The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association                                                                                  May  2019

Letter from the Editor
Badri Roysam,
University of Houston
Dear ECEDHA Members, Industry Partners, and Colleagues,

Summer is finally here. The grades are submitted. The students have gone home. It is the perfect time for faculty reinvention. It is fair to state that the most successful faculty members are constantly reinventing and redefining themselves. On the other hand, faculty members who remain wedded to a subject area are at risk.
 
In this issue of the ECE Source, we explore some known best practices for Department Chairs to stimulate and foster faculty reinvention. Importantly, we welcome your thoughts and shared experiences.

ECE in the News
A Celebration of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California San Diego
Last month, the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department (ECE) in the University of California San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering hosted ECE Day - a day dedicated to celebrating the spirit of the ECE community and bringing awareness to all it offers students, faculty and alumni.
 
"Our ECE community came together to make this year's events incredibly successful ," said Truong Nguyen, PhD, ECE Department Chair at UC San Diego. "Each year the dozens of students, volunteers, staff, and others work very hard to create a fun and engaging environment for all who participate."

>> Read more
Larry Pileggi Named as ECE Department Head at Carnegie Mellon University
Larry Pileggi,
CMU
Larry Pileggi, Tanoto Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, has been named head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), with a start date of March 1, 2019.
 
Larry completed his PhD at Carnegie Mellon in 1989, and after six years on the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, he returned to Carnegie Mellon as a faculty member. In 2001, he was the founding director of the Center for Silicon Systems Implementation (CSSI) and served as the director until 2007. From 2009 to 2013 he was the director of the multi-university Center for Circuit and System Solutions (C2S2) that was funded by the MARCO/DARPA Focus Center Research Program. Larry's research has been primarily focused on all aspects of digital and analog integrated circuit design, including CAD and design methodologies, but more recently he has also been working on modeling, simulation and optimization of electric power systems. He and his students have received many various awards for their research work and have founded four companies and participated in several others.
>> Read more
Pamela Cosman Honored at ECEDHA 2019
   

The award is given in recognition of proactive efforts to increase cultural, ethnic, and gender diversity within the ECE student body and among ECE faculty, that go well above and beyond the normal institutional recruiting practices.

Dr. Cosman's diversity initiatives are multifaceted and include diversity-related basic research, efforts to diversify the faculty, initiatives to support diverse students, and efforts in the community.   As the Faculty Equity Adviser in the Jacobs School of Engineering, Dr. Cosman conducts annual training on unconscious bias for all faculty search committees in the school and chairs the Excellence search committee (which conducts a competition for candidates active in diversity and outreach). The number of women faculty hired in the Jacobs School of Engineering has increased dramatically. Starting with the 2013-2014 hiring season, for the next five hiring years, the overall percentages of women hired was 30% - stunningly higher than the baseline rate of 10.8% women on the engineering faculty back in 2013.

Within the community, Dr. Cosman serves on the Internal Advisory Board of the CREATE STEM Success Initiative. This multi-year initiative connects UCSD researchers with regional K-12 educators. Programs include teacher training, leveraging the Supercomputer Center to boost computer science education in underserved schools, and studying math pipeline leaks. Additionally, Dr. Cosman wrote a children's book, The Secret Code Menace, aimed at making engineering accessible and attractive to girls.

Dr. Cosman goes above and beyond to ensure diversity is at the forefront, which has positively impacted the field of ECE and its future.

Sponsored Article

 
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This book includes a select set of examples curated to show how researchers and industrial partners are delivering on the innovation needed to change the world of transportation. Researchers are investigating the novel and the innovative, and we are proud to partner with them to make their work possible. To learn more about how NI partners with academic researchers, visit ni.com/research.

Conference Corner
Corporate Features
In This Issue
Calendar of Events
March 18-21, 2020
ECEDHA Annual Conference & ECE xpo
Renaissance SeaWorld - Orlando, FL
On Demand Webinar
Sponsored by Keysight Technologies
On Demand Webinar
A Case Study on Connected Maintenance Reliability
Sponsored by Fluke Corporation
On Demand Webinar
Rethinking Electronics Fundamentals
Sponsored by National Instruments
On Demand Webinar
In partnership with Tailfin Marketing

Special Announcements
Finalize Your 2018-2019 Membership Today!

Renew your membership today to continue receiving ECEDHA membership benefits, including:
  • The opportunity to participate in the ECEDHA Annual Survey, a valuable tool in benchmarking your organization in lab and office space, faculty and department head salaries, research budgets, student retention, graduation rates, and much more.
  • The opportunity to attend the 2019 ECEDHA Annual Conference and ECExpo
  • Complimentary job posting service via the ECEDHA website
  • Complimentary registration for ECEDHA's ECE Webinars
  • And much more!
Looking for your membership packet?

Pl ease contact Megan Bekolay at  [email protected]  or 312.559.3724
ECEDHA Member and Partner News
Rising Stars 2019

We invite your most promising early-career women in electrical engineering and computer science to apply to attend Rising Stars in EECS 2019 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Rising Stars is an intensive workshop for female graduate students and postdocs who are interested in pursuing academic careers. Launched at MIT in 2012, the annual event has since been hosted at UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and Illinois. 

Application Deadline: June 15, 2019

>> Learn more
ASEE Chair's Conclave

ASEE is offering a one-day Chair's Conclave in conjunction with the ASEE Annual Conference.
 
Hear from expert speakers on topics including leadership skills, department culture, lifelong learning as a chair, knowing your strengths as a leader, conducting faculty evaluations, and more!
 
Designed by chairs, for chairs, the Chairs Conclave is an exclusive forum for engineering and engineering technology department chairs to exchange ideas and experiences, talk through challenges, and build working relationships. 

Meeting Dates: June 16, 2019
Location: Tampa, Florida

>> Learn more 
International Workshop on Thin-Films for Electronics, Electro-Optics, Energy and Sensors (TFE3S)

Present your research to the global thin-film research community at the 3 rd international workshop on TFE3S. You'll join fellow experts and researchers from our organizing/sponsor institutions and many other top scholars from around the world.  

The workshop is organized by the Center of Excellence for Thin-film Research and Surface Engineering (CETRASE), University of Dayton, in cooperation with the University of Iceland and The Pennsylvania State University.  

Location: University of Iceland, Reykjavik
Dates: June 24-26, 2019

>> Learn more
Franklin Institute Awards: Call for Nominations in Neural Networks for Machine Learning

The Franklin Institute seeks nominations for the 2020 Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science.

Individuals are encouraged to submit nominations for those who have made significant contributions to the development of neural networks for machine learning-hardware or software systems designed as networks of artificial neurons that can be given raw data and trained to automatically discover abstract features that are relevant to detection, classification, or translation, resulting in desired outputs.

Deadline: May 31, 2019
Prize: $250,000 USD

>> Learn more

At the ECE Source, we strive to cover topics that are relevant and timely to ECE  department heads.  We welcome your comments, feedback, and suggestions of topics t o cover in our next issue.  Thank you.