Princeton Engineering

Five members of the Engineering School faculty received the University's highest honors for their accomplishments in teaching and mentoring students.

Claire Gmachl, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering, has been appointed vice dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. She will succeed Pablo Debenedetti on July 1, when he assumes his new position as the University's dean for research.

Using 3-D printing tools, scientists at Princeton University have created a functional ear that can "hear" radio frequencies far beyond the range of normal human capability.

Douglas Foy has joined the Fuel Freedom Foundation policy team, serving as senior legal advisor.

Most term papers are evaluated by one or two people, but Carlee Joe-Wong's will be checked by hundreds. The paper, completed in 2010, has evolved into a research project involving wireless operators like AT&T and 1,000 participating wireless customers

Hisashi Kobayashi, former dean and emeritus professor of electrical engineering, received the 2012 C&C (Computer and Communications) Prize for his seminal role in advancing the storage of digital information, a key part of the computer revolution.

Mung Chiang, a Princeton University engineering professor who uses innovative mathematical analysis to simplify and strengthen the design of wireless networks, has been awarded the National Science Foundation's highest honor for young researchers, the Alan T. Waterman Award.

The Innovation Forum brings together teams of faculty members, postdocs and graduate students to pitch ideas for commercializing early-stage research to a panel of judges.

Students conferred their semi-annual Excellence in Teaching Awards to professors and teaching assistants at a ceremony Feb. 21. The awards included a Lifetime Achievement Award to Professor Pablo Debenedetti.

The book Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile written by Eden Medina, associate professor at Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing, was awarded the Computer History Museum Prize and the Society for the History of Technology’s Edelstein Prize.

Tom Leighton is the new CEO of Akamai Technologies, Inc., an internet content delivery network based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was formerly the company’s chief scientist.

Mark A. Jung has been appointed to the Keynote Systems board of directors. This global company headquartered in San Mateo, California, provides internet and mobile cloud testing and monitoring for businesses.

Princeton researchers have found a simple and economical way to nearly triple the efficiency of organic solar cells, the cheap and flexible plastic devices that many scientists believe could be the future of solar power.

James Armstrong is the new chief technology officer at Symmetricom, a source of precise timekeeping technologies and instruments. Armstrong will lead the company’s technology standards, product development and execution, and oversee growth of technology and infrastructure.

Juan Carlos Niebles, who received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Princeton last year, is one of seven researchers worldwide to be recognized with a 2012 Microsoft Research Faculty Fellow award.

Steven McLaughlin is the new Steve W. Chaddick School Chair in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. McLaughlin oversees the school’s more than 2,400 undergraduate and graduate students and more than 100 faculty members. The school graduates the largest number of electrical and computer engineers in the country.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) awarded an honorary doctorate to H. Vincent Poor, dean of Princeton's School of Engineering and Applied Science, in recognition of his fundamental contributions to wireless communications and his innovations in undergraduate education.

In a key step toward creating a working quantum computer, Princeton researchers have developed a method that may allow the quick and reliable transfer of quantum information throughout a computing device.

Daniel Wong’s new book, Fundamentals of Wireless Communication Engineering Technologies, was recently released by publishers John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Jeff Bezos ’86, founder of Amazon.com, and Jeffrey Ullman *66, Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Computer Science (Emeritis), Stanford University, were elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Bezos was recognized as a business leader and Ullman for his contributions to computer science.

The HTC Corporation named Chia-Lin Chang as chief financial officer and spokesperson effective April 16.

Howard Huang has written a book on wireless cellular network design titiled MIMO Communication for Cellular Networks (Information Technology: Transmission, Processing and Storage).

The Consumer Electronics Association selected Robert Briskman, technical executive of Sirius XM, to be inducted into the association's Hall of Fame. Briskman was recognized for "advancing the products and services that inform, educate entertain and keep consumers connected." He will be honored along with 11 other professionals selected for their contributions at the association's Industry Forum in San Francisco in October 2012.

A flair for creating innovative courses and a dedication to mentoring students brought recognition to three Princeton Engineering faculty members at the close of 2011-2012 academic year.

A laboratory test used to detect disease and perform biological research could be made more than 3 million times more sensitive, according to researchers who combined standard biological tools with a breakthrough in nanotechnology.

Computer science is among the most forward-looking of disciplines, and in an address at Princeton University on Thursday evening, May 10, Eric Schmidt paid tribute to Alan Turing, one of the giants of the field, by looking ahead to an almost unimaginable future.

The National Academy of Engineering awarded the 2012 Charles Stark Draper Prize to George Heilmeier and three others “for the engineering development of the Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) that is utilized in billions of consumer and professional devices.”

Mung Chiang, an electrical engineering professor at Princeton, has been awarded the 2012 Kiyo Tomiyasu Award by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Princeton electrical engineering professor Mung Chiang introduced the undergraduate class "Networks: Friends, Money and Bytes" to examine the common foundation governing the networks that wind throughout modern life. A key part of the coursework is a two-week mini-project.

Zephyr Photonics, a research and development company, has appointed Dan Tuck as its new general manager and vice president of component operations. The company said Tuck brings experience in technology development, operations management and strategic business planning.

Bradley Dickinson, a professor of electrical engineering at Princeton University who helped shape one of the engineering school's fundamental design courses, died of cardiac arrest Jan. 22 at Capital Health Regional Medical Center in Trenton. He was 63.

An international team of researchers including scientists at Princeton University have achieved a 100-fold increase in the ability to maintain control the spins of electrons in a solid material, a key step in the development of ultrafast quantum computers.

Small packages: Nanoparticles improve drug delivery A technique for encapsulating drug molecules in tiny plastic-like coatings shows promise for improving treatment of cancer and tuberculosis, while aiding the laboratory testing of new drugs. Robert Prud’homme, professor of chemical and biological engineering, developed the fundamental method, called “flash nanoprecipitation,” and has numerous collaborations with companies, medical researchers and engineering colleagues to de

Fundamentals of fluids Researchers in the lab of Howard Stone, the Donald R. Dixon ’69 and Elizabeth W. Dixon Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, are applying a deep understanding of fluid flows to reveal the mechanics behind critical biological functions. In one project, Stone’s group found the unexpected formation of bacterial ribbons in the middle of flowing fluids, which has implications for understanding serious infections and has led to a collaboration with Bon

Conventional wisdom would say that blocking a hole would prevent light from going through it, but Princeton University engineers have discovered the opposite to be true. A research team has found that placing a metal cap over a small hole in a metal film does not stop the light at all, but rather enhances its transmission.

Noah Jafferis did not expect, when he started graduate school at Princeton, to invent something that has been touted in media coverage from around the world as a "magic carpet."

Sanjeev Kulkarni, an acclaimed teacher and engineer whose research ranges from signal processing to philosophy, has been appointed director of the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education.

Stuart Schwartz, a pioneer of mathematical methods that led to techniques for efficiently transmitting information, and an instrumental force in building the Department of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University, died Saturday, Aug. 27.

Princeton engineering students are participating in a research project to produce fiber-optic-based computational devices that work similarly to neurons, but are a billion times faster.

A Princeton researcher and his international collaborators have used lasers to peek into the complex relationship between a single electron and its environment, a breakthrough that could aid the development of quantum computers

ACADEMICS Computer graphics, digital signal processing, and robotics. For his independent work, Tralie developed a method to recognize and classify objects from LIDAR (an optical version of RADAR) data. He is starting with LIDAR scans of the city of Ottawa collected by Google. WHY “I decided to work with Professor Tom Funkhouser (computer science) after taking his computer graphics course. I had such an amazing experience in that class and was so enthralled with the material that

INDEPENDENT RESEARCH Working in Professor Sigurd Wagner’s lab with funding from Universal Display Corporation, Song worked on thin-film transistors that include a hybrid insulator to combine the performance of inorganic materials with the flexibility of organic materials. She also worked with Wagner and Assistant Professor Naveen Verma on large-area, amorphous silicon-based circuits for a structural health-monitoring system. Their system combines nanoscale integrated circuits, which of

INDEPENDENT RESEARCH Working on the Photonic Neuron Project led by Professor Paul Prucnal. The project seeks to enable ultrafast computing by using nonlinear optical devices to imitate neurons. These neurons perform computation on laser pulses that encode information. ADDITIONAL STUDIES Earned certificates in neuroscience, robotics, applications in computing, and engineering biology. WHY “It’s a nice marriage of my interests in electrical engineering and neuroscience.&r

Mung Chiang and his team are using a miniaturized version of the global communications network, dubbed the EDGE Lab, to develop new ideas and systems that will help ensure that the networking infrastructure of the future will meet consumer demand.

Princeton researchers have invented an extremely sensitive sensor that opens up new ways to detect a wide range of substances, from tell-tale signs of cancer to hidden explosives.

The University created a new certificate program that explores the links between information technology and society. The Program in Information Technology and Society began enrollment this year and already has attracted students in majors ranging from computer science and electrical engineering to history and politics.

Engineering students win International Association for Hydrogen Energy award for developing "homemaker" hydrogen generator.

An engineering project to dramatically improve diabetes care was among two research efforts chosen as the first to receive support from Princeton University's Eric and Wendy Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund.

Princeton has been certified as a federal hub for cybersecurity research, opening the door to more research to solve national security problems.

BrightPearl announced that Salman Malik has joined the business software company located in Bristol, U.K., as its new CEO.

Dan Warmenhoven, chairman of the board of directors and executive chairman of NetApp and its CEO from 1994 to 2009, was presented with the 2010 Visionary Award by the Entrepreneurs Foundation.

A comprehensive assessment of doctoral programs in the United States ranked departments at Princeton Engineering as among the very best in the nation. The National Research Council assessment gave median scores in the top 10 to all departments within the School of Engineering and Applied Science that have a comparable peer group of departments.

Princeton engineering researchers will participate in a $122 million research project to develop technologies that make buildings more energy efficient.

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who graduated from Princeton in 1986 with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering, gave the Baccalaureate address to Princeton's Class of 2010.

The school of engineering honored three junior faculty members with the E. Lawrence Keyes, Jr./Emerson Electric Co. Faculty Advancement Award on May 10. The award recognizes young faculty members who have established vibrant teaching and research programs early in their careers at Princeton.

Princeton engineers are leading a research center that brings together scientists and engineers from multiple universities to determine how to improve the speed, reliability and energy-efficiency of tomorrow's computer systems while reducing their cost.

Princeton engineers have developed new technique for revealing images of hidden objects may one day allow pilots to peer through fog and doctors to see more precisely into the human body without surgery.

Beatriz Infante joins boards of communications and information technology companies.

Adam Erlich joined Block Engineering LLC as vice president of marketing and business development.

Two professors and a lecturer from Princeton's engineering school have been elected members of the National Academy of Engineering, a professional society whose members are among the world's most accomplished engineers.

Brother and sister Princeton alums find an innovative solution to using smart phones in the winter.

A sociologist, a political scientist and two electrical engineers, each a Princeton faculty member with expertise in different types of social and technological networks, have received a grant of $1.1 million to study the relations between these networks.

Margaret Martonosi, a Princeton professor of electrical engineering, has been named a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery and of the IEEE, an international professional association for the advancement of technology.

Princeton University physical scientists and engineers will partner with researchers at four other institutions to explore the driving forces behind the evolution of cancer under a five-year, $15.2 million award from the National Cancer Institute.

As the founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos ‘86 has revolutionized commerce and pioneered a wide range of online innovations, from user reviews to one-click shopping. Bezos graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton with a degree in electrical engineering and computer science.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy, have created a $25 million endowment fund at Princeton for the invention, development and use of cutting-edge technology that has the capacity to transform research in the natural sciences and engineering.

As the CEO of Google since 2001, Eric Schmidt ’76 has overseen its growth from a Silicon Valley startup into the world’s largest search engine. Schmidt studied electrical engineering as a Princeton undergraduate and earned a Ph.D. in 1982 from the University of California at Berkeley.

H. Vincent Poor, the dean of Princeton engineering, has been elected as one of three new international fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering of the United Kingdom, a professional organization comprised of Britain's most eminent and distinguished engineers.

Researchers have demonstrated a method for identifying nitric oxide gas using lasers and sensors that are inexpensive, compact and highly sensitive, a portable device that could be of great value to atmospheric science, pollution control, biology and medicine.

Andrew Houck, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and a past Princeton valedictorian, was named to Technology Review magazine's list of the top 35 young innovators for 2009.

William Fung, managing director of Li & Fung Trading Ltd., is among the six newly appointed to Princeton University's board of trustees.

Steve Chou, the Joseph C. Elgin Professor of Engineering and professor of electrical engineering at Princeton, has been awarded the 2009 Outstanding Research Award by the Pan Wen Yuan Foundation.

Sharad Malik, the George Van Ness Lothrop Professor of Engineering and director of Princeton's Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education, has received the 2009 Distinguished Alumni Award from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.

Professors of electical engineering "swept" the highest teaching awards given at Princeton at the 2009 Commencement ceremonies. Sharad Malik, Paul Prucnal, Claire Gmachl and Sanjeev Kulkarni were all recognized for their excellent teaching and mentoring of graduate and undergraduate students.

The U.S. Department of Defense has selected Princeton engineers to lead two new multi-institutional research initiatives, one aimed at transforming wireless telecommunications networks and the other at inventing materials that adapt themselves to changing loads and environments.

Abraham Haddad received a Fellow Award from the International Federation of Automatic Control at its 17th World Congress held in 2008 in Seoul, Korea. The award is given to an engineer, scientist, technical leader or educator who has made an outstanding contribution in a field related to the focus of the federation.

Young faculty members who are pioneering new areas of communications networks, environmental sensing and other fields have received numerous awards for outstanding contributions early in their careers. Mung Chiang, associate professor of electrical engineering, received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the White House. He was one of only sixty-seven scientists who received the prestigious awards at a ceremony held at the White House last December. Chiang was

Thomson Leighton '78, gave the keynote at the 2008 Automotive Internet Roundtable, an event organized to present ways that the Internet could be better utilized to market and sell cars. It was hosted by J.D. Powers and Associates at the Bellagio Resort in Las Vegas.

Andrew Houck, a Princeton assistant professor of electrical engineering, has been awarded a 2009 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. He will receive $50,000 in funding for the two-year period for his research into applying the theories of quantum mechanics to the fields of computing and optics.

For Aleksandra Smiljanic, the makings of a good life include rock concerts, travel, and the freedom to pursue independent research. An evening at the theater makes it even better. Her varied background helped prepare her for her post as Serbia's first minister of telecommunications and information.

Electrical engineering graduate student Ekua Bentil is the recipient of a Technology for Developing Regions fellowship to deploy a gas-sensing system in her native Ghana. With the goal of avoiding illnesses caused by the smoke of wood fires, Bentil will use the system to detect carbon dioxide, ozone and water vapor in the air.

Princeton researchers traveled to China to study changes in Beijing’s air quality during the Olympics, when the Chinese government dramatically cut vehicle and factory emissions.

Andrew Houck, a Princeton professor of electrical engineering, won a 2008 Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists from the New York Academy of Sciences. The prize included $15,000 in unrestricted funding.

Teams from 16 middle schools and 17 high schools honed their engineering know-how in the regional Science Olympiad tournament hosted by Princeton. Featured are electrical engineering graduate student Ekua Bentil and civil and environmental engineering graduate student Yan Zhang.

Mung Chiang, a Princeton engineering professor who studies the communications networks integral to modern society, has received a 2007 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the White House.

Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, joined cyclist Lance Armstrong, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and filmmaker Steven Spielberg on the 2008 list of America's Best Leaders.

Peet's Coffee & Tea, a California-based specialty tea and coffee retailer, announced in October that Ted Hall has joined its board of directors.

An international team of scientists has performed the ultimate miniaturization of computer memory: storing information inside the nucleus of an atom. This breakthrough is a key step in bringing to life a quantum computer - a device based on the fundamental theory of quantum mechanics which could crack problems unsolvable by current technology.

Jennifer Rexford, a Princeton alumna and professor of computer science, has joined the technical advisory board at AlterPoint, a company that develops advanced network governance solutions.

Robert Briskman '54 received the Technology Business Leadership Award from the A. James Clark Engineering School at the University of Maryland for his role in founding Sirius Satellite Radio.

H. Vincent Poor, dean of engineering and the Michael Henry Strater University Professor of Electrical Engineering, and Simon Pun, postdoctoral research associate, received the Best Paper Award at the 2008 IEEE International Conference on Communications.

Two papers by Princeton Engineering researchers have been selected for inclusion in IEEE Micro's January/February 2008 Special Issue of Top Picks from Computer Architecture Conferences.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Board of Directors has honored Sergio Verdu with the 2008 IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal "for fundamental contributions to information theory and the development of multiuser detection."

Christopher Fine discussed "Colloboration, Cooperation and Co-opetition" at the VON Fall 2007 Conference in Boston.

Don Boroson, group leader of the Optical Communications Technology Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory, has been named the recipient of a Lincoln Laboratory Technical Excellence Award. The award recognizes "exceptional, sustained individual technical excellence" in a laboratory mission area.

Robert Kahn has been named the recipient of the 2008 Japan Prize for Information Communication Theory and Technology.

Bypassing decades-old conventions in making computer chips, Princeton engineers developed a novel way to replace silicon with carbon on large surfaces, clearing the way for new generations of faster, more powerful cell phones, computers and other electronics.

iStor Networks, a manufacturer of network storage solutions, has appointed Kevin Daly as chief executive officer.

A Princeton-led research team has created an easy-to-produce material from the stuff of computer chips that has the rare ability to bend light in the opposite direction from all naturally occurring materials. This startling property may contribute to significant advances in many areas, including high-speed communications, medical diagnostics and detection of terrorist threats.

Creating ultrasmall grooves on microchips -- a key part of many modern technologies -- is about to become as easy as making a sandwich, using a new process invented by Princeton engineers.

A little clay and sawdust went a long way at Princeton this month when a group of Trenton-area high school students used the simple materials to create effective, low-cost water filters.

Audrey Ellerbee has been selected as a AAAS Congressional Science and Engineering Fellow for 2007-08.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of a class that yokes two very unlikely subjects -- philosophy and engineering.

Li-Shiuan Peh has been named the winner of the 2007 Anita Borg Early Career Award by the Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research.

Stephen Chou, the Joseph C. Elgin Professor of Engineering, was recently honored for his contributions to the nanotechnology field with a Nano 50 award from Nanotech Briefs magazine.

Dean of Engineering H. Vincent Poor will receive the 2007 IEEE Guglielmo Marconi Best Paper Award, sponsored by Qualcomm, Inc. The annual award is given for an original paper in the field of wireless communications published in the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, selected based upon its originality, utility, timeliness and clarity of presentation.

From outstanding research to dedicated service to the School of Engineering and Applied Science, members of this year's graduating class were recognized for their achievements and contributions at the engineering Class Day ceremony Monday, June 4.

Aleksandra Smiljanic was recently appointed Minister of Telecommunications and Information Society in the Government of Serbia. Born in Belgrade.

Joseph Kennedy, CEO of Pandora, was appointed to Ecast's board of directors. Ecast is the largest broadband touch-screen media network in the United States, providing digital music to clubs and bars.

In July, Michael D. Smith, associate dean of computer science and engineering at Harvard, will become Harvard's dean of the faculty of arts and sciences.

Two engineering professors were among the four Princeton faculty members who received President's Awards for Distinguished Teaching at Commencement ceremonies June 5.

In mid-April Robert Briskman will be presented with the 2007 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Aerospace Communications Award at an international conference in Seoul, Korea.

Fortune magazine in its 2007 list of "America's Most Admired Companies" has named Network Appliance Inc. No. 1 in the computer peripherals industry. NetApp was co-founded by David Hitz, who earned his B.S.E. in electrical engineering and computer science at Princeton in 1986 and currently serves as the California-based company's executive vice president.

Stephen Chou and Sergio Verdu, professors of electrical engineering, have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, one of the greatest honors in the engineering field.

As they eliminate tiny air bubbles that form when liquid droplets are molded into intricate circuits, a Princeton-led team is dissolving a sizable obstacle to the mass production of smaller, cheaper microchips.

Aruba Networks of Sunnyvale, Calif., a secure wireless access provider, recently named Daniel Warmenhoven to its board of directors.

Eric Schmidt, the chairman and chief executive officer of Internet search giant Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., was named 2006 CEO of the Year by Investors Business Daily.

Three years after Leonard Liu founded Augmentum, a software development firm based in Foster City, Calif., the company's workforce has doubled in size from 500 employees to more than 1,000.

Symmetricom, manufacturer of atomic clocks, network synchronization tools and timing products, has appointed James Armstrong to be vice president of engineering at the company's Telecom Solutions Division in San Jose, Calif.

Princeton University electrical engineers are using lasers to shed light on the behavior of superfluids -- strange, frictionless liquids that are difficult to create and study. Their technique allows them to simulate experiments that are difficult or impossible to conduct with superfluids.

A Princeton-led team of students who are programming stem cells to treat diabetes ranked third in the world in a recent competition to build working "genetic machines" out of DNA building blocks.

Princeton engineers have invented a method of stealth communication that disguises not only the information contained in a message, but the existence of the message itself.

Sharad Malik, George Van Ness Lothrop Professor in Engineering , has been named director of Princeton's Center for Innovation in Engineering Education (CIEE).

Solar panels that are slated to be installed this fall on the roof of Princeton's Engineering Quadrangle will shave only about $60 off the University's monthly electricity bill. But the technology that emerges from this unique industry-academia research collaboration may eventually save New Jersey households millions of dollars in energy costs.

Clusters of students gathered in Princeton's Lewis Thomas Lab on a recent Friday for a trouble-shooting session before heading to their benches for another attempt at something few labs in the world can do: transforming mouse stem cells into muscle cells

Members of this year's class of graduating engineering students are leaving Princeton with impressive records of accomplishments and ambitious plans for the future, Dean H. Vincent Poor told students and their families during the engineering Class Day ceremony Monday, June 5.

Fifteen Princeton scientists and engineers will talk about their early-stage entrepreneurial ventures at an Innovation Forum at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, April 20, in the Friend Center Convocation Room.