Duke/ECEPRATT SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER ENGINEERING . AY2011

Step aside copper and make way for abetter carrier of information — light.

Light on SiliconBetter than Copper?

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CHAIR’S LETTER

Welcome to the 2011 Duke ECE Newsletter. As I writemy first Chair’s Letter for this publication, I’m struck by all the evidence that we’re havingan impact. Our revised undergraduate curriculum, with a focus on integrated sensing andinformation processing, is giving freshmen exciting and stimulating hands-on experiences intheir first year. And that excitement is translating into more challenging and ambitious sen-ior design projects. We’ve launched a new breed of master’s program – the master of engi-neering – designed for students who want to pursue applied engineering careers in industry.And our doctoral students such as Souvik Sen are winning awards at top conferences such asMobiCom, and publishing significant research contributions in top journals. For example, Iencourage you to read about the metamaterial optics research by doctoral students Alec Roseand Da Huang at the end of this newsletter.

Our faculty continues to win highly competitive research grants. The Department ofHomeland Security recently awarded $8M to David Brady for a three-year project to developexplosive-specific x-ray tomography systems. Jeff Glass was awarded $5.5M for a three-yeareffort to develop compact computational mass spectrometers for trace element detection. AndI want to congratulate Adrienne Stiff-Roberts and Chris Dwyer on their promotions to asso-ciate professor with tenure.

As always, our alumni are rising to positions of leadership. As one example of many, alum-nus Richard Alfonsi is nurturing an engineering-centric culture as vice president at Google.

During the over 16 years I have been at Duke, I have seen our engineering school trans-formed, with ECE a leading light of that transformation. With the Fitzpatrick Center forInterdisciplinary Engineering and Applied Science, we have world-class teaching andresearch facilities; the SMIF cleanroom facility, led by ECE professor Nan Jokerst, is a Duke-wide resource and a model for other universities. While facilities are critical to our success,our progress is driven by the efforts of our people. The excellence reflected in these pages is aproduct of tireless efforts by our faculty and staff, and by the special talents of our students.Enjoy.

Sincerely,

Lawrence CarinWILLIAM H. YOUNGER PROFESSOR AND CHAIR

Professor Leslie Collins has completed her four-year term as chair on July 1 to return to the laband refocus her efforts on research. Her research group of 4 professionals and 8 PhD students ispioneering signal processing in applications ranging from land mine detection to brain-com-puter interfaces.

She made great strides in raising the stature of the department by attracting talented stu-dents, productive faculty members and research funding. In particular, enrollment in thePh.D. program jumped 15 percent and in the masters program, enrollment jumped an impres-sive 30 percent. Also during her time as chair, research faculty increased from two to nine, andresearch funding increased from $15 to $20 million.

Collins took great pride in supporting junior faculty members by ensuring that theyreceived all the resources they needed to be successful. She was also instrumental modernizingour curriculum. Working with Lisa Huettel, associate professor of the practice and director ofundergraduate studies, and with the support of a National Science Foundation grant, theydeveloped what has become a national model. Closer to home, she has served as faculty leaderfor our new education and research building, a role in which she will continue.

Please join me in extending my thanks to Dr. Collins for her outstanding service.

Tom KatsouleasProfessor and Dean

AY 2011

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As good as the metal has been inzipping information from onecircuit to another on siliconinside computers and otherelectronic devices, optical sig-

nals can carry much more, according toDuke University electrical engineers. Sothe engineers have designed and demon-strated microscopically small lasers inte-grated with thin film-light guides on sil-icon that could replace the copper in ahost of electronic products.

The structures on silicon not only con-tain tiny light-emitting lasers, but con-nect these lasers to channels that accu-rately guide the light to its target, typi-cally another nearby chip or component.This new approach could help engineerswho, in their drive to create tinier andfaster computers and devices, are study-ing light as the basis for the next genera-tion information carrier.

The engineers believe they have solvedsome of the unanswered riddles facingscientists trying to create and controllight at such a miniscule scale.

“Getting light onto silicon and con-trolling it is the first step toward chipscale optical systems,” said Sabarni Palit,who this summer received her Ph.D.while working in the laboratory of NanMarie Jokerst, J.A. Jones DistinguishedProfessor of Electrical and ComputerEngineering at Duke’s Pratt School ofEngineering.

The results of team’s experiments,which were supported by the ArmyResearch Office, were published online inthe journal Optics Letters.

“The challenge has been creating lighton such a small scale on silicon, andensuring that it is received by the nextcomponent without losing most of thelight,” Palit said.

“We came up with a way of creating athin film integrated structure on siliconthat not only contains a light source thatcan be kept cool, but can also accuratelyguide the wave onto its next connection,”she said. “This integration of componentsis essential for any such chip-scale, light-based system.”

The Duke team developed a method oftaking the thick substrate off of a laser,

and bonding this thin film laser to sili-con. The lasers are about one one-hun-dreth of the thickness of a human hair.These lasers are connected to other struc-tures by laying down a microscopic layer

of polymer thatcovers one end ofthe laser and goesoff in a channel toother components.Each layer of thelaser and lightchannel is given itsspecific characteris-tics, or functions,through nano- andmicro-fabricationprocesses and by

selectively removing portions of the sub-strate with chemicals.“

In the process of producing light,lasers produce heat, which can cause thelaser to degrade,” Sabarni said. “Wefound that including a very thin band ofmetals between the laser and the siliconsubstrate dissipated the heat, keeping thelaser functional.”

For Jokerst, the ability to reliably facil-itate individual chips or components that“talk” to each other using light is the

next big challenge in the continuingprocess of packing more processingpower into smaller and smaller chip-scalepackages.

“To use light in chip-scale systems isexciting,” she said. “But the amount ofpower needed to run these systems has tobe very small to make them portable,and they should be inexpensive to pro-duce. There are applications for this inconsumer electronics, medical diagnosticsand environmental sensing.”

The work on this project was conduct-ed in Duke’s Shared MaterialsInstrumentation Facility, which, likesimilar facilities in the semiconductorindustry, allows the fabrication of intri-cate materials in a totally “clean” setting.Jokerst is the facility’s executive director.

Other members of the team wereDuke’s Mengyuan Huang, as well as Dr.Jeremy Kirch and professor Luke Mawstfrom the University of Wisconsin atMadision. ■

This research was supported by aMultidisciplinary University ResearchInitiative (MURI) grant, "Large LatticeMismatched Materials," through the ArmyResearch Office.

DUKE ECE NEWSLETTER

Thin Film IntegratedStructures onSilicon

COVER ... story continued:

Getting lightonto silicon andcontrolling it isthe first steptoward chipscale opticalsystems.

Sabarni Palit, left, and Professor Nan Jokerst

4 AY 2011

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Electrical engineers at DukeUniversity have determined thatunique man-made materialsshould theoretically make it pos-sible to improve the power trans-

fer to small devices, such as laptops orcell phones, or ultimately to larger ones,such as cars or elevators, without wires.

This advance is made possible by therecent ability to fabricate exotic compos-ite materials known as metamaterials,which are not so much a single substance,but an entire man-made structure thatcan be engineered to exhibit propertiesnot readily found in nature. In fact, themetamaterial used in earli-er Duke studies, and whichwould likely be used infuture wireless power trans-mission systems, resemblesa miniature set of tanVenetian blinds.

Theoretically, this meta-material can improve theefficiency of “recharging”devices without wires. Aspower passes from thetransmitting device to thereceiving device, most ifnot all of it scatters anddissipates unless the twodevices are extremely closetogether. However, themetamaterial postulated bythe Duke researchers, which would be sit-uated between the energy source and the“recipient” device, greatly refocuses theenergy transmitted and permits the ener-gy to traverse the open space betweenwith minimal loss of power.

“We currently have the ability to trans-mit small amounts of power over shortdistances, such as in radio frequency iden-tification (RFID) devices,” said YaroslavUrzhumov, assistant research professor in

electrical and computer engineering atDuke’s Pratt School of Engineering.“However, larger amounts of energy, suchas that seen in lasers or microwaves,would burn up anything in its path.

“Based on our calculations, it should bepossible to use these novel metamaterialsto increase the amount of power transmit-ted without the negative effects,”Urzhumov said.

The results of the Duke research werepublished online in the journal PhysicalReview B. Urzhumov works in the labora-tory of David R. Smith, William BevanProfessor of electrical and computer engi-

neering at Pratt School ofEngineering. Smith’s teamwas the first demonstratethat similar metamaterialscould act as a cloaking

device in 2006.Just as the metamaterial

in the cloaking deviceappeared to make a volumeof space “disappear,” in the

latest work, the metamaterial wouldmake it seem as if there was no spacebetween the transmitter and the recipi-ent, Urzhumov said. Therefore, he said,the loss of power should be minimal.

Urzhumov’s research is an offshoot of“superlens” research conducted in Smith’slaboratory. Traditional lenses get theirfocusing power by controlling rays asthey pass through the two outside sur-faces of the lens. On the other hand, the

superlens, which is in fact a metamaterial,directs waves within the bulk of the lensbetween the outside surfaces, givingresearchers a much greater control overwhatever passes through it.

The metamaterial used in wirelesspower transmission would likely be madeof hundreds to thousands – depending onthe application – of individual thin con-ducting loops arranged into an array. Eachpiece is made from the same copper-on-fiberglass substrate used in printed circuitboards, with excess copper etched away.These pieces can then be arranged in analmost infinite variety of configurations.

“The system would need to be tailoredto the specific recipient device, in essencethe source and target would need to be‘tuned’ to each other,” Urzhumov said.“This new understanding of how matem-

aterials can be fabricat-ed and arranged shouldhelp make the designof wireless powertransmission systemsmore focused.”

The analysis per-formed at Duke wasinspired by recent

studies at Mitsubishi Electric ResearchLabs (MERL), an industrial partner of theDuke Center for Metamaterials andIntegrated Plasmonics. MERL is current-ly investigating metamaterials for wire-less power transfer. The Duke researcherssaid that with these new insights into theeffects of metamaterials, developing actu-al devices can be more targeted and effi-cient.

The Duke University research was sup-ported by a Multidisciplinary UniversityResearch Initiative (MURI) grantthrough the Air Force Office of ScientificResearch and the U.S. Army ResearchOffice. ■

DUKE ECE NEWSLETTER

Novel Synthetic Material Could Facilitate

Wireless Power

FEATURE

Yaroslav Urzhumov

Theoretically, this metamaterialcan improve the efficiency of“recharging” devices without wires.

6 AY 2011

David BradyJohn Board Martin Brooke April Brown Robert Calderbank Larry Carin Krishnendu Chakrabarty

FACULTY

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

April Brown, the John Cocke Professor, specializes in the synthesis and design of nanostructures formicroelectronic devices, and surface science applications of molecular beam epitaxy. Brown com-pleted her three-year term as Senior Associate Dean for Research at the Pratt School of Engineeringand has returned to the faculty ranks and her research full time. A recent publication titled“Adsorption and desorption kinetics on Ga and GaN (001): Application of Wolkenstein Theory,was published in Physics Review B 82(7), 2010. Brown is now serving as associate editor for theJournal of Crystal Growth.

John Board is an associate pro-fessor, interim chair for thedepartment, and serves as asso-ciate chief information officerat Duke. He specializes inembedded sensors networksand power and resource man-agement and conservation. Inhis unique role in the universi-ty, Board leads campus-levelcomputing initiatives and over-saw the technical architecture,identity management andDuke Card technical operationsoffices this year during IT stafftransitions. He is also a facultyadviser for the Duke SmartHome Program, co-teaches theSmart Home course withDirector Jim Gaston, andserves on the program’s boardof directors.

David Brady, the Michael J.Fitzpatrick professor, specializesin computational imaging andnew applications of spec-troscopy. He launched a new$27 million DARPA programthis year titled MaximallyOptical Sensor Array Imagingwith Computation (MOSAIC).The project goal is to 0.02cubic meter 50-gigapixel cam-era. In other research, Brady isworking on combining imag-ing and non-imaging observa-tions to improve space objectidentification, and lenselesshigh resolution wide-fieldimaging. He taught a shortcourse on computational opti-cal imaging at the SPIEDefense and SecurityConference in 2010, and wasawarded U.S. patent 7,773,218for technology titled spatially-registered wavelength coding.

Krishnendu Chakrabarty, professor, specializes in the design, testing and optimization of integratedcircuits, embedded microsystems and networks. In 2010, he was awarded the Capers and MarionMcDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising by Duke’s Engineering AlumniAssociation. Chakrabarty was recently awarded research grants from the National ScienceFoundation, Cisco Systems, and the Semiconductor Research Corporation on projects ranging from3D stacked integrated circuits to fault isolation technology. He published 12 refereed articles in2010 and two books focused on integrated circuits and digital microfluidic biochips respectively.

Leslie Collins, professor, specializes in integrating phenomenological models with statistical signalprocessing techniques to address signal detection and identification problems such as improvingcochlear implant function, detecting and neutralizing land mines in cluttered environments, andsubsurface object detection and identification. She was recently awarded a $1,674,195 NationalInstitutes of Health grant titled "Towards Clinical Acceptability: Enhancing the P300-basedBrain-Computer Interface." The projects focuses on individuals with severe physical limitationswho may be unable to use augmentative and assistive communication devices since these devicesoften require neuromuscular control. Collins' work aims to further of use of an EEG-based speller,which has been shown to provide a viable communication option for this population because itrelies on brain activity to control the device. The goal of increasing home and clinical use of theP300 Speller may be better facilitated by improving the speed and accuracy of the Speller.

Robert Calderbank, professor, and Dean ofNatural Sciences at Duke, specializes incoding and information theory. He wasnamed the Philip Griffiths Professor ofComputer Science. He was recently award-ed a $7,513,286 grant from theDepartment of Homeland Security, withco-PI David Brady, for a project focusingon x-ray scatter and phase imaging forexplosive detection.

Larry Carin, the William Younger Professor, spe-cializes in statistical signal analysis, subsurfacesensing, wave-based signal processing andadvanced pattern recognition applications. Carinpublished 10 refereed journal articles in 2010,ranging from low-dimensional signal models todetecting viruses via statistical gene expressionanalysis to a logistic stick-breaking processdesigned to cluster data by proximity in order toidentify patterns.

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Lisa Huettel is an associate professorof the practice and director ofundergraduate studies for thedepartment. In this capacity, sheworked with implement an ECESemester at the Marine Lab toencourage students to study at theBeaufort, NC facility run by Duke’sNicholas School for theEnvironment. She revamped thestudent independent study postersession to involve more faculty inorder to improve the experience forstudent participants. She developednew lab projects for ECE 180:Fundamentals of Digital SignalProcessing based on NationalAcademy of Engineering GrandChallenge themes, emphasizingcross-disciplinary applications. Andher presentation on enhancing theundergraduate design experiencewith surface mount soldering andprinted circuit board techniques atthe 2010 Annual Conference of theAmerican Society of EngineeringEducation was a Best Paper AwardNominee.

William Joines, professor, specializesin electromatnetic field and waveinteractions with materials andstructures, particularly microwaveand optical frequency range wave-lengths that impact structures suchas antennas, circuit elements, bodyparts, fibers and biological cells.Joines was awarded a $137,000grant from the Army ResearchOffice to pursue software solutionsfor direct antenna modulation. Andhe recently published research on3D microwave image reconstructionfrom experimental data in layeredmedia in the journal IEEE Trans.Antennas Propagat., vol. 58, no. 2,Feb. 2010.

DUKE ECE NEWSLETTER

Steve Cummer Chris Dwyer Richard Fair Jeff Glass Michael Gustafson Lisa HuettelLeslie Collins

Steve Cummer, Jeffrey N. Vinik Associate Professor, specializes in electromagnetic wavepropagation modeling and inversion for remote sensing, and electromagnetic materials. Hiswork on metamaterials acoustic cloaking was recently featured in Science News, PCMagazine, BBC News, Physicsworld.com, MSNBC, The Week Magazine, and numerousinternational news outlets. He published 17 refereed journal articles on topics ranging frommulti-instrumental observations of gigantic jet lightning to transformation optics to meta-materials used in waveguide-fed phased array antennas. Cummer serves as the department’sDirector of Graduate Studies.

Jeff Glass, professor and Hogg Family Director of Engineering Management andEntrepreneurship, has completed his term as the Senior Associate Dean for Education atthe Pratt School of Engineering. He led the faculty in developing the school’s Master ofEngineering offerings. The Master of Engineering program is a unique and well-tailoredapproach to graduate education for those intending to pursue professional engineeringcareers in industry. He will be on sabbatical for the coming year, and will focus his effortson some recent promising research on new carbon nanotube structures with applicationsin supercapacitors and drug delivery.

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

Chris Dwyer was promoted to associateprofessor. He specializes in self-assem-bled nanostructures for integrated com-putation, communication and sensing.In 2010, Dwyer was one of a selectgroup of young engineers invited toattend the Indo-American KavliFrontiers of Science symposium spon-sored by the Indo-U.S. Science andTechnology Forum in partnership withthe National Academy of Sciences. Heis a 2010 Presidential Early CareerAward for Scientists and Engineers(PECASE) winner, and is working onresearch to create novel sensing devicesout of inexpensive, programmable, self-assembled nanosensors. He serves as amember on the DARPA ComputerScience Study Group.

Richard Fair, Lord-Chandran Professor, spe-cializes in microfluidic systems with anemphasis on bio-fluidic detection, trans-port and chemical synthesis. His teamrecently discovered a novel voltage-drivendroplet transport mechanism that willenable the integration of electronic, opti-cal and microfluidic technologies. In addi-tion, Fair is working with the StanfordGenome Center and Advanced LiquidLogic, Inc.—a Duke start up companyfounded by Fair—to develop a pyro-sequencing hip for massively parallel on-chip DNA sequencing. This work is sup-ported by the National Institutes ofHealth. Fair was awarded two patents in2010 for droplet-based pyrosequencingand methods for performing microfluidicsampling.

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

8 AY 2011

Tom Katsouleas, professor and dean, was awarded the 2011 Plasma Science Achievement Awardfrom IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society for fundamental contributions to the field ofplasma-based accelerators. Katsouleas’ leadership in the field of plasma-based accelerators hashelped thrust plasma science into the forefront of science. Recent progress in both laser-drivenand beam-driven plasma wakefield concepts have stemmed from accomplishments of Katsouleasand researchers he has taught or mentored. In the early years of plasma accelerator research,his theoretical and simulation work was the first to show to a skeptical community that plasmaaccelerators could (even in principle) fulfill the many different conditions (such as energy, energyspread, emittance, current) imposed on the accelerated beam for a high energy accelerator andprovided design criteria for how to accomplish these conditions. Later he played a seminal role inbuilding a collaboration between the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and groups at UCLAand USC that culminated in the energy doubling of electrons from the 3 km long SLAC accelera-tor from 42 GeV to 85 GeV in less than a meter of plasma. Following this confirmation of plas-mas’ potential to dramatically shorten a future high-energy collider, he played a lead role in anumber of DoE and NRC panels to successfully make the case for “phase II” funding to takeplasma accelerators to the next level of demonstration for a future collider.

Jeff Krolik, professor, specializes insignal processing applications such assurveillance radars and microwaveremote sensing, active and passivesonar and medical imaging. Herecently launched a new project forthe Naval Research Laboratoryfocused on over the horizon radarclutter mitigation with 2D arrays,and continues exploration of adaptivewide area sonar clusters for surveil-lance applications using autonomousunderwater vehicles. And he recentlypublished research on maneuverabletowed sonar arrays in the Journal ofthe Acoustical Society of America, vo.128, no. 6, December 2010.

Benjamin Lee, assistant professor, specializes in comput-er architecture, computer engineering and high per-formance computing. He joined Duke’s Pratt School ofEngineering in 2010. He holds a doctorate fromHarvard University, and a bachelor of science from theUniversity of California at Berkeley. He has held visit-ing research positions at Microsoft Research, IntelCorporation, and Lawrence Livermore NationalLaboratory; and a National Science FoundationComputing Innovation Fellowship at StanfordUniversity. Lee’s research titled “Phase ChangeTechnology and the Future of Main Memory,” wasselected as a Top Picks From Computer ArchitectureConferences by IEEE Micro Magazine. And his worktitled on phase change memory and scalability wasselected as a research highlight in the Communicationsof the Association for Computer Machinery.

Tom KatsouleasNan JokerstWilliam Joines Jungsang Kim Jeff Krolik Benjamin Lee Qing Liu

FACULTY

Nan Jokerst, J.A. Jones Professor,specializes in integrated microand nano systems, integratedoptoelectronics, integrated sens-ing, photonics, THz and opticalmetamaterials. Jokerst continuesto expand use of Duke s clean-room research resources throughclass-based explorations of theShared Materials InstrumentationFacility for which she is an exec-utive director. Her research onusing lasers as opposed to wireson computer chips was featuredin news outlets such as ScienceNews, International BusinessTimes, Photonics.com, andWUNC radio.

Jungsang Kim, an associate pro-fessor with appointments also inphysics and computer science,specializes in engineering highlymulti-functional complex sys-tems. His main research focus hasbeen in developing technologiesfor constructing practical quan-tum computers. He is leading a$22M Intelligence AdvancedResearch Projects Activity/ArmyResearch Office funded programtitled "Modular Universal Ion-trap Quantum Computer(MUSIQC)," to develop an 80-qubit quantum computer in col-laboration with nine other partic-ipating institutions. In collabora-tion with another group of nineinstitutions, he recently kicked-off $9M IARPA funded programtitled "Optimized Resources andArchitectures for QuantumaLgorithms (ORAQL)," whichaims to construct software toolsfor simulating the performance ofa quantum information processor.

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

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Romit Roy Choudhury was promoted to associate professor this year. He specializes inwireless networking and mobile computing. He was recently awarded a new NationalScience Foundation grants for research PHy informed networking, and Internet archi-tecture. He presented 9 papers in the most selective networking, mobile computingand distributed systems conferences in 2010, and undergraduate students workingunder his direction won the ACM Mobicom Student Research Competition in 2010.

DUKE ECE NEWSLETTER

Doug Nowacek, the Repass-RodgersUniversity Associate Professor ofConservation Technology and associateprofessor of electrical and computer engi-neering, specializes in sound in the oceanenvironment, is studying the linkbetween acoustic and motor behavior inmarine mammals, primarily cetaceans andmanatees, specifically, how they use soundin ecological processes. Nowacek spent sixweeks on a research cruise along theWestern Antarctic Peninsula as part of athree-year project titled Multi-scale andInterdisciplinary Study of Humpbacksand Prey or MISHAP. A typical day onthe trip involved finding and tagging awhale, mapping krill, conducting visualsurveys, and then measuring the physicalproperties of the water and mapping krillwhile tracking the whale during thenight. One goal of the research is to sup-port special protection for theWilhelmina Bay for whales, krill andother krill predators as part of theAntarctic Treaty.

Matt Reynolds was named the NortelNetworks Assistant Professor ofElectrical and Computer Engineering.He specializes in low power, distrib-uted sensing and communications withan emphasis on RFID technology. In2010, he was awarded the CETI(Celebration of Engineering andTechnology Innovation) award fromFIATECH for his SmartHat project.FIATECH is the construction industry’sresearch consortium. His technologyscavenges power from ambient radiowaves to operate a buzzer that let’s thewearer know when dangerous equip-ment comes too near on the construc-tion site. He also won a Best PaperAward at the 12th ACM InternationalConference on Ubiquitous Computingin Copenhagen, Denmark for a projecttitled “ElectriSense: Single-PointSensing Using EMI for Electrical EventDetection and Classification in theHome.” Reynolds was awarded fourU.S. patents this year.

Loren Nolte, professor, specializes insignal detection and estimation theoryand applications using physics-basedmodels. His research encompassesBayseian optimal decision and sensorfusion with applications to problems indetection, estimation, classification andtracking in biomedical engineering,medical imaging, systems biology, andocean acoustics. In 2010, Nolte washonored with an Excellence in Reviewfrom the IEEE Journal of OceanicEngineering, which honors the efforts ofreviewers in the previous year.

Daniel SorinHisham Massoud Loren Nolte Doug Nowacek Matt Reynolds Romit Roy Choudhury David Smith

David Smith, William Bevan Professor,specializes in metamaterials, transforma-tion optics, plasmonics, nonlinearoptics, microwave and optical devicesand general electromagnetics. Smith’smetamaterials work was selected as anInsight of the Decade by Science maga-zine. In the December 17, 2010 issue,his research was called a pioneering wayto guide and manipulate light, creatinglenses that defy the fundamental limiton the resolution of an ordinary lens andeven constructing “cloaks” that make anobject invisible at certain wavelengths.Smith and his team published 29 refer-eed articles in 2010, including a NatureMaterials paper, two papers and a coverin Physical Reviews Letters. Smith is alsothe leader of a Multi InstitutionalResearch Initiative titledTransformation Optics funded by theArmy Research Office.

which students developed a smart canefor electronic navigation to assist theblind. He is currently working on anintroductory textbook focused on the fun-damentals of microelectronic devices thatwill include software modules to facilitatethe computational aspects of this area ofsolid-state devices and integrated circuits.

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

10 AY 2011

Adrienne Stiff-Roberts Kishor Trivedi Rebecca Willett Gary Ybarra Tomoyuki Yoshie

FACULTY

And Kishor Trivedi, the Fitzgerald S. Hudson Professor of Electrical andComputer Engineering, specializes in high computing availability, softwarereliability, security quantification, and cloud computing performability. Hewon a $50,000 research award from the Cisco University Research Programfund, a corporate-advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.His project will focus on availability, performance and cost analysis of cloudsystems. He was recently awarded a three-year National Science Foundationgrant to explore analytical modeling and enhancement of vehicle ad hoc net-works for safety critical applications.

Rebecca Willett, assistant professor,specializes in network and imagingscience with applications in medicalimaging, wireless sensor networks,astronomy, and social networks, withparticular emphasis on data-starvedinference for point processes and thedevelopment of statistically robustmethods for analyzing discreteevents. She is one of 43 scientistsselected in 2011 through the AirForce’s Young Investigator ResearchProgram. These prestigious awardsare given to scientists and engineersacross the U.S. who received theirdegrees in the last five years andshow exceptional ability and promisefor conducting basic research. Sheco-authored a book chapter on com-pressive optical imaging—architec-tures and algorithms—in a booktitled Optical and Digital ImagingProcessing Fundamentals andApplications, to be published in 2011.

Gary Ybarra, professor of the prac-tice, specializes in K-12 enigneer-ing. He directs several pre-engi-neering programs that utilizeinquiry and project-based learning.His programs include TASC:Teachers and ScientistsCollaborating; MUSIC: MathUnderstanding through theScience Integrated withCurriculum; Techtronics: Hands-on Exploration of Technology inEveryday Life; TechXcite: DiscoverEngineering, among others. TheTeachEngineering Digital Librarythat Ybarra has worked on since2003 was recently recognized bythe National Science Foundationactivities as “the most ‘learningapplication-ready’ collection at theNational Science Digital Library.”The collection includes more than900 classroom-tested K-12 engi-neering lessons.

Adrienne Stiff-Roberts, associate professor, special-izes in the growth and characterization of hybridorganic/inorganic nanocomposite thin film materi-als; and the design, fabrication and characterizationof multispectral photodetectors for applicationssuch as infrared imaging and solar energy conver-sion. Stiff-Roberts is leading a $1 million Office ofNaval Research effort focused on multi-spectralphoton detection in polymer/nanoparticle compos-ites as part of her Presidential Early Career Awarefor Scientists and Engineers grant, won in 2010.Stiff-Roberts is the author of a book chapter enti-tled ³Quantum dot infrared photodetectors,² whichwas published in Comprehensive SemiconductorScience and Technology in 2011. She is also a co-author of an invited article to Applied PhysicsA:Materials Science and Processing in 2011 thatreviews a novel deposition technique forpolymer/nanoparticle composites known as matrix-assisted pulsed laser evaporation.

Tomoyuki Yoshie, assistant professor, specializes innanophotonics technology for information pro-cessing, optical sensing, solid-state lighting, ener-gy science, quantum optics and condensed matterphysics. His research encompasses current-injec-tion nanolasers, novel photonic materials based oncomplete photonic band gap materials, and one-way propagation of light. Yoshie’s research groupworks on theory, modeling, fabrication, and char-acterization of nanophotonic devices and materi-als. He recently published work on optical micro-cavities clad by low-absorption electrode media inthe IEEE Photonics Journal, Vol. 2, 2010.

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

Staff Kudos

11DUKE ECE NEWSLETTER

UNDERGRADUATEHIGHLIGHTS

Corinne HornMAJOR: Electrical and Computer Engineering, and

Mathematics ADVISER: Rebecca Willett, assistant professor, electrical and

computer engineeringPROJECT: Estimation of Dynamic Social Network Structure

Consider a dynamic network of individuals where the net-work topology, or more broadly, the influence of each indi-vidual on the remaining members of the network, may varywith time. We collect sequential observations of individuals’behavior with the goal of inferring the structure of the net-work in real time. In the social network context, we limit ourgraph to the class of Ising models where vertices exhibit thepairwise Markov property. Traditional methods for evaluatingour estimated model prove intractable, so we utilize thepseudolikelihood metric to reduce an NP hard optimizationproblem to the sum of p logistic regressions, which are easilycomputable. We utilize online convex programming tech-niques to update parameters of our graphical model to bal-ance between the most recent observation, and those observedin the past. If we compare our sequence of estimates to thebest time-varying offline comparator, we obtain a sublinearregret that depends on the speed of variation of the compara-tor. We test our method in simulations, and on the Senatevoting records and Enron email database.

Corinne graduated with Departmental Distinction in May2011.

Tanmay PrakashMAJOR: Electrical and Computer Engineering and Biomedical

EngineeringADVISER: Jeffrey Krolik, professor, electrical and computer

engineeringPROJECT: Microphone Array Feedback Suppression for Room

Acoustics

The objective of this project was to use a standoff microphonearray to suppress feedback for a microphone-loudspeaker systemin an indoor environment. When the gain on the amplifyingloudspeaker is too high, the sounds from the loudspeaker thatare picked by the microphone keep being re-amplified untilthere is a loud squeal in a process called feedback. This limitsthe amount of gain that can be put on the microphone-loud-speaker system. In this project, minimum variance distortion-less response (MVDR) beamforming was used to focus a micro-phone array on only the source and attenuate the sound fromthe loudspeaker, thereby suppressing the feedback loop. Themaximum gain that could be applied to the loudspeaker with-out inducing feedback was measured experimentally for MVDRand compared to that of conventional beamforming and nobeamforming. The experiments were performed on a systemthat processed the output of 4 microphones from an NISTMK3 array online in Java and output the processed signal tothe loudspeaker. The results showed that MVDR allowed for agreater gain than both conventional beamforming and nobeamforming.

Tanmay graduated with Departmental Distinction in May2011.

Pratt Undergraduate Engineering Research Fellows

12

From left: Paweł Gora, Marcin Wojnarski (organizers),Łukasz Romaszko, Benjamin Hamner, Carlos J. GilBellosta (winners), Ralf-Peter Schäfer (TomTom)

AY 2011

UNDERGRADUATEHIGHLIGHTS

Karthik SeetharamMAJOR: Electrical and Computer Engineering, and PhysicsADVISER: Adrienne D. Stiff-Roberts, assistant professor, electrical andcomputer engineeringPROJECT: Polymer Superlattices for Enhanced Charge Transport inOrganic Solar Cells

Commercially available silicon-based inorganic photovoltaic (IPV) cellscurrently have a conversion efficiency of approximately 15-25% with atheoretical limit at 31% for Si devices. Other IPVs based on compoundsemiconductors have achieved efficiencies up to 41% using multi-layertandem structures, but have not penetrated the terrestrial market due tothe prohibitive cost of mass production. Organic materials offer anexciting economical alternative because of their flexibility and lowmanufacturing cost. Since organic photovoltaics (OPVs) are much cheap-er to fabricate, improving OPV efficiency might provide an economicaland sustainable solution for growing energy demand. This study aims todesign and to build an efficient OPV using a polymer superlatticenanostructure that improves charge transport via miniband formation. Asuperlattice model based on elementary solid state physics was developedto understand and predict the current-voltage (IV) behavior of a polymersuperlattice. The model predicts that it is possible to significantlyenhance power output in a superlattice OPV due to resonant tunnelingas compared to a standard bulk heterojunction OPV. The fabrication ofultrathin (~ 3nm) multilayer polymer films is a current topic of investi-gation. Karthik graduated with Departmental Distinction in May 2011.He also received the National Science Foundation Graduate ResearchFellowship.

Pratt Undergraduate Engineering Research Fellows...continued

DataminingChampion

Electrical and computer engineeringstudent Benjamin Hamner has wonthe international UC San Diego

Datamining Contest for 2010. Hamner,whose adviser is Professor Leslie Collins,won a whopping $750.

In this year’s competition sponsored byFICO, Hamner tested his data miningskills on a real-world data set involvingelectronic retailer customer and non-cus-tomer data. The competition attracted575 participating teams, of whom over100 submitted solutions, most of themmany times: the total number of solutionswas close to 5000. Best algorithmsachieved nearly 3-fold improvement overbaseline solutions in predicting trafficcongestion and jams.

This is the second year in a rowHamner has won the contest. Last yearhe won the IEEE ICDM Contest:TomTom Traffic Prediction for IntelligentGPS Navigation where he developed algo-rithms to predict traffic, congestion andtraffic jams.

13DUKE ECE NEWSLETTER

In May 2011, freshmen teams competed in an autonomous robotics contest and sniffedout rotten food and cheesecake in a refrigerator, measured solar energy coming from pan-els on a smart home, and figured out what was on three TVs in a media room. It was allpart of ECE 27, Fundamentals of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

“Our goal is to give students an introduction to all aspects of electrical and computer engi-neering (ECE)—and not have them wait until their upper division courses to find out how allthe pieces fit together,” said Kip Coonley, undergraduate laboratory manager.

“When students aren’t in the dark about what ECE really is, they are able to make muchbetter choices about which study concentrations they want to pursue,” he said. Thedepartment offers undergraduates the choices of several areas of concentration includ-ing: computer engineering and digital systems; signal processing, communicationsand control systems; solid-state devices and integrated circuits; electromagneticfields; and photonics.

The course is lab based and hands on – in part because students are hungry for suchexperiences, but also because it’s a powerful way to learn. After 8 weeks of lectures andlabs that provide in-depth study of the department’s integrated sensing and informationprocessing focused curriculum, two-person student teams then spend 6 weeks design-ing, building, collaborating and getting ready to compete.

Their goal is to design robots that can autonomously complete specific tasks and totravel through a customized course that simulates the layout of The Home Depot SmartHome at Duke University dorm. Specific tasks include measuring the wind energybeing generated by a microturbine, making a judgment on food quality in a SmartFridge, figuring what shows were playing on three plasma screen TVs in the mediaroom, telling the time of day using a sundial, and determining the energy production

from photovoltaic panels and number of growing plants on a green roof. In addition to designing and building the robots, the teams also learned important project

management skills—developing Gannt charts of their progress, budgets and a final defense oftheir design. “This is excellence preparation for senior design courses,” said Coonley.

The course has been a tremendous success and students are better prepared for follow oncourses because they understand how to put new information into context. “We’ve essentiallyturned what was traditionally a weed out course into a weed in course,” Coonley joked. ■

Giving Freshmena Head Start

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

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

14

In ECE 51L Microelectronic Devicesand Circuits, students designed aweather monitoring electronic device

capable of measuring atmospheric condi-tions at three distinct heights above theground: 50 ft, 100 ft, and 150 ft. Thedesign required that devices be clipped tolarge helium-filled balloons capable oflifting one pound of weight. Balloons

were tethered to the ground for recovery,and to minimize environmental impact.Teams had a budget of $200 for parts notalready stocked in the lab room.

Part of the challenge was to include asmany meteorological measurements ateach height as possible, such as tempera-ture, humidity, barometric pressure, windspeed, wind direction, GPS coordinates,

or cloud formations. And meteorologicaldata had to be delivered to users on theground in a coherent, easily understand-able format. Each device also had to clear-ly indicate when it had completed itsobjectives and was ready to be retrieved.

The course was taught by ProfessorHisham Massoud and UndergraduateLaboratory Manager Kip Coonley. ■

AY 2011

Up, Up and Away:Autonomous weather balloon for low-altitude atmospheric monitoring

ECE 51 Microelectronic Devices and Circuits Smart Balloon launch on the Pratt Engineering quadrangle (spring 2011).Center, Chen Zhao, Boying Chui, Tanner Schmidt, Aaron Joseph, Matthew Block, Kim Coonley (lab manager). Background

(with balloons): Albert Oh (teaching assistant), and Hisham Massoud (professor and course instructor).

UNDERGRADUATEHIGHLIGHTS

15DUKE ECE NEWSLETTER

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

An “under the hand” look at oneof the SmartBalloon circuitysystems, including altitude,temperature, humidity, and

pressure sensors.

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

16 AY 2011

The Department is now offering two new graduate degree opportunities: aMaster of Engineering in either electrical and computer engineering or pho-tonics and optical sciences. The goal of the program is to offer an alternative

to the traditional, research-focused Master of Science curriculum and give studentsa competitive edge in their careers. Ideal candidates for a master of engineering areearly career professionals or recent B.S. graduates who know they want to go intopracticing engineering positions in industry and are interested in product develop-ment, engineering support and technology innovation.

The non-thesis M. Eng. curriculum takes between 18 to 24 months to complete,and exposes students to a core of preparatory business courses and either an intern-ship or applied research experience. So students gain business acumen to help themnavigate corporate environments and better prepare for project management andalso gain real world, practical research skills. The technical engineering coursesreflect the research strength of the department and there is a high degree of flexi-bility to customize course selection.

“The M. Eng. degree was started because there is an increased interest in masterslevel engineering education. ASEE reports a 38% increase in the number of mas-ters degrees awarded over the past 10 years,” said Brad Fox, associate dean for pro-fessional master’s programs. “Additionally, industry has placed significant emphasison the need for innovation in order to be competitive. By innovation, companiesare not just referring to invention but also implementation of that invention intopractice. We crafted the M. Eng. degree to address both aspects of the innovationequation.”

The Electrical and Computer Engineering M. Eng. curriculum gives students achoice to study in one of following areas: micro-nano systems, photonics, computerengineering, sensing and waves, and signal processing and communications.

The Photonics and Optical Sciences M. Eng. curriculum allows students to gaingreater technical depth through Duke’s Fitzpatrick Institute for Photonics. Majorareas of research biophotonics; nano/micro systems; quantum optics and informa-tion photonics; photonic materials; advanced photonic systems; nanophotonics; sys-tems modeling, theory & data treatment, and novel spectroscopies.

For more information about our new programs, visit http://www.ece.duke.edu/ece_meng

New Master’s Programs

GRADUATEHIGHLIGHTS

Electrical and computer engineering doc-toral student Sehoon Lim took thirdplace in the Fitzpatrick Institute forPhotonics’ 9th Annual Meeting postercontest. Lim, who is working withProfessor David Brady, won for hisresearch on compressive holography. Heaims to enable snap-shot holographictomography using compressive sensing.

Lim Wins in PhotonicsPoster Session

Souvik Sen wins ACMMobiCom 2010 ResearchAwardComputer science doctoral studentSouvik Sen won the Association forComputing Machinery MobiCom gradu-ate research award for 2010. Sen workswith assistant professor Romit RoyChoudhury, who has joint appointmentsin the departments of ECE and CS. Hiswork, titled “Listen Before You Talk, Buton the Frequency Domain” beat out 35other contenders. He will now competein the ACM grand finals across all sub-fields of computer science and engineer-ing. For more information, seehttp://src.acm.org/winners.html.

Souvik Sen

Sehoon Lim

17

In 1994, a small glitch was uncov-ered in a floating point unit in thePentium P5 microprocessor.Unfortunately, it wasn’t detected

until after it had been installed in count-less computers, which forced the companyto take a $475 million charge to replacethe faulty components.

Somehow, the defect slipped past thecompany’s rigorous testing procedures.These instances, though extremely rare inthe industry, demonstrate how importantit can be for manufacturers to ensure thatcomputer components perform up todesign expectations.

The process of ensuring that a comput-er component or a piece of software oper-ates as expected is known as verification.Meng Zhang, a graduate student workingwith Associate Professor Daniel Sorin istaking a novel design approach to easethe verification process.

“Traditionally, two distinct groups areinvolved in the creation of a new product,such as a central processing unit (CPU)for a computer,” said Zhang, a third-yeargraduate student. “Typically, the design-ers create a component for a specific need,and then pass the finished product on tothe verification specialists, whose testsensure that it functions properly.”

The verification is usually an isolatedstep performed on the more or less final-ized design, she explained, adding that itis highly likely that later a design is dis-covered to be very difficult to verifyspecifically because its verifiability wasnot considered in the design stage.

Zhang is working on an approach thathelps breaks down the barriers that oftenseparate the designers from the “verifiers.”

“We are investigating strategies thatencourage the designers to consider verifi-ability early in the design stage anddesign the system in a way that isamenable to verification,” she said. “Thatcould streamline the process and make itmore reliable.”

The Intel case of 1994 illustrates howimportant the verification process can be,especially as computer componentsbecome increasingly complex and areintegrated into myriads of devices.

One form of verification, known as“formal,” involves exploring all the statesa system can have to uncover bugs, a use-ful way to prove the correctness of systemand very important in life-critical areas –such as medical devices — but also aprocess that is very time-consuming andexpensive.

To achieve thecompleteness ofsuch a formal veri-fication process,Zhang and Sorinbelieve that com-ponents could bedesigned withfractal theories inmind. That meansthat the architec-ture of a compo-nent is made up ofsmaller, and iden-tical, buildingblocks.

Each building block is a reduced sizecopy of the whole. Their goal is toexplore how to design processors andtheir memory systems to make themmore amenable to verification.

DUKE ECE NEWSLETTER

A Fractal Design Approachto Ease Verification

“Using this fractal-based approach toarchitecture design, if we can verify thecorrectness of the smallest building block,we can prove the correctness of the wholesystem by induction,” Zhang said. “Sinceeach part looks and acts like the whole,we can be confident that there are not anyerrors in the whole system.”

Specifically, she is applying this fractal-based approach in cache coherence, whichrefers to the consistency of shared data,such as that stored on multiple CPUswithin a laptop computer.

“You need to verify that the differentCPUs are reading the latest data in acoordinated way,” she explained. “We

don’t want any ofthem working offstale data.”

Zhang wasdrawn to this fieldof research becauseit straddles twodisciplines thathave not alwaysbeen known towork closelytogether – design-ers of computerarchitecture andthose responsiblefor proving thecomponent works.She experienced asteep learningcurve, since beforecoming to Duke,she primarily hadbeen studying sys-tems-level com-puter architecture.

She expects tocomplete her PhD

in 2013, and hopes to be able combineher interests in architecture and verifica-tion. She came to Pratt in 2008 afterobtaining her M.S. and B.S. degrees fromBeihang University in China. ■

Meng Zhang

“Since each partlooks and acts likethe whole, we canbe confident thatthere are not anyerrors in the wholesystem.”

R. Smith, William Bevan Professor ofelectrical and computer engineering atDuke’s Pratt School of Engineering.

As an example, he used the crystal insome laser pointers, which transforms thenormal laser light into a beam – the out-put can’t be any stronger than the inputbeam — in another color, such as green,which would be the second-harmonic.Though they contain nonlinear proper-ties, designing such devices requires agreat deal of time and effort to be able tocontrol the direction of the second har-monic, and natural nonlinear materialsare quite weak, Rose said.

“Normally, this frequency-doublingprocess occurs over a distance of manywavelengths, and the direction in whichthe second-harmonic travels is strictlydetermined by whatever nonlinear mate-rial is used,” Rose said. “Using the novelmetamaterials at microwave frequencies,we were able to fabricate a nonlineardevice capable of ‘steering’ this second-harmonic. The device simultaneouslydoubled and reflected incoming waves inthe direction we wanted.”

The results of the Duke research werepublished online in the journal PhysicalReview Letters. The research was support-ed by the Air Force Office of ScientificResearch. Smith’s team was the first todemonstrate that similar metamaterialscould act as a cloaking device in 2006and a next generation lens in 2009.

“This magnitude of control over light isunique to nonlinear metamaterials, andcan have important consequences in all-optical communications, where the abilityto manipulate light is crucial,” Rose said.

The device itself, which measures sixinches by eight inches and about an inchhigh, is actually made up of row upon

row of individual piecesarranged in parallel rows.Each piece is made of thesame fiberglass material usedin circuit boards and isetched with copper circles.Each copper circle has a tinygap that is spanned by adiode, which when excitedby light passing through it,breaks its natural symmetry,creating non-linearity.

“The trend in telecommu-nications is definitely opti-

cal,” Rose said. “To be able to controllight in the same manner that electronicscontrol currents will be an important stepin transforming telecommunications tech-nologies.”

Duke graduate student Da Huang wasalso a member of the team. ■

18

Manipulating Light at Will

Duke electrical engineers havedeveloped a man-made materialthat they say literally allows

them to manipulate light at will.They say that the results of their latest

proof-of-concept experiments could leadto the replacement of electrical compo-nents with those based on optical tech-nologies, which should allow for fasterand more efficient transmission of infor-mation, much in the same way thatreplacing wires with optical fibers revo-lutionized the telecommunicationsindustry.

The breakthrough revolves around anovel man-made structure known as ametamaterial. These exotic compositematerials are not so much a single sub-stance, but an entire structure that can

be engineered to exhibitproperties not readily foundin nature. The structure usedin these experiments resem-bles a miniature set of tanVenetian blinds.

When light passes througha material, even though it maybe reflected, refracted or weak-ened as it passes through, it isstill the same light comingout. This is known as linearity.

“For highly intense light, however, cer-tain ‘nonlinear’ materials violate this ruleof thumb, converting the incoming ener-gy into a brand new beam of light attwice the original frequency, called thesecond-harmonic,” said Alec Rose, a grad-uate student in the laboratory of David

AY 2011

Alec Rose, foreground, and Da Huang.

“To be able to control light in thesame manner thatelectronics controlcurrents will be an important step in transformingtelecommunicationstechnologies.”

GRADUATEHIGHLIGHTS

19DUKE ECE NEWSLETTER

September 2010 - May 2011 GraduatesSeptember 2010Xi Cai, Ph.D.Dissertation: Reconfigurable BitstreamProcessor for Smart Sensor SystemsAdviser: Martin Brooke

Ryan Goldhahn, Ph.D.Dissertation: Waveguide Invariant ActiveSonar Target Detection and DepthClassification in Shallow WaterAdviser: Jeff Krolik

Lin Luan, Ph.D.Dissertation: Chip Scale Integrated OpticalSensing Systems with Digital MicrofluidicSystemsAdviser: Nan Jokerst

Jeffrey Rogers, Ph.D.Dissertation: Localization of DynamicAcoustic Sources with a ManeuverableArrayAdviser: Jeff Krolik

Lingling Tang, Ph.D.Dissertation: Subwavelength-scale LightLocalization in Complete Photonic BandgapMaterialsAdviser: Tomoyuki Yoshie

Peng Li, M.S.Adviser: Jungsang Kim

Sarah Oraby, M.S.Thesis: Malignancy Detection PerformanceUsing Excised Breast Tumor MarginSpectroscopic Data and an Optimal DecisionFusion Based Approach

December 2010Jeifu Chen, Ph.D.Dissertation: A Hybrid Spectral-Element/Finite-Element Time-DomainMethod for Multiscale ElectromagneticSimulationsAdviser: Qing Liu

Sabarni Palit, Ph.D.Dissertation: Thin Film Edge EmittingLasers and Polymer Waveguides Integratedon SiliconAdviser: Nan Jokerst

Chunping Wang, Ph.D.Dissertation: Non-parametric BayesianLearning with Incomplete DataAdviser: Larry Carin

Tao Zhou, Ph.D.Dissertation: Shielded Metal Waveguideswith Uniform Electric Field DistributionsAdviser: William Joines

Billyde Brown, Ph.D.Dissertation: Growth, Characterization, andModification of Vertically Aligned CarbonNanotube Films for Use as a NeuralStimulation Electrode Adviser: Jeff Glass

Sara Duran, M.S.Thesis: Stream Segregation on a SingleElectrode as a Function of Pulse Rate inCochlear Implant ListenersAdviser: Leslie Collins

Lingbo Li, M.S.Adviser: Larry Carin

Abhijit Mehta, M.S.Adviser: Jungsang Kim

Matthew Roberts, M.S.Project: A Comparison of 3 Parallel 8-BitDAC’sAdviser: James Morizio

Arpan Roy, M.S.Thesis: ACT: Towards Unifying the Conceptsof Attack and Defense TreesAdviser: Kishor Trivedi

Ritika Singh, M.S.Adviser: Nan Jokerst

Pantana Tor-Ngern, M.S.Adviser: Tomoyuki Yoshie

Zhengming Xing, M.S.Adviser: Larry Carin

May 2011Yang Zhao, Ph.D.Dissertation: Unified Design andOptimization Tools for Digital MicrofluidicBiochipsAdviser: Krishnendu Chakrabarty

Caleb Knoernschild, Ph.D.Dissertation:Scalable Optical MEMSTechnology for Quantum InformationProcessingAdviser: Jungsang Kim

Feng Han, Ph.D.Dissertation: Midlatitude D RegionVariations Measured from Broadband RadioAtmosphericsAdviser: Steve Cummer

Shiuan-Yeh Chen, Ph.D.Dissertation: Plasmonic Nanostructures forSurface-Enhanced Raman ScatteringAdviser: David Smith, Anne Lazarides

Haojun Chen, Ph.D.Dissertation: Inference of Low-DimensionalLatent Structure in High-Dimensional DataAdviser: Larry Carin

Jeffery Allen, Ph.D.Dissertation: Application of Metamaterialsto the Optimization of Smart AntennaSystemsAdviser: David Smith

Arnak Aleksanyan, Ph.D.Dissertation: Wide Dynamic RangeContinuous-Time Delta-Sigma A/D Converterfor Low-Power Energy ScavengingApplicationsAdviser: Martin Brooke

Kalyani Krishnamurthy, Ph.D.Dissertation: Spectral Image ProcessingTheory and Methods: Reconstruction, TargetDetection, and Fundamental PerformanceBoundsAdviser: Rebecca Willett

Mengqing Yuan, Ph.D.Dissertation: 3D Microwave Imagingthrough Full Wave Methods forHeterogenous MediaAdviser: Qing Liu

Yun Lin, Ph.D.Dissertation: Spectral Integral Method andSpectral Element Method DDM forElectromagnetic Field AnalysisAdviser: Qing Liu

Hongxia Fang, Ph.D.Dissertation: Design-for-testability andDiagnosis Methods to Target UnmodeledDefects in Integrated Circuits and Multi-Chip BoardsAdviser: Krishnendu Chakrabarty

Ivan Borzenets, M.S.Adviser: Jungsang Kim

Chao Chen, M.S.Adviser: Martin Brooke

Pallavi Daggumati, M.S.Adviser: Nan Jokerst

Yanchi Fan, M.S.Adviser: Loren Nolte

Tianyu Feng, M.S.Adviser: Stacy Tatum

Ming Gao, M.S.Adviser: Martin Brooke

Hao He, M.S.Adviser: Qing Liu

Adam Jacobvitz, M.S.Adviser: Daniel Sorin

Xintong Li, M.S.Adviser: Leslie Collins

Luyao Li, M.S.Adviser: Qing Liu

Taodun Li, M.S.Adviser: Loren Nolte

Meng Li, M.S.Adviser: Loren Nolte

Guy Lipworth, M.S.Adviser: David Smith

Olugbade, Morakinyo, M.S.Adviser: Dan Sorin

Alexander Mrozack, M.S.Adviser: David Brady

Christopher Potts, M.S.Adviser: Jeff Krolik

Yunfei Shen, M.S.Adviser: William Joines

Bhawana Singh, M.S.Adviser: Martin Brooke

Eric Wheeler, M.S.Adviser: Chris Dwyer

Yin Xiao, M.S.Adviser: Loren Nolte

LingZhao Xie, M.S.Adviser: Martin Brooke

Fangming Ye, M.S.Adviser: Martin Brooke

Jie Yin, M.S.Adviser: Loren Nolte

Songtao Zhang, M.S.Adviser: Loren Nolte

Hong Zhang, M.S.Adviser: Matt Reynolds

Huifeng Zheng, M.S.Adviser: David Smith

Yu Jia, M.S.Project: Fast Analytical Solution for TriaxialInduction Tools in a Layered AnisotropicMediumAdviser: Qing liu

Yun Liu, M.S.Project: Prototype Implementation ofComponent-Based Availability ModelingFramework for Cloud Service ManagementAdviser: Kishor Trivedi

Cong Wu, M.S.Project: Program Optimization UtilizingParallel Computing TechnologiesAdviser: Qing Liu

Yiwen Wu, M.S.Project: Statistical InferenceImplementation in SHARPEAdviser: Kishor Trivedi

Ruofan Xia, M.S.Project: System Modeling and OptimizationUsing Markov Decision ProcessAdviser: Kishor Trivedi

Chih-Hao Yu, M.S.Project: Absorption Enhancement in HybridNanocomposite Near-InfraredPhotodetectors via Surface PlasmaResonance in Metallic GratingsAdviser: Adrienne Stiff-Roberts

As a self-professed nerd in college, Richard Alfonsi (ECE ’93)is now probably at the coolest place there is to work –Google – and in probably one of the coolest places to live– the San Francisco Bay area.

It seems his engineering studies at Duke, and subsequent studiesat business school and work in start-up technology companies wereall leading to this – an upper management position at Google, afirm that is not only a company, but a verb.

It was an Angier B. Duke scholarship that lured the Salisbury,N.C. native to Durham. And while he always had a keen interestin science and mathematics, he tried to maintaina balance between academic and outside interests,whether by participating in intramural sports ortaking humanities classes. It also didn’t hurt thattwo of his four fours year at Duke coincided withnational championship men’s basketball runs,most of the games he witnessed personally atCameron Indoor Stadium.

“I initially came to Duke as a Trinity freshman,”Alfonsi said. “At the time I wasn’t really sure whatI wanted to do. I took a lot of science and mathcourses in that freshman year, like calculus andchemistry. However, when it came time for sopho-more year – I transferred to engineering. In a way,I was swimming against the tide. Many kids weretransferring out of the engineering school aftertheir first year because it was so hard. He recalleda saying going around at the time at Duke thatEE did not necessarily mean “electrical engineer-ing,” but “eventually economics” as a major.

“A lot of eyebrows were raised when I trans-ferred to engineering,” he continued. “At the time,it was unusual. I enjoyed science, but I was deter-mined not to be one-dimensional – so each semes-ter I made sure I took one class just for the soul.”

In fact, between his junior and senior years he spent a summer atOxford studying English literature.

As it turns out, his engineering background proved invaluable ashe combined his love of technology with a growing interest in thebusiness side of technology development. With his Duke degree inhand, he spent the next two years in the Atlanta offices ofMcKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm, before head-ing off to the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Itwas then the West Coast bug bit, and hard. Though he tried onseveral occasions to move back to the East Coast, California alwaysbeckoned.

After another stint at McKinsey, he served as vice president at anumber of high-tech start-ups, including Zaplet, Inc., Velant, Inc.,

and Tellme Networks, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2007 formore than $800 million. Ironically, many friends and colleaguesfrom those earlier ventures are now at Google as well.

While the uncertainty of starting and running a new venturesatisfied both his technical and business aspirations, Alfonsi saidthat Google – for a large company – is an inspiring place to work.

“I serve as vice president of global online media sales,” he said.“My team is responsible for a big chunk of advertisements thatreach beyond the core search ads we show on Google.com. Theseareas include display ads on partner websites, ads on mobile

devices, and video ads on YouTube. We handle themid-market clients – not the Fortune 500 compa-nies or really small businesses – but those inbetween. Google has had a lot of success in thesemarkets – my team is responsible for several bil-lion dollars in annual revenue, serving clientsacross the Americas, Europe, and Asia, so it keepsus pretty busy.

“The future for Google depends on many ofthese newer business areas. We’re making biginvestments in areas such as mobile, which as abusiness has been on fire,” he continued. “It’s hardto imagine a more exciting time than now in thisspace. Smart phones have become so ubiquitousthat they’ve practically become invaluable exten-sions of ourselves and fundamentally change howwe interact with information and each other.”

In all his journeys throughout the entrepreneur-ial world, Alfonsi finds that his engineering train-ing has served him well.

“Google is a company that is remarkable in howhighly it prizes and values engineering and inno-vation,” he said. “It is an engineering-driven cul-ture. Even though I’m on the business side nowmy engineering and product management back-

ground make it easier to connect very well with the product guystoo, which is critical.

“More broadly, the analytical thinking and problem solvingskills that come from an engineering background have been com-mon threads throughout my entire working career,” he added.

Though he personally hasn’t been on campus for recruiting tripsfor Google, he does have a word of advice for current Pratt students.

“Google is famous for asking off-the-wall questions to see howpotential recruits can think on their feet,” Alfonsi said. “So be pre-pared. Also, academic performance is important – some people aresurprised how important that can be. The recruiters look at youroverall performance – just be ready to tell your story and what dis-tinguishes you from the others.” ■

“Google is a company that isremarkable in how highly it

prizes and values engineeringand innovation.

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Google Exec Thrives in Engineering-Driven Culture