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COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

EE Strategic Strength Areas

• Systems Biology & Neuroengineering

• Media Informatics & Communication Systems

• Devices for Energy, Communications, and Sensing

• Ambient Intelligent Cyber-Physical Systems

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Systems Biology and Neuroengineering Opening new frontiers at the intersection of the neuro 

and biological sciences, and systems engineering. Fosters collaboration both within the department, SEAS 

and Columbia (Medical School) Contributes to the development towards the education of 

a new generation of scientists and engineers. EE has organically developed critical Bio‐EE faculty:

– Lazar, Anastassiou, Jelenkovic, Shepard, Wang– This is a unique core among competitive EE in peer schools – strategically build

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Media Informatics and Communications Systems

Core EE strengths in Multimedia information analysis, audio‐video recognition (Chang, Ellis); Wireless communication, Statistical signal processing (Wang)

Strong Current funding Four DARPA projects ONR, NGA, ARO, NSF, DOJ Industry sponsors (AT&T, IBM, Kodak, Kitware, Navteq, Google)

Highly cited author in ISI index, #1 cited author in multimedia Top ranking in international competitions (TRECVID, EuroSpeech) Prestigious student fellowship (SEAS Fellow, NSF, Kodak Fellow)

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New energy sources Build on excellence in nanoscale materials, devices for solar energy Plasma Fusion Energy – Large DOE program, Green Energy

– Energy storage: New materials and systems for energy storage

– Energy efficient computation/communication– Improved use, distribution, and sensing of energy

Build on excellence in Smart Grid, Green IT, Smart Cities

Centerpiece Programs– DOE Energy Frontier Research Center on Photovoltaic Technology – ARPA-E Program– NYC MTA Smart-Grid – DARPA and DOE: Ultra-Energy Efficient Nanophotonic Interconnect

Devices for Energy, Communications, and Sensing

Energy Harvesting, Efficiency, and SustainabilityEnergy Harvesting, Efficiency, and SustainabilityFoundational Strengths Energy Efficient Processing and 

CommunicationsGreen Networking and Energy 

SustainabilityDOE, NYSTAR, 5 yrs $19M Energy Frontier Research Center Photovoltaic TechnologyPIs Heinz/Yardley (EE), Brus (Chem)EE (6), Mech E, APAM, Chem, Phys, UT Austin, Purdue

NSF Nanoscale Science & Engineering Center (NSEC)Nanoscale electron transport information processing

EE (6), Chem, Phys, Mech E, APAM

DOE $900kFusion Green Energy PPPL, MIT

DOE ARPA‐E, NYSTAREnergy Harvesting MetacapacitorsEE (2), CUNY, Berkeley

Chip Scale Silicon NanophotonicsDARPA POPS $1.25M all optical processingSRC/DARPA Interconnect Focus CenterDARPA Photonics Center $1.8M: MIDAS (mid‐IR)DARPA/IBM – NOBS nanophotonic switches

IR  detectors environmental sensors

DARPA InPhoQuantum CommColumbia (EE, Mech E), MIT

GrapheneAFOSR MURI $1.5M/yr, PI OsgoodEE (3), Mech E, APAM, Chem, Phys, CornellDARPA  CERA,  $4M PI Shepard, EE(2), Mech E, Phys, Chem, IBM

Energy Efficient Nanophotonics InterconnectDARPA, Photonic Networks‐on‐Chip, Bergman, CSDOE, Photonic Memory, Sandia, Micron TechnologiesDARPA POEM, embedded computing, MIT LL

Energy Efficient ComputingDOE, NYSTAR $2.8M Magnetic  Energy StorageIBM, Cornell

Energy Efficient CommunicationsNSF, Ultrasonic Wireless (Kinget/Kymissis)Texas Instruments, Ultra‐Low PowerCoherent WirelessOn‐Chip Power Conversion, IBM, APAM

EnHANTs: Energy Harvesting Active Networks NSF, 1.2M, support Vodafone, Google, DHSCross EE: Networks, Circuits, Sig Proc, DevicesEE: Zussman/Kinget/Kymissis/Wang; CS: Rubenstein

Smart Grid – Cyber‐Physical SystemsNSF, traffic control, automobile safetyNYC MTA: mass transit, 7 MS students

Green TouchIndustry/Academic/Government ConsortiumReduce ICT Carbon FootprintColumbia Partnership led by EE:Kinget, Maxemchuck, Zussman, Bergman

Smart Power Grid – Network ResilienceDoD/DTRA Young Investigator  (Zussman)NSF, 0.5M, IEOR, MIT, UA

ELASTx: Energy Efficient WirelessDARPA MTO, USC, UCLA, Creonex

NSF Engineering Research CenterCIAN: Center Integrated Access NetworksColumbia major institutional partnerUoA, UCSD, UCLA, CalTech, BerkeleyEnergy Optimized Intelligent AccessBergman, Zussman

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A cyber-physical system (CPS) is a system featuring a tight integration of, and coordination between, the system’s computational and physical elements

Builds on core EE strengths with very widespread applications enabled by the interconnection & networking of computational and physical elements

Extremely successful EE efforts on RF, Analog Circuits, Ultra-low power, mm-Wave, Sensors

Computer Architecture (Columbia strength); Digital VLSI (Urgent gap need, for both research and teaching in our growing CE BS and MS programs

Ambient Intelligent Cyber-Physical Systems

Wireless Sensors/Actuators

Integrated Sensors and Systems for Ambient Intelligence

Biological Sensors/Actuators

Acoustic Sensors/Actuators

Mechanical Interfaces/Actuators

Analog Signal Processing

Digital VLSI

Data Conversion

Communication and Networking

Efficiency Linearized All‐Silicon Transmitter ICsKrishnaswamy, DARPA $1.4M

EnHANTsNSF $1.2M

Vodafone, GoogleKinget Kymissis

Broadband ADC through Iterative Downconv.

Kinget, UT‐Austin, NSF $0.54M

Variation‐tolerant, noise‐shaping ADCs

Kinget,SRC

Event‐driven data conv. & signal proc. Tsividis, Nowick, NSF $1.1M

Ultra‐low‐power VLSI ICs for emerging applications and 

platforms

Leakage‐tolerant MS‐CMOS

Energy‐Efficient Computing

$2.8M from DOE, NYSTARShepard, Kymissis, Cornell, IBM

Zukowski

Compressive Sensing for Impulse RadarKrishnaswamy, NSF

Ultrasonic Wake‐up ReceiversKymissis, KingetNSF $0.4M

MicrophoneKymissis, DARPA

ElectrostrictorKymissis, DARPA

FBAR for mass‐sensingShepard and Kymissis

Zussman Wang Rubenstein

New EE faculty 2011-12• John Wright• PhD in EE, 2009, University of Illinois at Urbana-

Champaign• Research: Sparse Signal Representation, Large-Scale

High-Dimensional Data Analysis, Compressive Sensing, Applications in Image, Vision, Audio, Web, Bioinformatics, Communication, Sensing Infrastructure.

• Mingoo Seok• PhD candidate in EE, 2011, University of Michigan.• Research: Cyber-physical systems, very low energy

digital systems, computing hardware for sensor platforms.

New faculty hires 2012-13• Javad Lavaei • Ph.D. in Control and Dynamic Systems, CalTech, 2011• PostDoc in EE and Precourt Inst. of Energy, Stanford, 2012• Research: Power Systems: optimal power flow, control

and optimization of smart grids; Circuits: automated synthesis of large-scale analog circuits; Communication Systems: design of programmable on-chip smart antennas, parameter optimization; Networks: network congestion control; Control: biologically inspired control systems

• Christine Fleming• Reseach Fellow, Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Harvard

Medical School and Mass General, 2010-12• Ph.D. Biomedical Engineering, Case Western Reserve, 2010,

cardiac tissue characterization with optical coherence tomography

• Research: optical coherence tomography (OCT) for cardiac electrophysiology applications; cardiovascular imaging

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Recent Initiatives (subset) New DOE Energy Frontier Research Center

on Photovoltaic Technology – 5 years, $19M, Yardley/Heinz EE, Brus Chemistry (PIs),

Kymissis, Osgood, Shepard in EE and others as co-PIs

– Improve photovoltaic efficiency through fundamental understanding and molecule-scale control of the key steps in the photovoltaic process in organic and hybrid materials

NSF Center on Optical Techniques for Actuation, Sensing, & Imaging of Biological Systems

– 5 years, $3M, Shepard EE (PI) and 19 faculty members from 9 departments, 6 schools

– optical methods for biosensing and bioimaging, on-chip biological sensor systems using nanoscale device fabrication capabilities

DOD MURI on Graphene Research– 5 years, $7.5M, Osgood EE (PI),

with Mech E, Physics, Chemistry and Cornell U co-PIs

– explore the unique properties of graphene and new device applications

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Recent Initiatives (contd.)

Active Networked Tags for Disaster Recovery– Winner of Vodafone Foundation's "Wireless Innovation" competition, new NSF grant– Collaborative effort between EE and CS– Energy harvesting tags, ultra low power communications, tracking/locating survivors

Photonics and optical interconnect networks– New DOD/DARPA/NSF ERC grants, PI Bergman (EE),

co-PIs Zussman (EE) and Carloni (CS)– High-performance computing systems, fast future Internet,

cross-layer optimized access networks

Media Informatics– DARPA/ONR/NGA/NSF/DOJ grants, large-scale multimedia analysis and search,

Chang, Ellis (EE), Attinger (ME), Kender (CS), Sajda (BME)– Media NYC 2020 by NYC Mayor office, Columbia STV, EE, CS, NYU-Poly– Connect media industry and university research in new media areas