UT ECE professors Mikhail Belkin and Neal Hall have been named recipients of 2012 DARPA Young Faculty Awards. According to DARPA, "The objective of the DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) program is to identify and engage rising research stars in junior faculty positions at U.S. academic institutions and expose them to Department of Defense needs as well as DARPA’s program development process.

UT ECE professor Mattan Erez has been named a recipient of an Early Career Research Award from the Department of Energy for his work on programming and execution model support for resiliency. Dr. Erez is one of 68 scientists selected for the five years award out of 850 candidates.

Four student teams in the EE 382V Data Converter course were awarded Texas Instruments Outstanding Student Designer Awards on May 7th for their excellent performance in the final project. The winners were awarded by Texas Instruments experts Tom Vrotsos, Tim Fischer and Mark McClung. Congratulations to the following winners:

1st Prize:
Peijun Wang and Kathryn Loeffler

2nd Prize:
Stefan Mastovich

3rd Prize:
Ben Bright and Kyoungtae Lee

UT ECE professor John Goodenough has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. According to the NAS, membership is a widely accepted mark of excellence in science and is considered one of the highest honors that a scientist can receive.

The University of Texas at Austin student branch of IEEE has been named the 2012 Outstanding Large Student Branch in Region 5.

Founded in 1947, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Student Branch at The University of Texas at Austin is a student-run organization which promotes the interests of undergraduate and graduate electrical/computer engineering students on and off-campus.

The University of Texas at Austin Electrical and Computer Engineering Department (UT ECE), a top-ranked department, provides a unique opportunity and a supportive environment for academic/industry partnership through our Senior Design Projects. This capstone coursework provides academic excellence as well as key corporate benefits as teams focus on solving open-ended problems submitted by industrial collaborators.

UT ECE graduate student Michelle Saad has been named as a recipient of a 2012 US Corporate Intel PhD Fellowship. The Intel Corporation Ph.D. Fellowship Program awards fellowships to Ph.D. candidates pursuing leading-edge work in fields related to Intel's business and research interests. These students are also prioritized for internships and hiring within the company. This is a highly competitive program with a limited number of fellowships awarded annually. Michele is studying under the supervision of Dr. Al Bovik.

UT ECE graduate student Bei Yu has been named as a recipient of a 2012 IBM PhD Fellowship. The IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Awards Program is an intensely competitive worldwide program, which honors exceptional Ph.D. students who have an interest in solving problems that are important to IBM and fundamental to innovation in many academic disciplines and areas of study.

UT ECE graduate student Geoffrey Luke has been selected as a recipient of the prestigious NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award for Individual Predoctoral Fellows. Geoff is working with Prof. Stas Emelianov on the detection of micrometastases in the sentinel lymph node in the BME track in ECE and awarded a recruiting TA position.

UT ECE graduate student Jason Soric recently won Best Presentation at the 2012 Mini-Symposium on Wireless and Microwave Circuits and Systems held at Baylor University on March 23. Jason presented a paper on Microwave Applications of Epsilon-Near-Zero Metamaterials. Jason is supervised by Dr. Andrea Alù in the Metamaterials and Plasmonics Research Group.