Swanson School Electrical & Computer Engineering Fall 2012 Newsletter

Annual Publication of the University of Pittsburgh | Swanson School of Engineering

Electrical & computer engineering fa l l 2 0 1 2

From the

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Chair

elcome to a glimpse of the exciting things happening in Pitt’s dynamic Electrical and Computer Engineering programs. Even as this newsletter was going to print we learned that our undergraduate programs in electrical engineering and computer engineering (the latter a joint program with Computer Science) have both received full six-year accreditation by ABET. As you’ll read, we’re full of new ideas and directions as this issue introduces you to our most recent additions to the faculty along with some of the awards and accomplishments of our students over the last six months. With all of the new, we also said “farewell” to our esteemed colleague (and former Chairman), Professor Joel Falk, who retired in May. You’ll see that he’s off to “the good life.”

As we’re now launching a new academic year, the ECE Department will continue to redefine our identity as we’ve chosen the following areas into which to focus our major research initiatives: Bio/ Medical Electronics and Signal Processing, Energy and Electric Power Systems and Technologies,

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ECE NEWS Similarly, our undergraduate educational programs are evolving as we’re looking at curriculum reform and new methods of education delivery. Even now, the vast majority of undergraduates are taking advantage of the enriching experiences that Pitt offers such as Co-Op, undergraduate research, and international experiences. These topics will be the focus of future newsletters.

Finally I welcome hearing from you, our alumni, friends, colleagues, and associates as you learn about what’s new and coming at Pitt ECE. Thank you for your support of and interest in our programs.

Sincerely,

Nano-Electronics and Nano-Photonics, and Cyber Systems and Technologies. While our faculty will continue to maintain expertise in the traditional core areas of electrical engineering and computer engineering, these application focus areas will become “hallmarks” of the Department. To accompany this, we’ve had the great fortune to be able to grow the size and quality of our graduate program – look inside for the story on this.

William Stanchina, PhD Chairman and Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Inside

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Feature Story:

Dr. Kartik Mohanram

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Joel Falk, Enjoying Retirement

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Graduate Research: Raghav Khanna

Growing Graduate Enrollment.............................. 2

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$24,000 DAC Scholarship

PROFILE: Dr. Ervin Sedji’c....................................... 4 New Faculty.......................................................4-5 Student Accomplishments..................................6-7 Embedded Systems Goes Social....... Back Cover

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Joel Falk, Enjoying Retirement and the Golden State’s Golden Gate Dr. Falk told NASA that he couldn’t do the work in an industrial setting, but could from Pitt – triggering about ten years of collaboration between Pitt and NASA Goddard.

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fter working with the Swanson School of Engineering for thirty-seven years, Professor Joel Falk retired and moved home to Marin County, California, in May 2012.

While attending graduate school at Stanford (1965-70), Dr. Falk became interested in lasers and nonlinear optics and began working in industry in anial optics research group after graduation. His work in industrial optics continued at Pitt when he joined the electrical engineering department in September 1975.

Before Dr. Falk left his industrial-based optics research group, a NASA astronomer approached him about extending a nonlinear optical technique that Falk developed. This work looked at non-visible infrared signals by converting them to the visible.

NASA wanted to follow the infrared signature of a particular comet, Kohoutek, as it neared earth.

After six years in Pittsburgh, Dr. Falk was on a backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon with friends from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). They suggested that he join LLNL for a sabbatical year. His time at LLNL led to work at Pitt in yet another laser, nonlinear optical research area – the use of optical phase conjugation for correction of image aberrations.

Dr. Falk’s last professional research work at Pitt involved collaboration with Dr. Steven Woodruff, a senior staff member at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in Morgantown, WV. They pursued the use of an old technique, Raman scattering, using a new implementation of scattering inside of optical waveguides to produce an instrument useful for quantitative analysis of gases – especially the hydrocarbons used for fuels. They published about a dozen papers together and have a patent pending on this work. An optical instrumentation company took an option on the underlying intellectual property and expects to market a device based on this work. Dr. Falk wants to recognize his students Michael Buric, who now works at NETL, and Steve Biedrzycki, who enrolled in a PhD program at UC Santa Barbara, for their help in his work at Pitt.

ECE Graduate Enrollment and Net Graduate Tuition

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ver the past five years, the Swanson School’s ECE graduate program’s enrollment gradually gained more attention. The program’s enrollment nearly doubled from 85 students in fall 2007 to 156 students in fall 2011. Of those, 92 pursued MS degrees and 64 pursued PhDs. “This year,” said Dr. Mahmoud El Nokali, Associate Professor in ECE, “we awarded

Dr. Falk says, “I had a good time at Pitt; I enjoyed my research work, my teaching, as well as my time as chairman of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In recent years, I have been involved with undergraduate education and for the past ten years served as a Program Evaluator for the national engineering accreditation organization, ABET.” Aside from Dr. Falk’s consistency at Pitt, he says that another thirty-five year constant in his life was noon-time running. “In the 1970s and ’80s, I’d run five to eight miles each noon-time and compete in 10k races on many weekends. Every Saturday morning, I’d run with the same four or five friends. As we aged, the running distances diminished and the running became more of an excuse for friends to meet. We continued to run – or pretended to run – every Saturday morning until I left Pittsburgh. You could find us at Bruegger’s in Squirrel Hill after our run, eating bagels, drinking coffee and solving the world’s problems,” he remembers.

Dr. Falk’s move back to the West Coast was not unexpected. He says “When my wife, Vicki, and I got married in 1983, I promised her that she would live in Pittsburgh for a while then we would move back to the West Coast.” In May, she collected on that promise. Now, he just needs to find a new running group and bagel shop to support his plan to save the world.

Continues to Grow

eight PhD degrees and an unprecedented 48 MS degrees – 14 of which were thesis option. Of the 14 MS graduates, seven decided to continue their PhD studies in the department.”

fall 2011 term. Only 127 student applicants gained admission to the ECE grad program, a 14.4 percent admission rate. The department hopes to gradually decrease the admission rate to a single-digit percentile.

ECE received and reviewed 881 applicants for admission to the department’s graduate program between December 2011 and April 2012 for the fall 2012 term – a 36.8 percent increase since the admission review for the

The diversity of the graduate student body includes students from the U.S.A., China, India, Taiwan, South Korea, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, France, Romania and Libya.

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The Quest for Circuit Reliability –

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with Dr. Kartik Mohanram

artik Mohanram began working as an associate professor with the Swanson School’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in July 2011. He earned his bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, Mumbai, India in 1998. Later, he moved to Texas where he earned both his master of science degree and PhD in computer engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and graduated in 2003.

Dr. Mohanram’s research focuses on fundamental problems in the theory of computation. But while his work involves computer science and engineering, device physics and materials science, it also involves the study of regulatory processes and cellular dynamics.

“Broadly, my research seeks to explain the effects of noise inherent to computation and its impact on system function and robustness. As a PhD student, I specialized in circuit design and computational methods to optimize them at very large scales,” explains Dr. Mohanram. “However, as the transistors used to build these circuits get smaller, they become increasingly susceptible to noise. I completed my dissertation looking into fault tolerant solutions to make them robust, much in the way that a bicyclist carries a spare tube and assorted gear to deal with emergencies on the road.”

Dr. Mohanram diversified his research through abstractions based on discrete modeling and optimization techniques – bridging into domains such as circuit design, low-dimensional electronic materials and computational biology.

“I believe that we, as a community, have only scratched the surface in the domains that I work in and that there is a long, but rewarding, journey ahead of us. Early in my research career, circuit reliability was an afterthought. But, today, it is a first-class citizen alongside power and performance, impacting everyone from Intel to Google.” For example, Dr. Mohanram cites graphene, once a novel material that now may replace other materials, such as silicon, in niche areas like commercial electronics.

He considers his work with graphene electronics and new circuit designs as one of the major highlights of his career.

“Through closely coordinated theoretical, computational, design, and experimental efforts, we have demonstrated graphene circuits with reduced complexity, larger bandwidth, higher frequency, and lower power consumption than stateof-the-art circuits implemented with conventional semiconductor materials,” Dr. Mohanram says. “This work, supported through multiple NSF grants, was widely covered by Nature, MIT Technology Review, IEEE Spectrum, and other technology portals.”

“Circuits and biology were thought to be polar opposites in radically different domains – today, one could almost argue that the cross-fertilization of concepts and solutions is mature and that we ought to look into new pastures. I am excited to have contributed my part over the past decade and look forward to more challenges in the years to come.”

Kartik Mohanram’s research addresses fundamental problems in the theory of computation using unreliable circuits, with applications to robust design for scaled CMOS and novel low-dimensional nanomaterials such as graphene and carbon nanotubes. His work bridges computer science, computer engineering, device physics, and materials science, and also carries over to the study of regulatory processes and cellular dynamics in interdisciplinary fields such as computational systems biology.

His research has received support from both government and industrial sources, including the NSF, Texas Instruments, Fujitsu Laboratories of America, Intel, ARM, Advanced Micro Devices, and Xilinx. His work has been recognized with the NSF CAREER Award and the A. Richard Newton Graduate Scholarship; has been nominated for the best paper award at the International Conference on Computer-aided Design; listed in the top ten downloaded articles of the IEEE Transactions on Computer-aided Design, IEEE Electron Device Letters, and IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology ; and covered by MIT Technology Review, IEEE Spectrum, Nature, EE Times, Physics World, and other technology portals.

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Graduate Research Highlight –

The Impact of Engineering on Human Life

Profile: Dr. Ervin Sejdić

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ersonal struggles or dramatic experiences in our lives often push us toward certain career paths. Dr. Ervin Sejdi´c, an assistant professor in the ECE department, first began to consider the biomedical applications of engineering when his mother was diagnosed with cancer. After observing the oncologists and other doctors involved in his mother’s care, he realized that engineers have great influence on health care.

“That was the first initial prompt or sign that showed me that as an engineer you can really make a contribution to society,” he explains, “… doctors play a major role in patient care, but it’s actually with the help of engineers that they can provide this level of care.”

Dr. Sejdi´c earned his PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, where he specialized in signal processing data analysis. He then searched for a post-doctoral position that would allow him to focus on engineering devices for patient care. The Prism lab headed by Dr. Tom Chau at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital/University of Toronto offered a position focusing on developing a new device for detection of swallowing difficulties. This evolved into a two-and-a-half year position with more responsibilities than expected. He not only worked on detection of swallowing difficulties in pediatric and geriatric populations, but also analysis of human actions – like walking and handwriting. Dr. Sejdi´c expanded his

research horizons during his research fellowship at Harvard Medical School where he realized that he needs to trace the effects of diseases and aging on functional outcomes (e.g., walking) and discover ways to predict complications earlier and/or to determine how therapy will affect the patient.

“My biggest goal as a researcher is to develop devices that can be used with patients, not just developing for the sake of getting a new grant. I’m interested in actually making sure my research helps people,” Dr. Sejdi´c says. He realizes that to achieve his goal, his career required support from collaboration with a strong medical center as well as quality faculty and students, which is why he chose the Swanson School. Because of previous research efforts, Dr. Sejdi´c was already familiar with some Swanson School faculty. He also decided that the location of UPMC in association with the Swanson School would make it much simpler to complete medically-related research. But he recognizes the Swanson School for its students, too. “Pitt students are excellent students. I was amazed by the things done by the undergrads,” he says.

Dr. Sejdi´c currently has four undergraduate students working with him on real research projects and he’s welcome to mentoring more. He’s always looking for active collaboration with medical professionals and engineers as well as attracting eager students for research who have an initial desire to make a change in society. He started the iMed lab at the Swanson School through generous support from Pitt. Through the iMed lab, he will work toward quantifying the effects of disease and aging on the human body. He has already begun collaborating with engineers and clinicians associated with Pitt and UPMC on a number of different issues (e.g., walking and swallowing).

ECE Welcomes Two New Faculty Members this Fall

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r. Hai (Helen) Li received her BS and MS degrees from Tsinghua University, China. After earning her PhD from Purdue University in 2004 she joined industry and worked for Qualcomm Inc., Intel Corp., and Seagate Technology. In 2009, Dr. Li joined the ECE Department at Polytechnic Institute of New York University as an assistant professor. Her research interests include architecture/circuit/device co-optimization for green computing systems, emerging memory design, neuromorphic hardware, and 3D integration technology and design. Dr. Li has

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published more than 70 technical papers in refereed journals and conferences, filed 59 U.S. patents (41 granted) and one Seagate Trade Secret. Her new book “Nonvolatile Memory Design: Magnetic, Resistive, and Phase Changing” was published with CRC Press in 2011. She also authored three book chapters in the related area. Dr. Li received two best paper awards and three best paper nominations from ISQED, ISLPED, DATE, and ASPDAC. She was the recipient of NSF Career Award in 2011.

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Raghav Khanna

efore completing his master of science in electrical and computer engineering in August 2010, Raghav Khanna completed a graduate research project focused on developing low-cost point-of-care diagnostic tools for rapid pathogen detection. He chose his research topic as a practical application of his education and also as a way to find a useful solution to a societal problem.

Current equipment used in diagnostic testing for detecting pathogen infected DNA is very expensive and proves difficult to transport. Low-resource settings require equipment that physicians can easily transport and use for the least cost. Mr. Khanna’s research focused on using sustainable, off-the-shelf electrical components to create a time-saving and economical pathogen diagnostic technology. The technology is based on an innovative method in DNA amplification termed “loopmediated isothermal amplification.” Mr. Khanna’s research involved the mixture of DNA, reactants and DNA-binding fluorescent dye that is heated in a test tube and then exposed to a UV lightemitting diode (LED) to cause a chemical reaction that exposes pathogen-infected DNA. Ultimately, infected DNA amplifies while uninfected DNA does not. The level of infection is

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determined by using inexpensive opto-electronic photodetection circuitry to capture the resulting fluorescence of the sample as it being illuminated by the UV LED. The fluorescent signal can then be tracked by a doctor through common gadgets like a smartphone or iPad. “The fluorescence intensity change over time is detected and stored into a non-volatile flash memory,” explains Mr. Khanna, “a doctor can view the characteristic curve of the amplification on his or her cell phone and make a diagnosis.”

Alex Jones, PhD, associate professor of ECE, and William Stanchina, PhD, ECE chairman and professor, advised Mr. Khanna during his research.

Abhay Vats, MD, a nephrologist at UPMC Children’s Hospital, also acted as a principal investigator in Mr. Khanna’s research. He acknowledges Drs. Stanchina, Jones and Vats for their expertise and reminders that the purpose of science and for his research project is to solve problems that are affecting people all over the world. “The most important thing about being a scientist is to be able to utilize what has been taught in the classroom and apply it in a useful and pragmatic manner, which benefits society,” says Mr. Khanna.

“This project accomplishes that and is thus very fulfilling for me.”

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homas E. McDermott, PhD, PE is assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dr. McDermott specializes in circuit simulation, electric power distribution systems, distributed wind and solar integration, lightning protection, power quality and power electronics applications. He is also President of MelTran, a power system consulting company based in Pittsburgh. He specializes in applied R&D for distribution systems and smart grid applications, distributed resource interconnection, custom software development, and electromagnetic transient studies. Dr. McDermott leads the development of distributed wind and PV software tools for

Mr. Khanna is currently pursuing his PhD in Pitt’s Power and Energy program working toward his PhD in electrical engineering and hopes to graduate by December 2013. His PhD advisors include Dr. Stanchina, Dr. Zhi Hong Mao, and Dr. Gregory Reed, director of Pitt’s Electric Power Initiative.

Mr. Khanna’s PhD research involves researching the integration of advanced semiconductor technology with novel adaptive control schemes in order to maximize the generated power of photovoltaic systems. This work will potentially provide a roadmap towards implementing robust and efficient power converters which are interfaced with photovoltaic systems thus resulting in optimal energy distribution.

UWIG, and contributes to IEEE P1547.7 and P1547.8. He currently chairs IEEE PES Working Groups on Recommended Practices for Distribution System Analysis and Wind/Solar Plant Interconnection Requirements. He has previously chaired the Pittsburgh Section IEEE and the Working Group on Estimating Lightning Performance of Transmission Lines. He is also a task force leader in Cigre WG C4.502 on system performance impacts of long AC cables.

Dr. McDermott is a registered professional engineer in Pennsylvania. He has a BS and MEng in electric power from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a PhD in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech.

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ECE Highlights

2011-2012 Student Accomplishments

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Ms. Azime Can, Teaching Assistant Awardee The annual ECE Outstanding TA awardees are nominated by students. Ms. Can is a PhD student in signal processing. “I believe, the reason many students appreciate Azime is her honest desire to help them comprehend the material in [the less popular courses that she’s taught]… she is more than willing to explain the difficult problems or the hard-to-grasp concepts without a threatening or condescending attitude. To be able to do this requires commitment to teaching and knowledge of the material in those courses,” explains Can’s advisor Professor Chaparro. “But it must also be the students’ sense that they can count on her: she is available beyond her required office hours. Beyond all of this, Azime has the kind of pleasant personality that puts her students at ease.

As her advisor, I have greatly benefitted for her help in my teaching and for her excellent performance in research.”

Ms. Yi Xu, Research Assistant Awardee The annual ECE Outstanding RA awardees receive nominations from their advisor(s) and other members of the department.

Nominees for the award must be enrolled in a PhD program with a high QPA and a record of publications. Ms. Xu’s advisor, Dr. Jun Yang, and Dr. Yiran Chen, a member of her PhD dissertation committee, nominated her for the award. Drs. Yang and Chen describe Xu as an extremely creative and motivated researcher who produces original, high-quality work. She’s most praised for her original research with network-on-chip (NoC) for chip processors to design a 3D chip. “I think Yi’s contribution is now beyond her own research. She will become a bridge not only for me to

establish more connections with industry, but also for the junior students to have more employment opportunity in the future. I feel extremely fortunate to have her as my PhD Student,” wrote Dr. Yang in her nomination.

Grants and Scholarships Mr. Wayne Dailey, Whitaker Fellowship Awardee Mr. Dailey is currently pursuing a Master of Philosophy in Bioengineering under the supervision of Dr. Etienne Burdet at Imperial College in London with the Whitaker Fellowship. His research focuses on rehabilitative hand robotics and an electromyography-based hand exoskeleton for recovering stroke patients.

“The Whitaker Fellowship has proven to be a very supportive and generous award.

It fully supports my studies and travel and provides many collaborative, professional, and social networking opportunities in the field of bioengineering,” said Mr. Dailey.

Only two weeks into his program, he visited a lab in Bristol for the opportunity to explore some research projects and initiate collaborations that will prove valuable in his research. The fellows and post-doctoral researchers will travel to Budapest next spring to share their experiences and present their work to the Whitaker Steering Committee.

Mr. Nick Czarnek, Duke University James B. Duke Fellowship Awardee and 2012 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Awardee Nicholas Czarnek was admitted to the PhD program in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering, where he will study signals processing under the

direction of Professor Leslie Collins. He will receive complete funding – including tuition and $5,000 per year as a James B. Duke Fellow for four years. Mr. Czarnek will also receive $15,000 from the ECE department for the first year.

Czarnek was awarded a fellowship from the 2012 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). Through the NSF fellowship, Czarnek will receive a $30,000 stipend per year for three years for his “outstanding abilities and accomplishments, as well as his potential to contribute to strengthening the vitality of the US science and engineering enterprise” (NSF Award Letter).

Mr. Matthew Cimino and Mr. Zachary Smith, 2011-12 (renewed for 2012-13) IEEE Power & Energy Society Scholarship Plus Initiative The PES Scholarship Plus Initiative™ supports the most promising future engineers in power and energy. Recipients are high-achieving undergraduate students in electrical engineering who commit to exploring the power and energy fields through both coursework and career experiences. PES regional volunteer leaders selected the first class of recipients following the first round of application submissions in June 2011. These students will graduate with the knowledge and career experience necessary to begin making an impact across the power and energy industry (http://www.ee-scholarship.org/).

Messrs. Cimino and Smith show tremendous aptitude and enthusiasm towards their studies and related endeavors in electric power engineering, including undergraduate student research activities and co-op positions in the power industry.

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2011-12 Approved PhD Dissertations August 2011 Yushi Hu – “Electrochemically Grown Single Nanowire Array for Highly Sensitive and Selective Chemical Detection” Company: Micron Technology Advisor: Minhee Yun, PhD, associate professor Charles Jewart – “Design and Optimization of Microstructured Optical Fiber Sensors” Advisor: Kevin P. Chen, associate professor December 2011 Xiaoyu Liu – “Design, Optimization and Implementation of an Ortho-tag RFID System” Company: Pitt, post-doc Advisor: Marlin H. Mickle, PhD, Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor Hong-Jun Yoon – “Multiridgelets for Texture Analysis” Company: UPMC Advisor: Ching-Chung Li, PhD, professor Xiuyi Zhou – “Dynamic Thermal Management Through Task Scheduling” Company: Microsoft Advisor: Jun Yang, PhD, associate professor April 2012: Tong Chen – “Fiber Optic Sensors for Extreme Environments” Company: Princeton Optronics Advisor: Kevin P. Chen, PhD, associate professor Innam Lee – “Biosensing of Cardiac Biomarkers using Single Polyaniline Nanowires” Advisor: Minhee Yun, PhD, associate professor Ping Zhou – “Towards Successful Application of Phase Change Memories: Addressing Challenges from Write Operations” Advisor: Jun Yang, PhD, professor and Youtao Zhang, PhD, assistant professor

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ECE Grad Student Receives $24,000 DAC Scholarship for NVSim-VX Project

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his spring ECE graduate student Wujie Wen and Yiran Chen, PhD, assistant professor and Mr. Wen’s advisor, received notice that the University of Pittsburgh will receive a $24,000 graduate scholarship from the 49th Design Automation Conference (DAC) and A. Richard Newton Graduate Scholarship Committee to support Wen’s graduate project, NVSim-VX. “The aim of this two-year research is to develop a tool called NVSim-VX, a statistical emerging nonvolatile memory simulator, to model the impacts of process variations and probabilistic device properties on the design specifications of Emerging Memory Technologies (EMTs), and to investigate a statistical memory design methodology to explore the tradeoffs among memory structure, implementation cost and design specifications toward various system requirements,” explains Mr. Wen. “The NVSim-VX non-volatile memory simulator could revolutionize the design philosophy of next-generation memory technologies. The proposed work is a crosslayer project that integrates the research efforts from electronic device modeling, circuit design, and computer architecture applications,” Dr. Chen says. “Wujie’s solid background in relevant areas makes him an ideal candidate to work on this exciting research project.”

With issues rising in the computer technology realm regarding memory bandwidth, cache space, leakage power management and process variation control, EMTs now receive increasing attention from solid state circuit and device societies. “The non-volatility of these new memories perfectly solves the leakage power issue.

Meanwhile, nanosecond access time and good scalability are offered,” says Mr. Wen. “I hope that the proposed research will be conducted smoothly in the following two years and that our developed NVSim-VX will benefit the electronic design automation, computer and embedded system communities by preparing the memory hierarchy designing for the revolutionary design philosophy of emerging memories,” states Mr. Wen. “If we think about the memory industry, which has $70 billion revenue per year, the potential for this project is huge – no matter from academic research impact or from industry promotion,” Dr. Chen adds.

Mr. Wen selected the Swanson School for his PhD after earning his master of science degree from Tsinghua University, China, and working with Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. for a year. The DAC published Mr. Wen’s first paper after his submission last fall, his first term at Pitt. He later presented his work and accept the scholarship at the 49th DAC in San Francisco, June 3-7, 2012.

“It is truly an honor to me and an important recognition to my research,” Mr. Wen says. “I will certainly work even harder in the future to fulfill my goal to be a top researcher in VLSI circuit design and design automation, of course, under the support of this scholarship. I would like to thank Dr. Chen, for his patience and invaluable guidance, but also express my gratitude to our groups and our ECE department.

Without all their support, I cannot make it happen.”

Benedum Hall 3700 O’Hara Street Pittsburgh PA 15261

Embedded Systems Class Goes Social

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n December 2011, Yiran Chen, PhD, assistant professor in ECE, created a YouTube channel to document and present student projects from his Embedded Systems course. “I decided to create a channel so that they can share their ideas with their classmates by using new media – online video.

YouTube provides a perfect forum for this purpose: idea demonstration and presentation, comments, reply and publicity,” explains Dr. Chen.

He originally intended to target current and prospective students of his class, but now considers general viewers interested in the class or embedded system knowledge. “The channel is getting more and more attention all over the world,” he says. “For example, Professor Kang Li from Rutgers recommended that his students watch the channel for inspiration in their project ideas. The U.S. Army and Air Force also use it for their education on Android Phone programming and applications.” In May, Dr. Chen incorporated videos from the channel into tutorials presented to over fifty soldiers, researchers and contractors in attendance at the U.S. Air Force Research Lab in Rome, NY. Students currently enjoy posting their videos and often perform edits to include commentary and music.

In the future, Dr. Chen hopes to include projects from other courses on the channel – particularly from a new course on Android programming, as well as research sub-channels to demonstrate the latest research outcomes in embedded systems.

View Dr. Chen’s YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/PittEmbeddedSystem.

Un iv e r si t y of P i t t s b urgh | Swan s o n S c h o o l o f E n g ineerin g | EC E N ews | Fall 2012