aspects of computational systems, rather than just engineering CMOS and associated systems to the next nanoscale generation, is a great opportunity for the research community. My research group at UMass Amherst focuses on nanoscale

By Professor Csaba Andras Moritz

Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) silicon integrated-circuit technology and its associated applications arguably have been the primary socio-economic drivers of the last century. Continuous progress in CMOS spawned the various integrated circuits that have underpinned the IT revolution, the Internet, and advances in wireless communications, satellite communications, industrial automation, weather prediction, and medicine.

This progress, however, is threatened by fundamental challenges and limitations. The CMOS paradigm was sustained by the continuous scaling of underlying devices in conjunction with architectural innovations to form increasingly efficient systems and double computing power every two years. Scaling to ever-smaller device sizes, however, is projected to reach fundamental physical and manufacturing limits in the near future, and architectural innovations are also producing diminishing returns.

The cost of building a single factory capable of producing today’s deep submicron chips—which use 45 nanometers, thousands of times smaller than the width of a single human hair—is already in the several-billion-dollars range and is projected to double every four years. Using state-of-the-art process technology to make very-high-volume products is therefore unfeasible

ECE NewsletterDepartment of Electrical and Computer EngineeringUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst

for all but a very few companies. The economic unsustainability of CMOS manufacturing is further suggested by a Gartner Inc. forecast that worldwide semiconductor industry revenue for 2009 will be “only” $309 billion.

Increasing power dissipation/power density is another major looming bottleneck. Ultimate theoretical power densities (translating to requirements for heat dissipation) on the order of megawatts-per-centimeter-square—higher than those in a nuclear reactor or rocket nozzle—are projected, while even the most promising cooling technique, using fluidic channels, is likely to be limited to less than one kilowatt-per-centimeter-square, a thousand times less than required. The ITRS 2007 roadmap, the latest published assessment of the semiconductor industry’s future technology requirements, projects CMOS devices as small as 11 nanometers. It is clear, however, that the technological foundations of advances in computing speed as we know them will come to an end, perhaps even within a couple of decades. Integrated circuits will likely continue to be produced with an end-of-the-line CMOS fabric until a new nanoscale fabric paradigm, one with critical competitive advantages including cost effectiveness, becomes available. But where might that next wave in computing foundations come from?

Thinking freely about wide-ranging

Spring 2010

HighlightsNewsFaculty Hires ............................. 7Pishro-Nik and Polizzi

Receive NSF Career Awards .... 8Gong delivers Distinguished

Faculty Lecture ....................... 9Gao and Krishna Elected

IEEE Fellows ......................... 10The Unparalleled M5 ............... 12

Alumni ProfilesJoe Biondi ’90 ............................. 3Jennifer Watson ’97 .................... 4

Student Profiles“That Lightbulb Moment” ........... 4“Challenges and Rewards” ........... 5“Color Me Orange” .................... 6

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Rethinking the Foundations of Computing at Nanoscale

Csaba Andras Moritz

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computing foundations beyond CMOS. Reviewing the limitations of CMOS can offer valuable hints as to possible research avenues, including:

• developing alternative state variables (strategies for representing information in matter other than with electron charge configurations)

• finding alternative ways of manufacturing not limited to photolithography, with its total reliance on optics to refine feature sizes

• finding alternative means of achieving correctness of execution—that is, relaxing the paradigm that each system be so precisely manufactured that it can be expected to function perfectly under all conditions

• conceiving new approaches to assembling devices into functional circuits (it might not be possible to wire together nanoscale devices at nanoscale on an individual basis)

• cultivating a different mindset about what future computational systems should look like. (Why limit them to architectures based on digital arithmetic and logic?)

Attempts to use state variables other than charge, such as particle spin and molecular structure, confirm that CMOS charge electronics remain very competitive, and there is no straightforward replacement device in sight. Progress could be made, however, by focusing on the underlying fabric (broadly defined as the state variable in conjunction with the circuit style and its associated manufacturing approach) rather than on the device alone.

The future nanoscale computing fabrics my colleagues and I envision will be designed with an integrated fabric-centric mindset across innovative state

variables, circuit and nanomanufacturing layers, and will be scalable into large-scale computational systems. Such an integrated mindset might be necessary since assembling and functionalizing devices at nanoscale is fundamentally difficult: there exist only limited means to control the alignment and placement of individual atoms in nanoscale architectures projected to have billions of functional blocks.

Mother Nature, on the other hand, achieves nanoscale assembly of structures with great precision and is an inspiration for self-assembly-based nanomanufacturing, an approach fundamentally different from today’s top-down photolithography. Self-assembly eliminates the daunting need to arrange single atoms or a handful of atoms one at a time. A significant reduction in manufacturing costs could therefore be achieved by focusing on fabrics that are regular and either partially or wholly self-assembled through chemical or biological processes.

A fabric-centric mindset with self assembly can also realize a much higher design density than is possible with CMOS. Comprehensive built-in fault masking, compensating for imperfections and parameter variations in the fabric, further reduces requirements for precision in manufacturing, allowing aggressive scaling of feature sizes beyond what is possible with

photolithography. Short interconnects (a form of wiring between devices) that are inherently part of the fabric or means of inter-device interaction based on new physical phenomena could also contribute to significantly better power efficiency than in CMOS designs. New types of applications such as neuromorphic architectures resembling brainlike information processing and new types of nanoprocessors could directly exploit capabilities in these nanoscale fabrics.

My research group focuses on such nanofabrics, based both on new types of charge-based electronics as well as magnetic spin waves. The Nanoscale Application Specific IC (NASIC) fabric, a concept developed by my group, relies on 2-D grids of semiconductor nanowires with computational streaming supported from CMOS. Built-in fault tolerance is added at many levels to mask defects and slow components caused by fabric irregularities, even in the presence of defect rates ten orders of magnitude higher than in conventional CMOS. Partial self-assembly is made possible by fabric circuits that rely on uniform single-type devices aligned inside a 2-D grid rather than being individually sized and placed. New types of architectures, such as stream processors and neuromorphic systems, are being targeted and explored on NASICs theoretically.

The NASIC fabric (from left): an example of image-processing architecture; a functionalized 2-D nanowire crossbar with devices at cross-points, a cross-point device (state variable) designed and simulated; ongoing efforts by Professor Chui’s group to self-align nanowires into a grid. Initial efforts are based on 100-nanometer silicon nanowires but further scaling is expected in the near future, with an eye toward a 10-nanometer grid pitch.

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The project benefits from vibrant cross-disciplinary collaborations with colleagues on campus and beyond. We recently worked with Professor Chi On Chui’s group at UCLA to produce a detailed fabric simulation that integrated 3D device physics and accurate circuit-design issues for the first time. Professors Massimo Fischetti and Eric Polizzi at UMass Amherst are exploring electronic and quantum transport in such ultra-small nanoscale devices, while Professor Neal Anderson is developing information theoretical models for projecting ultimate capabilities in NASICs. At the same time, we are collaborating with Professor Chui, with Professor Cengiz Ozkan and Professor Mihri Ozkan at UCR, and with investigators at UMass Amherst’s Center for Hierarchical Manufacturing targeting experimental techniques for self-assembly-based NASIC fabric formation.

Professors Bernard Pottier, Catherine Dezan, and Loic Lagadec and their groups at the Université Occidentale in Bretagne, France, are developing CAD tools. Professors Israel Koren and Mani Krishna at UMass Amherst are collaborating on devising techniques

to allow efficient fault-masking in NASICs. A recent extension of the NASICs project is based on spinwaves, a collective oscillation of electron spin around the magnetization momentum that somewhat resembles the wave motion visible after a stone is dropped into a pool of water or when wind blows through a wheat field. The initiative’s objective is to explore chargeless computational systems without “wiring,” with potential order-of-magnitude improvements in power efficiency compared to projected scaled CMOS. Professor Mark Tuominen’s group in UMass Amherst’s Department of Physics collaborates in the experimental demonstration of such magnetic nanofabrics. Professor Kang Wang and Dr. Alex Khitun at UCLA, key inventors of the spinwave logic and collaborators, are similarly vested in these efforts.

Through these interdisciplinary collaborations, my colleagues, students, and I hope to develop nanoscale fabrics able to surpass the capabilities of CMOS and thereby provide the technological foundations of computing into the twenty-first century.

Csaba Andras Moritz is a professor in UMass Amherst’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is the director of the Nanofabrics Laboratory and the theme leader of the Nanofabrics Theme at the Functionally Engineered Nano Architectonics (FENA) Center funded by the semiconductor industry and DARPA. He is also the technical research group leader (together with Professor Mark Tuominen) of the Nanoelectronics Research Group in the University’s Center for Hierarchical Manufacturing, and an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology. His nanofabrics group was rewarded with the Best Paper Award at the IEEE Symposium on VLSI in 2008, were finalists for Best Paper at IEEE/ACM Nanoarch in 2009, and received research poster awards at the FENA annual reviews in 2007 and 2008. Moritz is a proponent of introducing a cross-disciplinary Nanosystem Engineering (NSE) Program on campus to facilitate the integrated exploration of nanoscale systems.

Anticipating the cutting edge of technology is a way of life for Joe Biondi ’90. As vice president of Advanced Technology Programs for Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems (IDS), he leads a team that is constantly improving technology to make things better for Raytheon’s ultimate customer, warfighters and civil authorities.

Raytheon IDS is a division of the $23.2 billion Raytheon Company, which has more than 73,000 employees worldwide. A technology and innovation leader in defense, homeland security, and other government markets worldwide, Raytheon provides state-

of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration, and other capabilities in sensing and effects as well as command, control, communications, and intelligence systems and a broad range of mission support services.

After receiving a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from The Pennsylvania State University, Biondi began his career at Raytheon in 1987. There he got his first taste of high technology, supporting microwave antenna and circuit design for Raytheon’s Missile Guidance Laboratory. Through the Raytheon-sponsored UMass Microwave

Joe Biondi ’90

Alumni Profiles

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Staying Ahead of Technology

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Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, Steve Holland caught the engineering bug at an early age. Open his grammar school yearbook and you’ll see, amongst other kids hoping to be firemen, cops, and professional ball players, the young Holland lists “electrical engineer” as his dream profession.

“My father’s stereo captured my imagination from a very early age,” he says, “and inspired me to start taking apart radios and eventually build small speakers. My parents were always extremely supportive, even when facing a dining room table covered in parts.”

Student ProfilesThat Lightbulb Moment

Scholars program, Biondi returned to school and in 1990 received a master of science degree in electrical engineering. “The ECE program,” he notes, “helped focus and build the foundation for my career at Raytheon and further shaped my desire to pursue cutting-edge technology to solve real-world problems.”

Biondi has held numerous positions within Raytheon and now leads programs that explore the integrating and inserting of hardware and software into higher-order systems. He says, “I continue to leverage my ECE experiences from early knowledge building to more recent relationships such as collaborations with ECE Professor David McLaughlin and the Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere Engineering Research Center.”

Biondi’s Raytheon team continues to focus on technologies and capabilities that support short- and long-term IDS business strategies. The group’s advanced technology programs span everything from RF systems and radars to maritime systems and sensors, radiation and nuclear detection, software development, advanced materials, environmental systems, whole-life systems, advanced manufacturing, electro-optics, robotics, power systems, and advanced semiconductors. Biondi’s team works directly with customers to initiate new

business and improve capabilities and technologies.

Radar, Sonar, and Everything in Between

Immediately after graduating from UMass Amherst’s Antenna Lab in 1997, Jennifer Watson began working at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory on a multi-element buoyant cable antenna to enable high-frequency communications between submarines and other naval assets. Her part of the program focused on the antenna design, but the adaptive signal processing involved in the program sparked her interest in adaptive beam-forming.

In fall 1999, through the laboratory’s Lincoln Scholars Program, Watson began studying at MIT’s Ocean Engineering Department. In December 2003, she earned her Ph.D. in adaptive beam-forming for passive sonar systems. Watson then returned to Lincoln Laboratory and spent several years developing adaptive signal processing algorithms for the Navy’s submarine towed arrays, as well as a variety of other passive sonar arrays.

One of the most exciting aspects of Watson’s algorithm development at the laboratory is that it is all designed and tested on data collected from operational systems. Textbook theory

may be the starting point, but the real power of the algorithms derives from their being based on observations made from experimental or operational data. While in graduate school, Watson spent three weeks on board a Woods Hole research vessel collecting data in the Gulf of Mexico. Algorithms she and her colleagues developed from those data are now operational in Navy systems.

Watson currently works on radar-based maritime surveillance systems. Many of the concepts in passive sonar are directly applicable to radar surveillance systems, although both have their unique challenges.

The key to an enjoyable career, Watson feels, is to continue learning and solving challenging problems. She is married and has three children, ages 6 years, 2 years, and 9 months.

Jennifer Watson

Steve Holland

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Challenges and Rewards

Lucas RootContinued next page

By the time Holland was a senior in high school he had years of experience in hobby electronics projects and was more certain than ever of his career goal. “It wasn’t a question of what to major in,” he says, “but where.”

Holland found what he was looking for at the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) in Wisconsin, known for its small class sizes and extensive, professor-taught labs. There he graduated in 2006 with a BSEE with high honors and a minor in mathematics.

“My freshman year ‘Physics of Electricity and Magnetism’ course was fascinating and piqued my interest in EM,” Holland notes, “but my junior-year EE electromagnetic fields courses convinced me that I wanted to attend graduate school and focus on electromagnetics.”

His passion for Maxwell’s equations cemented Holland’s desire to attend graduate school, as did his experience serving in various positions at MSOE. For three years he tutored extensively in mathematics, physics, and electrical

engineering at the school’s Learning Resource Center.

“I enjoyed immensely the challenge of explaining a difficult topic from multiple perspectives,” he says. “Seeing students have that light-bulb moment, when they finally understand a concept they previously struggled with, is what ultimately sparked my desire to pursue a career in academia.”

Holland gained research experience working with a group developing microwave and mm-wave EPR instrumentation at the National Biomedical Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

The strength of UMass Amherst’s ECE Department made it an easy decision to move to the Pioneer Valley for graduate school, although as a lifelong White Sox fan he has painfully had to accept that local references to “the Sox” are about the Red Sox.

Holland earned a master’s degree in 2008 with a research focus on miniaturized GPS antennas. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the

Antennas and Propagation Lab, performing research under the guidance of ECE Professors Daniel Schaubert and Marinos Vouvakis. His work focuses on methods of substantially reducing the cost and complexity of low-profile ultra-wideband antenna arrays. It has led to two patent disclosures: the Banyan Tree Antenna (BTA) array, a vertically integrated topology that achieves ultra-wideband performance without baluns or hybrids in the feed network, and the Planar Ultra-wideband Modular Antenna (PUMA) array, the first truly planar ultra-wideband array topology that can be fabricated using only common microwave-circuit techniques and that connects directly to standard unbalanced RF interfaces (without baluns or hybrids). Holland hopes to pursue a career in academia, combining his passions for teaching and research.

Outside of work, Holland finds time to play the drums and explore western Massachusetts on his bicycle, though he is still trying to get used to the region’s enormous hills.

Lucas Root transferred to UMass Amherst in the fall of 2007 after studying atmospheric sciences at the State University of New York at Albany. His research in photovoltaic solar cell applications at SUNY Albany inspired him to pursue a degree in electrical engineering. He was drawn to UMass by the strength of its program and its renowned Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere.

Root finds UMass Amherst’s academic environment both challenging and rewarding. His early success in the engineering program afforded him the opportunity to work as an undergraduate teaching assistant for Professor Russell

Tessier. That, he says, “gave me the opportunity to aid fellow students, offset living expenses, and crystallize my knowledge of the subject matter.” His efforts earned him an Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award.

During the summer of 2008, Root served as an intern at Teradyne in North Reading, Mass. There he put his classroom knowledge to work writing software for an automated inspection system that uses x-rays to detect defects in printed circuit boards. His primary task was to use image-processing techniques to perform calibration calculations for

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Color Me Orange

Continued from page 5

Mandy Liem’s passion for the color orange helped her decide on a career in engineering. Liem has always loved the color and is often seen wearing it. When she discovered that UMass Amherst Engineering graduates wear orange tassels on their mortarboards, Liem found her calling.

Even as a child, however, Liem was fascinated by electronics, especially that box known as the television that magically produced pictures and sounds. Now, through her Electrical Engineering education, she is finding out how the magic works. Currently a junior, Liem has also developed an interest in learning and helping others learn. She was an undergraduate teaching assistant for her engineering courses and enjoys showing others the wonders engineering can create.

To add another flavor to her studies, Liem worked last summer with ECE Professor Paul Siqueira in the Microwave Remote Sensing Lab. Alongside other graduate students she assisted in a project to develop a Ka-band interferometer for measuring topography. She worked on algorithms used to control the radar, integrated two new components, and helped deploy the system at nearby Skinner State Park. Liem also helped with a project that used radar and lidar technology to measure the carbon stored in a forest. Covered

with bug repellent and armed with diameter-tape and chalk, she helped identify tree species and measure tree diameters to estimate the forest’s carbon content. The measurements she helped make on the ground are being compared with those made by satellites to help complete the puzzle of the global carbon budget. These experiences showed Liem the breadth and impact of engineering

and its almost boundless range of application.

If Liem was first drawn to engineering based on the color of a tassel, she soon discovered that she relished its challenges. Last year her circuit-analysis course was taught using an approach called “Mastery,” developed by Professor William Leonard. Students are given 33 online “modules” and in order to pass are required to score a perfect 10 out of 10 on at least 22 of them. Liem was one of only two people to achieve 10-point “mastery” in all 33 modules. She found the experience richly satisfying—both challenging and fun, not unlike completing a puzzle.

Liem feels much the same way about Electrical Engineering, and plans to stay on campus for two more years to complete it and two other majors, Mathematics, and Computer System Engineering.

the system’s mechanical components.

Root returned to academic research in January 2009 by joining Professor Andreas Muschinski’s newly created Environmental Wave Propagation Group. To foster undergraduate research, Muschinski recruited top students from his ‘Signals and Systems’ class. Root spent the spring investigating the generation, propagation, and detection of atmospheric infrasound using data collected with high-precision barometers donated by Paroscientific. Root’s background in atmospheric science and his newly acquired knowledge of signal processing techniques perfectly suited him for the topic.

Hoping to continue his research with

Muschinski over the summer, Root applied to the College of Engineering’s Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program, which gives students the opportunity to work alongside faculty members on focused summer research projects. Root’s proposal was accepted and he was awarded financial support from a donation by James R. Smith ’67. During June and July, Root worked with fellow undergraduate Andrew Hills and master’s student Ganesh Kumar to deploy an array of barometers to perform angle of arrival and trace velocity calculations of detected infrasound wave packets. “The process of condensing theory from numerous sources to create efficient data-analysis software was incredibly satisfying,” declares Root. He is

presently drafting a paper to submit for publication.

Beyond his academic regimen, Root enjoys swimming, camping, and following the stock market. He has recently discovered scuba diving and hopes to begin working toward his private pilot’s license in the coming months. Travel is an important part of Root’s life and he has made numerous trips to rural Mexico to build homes for displaced families.

With graduation approaching in May 2010, Root is considering a variety of options in academia and industry. “Regardless of my final decision,” he says, “I am confident that my time at UMass Amherst has given me the knowledge and skills necessary to excel.”

Mandy Liem

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Christopher Salthouse (Biomedical Electronics) came to UMass Amherst in August 2009 as the Dev and Linda Gupta Assistant Professor. He has founded the Biomedical Electronics Laboratory, where he is developing a new generation of instruments to allow physicians and researchers to better visualize the biology of cancer. This work combines the integrated circuit design work he did at MIT with his biomedical imaging work at Massachusetts General Hospital. At MIT, Salthouse worked on a team that increased the battery life of cochlear implants, devices that give hearing to the deaf, by a factor of 30 using advanced circuit-design techniques. At MGH, he pioneered a method of detecting fluorophores in the time domain that is key to the development of quantitative in vivo optical sensors and published one

of the first reports of in vivo imaging of up converting nanoparticles, a technology which can essentially eliminate background signals in vivo imaging using nonlinear optics.

Michael Zink (Integrative Systems Engineering) joined the ECE Department in September 2009 as an assistant professor in integrative systems engineering (ISE), an important component in the design and building process of large systems like the Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive

Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) test beds. ISE deals with the connectivity of social, economic, and political issues stemming from the research, creation, and deployment of technologies to solve societal problems. In the short term, Zink’s position will support CASA’s radar and sensor network activities, and in the long run it will help the department grow this new subdiscipline. Zink received his PhD (Dr.-Ing) from Darmstadt University of Technology, where he was a research assistant at the Multimedia Communications Laboratory. In 2004, he joined UMass Amherst’s Computer Science Department as a postdoctoral fellow and later as a senior research scientist. He is currently involved in CASA as deputy director for technical integration. Beyond ISE, Zink’s research

Faculty Hires

Imaging living animals is important for intraoperative imaging and biomedical research. High-resolution whole-animal in vivo systems for mouse and zebrafish imaging are being developed.

Off-the-Grid sensor node, consisting of radar, camera and weather station, used in the GENI Vise project: http://vise.cs.umass.edu

interests include sense-and-response sensor networks, sensor virtualization, the design and analysis of long-distance wireless networks, network measurements, and the distribution of high-bandwidth, high-volume data.

Ramki (Ramakrishna) Gummadi (Embedded Systems) joined the ECE department in January 2010 as an assistant professor in wireless and embedded systems. He came to UMass after two years as a postdoc at MIT. Earlier, he obtained his B.Tech. from IIT Madras, M.S. from UC Berkeley and Ph.D. from USC. He enjoys building reliable and secure embedded systems and networks using new hardware and software description languages. He is currently working on new protocols and embedded systems for improving the capacity and coverage of wireless networks. Although today’s 3G and 802.11 wireless networks are a significant step up in terms of speed and capacity from networks only a few years old, their performance and reliability is still poor, and falls short of theoretical possibilities significantly. He is developing new cross-layer protocols and programmable radios that can implement these protocols to realize practical high-throughput wireless networks that can leverage cooperation, adaptation and reconfiguration. One programmable wireless platform he is working on is called AirBlue, which uses FPGAs to implement high-throughput and low-latency protocols that can take advantage of cross-layer information.

Michael Zink

Christopher Salthouse

Ramki Gummadi

Wireless platform, AirBlue, which uses FPGAs to implement high-throughput and low-latency protocols that can take advantage of cross-layer information.

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Pishro-Nik is working on a system that automobile manufacturers have always dreamed of creating: a wireless communication network to prevent cars from crashing into one another. His NSF CAREER proposal focuses on the theoretical and mathematical framework for this kind of anti-crash system. “The idea is to equip cars with wireless communication capabilities so they communicate with one another,” explains Pishro-Nik. “We use this network to prevent accidents and also send traffic-congestion information to drivers. It is predicted this new capability can significantly improve the safety and efficiency of the transportation system.”

While Pishro-Nik’s research is theoretical, he is in an excellent position to validate his mathematical results. He and his collaborators at UMass Amherst’s Transportation Engineering Group have built a test bed and have access to a large set of real traffic data.

NSF Career Awards

“One of the things I’m trying to develop here is a theory of obstructive wireless communication,” says Pishro-Nik. “These networks work in high-frequency ranges. They cannot go through buildings. So if you are coming to an interesection in a city, and there is a building between you and another vehicle approaching the interesection from an adjoining street, your vehicle cannot communicate directly with that car. You would have to have multiple links. Your vehicle would have to communicate with that car through another vehicle or have a communication hub at an intersection so that both vehicles can link through that.”

Hossein Pishro-Nik

Computer simulation showing detailed structure carbon nanotube

Eric Polizzi

The National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award is amongst the most prestigious awards a young faculty member can receive. In 2009, ECE Professors Hossein Pishro-Nik and Eric Polizzi each received $400,000 Career Awards.

Eric Polizzi received his NSF CAREER to create a new suite of computer simulation methods to tackle the challenges created by designing, modeling and testing nano-devices that become more miniaturized every year. Polizzi’s research can be applied to simulations ranging from material sciences and chemistry to nano-electronics and bio-nanotechnology.

“Making devices such as silicon nanowire, carbon nanotube transistors, nanoribbons, or some combination of them requires a lot of experimental research,” says Polizzi. “Simulations become more and more important because they’re flexible and much less expensive than experimentation.”

Polizzi’s methods will allow an order-of-magnitude speedup in the modeling stage, critically important for designers of devices, circuits, and chips who run numerous simulations in search of the best design. Polizzi’s modeling methods will also be essential for understanding the fundamental physics governing the operation of such novel nano-devices.

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The research of Andreas Muschinski, Paros Professor in Measurement Sciences, was featured on the cover of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The article, “Metcrax 2006: Meteorological Experiments in Arizona’s Meteor Crater,” details the work that Muschinski and 13 other researchers are doing in the 1.2-km-diameter Meteor Crater near Winslow, Ariz. Muschinski is especially interested in “atmospheric seiches,” a term he coined for the sloshing, bathtub-like motion of cold-air pools in closed basins like the Meteor Crater. A better understanding of these seiches will help improve forecasting of air quality and nighttime ground temperatures.

ECE Professor Daniel Schaubert was the lead author for the cover article, “State-of-the-Art Antenna Technology: The 2008 Antenna Applications Symposium,” in the January Microwave Journal, the industry standard for microwave news. The Antenna Applications Symposium

and its predecessor, the Air Force Antenna Symposium, have for more than 50 years provided a unique forum for exchange of ideas and information on the practical aspects of antenna design, development, and use in systems.

A paper based on the thesis research of ECE Professor Steve Frasier’s former PhD student Dragana Perkovic was chosen for the cover article of IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. The article, “Longshore Surface Currents Measured by Doppler Radar and Video PIV Techniques,” compared, contrasted, and tested two innovative techniques for measuring currents that flow and churn along shorelines while transporting sediments and pollutants in the surf zone.

ECE Professor Eric Polizzi’s paper, “Density-matrix-based Algorithm for Solving Eigenvalue Problems,” was published by the distinguished journal Physical Review B and was then selected as an

“Editors’ Suggestion” paper. The editors and referees choose only five to 10 of the 80 to 150 papers accepted each month for this honor.

“Short-Wavelength Technology and the Potential for Distributed Networks of Small Radar Systems” by ECE Professor David McLaughlin, et. al. appeared in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society in December 2009. The article describes CASA’s first test bed in Norman, Oklahoma and reviews tradeoffs associated with the distributed collaborative adaptive sensing approach.

Faculty Research Highlighted on Journal Covers

Weibo Gong

Gong gives Distinguished LectureAs part of the campus’s 30th annual Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series, ECE Professor Weibo Gong delivered a lecture, “Will the Internet Blow Our Minds?” He noted that the human brain still outstrips the prodigious ability of Internet search engines to search content because the brain engages in “creative searching,” connecting different types of knowledge stored in different regions. Gong did, however,

predict that there exist means to tap into the enormous capacity of the Internet to make creative connections efficiently. This, he suggested, will likely happen soon and we should be prepared for the consequences. Faculty members chosen for the Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series receive the Chancellor’s Medal, the highest honor bestowed on individuals for exemplary and extraordinary service to the University.

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The goal of Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA), chartered in 2003 by the National Science Foundation Engineering Center, works to overcome the limitations of today’s weather detection and forecasting systems by building a denser, networked system of radars to better sample the lower atmosphere, where most weather forms. Among its recent advances:

New radar network detects low-altitude weather phenomena better than NEXRAD

CASA designed and deployed an end-to-end, distributed-collaborative

CASA News

ECE Professor and Graduate Program Director C. Mani Krishna has been elected a 2009 IEEE Fellow “for contributions to the design and evaluation of real-time systems.” Professor Krishna is the author of two

books: Fault-Tolerant Systems (with Israel Koren, 2007), and Real-Time Systems (with Kang G. Shin, 1997).

ECE Professor Lixin Gao was elected a 2010 IEEE Fellow “for contributions to inter-domain internet protocol network routing.” Professor Gao’s research interests include multimedia networking, Internet routing, network security, and energy efficient wireless networks. Among other honors, she received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 1999 and was an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow in 2003.

C. Mani Krishna

Left: CASA Phase Tilt radar. Above: Computer model showing rotating winds enabled “mock” warning to be issued 3 minutes earlier than the NWS Warning

Gao and Krishna elected IEEE Fellows

Lixin Gao

adaptive radar network in Oklahoma’s “Tornado Alley.” In research trials it demonstrated a set of observing capabilities fundamentally better than the current operational national radar system. The test bed recently captured a tornado during a severe thunderstorm, enabling experimental observers using the data to issue a mock tornado warning three minutes prior to that provided by the National Weather Service. Trials such as this point to the promise of CASA’s distributed adaptive technology to contribute to better, more accurate and timely warnings to help save lives and enhance public safety.

CASA Solid State Phased Array RADAR

Fabrication of the first CASA Phase Tilt radar is under way on campus. These low-power, dual-polarization, electronically scanned radars for observing severe weather have been developed by CASA graduate students under Professors Steve Frasier and David McLaughlin and Senior Research Fellow Eric Knapp. The system will go through extensive tests and evaluations before being is deployed in CASA’s Networked Radar Test Bed (IP5) in Oklahoma in the spring of 2012. This low-cost, phased-array technology will allow CASA researchers to take full advantage the distributed, collaborative, adaptive sensing (DCAS) paradigm.

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ECE’s Microwave Remote Sensing Laboratory (MIRSL) played a critical role in an historic study to explore the origin, structure, and evolution of tornadoes, a project which took place in Spring 2009 across the central United States. The project, named the Verification of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2 (VORTEX2), was the largest attempt in history to study tor-nadoes. It used more than 50 scientists and 40 research vehicles, including 10 mobile radars. VORTEX2 is funded by the National Science Foundation

and the National Oceanic and At-mospheric Administration (NOAA), and involves scientists from NOAA, 10 universities, and three nonprofit organizations. The main objective of the MIRSL work is “to understand better the dynamics and kinematics of severe convective storms and the tornadoes they sometimes spawn.” MIRSL operated two mobile Doppler radars during the project: UMass Amherst’s mobile W-band radar and mobile, polarimetric, X-band radar.

From the Department Head

A few months ago ECE students, faculty, and alums came together to celebrate an event that bound them together: the inaugural lecture of Dr. Christopher Salthouse as the Dev and Linda Gupta Professor. The event symbolized the organic nature of a robust academic unit: a successful alum giving back to the institution, a bright young faculty member ably laying out his research program to the academic community, and students exposed to the exciting possibility of their profession profoundly affecting a different discipline—in this case, as described in Dr. Salthouse’s lecture, “How to Implant a Fluorescence Microscope,” turning the notion of a microscope on its head.

Earlier, in the summer of 2009, the Department’s Engineering Research Center, CASA, conducted a successful review for its donor, the National Science Foundation, ensuring the Center of continuous funding throughout its intended lifetime. The NSF review panel praised CASA “as one of the strongest academic groups in radar meteorology.” Everyone connected with the ECE Department can take pride in that success, and smack-dab in the middle of it all was one of the ECE Department’s newest hires, Dr. Michael Zink. He will conduct research in integrative systems engineering, which he has been practicing in-situ as CASA systems engineer and thrust leader and now continue as deputy director for technical integration.

Lastly, at the beginning of the current semester, we welcomed a new faculty member Dr. Ramki (Ramakrishna) Gummadi in computer systems engineering, where he will be conducting research at the hardware/software boundary of embedded systems and networks.

It’s been said that nothing has a greater impact on an academic department than new faculty hires. If that’s the case, the ECE Department’s future has been brightened by these additions. More detailed profiles for each can be found in this newsletter.

Professor Christopher V. Hollot

MIRSL Takes Part in Major Tornado Study

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Marcus Hall’s new undergraduate resource space, known as M5, brims with circuits, chips,

voltmeters, oscilloscopes, and other equipment to encourage exploration and design. Open to all ECE students, it’s where, as one student puts it, we can “do our Rube Goldberg thing.”

In addition to free access to electronic components and test equipment, M5 also provides ECE students with a place to call their own including meetings rooms, computing resources and white boards galore.

The facility is the brainchild of ECE’s department head, Professor Christopher Hollot, and ECE Undergraduate

Program Director T. Baird Soules. “The desire to tinker is a terrible thing to waste,” they explain. “Traditionally, the urge to take stuff apart and figure out how it works has been the hallmark of engineers-to-be. The miniaturization of electronics in modern commercial products has made discovery activity more challenging, and M5 helps counter that.”

M5exco

In Fall 2009, M5 introduced an innovative concept in which student volunteers would teach their peers about technical subjects near and dear to their hearts,

nobody knew for sure what the response would be. It’s remarkable, then, that within days after the seven voluntary courses were announced, 58 participants signed up.

The program is called the M5 Experimental College, nicknamed M5exco and pronounced “Mexco.” With M5exco, M5 has been transformed into a learning hub where students and faculty members volunteer to teach extracurricular courses on topics such as the Pure Data programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing, and Ruby on Rails, a framework that allows for the rapid development of web applications and individual or team-based design projects.

“One of the ideas behind M5 is to build an intellectual community amongst the students,” says Soules. “M5exco does this by bringing out their skills and passions for various technical topics not expressly covered in the ECE curriculum.”

One good example is “Design Projects 1-2-3” (DP123), M5exco courses that can be taken for credit. One such project is devoted to building a robot named Emma5. “The class takes a bunch of budding engineers and puts them into this dynamic, multi-team approach to solving the problems of building a robot,” says ECE

The Unparalleled M5

ECE Undergraduate Program Director T. Baird Soules (middle) working with undergraduates in M5’s “Good Room”.

M5’s “Parts Room” provides students free and unfettered access to electronic cocmponents and IC’s.

M5’s “Great Room” provides ECE students with meeting rooms,computing resources, library, and tons of white boards.

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graduate student Ric Zanonni. “What drew me to M5 and the experimental college is that this is my kind of place. I’ve always been an experimenter and a tinkerer, and that’s what DP123 is really all about. I’m enjoying fostering that inquisitiveness.”

In Spring 2010, M5exco is offering three courses taught by undergrads: “Excel for Engineers”, “Linux Basics” and “Sound Modeling and Creation Using Pure Data”. DP123 courses include: “Play the Room” where robotic musical machines will be designed and mounted in the M5 Good Room, an “Off-Grid LED Lamp” that will be recharged with solar, heat or mechanical energy, and the “ECE/Theater Collaboration” working on theater technology in an upcoming production of “Little Shop of Horrors”.

One DP123 project is devoted to building a robot named Emma5. “The class takes a bunch of budding engineers and puts them into this dynamic, multi-team approach to solving the problems of building a robot,” says ECE graduate student Ric Zanonni (top right).

M5’s “Good Room” hosts M5exco courses including the undergraduate design project experience course “DP123”.

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Chancellor’s Circle Patron ($100,000-$249,999)

Michael G. Hluchyj ’76 & Theresa (Murphy) Hluchyj ’77 +

Chancellor’s Circle Fellow ($25,000-$99,999)

Arlindo Jorge ’50 +James M. Smith ’67, ’07HD +

Chancellor’s Circle Associate ($10,000-$24,999)

Daniel J. Bonelli ’78 & Patricia (Pepe) Bonelli ’78 + $

Roberto Padovani ’83MS, ’85PhD & Colleen (Mclevedge) Padovani ’75S, ’82 $

Robert G. Raymond ’49 & Jean (Semon) Raymond ’48 +

Dean’s Circle Partner ($5,000-$9,999)

Scott M. Perry ’82 & Ann (Reddy) Perry ’82 +

Ting-wei Tang & Shirley S. Tang +

Dean’s Circle Sponsor ($2,500-$4,999)

Edward S. Andrews Jr. ’85 $Jay A. Catelli ’05 $John P. Keenan ’72 &

Dagmar (Schorkhuber) Keenan ’73Daniel P. Marsh ’82

Dean’s Circle Member ($1,000-$2,499)

Nicholas G. Agrios ’85Thomas L. Anderson ’80 + $Andrew D. Baker ’74 &

Marie (Kimtis) Baker ’75 +Peter L. Blum ’88 +Gregory J. Caetano ’84 +David J. Chou ’81 + $Stephen A. Collins ’81 &

Amy (Ostanek) Collins ’87Ted Selig ’88 &

Kimberly Cotter-Selig ’88Edward H. Cowern ’59 &

Irene (Kowalczyk) Cowern ’59 +

Paul B. Ferraro ’89, ’92MS & Ellen (Martin) Ferraro ’89, ’94PhD + $

Andrew B. Forbes ’91, ’94MS & Jennifer Lewis-Forbes ’93

Stephen J. Forde III ’81, ’89MS & Dawn (Kalinen) Forde ’80 +

Karen Skolfield ’98MFA & Dennis L. Goeckel +

Barbara Howard ’78 +Gordon J. Hutchins Jr. ’70 +Raymond J. Kaleda ’66 & Laurel V. Kaleda + $Michelle (Hruby) Kallmes ’92PhDHarold P. Kelley Jr. ’56 + $Kevin J. Kelley ’61 & Lee KelleyPaul W. Kelley ’67 +Alvin T. Kho ’94, ’96MS, ’00PhD+Andrew C. Knowles III ’57, ’82HD * +Dale M. Labossiere ’78 +Arthur C. Lawrence ’83Tucuong Lien ’70 &

Jennifer (Chen) Lien ’71 + $John Mardirosian ’81, ’84 & Janice Ferguson ’82 $John T. Murphy ’65Lawrence M. Nugent ’56 +Philip C. Pedersen ’74 & Brenda Johnson ’72 + $Victor J. Pietkiewicz ’53 + $Devendra Y. Raut ’97MSDavid H. Rosen ’59 +Mark Rovelli ’79 + $Scott A. Sandler ’83 +Neil P. Sirota ’88N. Ralph Testarmata ’50 + $

Dean’s Circle Affiliate ($500-$999, most recent 10 classes, and $250-$499, most recent 5 classes)

Charles N. Cheatwood ’02MS + $Panagiotes M. Petrakis ’08

2009 Donor ListThe 1863 Society

Donors who made leadership gifts totaling $1,000 or more to the University of Massachusetts Amherst in fiscal year 2009 (July 1, 2008 - June 30, 2009) are recognized in the Chancellor’s Circle and the Dean’s Circle of The 1863 Society. The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering wishes to recognize our donors who are members of this society.

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Other Individual Donors

The following donors each generously contributed between $250 and $999 to the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering between July 1, 2008, and June 30, 2009. Gifts of all levels to the Department are critically important and gratefully acknowledged. In order to share a comprehensive list of all individuals who designated support to our department in fiscal year 2009, we have created a donor page on our website. Please visit www.ecs.umass.edu/ece/

$500-$999 Donors to the College of Engineering

Carl A. Avila ’78 $Wayne T. Boulais ’85, ’88MSKenneth D. Boyd ’75MS $Jonathon M. Brennan ’77Robert A. Cramer ’80Mark D. Gaphardt ’83MS + $Thomas W. Kelly ’81 $Kenneth R. Lovell ’59, ’61MSAnne (Potvin) McIntosh ’70, ’76MED +Richard M. Newman ’89 + $Halil Padir ’87PhD &

Karen M. Tegan Padir +Kenneth J. Plourde ’86 +Thomas H. Proctor ’79 &

Deborah Proctor $Max A. Solondz ’86MSRobert J. Tosti ’87, ’90MS &

Laura (Weiss) Tosti ’86Jeffrey W. Zink ’73

$250-$499 Donors to the College of Engineering

Robert G. Bartlett ’80 & Marie BartlettDavid J. Bodendorf ’64 &

Joan (Janik) Bodendorf ’65 + $Nicholas S. Bowen ’92PhD$Thomas E. Brennan ’85 +Ying H. Cho ’85 +Geoffrey L. Cohler ’79 $Dennis J. Dahlen ’78 + $Adil M. Daruwala ’88MS +Lester G. Deotte ’68 &

Patricia B. Deotte +Brian M. Fiegel ’98 & Jennifer (Bourque) Fiegel ’98James J. Ford ’84 + $Lance A. Glasser ’74 &

Wendy (Joseph) Glasser ’75 +Leo F. Gray ’82Joseph M. Griffin ’51Ronald E. Higby ’58Joel C. Janovsky ’87 +Alan I. Kniager ’88 +Rajeev S. Koodli ’93MS, ’98PhD &

Vidya Raichur ’97MS +Xin Liu ’00MSJohn F. Magnani ’81Richard J. Manning ’63MBA, ’63 + $Michael J. Mazzu ’89 +Eric J. Michnovez ’88Charles E. Molongoski ’75Frank Ngo & Kien Ngo $Bryan O. Nicholas III ’74, ’77MBA &

Cheryl Nicholas ’81, ’96MSNorman L. Page ’71Paul R. Richard ’78Kenneth P. Rispoli ’88MS $Jonathan W. Roskill ’85 + $Mark E. Russell ’85MS $Victor C. Sanchez ’86, ’88MS $William L. Schweber ’74MS &

Susan (Baer) Schweber ’74John J. Swana ’53 + $Matthew J. Twarog ’98 &

Jesse (Rutherford) Twarog ’97 + $Theodore J. Twarog Jr. ’62 +Anlu Yan ’92MS, ’98PhD $

Organizational Contributors & Matching Gift Companies

Organizations and corporations listed below generously designated gifts toward the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering between July 1, 2008, and June 30, 2009.

Alpha Omega Electromagnetics LLCAnalog Devices Inc.BD Matching Gift ProgramBig Y Foods Inc.The Boeing Company General Electric FundIBM International FoundationIEEE IncIntel Corporation +ISO New England Inc.Lutron Electronics Co. Inc.Park Electrochemical CorporationPhilips Electronics North America

CorporationQUALCOMM Inc.Raytheon CompanySynopsys Inc.UnumProvident Corporation

This report recognizes contributions received during Fiscal Year 2009.

HD Honorary Degree RecipientHA Honorary Alumnus* Deceased+ Donor for 5 consecutive years or more$ Corporate matching money was part of

individual’s giving total

(Top) DP123 UMass theater project assists with the production of “Little Shop of Horrors”.

(Bottom) Controls are being designed and built to raise and lower an elevator, interact with pneumatics to enlarge the man eating plant, and rapidly spin clocks.

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Non Profit Org.U.S. Postage

PAIDAmherst, MAPermit No. 2Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

College of EngineeringUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst130 Natural Resources RoadAmherst, MA 01003

ECE Snapshot

Faculty

34 Faculty members11 IEEE Fellow6 NSF CAREER Awardees2 University Distinguished Teachers

StudentS

68 PhD111 MS287 BS

PerFormance (average 2007-2009)

$9.5M research expenditures14 PhD degrees46 MS degrees59 BS degrees

reSearch

computer and embedded systemscommunication and computer

networksemerging nanoelectronicssensing systems

• antennas and propagation• electromagnetics• microwave engineering• radar networks• remote sensing• sub-millimeter circuits and devices• weather radar

system modelingVLSI/CADwireless communication

Departmental Wish List

Graduate Fellowships: Funding a graduate student fellowship would allow ECE to attract the best students to our graduate program and enable recipients to explore their options before choosing an area of concentration.

Fifth-year Funding: ECE is now offering a five-year B.S./M.S. degree program. Your contribution can help defray a student’s fifth-year financial burden.

M5: Help us achieve our vision for M5 www.UMassAmherstM5.org/. Your contribution will help provide quality space and an environment in which ECE students can advance their technical interests through experimentation, exploration, interaction and entrepreneurship.