-ready. My team takes flight-worthy software and incorporates it into a ground-based P-8A simulator. We perform all stages of development, from defining requirements that detail what the Navy wants, to designing and integrating the software in our lab, to installing and verifying it at our customer sites. It’s a great feeling to see a product that you’ve worked on for months being deployed to our customer and seeing the looks of satisfaction.

What are some of your challenges and rewards working in the defense industry?

You serve as a mentor for UCI students; what advice do you like to give them?

Being an engineer, I would say the challenges are not technical. Our challenges lie in keeping our program running. That means dealing with contracts, funding and work scope. But once that is worked out, the biggest rewards are the final deliveries to our customer. That represents a team accomplishment that marks how we overcame technical challenges and worked closely with our customer to provide a product with superior performance, now and in future years.

Keep the passion that you have, and believe in yourself. They are all so capable, but the “real world” sometimes seems intimidating to them. I encourage them to explore opportunities. Think of yourself as the company owner, put yourself in their shoes, and learn how to do many jobs. Having that mentality can help you advance. I also encourage them to embrace continuous learning to avoid professional obsolescence.

What has been your proudest moment as an engineer? While I am proud of my own accomplishments, my proudest moments come from seeing my mentees succeed. For example, I am proud to say that I was able to help grow the career of a young engineer, from a new employee to a lead position as an airline support engineer who oversees the European region. The fact that he is comfortable interacting with international customers and executives on a regular basis shows his considerable growth. I’m happy to say that he is paying it forward as well, by mentoring others to success. You have 17 patents to date; what are your innovations? These are for innovative instruments in the area of guidance and control. I developed these while I was working on the Minuteman III program, developing Next Generation Inertial Measurement Unit (NGIMU) components. The inventions include accelerometers, leveling devices and other guidance components, which are useful in standard IMUs, or autopilot subsystems.

We understand you compete in adult figure skating. How did you get started and what motivates you? I guess you can describe it as an epiphany. I had a realization that I wanted to do it, and I could do it. Here I was telling my mentees that they could do anything … so I put my money where my mouth was. It’s difficult as an adult, but I keep at it. There is so much to learn about edges, balance, flow and artistry. It’s a physical sport that blends in artistry. It teaches persistence, and as I tell people – I can use both my right brain and left brain as I exercise. Anything else you’d like to tell us? There are so many opportunities for both men and women in the field of engineering. Get involved early and often. Keep being involved and remember to pay it forward.

2017-18 Year in Review

FACULTY DIRECTORY H. Kumar Wickramasinghe, Ph.D.

Peter Burke, Ph.D.

Franco De Flaviis, Ph.D.

Nicolas G. and Sue Curtis Alexopoulos Presidential Chair, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Henry Samueli Endowed Chair Research Interests: nanoscale measurements and characterization, scanning probe microscopy, storage technology, nanobio measurement technology Email: hkwick@uci.edu

Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, and Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Research Interests: nano-electronics, bionanotechnology Email: pburke@uci.edu

Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: microwave systems, wireless communications, electromagnetic circuit simulations Email: franco@uci.edu

Filippo Capolino, Ph.D.

Brian Demsky, Ph.D.

Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: optics/electromagnetics in nanostructures and sensors, antennas/ microwaves, RF and wireless systems Email: f.capolino@uci.edu

Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: computer security, programming languages, software engineering, computer systems, compilers, distributed systems, internet of things Email: bdemsky@uci.edu

Mohammad Al Faruque, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Emulex Career Development Chair Research Interests: cyberphysical systems, internet of things, embedded systems, CPS security Email: alfaruqu@uci.edu

Ender Ayanoglu, Ph.D. Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: communication systems, communication theory, communication networks Email: ayanoglu@uci.edu

Nader Bagherzadeh, Ph.D. Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Computer Science Research Interests: parallel processing, computer architecture, computer graphics, memory systems, 3D ICs, heterogeneous computing, low-power processing Email: nader@uci.edu

Ozdal Boyraz, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: integrated optics, silicon photonics, optical communications systems and microwave photonics Email: oboyraz@uci.edu

Aparna Chandramowlishwaran, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: high-performance computing, domain-specific compilers, algorithm-architecture co-design, data analysis, scientific computing Email: amowli@uci.edu

Pai Chou, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Computer Science Research Interests: embedded systems, low-power design, wireless sensing systems, energy harvesting, wearable medical devices, real-time systems, hardware/software codesign Email: phchou@uci.edu

Quoc-Viet Dang, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Teaching Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: e-learning, data analysis, autonomous vehicle racing, cyberphysical systems Email: qpdang@uci.edu

24 UCI Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Rainer Doemer, Ph.D. Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: system-level design, embedded computer systems, design methodologies, specification and modeling languages, advanced parallel simulation, integration of hardware and software systems Email: doemer@uci.edu

Ahmed Eltawil, Ph.D. Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: design of system and architectures for computing and communication devices, low power implementations and architectures for digital signal processing Email: aeltawil@uci.edu

Jean-Luc Gaudiot, Ph.D. Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: parallel processing, computer architecture, processor architecture Email: gaudiot@uci.edu

Ramon Gomez, Ph.D.

Pramod Khargonekar, Ph.D.

Guann-Pyng Li, Ph.D.

Assistant Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: analog and RF circuit design Email: ragomez1@uci.edu

Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: systems and control theory, learning and intelligent systems, applications to renewable energy and smart grid, neural engineering and economics, leadership and creativity, technology and society Email: pramod.khargonekar@uci.edu

Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, and Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Research Interests: micro/nano technology for sensors and actuators, internet of things, smart manufacturing, biomedical devices and millimeter-wave wireless communication Email: gpli@uci.edu

Michael Green, Ph.D. Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: analog/mixed-signal IC design, broadband circuit design, theory of nonlinear circuits Email: mgreen@uci.edu

Glenn Healey, Ph.D. Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: machine learning, data science, sabermetrics, physical modeling, computer vision, image processing Email: ghealey@uci.edu

Payam Heydari, Ph.D. Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: design and analysis of analog, radio-frequency, millimeter-wave and terahertz integrated circuits Email: payam@uci.edu

Syed Jafar, Ph.D. Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: wireless communication and information theory Email: syed@uci.edu

Hamid Jafarkhani, Ph.D. Chancellorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: communication theory, signal processing, coding, wireless networks, medical image segmentation Email: hamidj@uci.edu

Stuart Kleinfelder, Ph.D. Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: circuits and systems for visual imaging, X-rays, electron microscopy, particle physics and other applications Email: stuartk@uci.edu

Fadi Kurdahi, Ph.D. Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Computer Science Research Interests: embedded and cyberphysical systems, VLSI system design, design automation of digital systems Email: kurdahi@uci.edu

Chin Lee, Ph.D. Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: electronic packaging, bonding technology, metallurgy, thermal design, semiconductor devices, electromagnetic theory, acoustics and optoelectronics Email: cclee@uci.edu

Kwei-Jay Lin, Ph.D. Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Computer Science Research Interests: real-time systems, distributed systems, service-oriented computing Email: klin@uci.edu

Athina Markopoulou, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Information and Computer Sciences Research Interests: networking, including network protocols, network measurement and analysis, mobile systems and mobile data analysis, network security and privacy Email: athina@uci.edu

Henry Samueli, Ph.D. Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: digital signal processing, communications systems engineering, CMOS integrated circuit design for applications in high-speed data transmission systems Email: engineeringdean@uci.edu

Henry Lee, Ph.D.

Phillip C-Y Sheu, Ph.D.

Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: photonics, fiber optics and compound semiconductors Email: hplee@uci.edu

Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, and Computer Science Research Interests: semantic computing, robotic computing, biomedical computing, multimedia computing Email: psheu@uci.edu

2017-18 Year in Review

FACULTY DIRECTORY Keyue Smedley, Ph.D. Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: power electronics, renewables, energy storage and grid stabilization Email: smedley@uci.edu

A. Lee Swindlehurst, Ph.D. Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: signal processing, estimation and detection theory, applications in wireless communications, geo-positioning, radar, sonar, biomedicine Email: swindle@uci.edu

Chen Tsai, Ph.D. Chancellor’s Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: integrated microwave magnetics, ultrasonic atomization for nanoparticles synthesis, silicon photonics Email: cstsai@uci.edu

Peter Tseng, Ph.D.

EECS Professors Named Associate Deans In 2017, two electrical engineering and computer science professors were appointed to leadership roles in the Samueli School of Engineering. Mike Green (pictured right) became the associate dean for undergraduate student affairs, replacing John LaRue who served in that role for 22 years. The associate dean is responsible for all aspects of undergraduate education and research at the engineering school, including oversight of the Office of Undergraduate Student Affairs and the Office of Curriculum, Analytical Studies and Accreditation. A 20-year UCI veteran, Green previously served as EECS department chair from 2009 to 2014. Last year, Fadi Kurdahi also took on a new role, serving as the school’s inaugural associate dean for graduate and professional studies. Kurdahi oversees policies and procedures for graduate and professional student education, including increased faculty engagement to support the school’s strategic goals, recruitment and retention, and the establishment of self-supporting and certificate programs. A Fellow of IEEE, AAAS and the recipient of multiple best paper awards, Kurdahi is the director of UC Irvine’s Center for Embedded and Cyberphysical Systems.

Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: micro-electro-mechanical systems, wearable technology, materials-by-design, bioelectromagnetism, nanotechnology Email: tsengpc@uci.edu

Zhiying Wang, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: information theory, coding theory for data storage, compression and computation for genomic information Email: zhiying@uci.edu

Homayoun Yousefi’zadeh, Ph.D. Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: communication networks Email: hyousefi@uci.edu

26 UCI Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

INDUSTRY ADVISORY BOARD The Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Industry Advisory Board was formed in 2007 and is comprised of industry representatives from a variety of electrical engineering and communications technology companies. The board meets quarterly to advise and assist academic leadership on curriculum development, student internships and design review, and to serve as a liaison to local industry. Khaled AbouZeid

Jeff Greenberg

Michael Rakijas

Fausto Andrade

Mingying Gu

Raffi Sakabedoyan

Jim Aralis

Jeffrey L. Hilbert

Darryl Sato

Les Badin

Brian Johnson

Dan Schumann

William Boyle

Charles J. Kim

Neema Shafigh

Mentor Graphics

Northrop Grumman Microsemi Alumnus

Western Digital

William Cassidy

Tech Coast Works Western Digital

Western Digital

Ting Li Chan

Jeff Ludwig

Dan Cregg

Kevin Mori

George Di Papa

Ken Neeld

Insteon

3D Advanced Technologies

George Eaton ThingKus

Pete Fiacco

Executive Technology Consulting

Sangram K. Gaikwad VTI Instruments

Oleksandr Goushcha

Beryl Technologies CareFusion

Southern California Edison

Garrett Lee

Marvell

Garmin

WiSpry, Inc

Orange County Sanitation District

Thales Raytheon Systems

Keysight Technologies

Royce Slick

The Boeing Company

Canon

Rob Valle Mazda

Tahiti Capital

Steve Way

Mazda North American

Northrop Grumman

Maria Wong

Delphi Display Systems

Ametek

Jeff Yang

Hoa Nguyen

OK International

Northrop Grumman

David Young

Skyworks Solutions

Lyle Norton

Thales Group

Todd Zylman

Northrop Grumman

Stephen Palm Broadcom

Brad Potts

Mentor Graphics

Luna Optoelectronics

2017-18 Year in Review

INGENUITY

MOVE OVER, POKEMON GO Augmented reality, which provides an enhanced view of the environment by overlaying virtual elements on what users see, already is a mainstay of gaming, advertising and retail businesses. Soon, it may assume an important role in smart manufacturing facilities as well.

In addition to providing real-time directions to the user, the app can offer an assessment by analyzing past movements. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This could be used in any type of training that relates to learning,â&#x20AC;? says Gago.

A proof-of-concept application, developed by UC Irvine undergraduate computer engineering students, could be modified for use as a training tool, enhancing worker productivity and safety as well as adherence to quality assurance standards. In its current iteration, the app assists those trying to solve a Rubikâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cube puzzle. The user, wearing AR goggles, manipulates the puzzle as the app guides his/ her movements. Turn the top row to the left, twist the middle row twice to the right, and so on. This digitally manipulative approach can be adapted to train workers in assembly protocols and other training procedures, says computer science assistant professor of teaching Sergio Gago, who mentored the three student app designers, (pictured from left) Faustino Aguirre, Fabian Garcia and Kian Bayati.

28 UCI Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

2017-18 Year in Review

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Invest in a brilliant future. Be an EECS supporter. We believe in meeting tomorrowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s technological challenges by providing the highest quality engineering education and research rigor today. We invite you to invest in the future of UC Irvineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s electrical engineering and computer science programs. It is through private donations like yours that we can continue to provide outstanding opportunities for our students and researchers. Your contribution, regardless of amount, makes a difference toward what EECS can accomplish. To find out more about supporting the advancement of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, please visit engineering.uci.edu/alumni-friends/ways-give. If you want to support a specific initiative, please contact Ed Hand, assistant dean for development, at elhand@uci.edu. To learn more about the EECS Department, please visit engineering.uci.edu/dept/eecs.