ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING TODAY

Assistant professor of electrical & computer engineering and IDoTeach, Dr. Noah Salzman has been awarded funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a new project designed to transform undergraduate engineering education. The three-year grant provides nearly $600K to support curriculum development. The goal of Salzman’s project is to integrate concepts of sustainable and resilient design into engineering and construction management curricula. Sustainable engineering designs balance economic, ecological, and societal needs by being responsive to community impact, public health, and the environment. Resilient designs are durable. In adverse situations, they continue to function, resist damage, and recover quickly.  Students need training and hands-on experience applying these concepts to their engineering solutions. To help students develop these design skills, Salzman’s team plans to develop a set of active learning modules that incorporate sustainable and resili...

ECE Professor Sin Ming Loo recently coauthored an article in T&D World, a publication p roviding critical information related to utility design, operations, maintenance, and safety. "I n our increasingly connected world, we need problem solvers with cybersecurity perspectives," says Loo.   Cyber education is for everyone. Operators need to know how to stay safe in a world increasingly driven and controlled by technology. Read the full article here >>

Sin Ming Loo, a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Boise State, was recently quoted in a story on cybersecurity education initiatives by KIVI news.  Catch the full story here .

Dr. Sin Ming Loo, a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boise State, has been appointed to serve as a faculty lead in cybersecurity at the Idaho National Lab.  >> Read more

A digital image processing expert from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Dr. Elisa Barney is currently working on a facial recognition research project with collaborators Dr. Don Winiecki and ECE Ph.D. candidate Sara Sedighi. Barney was in Las Vegas, Nevada last week to showcase IEEE student programs at the Consumer Electronics Show. While at the conference, KPOO radio host Harison Chastang interviewed Barney about her project and the potentially adverse effects facial recognition technology can have on diverse communities. Harrison Chastang KPOO The Computer Show streamed live from Las Vegas on Jan. 7. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/5gcyRyQbGNA

Students Setting up a Tetrahedron Sensor Structure to Monitor Gunshot in Field Tests Left to right: Grady Anderson, John Viera, Ian McLennan Field tests are underway for a transdisciplinary research team at Boise State. Led by professor of electrical and computer engineering Dr. Sin Ming Loo, and geosciences professor Dr. HP Marshall, the team is working to develop a competitively-priced, self-contained system with the ability to pinpoint infrasound. What on earth is infrasound? Much like the light spectrum which ranges beyond human perception (e.g. infrared), sound is also a spectrum. Infrasound refers to those sound waves with frequencies below the lower limit of human hearing. This month, the team is testing their work at Black's Creek Public Shooting Range. Special thanks to Don Sturtevant and John Keane for their help at the Black's Creek facility.  Spending a sunny day at a shooting range sounds like fun, but these critical tests also provide students with im...

Dr. Sin Ming Loo, a professor in the Department of  Electrical and Computer Engineering is passionate about sensors, systems, and the internet of things.  Now that sensors embedded in smart buildings or other physical systems have become a common vector of attack for hackers, the security of cyber-physical systems has become Loo's new favorite thing. He's been working with Boise State's Division of Extended Studies to create a new online certificate program that will provide broad access to  cyber-physical systems security training. Boise State recently received a grant of $833,958 from the Idaho Workforce Development Council for the development of Loo's innovative online cyber-physical systems security certificate.  >> Read More

Two faculty members in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering have each been awarded $75,000 from the Idaho State Board of Education’s Higher Education Research Council incubation fund, which financially supports projects that make technologies from research and development commercially available. Read more >>

Today's electronics, from cell phones to medical instrumentation, require a fairly moderate environment in order to operate at an optimal level. Subject a semiconductor device to an extreme environment (e.g. temperatures above 300° F) such as may be found on an engine, in a power generation facility, or in space, and device performance tends to degrade significantly.  These same devices perform poorly in high radiation environments as well and require radiation “hardening” for survival in space applications.  One possible solution for harsh environments may be v acuum electron transistors, which can operate at very high temperatures and under extreme levels of radiation.  A team of researchers led by Dr. Tayo Akinwande from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is studying the potential to use vacuum transistors in such environments.   Akinwande's team includes  Drs. Karl Berggren, Tomas Palacios, and Luca Daniels from MIT; Dr. John Ca...

Thanks to a NASA EPSCoR grant, electrical and computer engineering (ECE) faculty Drs. Jim Browning, Nirmala Kandadai, and Harish Subbaraman are teaming up with ECE alumnus and materials science faculty Dr. Dave Estrada, and biochemistry professor Dr. Ken Cornell. The team aims to ascertain the feasibility of plasma-jet application in space with their three-year $700K grant. Read more about the team's project  

Dr. Elisa Barney Smith, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boise State University, recently gave a talk at a local TEDx event on the topic of "How Digital Technology Helps Solve Mysteries in the Humanities".  Throughout her career as a professor, Dr. Barney Smith has worked to apply image processing and machine learning (a more accurate word for “Artificial Intelligence”) to many problems in many fields. She loves working with students in and outside the classroom, and is very involved with the electrical engineering and computer science professional society, IEEE, or the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. In her highly visual talk, Dr. Barney Smith shares selected stories and images from the wide range of humanities projects she has worked on during her career, illustrating how technology can uncover new information from historical documents,from WWI postcards to medieval manuscripts to the Dead Sea Scrolls. You can view the full talk ...

Maria Mitkova, a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Boise State University recently attended the 25th assembly of the Silver Jubilee Advanced Materials Congress held in Stockholm, Sweden. Mitkova was honored at the event, receiving the International Association for Advanced Materials (IAAM) medal. Dr. Maria Mitkova (left) Receives IAAM Medal Ea ch year IAAM recognizes high-impact research and innovations which promote the advancement of materials. Recognized by the IAAM for her outstanding contributions to the advancement of materials, Mitkova says she is proud to have received the award.   “I have great opportunities to develop my research in a college known for its innovation, inclusion, and integrity,” Mitkova says, “where I am surrounded by a wonderful team of faculty and students.” Dr. Mitkova’s current research interests are in the area of chalcogenide glasses and thin film microstructures.  Learn more about ongoing work onl...

Elisa Barney, Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Boise State University, and doctoral student Nishatul Majid attended the International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition (ICFHR) in Niagara Falls. Doctoral student Nishatul Majid (right) discusses research results with his advisor Dr. Barney Majid presented a poster along with a peer-reviewed paper he co-authored with Dr. Barney, "Introducing the Boise State Bangla Handwriting Dataset and an Efficient Offline Recognizer of Isolated Bangla Characters." Dr. Barney was a co-chair of the Tutorials and Workshops committee and will be a program chair representing the Americas for ICFHR 2020 to be held in Dortmund Germany in September 2020.