ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING TODAY

 The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Boise State University invites you to attend a free public seminar hosted on Zoom. This week's seminar features  Dr. Emily Heckman, a Senior Research Engineer at Air Force Research Laboratory. October 7 @ 10:30 am  https://boisestate.zoom.us/j/92994002201 ABSTRACT |    This talk will provide an overview of the field of printed electronics and ongoing research efforts in this area at the Air Force Research Laboratory Sensors Directorate. Printed electronics is a subset of additive manufacturing that uses technologies such as inkjet and aerosol jet printing and various other direct-write tools to additively print electronic devices on flexible, conformal and traditional substrate platforms. The AFRL Sensors Directorate is currently exploring this technology for application areas such as RF circuits and antennas, optoelectronic devices, sensors, and rapid prototyping. Challenges such as post-processing, repeat...

The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Boise State University invites you to attend a free public seminar hosted on Zoom. This week's seminar features  Dr. Ben Arazi, Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ben Gurion University. September 23 @ 10:30 am  https://boisestate.zoom.us/j/92994002201 ABSTRACT |  Blockchain is the technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. It has expanded to redefining the meaning of trust, authorization, and other fundamental security issues in open networks. The principle is skipping here the need for trusted third parties. Blockchain is rated as #1 in the LinkedIn list of “skills companies need most in 2020”. According to Forbes, “Blockchain shows massive potential for the Telecom industry.” Blockchain serves here in subscription identity; settling accounts; roaming management; identity-as-a-service and data management’ and more. This seminar will focus on research activities in these areas. ...

The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Boise State University invites you to attend a free public seminar hosted on Zoom.  This week's seminar features ECE PhD Candidate Sohel Rana. September 16 @ 10:30 am  https://boisestate.zoom.us/j/92994002201 ABSTRACT |  As traditional electronic systems are beginning to hit a wall in terms of interconnect speed and performance, it is believed that optics presents a blue sky with immense potential for technology innovations and widespread adoption in the areas of communication, security, energy, sensing, computing, etc in the not-too-distant future. Optical fiber systems have found a plethora of promising and potential applications in significant fields due to their low loss and wide bandwidth. Following these, we are developing fiber optic sensors that may survive in harsh environments such as high radiation field and high temperature and provide useful information regarding temperature, pressure, and strain. SPEAKER ...

The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Boise State University invites you to attend a free public seminar hosted on Zoom. This week's seminar features Dr. Rene Rodriguez, a professor of physical chemistry at Idaho State University. September 9 @ 10:30 am  https://boisestate.zoom.us/j/92994002201 ABSTRACT |  Raman Spectroscopy probes the vibrational energy states of a material. Since the vibrational states are characteristic of a particular material, Raman spectra of substances like reactant gases in a PECVD process or the thin film which is deposited during the process, provide information about the identities and or concentrations of the substances. Experimentally Raman analysis can be performed in a coherent fashion for harsh environments or as a spontaneous process for more routine analysis.  This seminar will include an introduction to spontaneous and coherent Raman spectroscopy followed by two examples from the PECVD studies performed in our lab. In on...

The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Boise State University invites you to attend a free public seminar hosted on Zoom. This week's seminar features Jon Scaggs, Laboratory Safety Specialist at Boise State University. August 26 @ 10:30 am  https://boisestate.zoom.us/j/92994002201 ABSTRACT |  Creating a robust and comprehensive safety program is the responsibility of everyone from the university administrators to the students working in each lab. A large part of this program is to ensure those that work in the labs receive appropriate and adequate lab safety training in accordance with the national hazardous communication standards. The annual safety seminar ensures everyone can recognize risks and hazard s associated with work in a lab and be able to analyze these risks for all associated first- and second-order impacts. Additionally, mitigation strategies are explained to allow lab operators to develop their own specific to their work. Lastly, everyone shoul...

Adam Croteau is pursuing his master of science in electrical and computer engineering at Boise State University.  Join us at 10 AM on Friday, July 10 , for a presentation of Croteau's thesis  Design and Characterization of Low-Temperature Co-Fired Ceramic Dielectric Barrier Discharge Plasma Arrays for Killing and Removing Bacterial Biofilms.   Image of a Floating Plasma Line Cold atmospheric pressure (CAP) plasma has found novel uses in the electronics, medical, and food processing industries. CAP devices that can remove or etch away bacterial biofilm are free from harmful cleaning chemicals and completely renewable. Devices such as these represent the next step in medical and agricultural sanitation and disinfection and are currently under testing and optimization at Boise State University.  Image of a Plasma Array This research highlights the current state-of-the-art in dielectric barrier discharge CAP devices at Boise State. Single line discharge devices and plasm...

ECE PhD Candidate Sumedha Dahl to present her dissertation The Effect of Radiation on Memristor-Based Electronic Spiking Neural Networks  on Wednesday, June 10. Spiking neural networks are designed to learn spatio-temporal patterns representing 25 and 100-pixel characters. Two-terminal resistive memory devices (memristors) are used as synapses to manipulate conductivity paths in the network. Spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) learning behavior results in pattern learning and is achieved using biphasic shaped pre- and post-synaptic spikes. A TiO2 based non-linear drift model in Verilog-A is used to implement memristor behavior and is modified to include experimentally observed effects of state-altering, ionizing, and off-state degradation radiation on the device. Effects of state-altering radiation on the STDP learning rule, system stability, and pattern learning ability of the spiking neural network are observed. In general, radiation interaction events distort the STDP learn...

ECE PhD Candidate Nishatul Majid to present his dissertation Design of an Offline Handwriting Recognition System Tested on the Bangla and Korean Scripts  on Monday, April 27. This dissertation presents a flexible and robust offline handwriting recognition system that is tested on the Bangla and Korean scripts. Offline handwriting recognition is one of the most challenging and yet to be solved problems in machine learning. While a few popular scripts (like Latin) have received a lot of attention, many other widely used scripts (like Bangla) have seen very little progress. Features such as connectedness, vowels structured as diacritics make it a challenging script to recognize. A simple and robust design for offline recognition is presented which not only works reliably but also can be used for almost any writing system. The framework has been rigorously tested for Bangla and demonstrated how it can be transformed to apply to other scripts through experiments on the Korean script...

ECE PhD Candidate Shelton Jacinto to present his dissertation Towards Hybrid Quantum-Classical Ciphersuite Primitives April 6 at 11 AM. With the dawn of quantum computing in scale, current secure classical primitives are at risk. Protocols with an immediate risk of breach are those built on the advanced encryption standard (AES) and Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA) algorithms. To secure classical data against a quantum adversary, a secure communications ciphersuite must be developed. The ciphersuite developed in this work contains components that do not necessarily rely on quantum key distribution (QKD), due to recent insecurities found when a QKD-based protocol is faced with a quantum eavesdropper. A set of quantum-classical ciphersuite primitives were developed using less common mathematical methods where a quantum adversary will take a non-deterministic polynomial-time to find a solution, but still easy enough for communicating classical computers to evaluate. The methods util...

The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Boise State University invites you to attend a free public seminar featuring   Dr. Costas Kolias , assistant professor of computer science at the University of Idaho.  Kolias is scheduled to present his talk Identifying Unauthorized Hardware Substitutions in the Supply Chain Jungle .   ABSTRACT | In this talk, we will present a system for branding digital device components based on the EM signals typically emitted during their normal operational cycles. The signals emitted contain digital artifacts that are unique and may act as an identifier of a particular device component (e.g. a CPU) or the entire device. In real-life scenarios, this “biometrical” fingerprinting of hardware has to be conducted only once. The fingerprinting could be conducted by network administrators as part of an initial device configuration process with minimum additional maintenance time and cost. In subsequent stages, devices can be “a...

Free Public Seminar - Wednesdays at 10:30 AM - Micron Engineering Center, Room 114 Featuring Andong Yue, ECE PhD Student Simulation of an Industrial Magnetron Using Cathode Modulation  ABSTRACT |  Magnetrons are highly efficient high-power microwave sources that can be phase-locked using external systems. Results of a simulation study of the L3Harris CWM75KW industrial strapped magnetron will be presented. This study is part of a larger project covering the feasibility of achieving phase control and faster startup in the magnetron via controlled electron injection using gated field emission arras (GFEAs). The device was simulated by using the 3-D PIC code VSim at its typical operating conditions. The startup behavior was examined with 1) no priming of any kind, 2) RF Priming, and 3) cathode modulation. With no priming, no oscillations were seen up to 300 ns; with RF priming for the first 50 ns, oscillations were then observed at 150 ns; and with the cathode, m...

The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Boise State University invites you to attend a free public seminar featuring   ECE Doctoral Candidate Nishatul Majid. ABSTRACT | Offline handwriting recognition is a decades-old problem in the field of machine learning and it is still challenging researchers today. There are solutions for various subsets of this problem but not a whole system that can recognize handwritten text. Although popular scripts like Latin receive much more attention than other scripts, there are no unifying frameworks that work for any writing system. This talk presents a simple, intuitive and yet extremely effective design is presented that can handle this problem. The design has been tested with Bangla and Korean and should work for almost any other script. SPEAKER BIO | Nishatul Majid is in his final year of study as a doctoral candidate in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Boise State University. He completed his bachelor'...

Free Public Seminar - Wednesdays at 10:30 AM  -  Micron Engineering Center, Room 114 Featuring Nicole McFarlane, Associate Professor in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at the University of Tennessee  Technologies for Biosensing Applications Lab-on-chip and implantable sensor systems have been widely sought as a means to provide long-term minimally invasive, portable, and low-cost sensing solutions. The University of Texas's micriobioelectronics lab combines advanced microfabrication techniques with CMOS readout to enable the development of low-cost sensing systems. One example being the Glucose monitoring system. The Glucose monitoring system combines insulin pumps and control algorithms, which can act as an artificial pancreas (AP). Key challenges of implementing an AP system include data security, improving glucose sensor sensitivity at the microscale, integrating electrodes with low-power, low-noise readout, modeling and predicting glucose...

Free Public Seminar - Wednesdays at 10:30 AM  -  Micron Engineering Center, Room 114 Featuring Jon Scaggs, Laboratory Safety Specialist at Boise State University Laboratory and Work-Space Safety Creating a robust and comprehensive safety program is the responsibility of everyone from the university administrators to the students working in each lab. A large part of this program is to ensure those that work in the labs receive appropriate and adequate lab safety training in accordance with the national hazardous communication standards. The annual safety seminar ensures everyone can recognize risks and hazard s associated with work in a lab and be able to analyze these risks for all associated first- and second-order impacts. Additionally, mitigation strategies are explained to allow lab operators to develop their own specific to their work. Lastly, everyone should know what do in case there is an emergency in the lab, the building, or in general. Reviewing each sp...

Free Public Seminar - Wednesdays at 10:30 AM  -  Micron Engineering Center, Room 114 Featuring Randy K. Rannow, Engineering Director at Silverdraft Supercomputing and IEEE Boise Section Chair Ethics, Privacy, Bias, Transparency, and Standards Development: A High-Performance Computing Perspective With the ever-evolving use of artificial intelligence, ethics-related matters (privacy, bias, transparency) are surfacing as the speed of innovation (especially in high-performance computing) continues to increase. There are many complex ethics-related matters to be considered, including the various standards development organizations that have initiated activities to further explore ethics-related matters. This presentation will provide an overview of a standard development process that adheres to fair and equitable processes, ensure the highest quality outputs, and reinforces the market relevance of standards. Specific IEEE standards activities related to Ethically Ali...

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boise State welcomes you to join us for a free public seminar on January 22 at 10:30 AM in the  Micron Engineering Center , room 114. This week's featured speaker is Dr. Sin Ming Loo, Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Boise State University Safety in a Connected World: Managing Security in the Internet-of-Things In today's world, we are always connected by the internet-of-things (IoT). It seems we crave information and constant status updates. Some find it necessary to check in on houses or pets. Others enjoy the convenience of unlocking doors or turning on lights with a smartphone. What many may not realize is that IoT significantly increases exposure to the internet, creating security vulnerabilities. Each connected device is a potential target and with a large number of connected devices, attackers have many opportunities to steal personal information. While we can't predict how ...

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boise State Welcomes you to join us for a free public seminar on December 4 at 10:30 AM in the Ruch Engineering Building , room 103. This week's featured speaker is Allen L. Garner,  Associate Professor of Nuclear Engineering at Purdue University Explore Current Research on the Theoretical and Experimental Unification of Electron Emission Mechanisms The reduction in the size of vacuum electronics, such as carbon nanotube field emitters, and the growing popularity of microplasmas for numerous applications encourages exploration of the impact of nanoscale behavior on electron emission and gas breakdown. While Townsend avalanche drives conventional gas breakdown, field emission drives gas breakdown at microscale. At smaller gap distances, electron emission transitions to space-charge limited and, ultimately, quantum driven. This talk summarizes the use of theory and experiment to unify these different emission mechanis...