From the Chair

ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER

ENGINEERING

F A L L 2 0 1 3ECENEWS

This issue of our Electrical and Computer Engineering Newsletter is intended to provide you with a glimpse of just some of the exciting developments happening here at Pitt. While you’ll see details here about many of our

faculty and some of the new, recent, program developments, there’s simply not enough room to really provide the full picture. For example, you’ll not see that we once again had ten PhD students complete their dissertations last year with five going to academic positions and the other 5 landing nice jobs at leading industrial employers. Nine of our twenty-two faculty members serve in 14 different editorial positions with technical journals. Our student enrollment continues to grow in both electrical and computer engineering with approximately 380 undergraduate students and 170 graduate students. We continue to build on our international partnerships/programs to enable our students to study abroad and to attract outstanding overseas students to Pitt. The list goes on. Please look through this newsletter and check out our website: http://www.engineering.pitt.edu/ECE/

Sincerely,

William Stanchina, PhDChairman and Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Pitt Research Team Part of $10 Million

NSF Grant

Wearing Your Computer in Your Sleeve ....................................3

Recognition...............................4, 5, 11

Dr. Ervin Sejdic Named Associate Director ............................7

Chen to Participate in US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium..........................................8

Dr. William Stanchina Appointed to Swedish Science and Technology Advisory Board...................................9

New Online Electric Power Engineering Certificate.........................Back Cover

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Advance Energy Needs and Technologies for the 21st Century

eButton Monitor Gets a Facelift4 6

Dr. Marlin Mickle

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Ansel Barchowsky, a second-year masters student in electrical Engineering, was awarded the 2013 Siemens Graduate Scholarship in Electric Power Engineering on October 3 at the Swanson School. Pictured from left is Frank Petraglia EE ‘87, vice president of High Voltage Systems for Siemens; Kevin O’Hara, vice president of operations for the Smart Grid division of Siemens Infrastructure and Cities Sector in North America and the vice president and general manager of Smart Grid Services for Siemens Energy; Mr. Barchowsky; and Gregory Reed, PhD ‘97, director of the Electric Power Initiative at Pitt’s Center for Energy, and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering.

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Pitt Research Team Part of $10 Million NSF Grantto Develop Visual Cortex on Silicon

Developing a computer that can see the world like the human brain’s complex visual cortex has been a long-sought

challenge. Thanks to a $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), that challenge may be a future reality.

A University of Pittsburgh research team is part of a seven-university group led by Principle Investigator Vijaykrishnan Narayanan, PhD, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University, that will receive an NSF CISE Expeditions in Computing awards, the largest single investment in computer science research that NSF makes.

The Pitt team, which will be funded by $500,000 of the total grant, is led by Steven P. Levitan, PhD, the John A. Jurenko Professor of Computer Engineering at the Swanson School of Engineer-ing; and Donald M. Chiarulli, PhD, Professor of Computer Engineering and Computer Science in Pitt’s Department of Computer Science. Student researchers are undergraduates Soyo Awosika-Olumo, Natalie Janosek and Andrew Seel; and graduate students John Carpenter and Yan Fang. Other collaborating institutions include University

of Southern California, Stanford University, York College of Pennsylvania, University of California-San Diego, University of California-Los Angeles, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

According to the NSF’s announcement, this project envisions a holistic design of a machine vision system that will approach or exceed the capabili-ties and efficiencies of human vision, enabling computers to not only record images, but also to understand visual content, at up to a thousand times the efficiency of current technologies.

While several machine vision systems today can each successfully perform one or a few human tasks – such as detecting human faces in point-and-shoot cameras – they are still limited in their ability to perform a wide range of visual tasks, to operate in complex, cluttered environments, and to provide reasoning for their decisions. In contrast, the visual cortex in mammals excels in a broad variety of goal-oriented cognitive tasks, and is at least three orders of magnitude more energy efficient than customized state-of-the-art machine vision systems.

In particular, this Expedition aims to understand the fundamental mechanisms used in the visual cortex, with the hope of enabling the design of

new vision algorithms and hardware fabrics that can improve power, speed, flexibility, and recognition accuracies relative to exist-ing machine vision systems.

Because of the complexity of the human visual cortex, which processes image data faster than a computer, the teams are applying their expertise across multiple systems. Pitt’s Levitan and Chiarulli are investigating

the resonance of coupled electro-magnetic oscillators to perform image processing in silicon. “The underlying principle is not new – in fact, in 1665, Christiaan Huygens discovered that two pendulum clocks mounted to the same wall would synchronize their swings, no matter how they were started,” Dr. Levitan explains. “This self-synchronization property of coupled oscillators can be used as a measure of similarity in large scale pattern matching problems.”

Electro-magnetic spin torque oscillators are an emerging nano-technology that is fabricated as a sandwich of two magnetic films separated by a non-magnetic layer. When an electric current passes through the sandwich the electrons cause the magnetic field to rotate like a spinning top, which creates an oscillating voltage. The oscilla-tors can be coupled so they resonate when they are at the same frequency. Levitan and Chiarulli are exploiting this locking phenomenon to match patterns in visual images. “Imagine a vast sea of organ pipes, each tuned to one frequency. If you then play a note in the air, the pipe tuned closest to that note will resonate. If we identify the pipe, we know which note it was; that is the basic idea.”

Dr. Chiarulli adds, “Traditional Boolean logic – the 1s and 0s or true/false values that comprise computer systems – is not capable of the nuanced pattern matching and image analysis that the human brain does many times per second using less than ten watts of power. This work is focused on new computational models that can work more like a human brain model of computation in solving the problem of visual perception.”

Smart machine vision systems that understand and interact with their environments could have a profound impact on society, including aids for visually impaired persons, driver assistance capabilities for reducing automotive accidents, and augmented reality systems for enhanced shopping, travel, and safety.

Drs. Levitan (left) and Chiarulli.

ENGINEERING.PITT.EDU

“Advances in the computer and information sciences drive progress in all areas of science, engineering and education, which positively impacts the U.S. economy, furthers national priorities and bolsters our overall quality of life,” said NSF Acting Director Cora Marrett. “America’s future depends on strong and sustained U.S. government support in this area. NSF is proud to fund this next round of Expeditions awards, and in supporting fundamental research, to continue its tradition of enabling the nation to maintain its competitive advantage in information technology.”

The first Expeditions awards were made in 2008. As of today, 16 awards have been made through this program, addressing subjects ranging from foundational research in computing hardware, software and verification to research in sustainable energy, health information technology, robotics, mobile computing, and Big Data.

“The Expeditions in Computing program catalyzes large-scale, far-reaching and potentially transfor-mative research motivated by deep scientific questions,” said Farnam Jahanian, assistant director for CISE. “These two new awards aim to apply our understanding of natural, biological capabilities to the development of revolutionary new computing and information technologies with tremendous potential for societal benefit.”

“Without exception, the Expeditions in Computing awards fund bold, ambitious and exciting research,” said Mitra Basu, program director for the Expeditions program. “We are now seeing how they advance the field and lead to exciting results in a variety of applications. We’re confident that these two projects have the same potential for pushing the frontiers of computing.”

Wearing Your Computer in Your SleevePitt Researchers Receive NSF Grant to Explore Development of “Materials that Compute”

A computational “fabric” envisioned by University of Pittsburgh researchers could lead to the development of clothing that could respond to external stimuli, monitor vital signs of patients

or athletes, and help the visually impaired “sense” their surrounding environment.

The research, recently funded by a $700,000 National Science Foundation Integrated NSF Support Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Education (INSPIRE) grant build upon the already-established research of Principle Investigator Anna C. Balazs, PhD, Distinguished Robert v. d. Luft Professor of Chemical Engineering, and Steven P. Levitan, PhD, the John A. Jurenko Professor of Computer Engineering at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering. The two are integrating Dr. Balazs’ research into Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) gel, a substance that oscillates in the absence of external stimuli, with Dr. Levitan’s expertise in computational modeling and oscillator-based computing systems.

“Although BZ gels have been investigated since the 1990s, this research moves in a new direction beyond logic operations – in essence creating materials that compute,” Dr. Balazs explains. “The material would be an integrated sensing, computing and responsive device without an external power source that could act as a “sixth sense” for those who wear it.”

Drs. Balazs and Levitan propose utilizing the chemo-responsive nature of the BZ gels to create a chemical-based computational fabric that would be lightweight and mechanically compliant, and would be human-centric, sensing and responding to human touch and motion. The material would perform autonomously for up to several hours without connections to an external power supply.

The BZ reactions within the gels would perform information processing between sets of stored or learned patterns and stimuli in the form of light, pressure or chemistry. This ability for the material to interpret a stimulus, send out a signal and respond in kind will be a key part of the research. “In essence, we let the physics do the computing.”

“The real leverage for this project is capitalizing on the gels’ natural oscillation to communicate at a human scale that can sense the surrounding environment, process information and react to complex stimuli,” Dr. Levitan adds. “The fabric would most likely require a piezoelectric film to generate an electric field, allowing it to interface with embedded electronics.

The five-year grant will allow the researchers to further the computational modeling of how such a BZ gel fabric would function, with the goal that others would be able to fabricate the material.

“Imagine this fabric helping a burn patient who has lost the sense of touch know whether he is in contact with a hot or cold material, or the fabric integrated into a jogging suit that can monitor and display your pulse, pressure and respiration,” Dr. Balazs says. “By eliminating the need for external wiring or typical computer processors, this sensing fabric could help to change human quality of life.”

The NSF INSPIRE awards program was established to address some of the most complicated and pressing scientific problems that lie at the intersection of traditional disciplines. “Sensing and Computing with Oscillating Chemical Reactions” is jointly funded between the Division of materials research (DMR) in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) and the Division of Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF) in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE).

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A paper co-authored by Alex Jones, PhD, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering

and Director of the Computer Engineering program at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, was named one of top 25 most influential papers from the IEEE Field Programmable and Custom Computing Machines Conference (FCCM). “A MATLAB compiler for distributed, heterogeneous, reconfigurable computing systems” (2000) was recognized in part for providing “a first step in the development of the MAT-LAB compilation tools in Xilinx System Generator that are used by thousands of engineers annually.”

FCCM, which marks its 20th anniversary this year, is the premiere IEEE conference on field programmable computer hardware. Dr. Jones’ paper is in the top 5%

of all papers presented at the conference over its 20-year duration. The paper was recommended by Russell Tessier, PhD, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

“It is a tremendous honor to be recognized in this fashion by my peers,” Dr. Jones said. “I am just pleased to have been able to make contributions to this work with my colleagues and that the technique lives on as commercial tool which benefits FPGA designers throughout the world.”

The paper’s co-authors included Prithviraj Banerjee, U. Nagaraj Shenoy, Alok Choudhary, Scott Hauck, Christopher Bachmann, Malay Haldar, Pramod Joisha, Alex Jones, Abhay Kanhare, Anshuman Nayak, Suresh Periyacheri, Michael Walkden, and David Zaretsky.

Research Paper Co-authored by Dr. Alex Jones Recognized as One of the Top 25 in Its Field by IEEE FCCM

eButton Monitor Gets a FaceliftPitt’s eButton Prototype Now Determines Portion Sizes Based on Shapes

A wearable, picture-taking health monitor created by University of Pittsburgh researchers has received a recent

facelift. Now, in addition to documenting what a person eats, the eButton prototype can accurately match those images against a geometric-shape library, providing a much easier method for counting calories.

Published in Measurement Science and Technology, the Pitt study demonstrates a new computational tool that has been added to the eButton – a device that fastens to the shirt like a pin. Using its newly built comprehensive food-shape library, the eButton can now extract food from 2D and 3D images and, using a camera coordinate system, evaluate that food based on shape, color, and size.

“Human memory of past eating is imperfect,” said Mingui Sun, lead investigator and Pitt professor of neurological surgery and bioengineering and professor of electrical and computer engineering. “Visually gauging the size of a food based on an imaginary measurement unit is very sub-jective, and some individuals don’t want to track what they

consume. We’re trying to remove the guess work from the dieting process.”

eButton – which is built with a low-power central processing unit, a random-access memory com-munication interface, and an Android operating system – now includes a library of foods with nine common shapes: cuboid, wedge, cylinder, sphere, top and bottom half spheres, ellipse, half ellipse, and tunnel. The device snaps a series of photos while a person is eating, and its new formula goes to work: removing the background image, zeroing in on the food, and measuring its volume by projecting and fitting the selected 3D shape to the 2D photograph using a series of mathematical equations.

The Pitt team tested their new design on 17 popular favorites like jelly, broccoli, hamburgers, and peanut butter. Using a Logitech webcam, they captured five high-resolution images at different locations on diners’ plates. Likewise, they applied the eButton to real-world dining scenarios in

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which diners were asked to wear the eButton on their chests, recording their eating. For each image, the eButton’s new configuration method was implemented to automatically estimate the food portion size after the background was removed. To account for eaters leaving food behind, the Pitt team analyzed the last photo-graph taken during a meal. This leftover food was estimated and subtracted from the original portion size, as documented by earlier photographs.

“For food items with reasonable shapes, we found that this new method had an average error of only 3.69 percent,” said Sun. “This error is much lower than that made by visual estimations, which results in an average error of about 20 percent.”

While Sun and his colleagues were pleased with the results, there were three common foods that presented problems: ketchup, haddock, and ice cream. Because the properties of these provisions can change, results varied. Also, varying cooking techniques presented mixed consistencies, Sun said.

Even though the eButton is still not available commercially, Sun hopes to get it on the market soon. He and his team are now fine-tuning the device, working toward improving the accuracy of detecting portion sizes for irregularly shaped foods.

Other collaborators include, from Pitt, Professor of Psychiatry John Fernstrom, Research Assistant Professor of Neurological Surgery Wenyan Jia, former Pitt Postdoctoral Research Fellow Hsin-Chen Chen, and Yaofeng Yue, a Pitt graduate student. Also involved were National Cheng Kung University Professor of Computer Science Yung-Nien Sun in Taiwan, and Zhaoxin Li, a graduate student from Harbin Institute of Technology in China who is visiting Sun’s laboratory.

The paper, “Model-based Measurement of Food Portion Size for Image-Based Dietary Assessment

Using 3D/2D Registration,” was originally published online Sept. 4 in Measurement Science and Technology. This work was supported in part by a grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and scholarship support from the National Science Council of China.

Computer Engineering Research Group Recognized at ACM GLSVLSI 2013 Conference in ParisA paper presented by a Computer Engineering research group at the Swanson School

of Engineering was awarded best paper at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) GLSVLSI 2013 conference in Paris. The paper, “Coordinating Prefetching and STT-RAM based Last-level Cache Management for Multicore Systems” was recognized as a best paper candidate selected anonymously by the program committee and included in a plenary session with all of the other nominees.

The paper was co-authored by graduate student Mengjie Mao and professors Yiran Chen, Alex Jones and Helen Li.

The paper was selected by a special committee who read and re-reviewed all of the best paper nominees and considered the conference presentations. GLSVLSI had a 21% acceptance rate and is consistently the leading ACM meeting on VLSI with a similarly competitive acceptance rate. There were 51 papers accepted for oral presentation with well over 200 papers submitted placing the paper in the top 2% of accepted papers and better than the top 1% of submissions.

Contributing author: B. Rose Huber

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MARLIN MICKLE

“If you had told me in December 1961 that I would eventually retire from Pitt as a faculty member, researcher and inventor, I wouldn’t have believed you.” Dr. Mickle said. “At that point I just wanted to get a job as an engineer.”

Dr. Mickle, who semi-retired this year as the Bell of PA/Bell Atlantic Professor, and was formerly the Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has helped to establish the University of Pittsburgh as one of the world leaders in RFID technology and energy harvesting research. After earning his MSEE in 1963 and PhD in 1967, Dr. Mickle would continue his career as a faculty member, earning additional appointments in telecommunications and industrial engineering. His focus on RFID technology began with a DARPA grant request to establish RFID testing and standards.

“Back in the late 1990s my research team and I were trying to harvest energy out of the air – a dream that began with Nikola Tesla in the early 20th century. My colleague in industrial engineering, Richard Billo, brought the grant request to my attention and said that he knew about RFID mainly for the traffic and supply of goods. So we decided to combine our expertise and submit a proposal.”

That initial grant from DARPA would eventually lead to establishment of Pitt’s RFID Center for Excellence, one of the world’s top three leaders in radio frequency identification technology and research. Through the DARPA award the University of Pittsburgh was responsible for establishing the basis of the 915 MHz standard for the U.S. Department of Defense. Currently the Center and Dr. Mickle hold 42 approved patents for RFID and related technologies.

Although he now spends his time between Pittsburgh and New Hampshire with his wife, Nancy, Dr. Mickle still has not relinquished his greatest passions – research, technology and teaching. Indeed, he sees the three even more inexorably linked into the future.

“Today technology is pervasive in our daily lives, and there are more devices connected to the Internet than there are people on earth,” Dr. Mickle says. “And yet, even though we’re finding better ways to use these devices to collect data and improve daily life through technologies like RFID and bar codes and experiencing the evolution of the Internet of Things, U.S. scientists have done a terrible job at educating people how to understand technology. We need to teach our students – our future teachers and scientists – to better communicate science to the general public and be ambassadors for technology, and helping to set better expectations for what technology can do for us and our world.”

As Dr. Mickle reflects on his tenure at Pitt and his decades of research, he is most proud of the many students he has taught, mentored, and been privi-leged to see succeed in academia and industry.

“We researchers like to think of ourselves as contributing to the technical side of things but as one of my former graduate students once explained, it’s the people we interact with who make the difference in one’s career,” Dr. Mickle says. “I have had the pleasure of working with some very bright individuals who are now successful as faculty in their own right or as CTOs and CSOs.” And he adds with a smile, “I’m very proud of what they have accomplished and like to think it wasn’t anything or any way that I taught…they were just exceptional students whom I was lucky enough to encounter.”

More about Dr. Mickle

Dr. Mickle’s research, development and educa-tional activities have been supported by over 140 grants and/or contracts from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the National Science Foundation, the United States Army, the Urban Mass Transportation Administration, NASA, the Bureau of Mines, the Department of Commerce, the Pittsburgh Foundation, the Pennsylvania Power and Light Company, American Sterilizer Company, Contraves Goertz Corporation, PPG, Inc., the Electric Power Research Institute, Intel, Digital Equipment Corporation, Tandy, Motorola, Texas Instruments Corporation, Ben Franklin Program, WesDyne, the Lemelson Foundation, Argonne Laboratory, EPA, Coleman Foundation, DARPA, the Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse, Medrad, Siemens, Vocollect, Mobile Aspects, Matthews Marking Corp., ChemDAQ, Syracuse Research Corporation, Gnostic Systems, Identifi Technologies, FireFly, ADCUS, SSI, Union Switch & Signal, and JEC Technologies.

After earning his bachelor of science in electrical engineering from Pitt in 1961, Marlin Mickle didn’t envision his career coming full circle at the same university.

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Dr. Ervin Sejdić Named Associate Directorof Pitt’s RFID Center of Excellence

Ervin Sejdic, PhD, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School

of Engineering, was named Associate Director of the RFID Center for Excellence, according to an announcement from the Office of the Dean, Gerald D. Holder, PhD. Dr. Sejdic will assist with providing strategic direction, obtaining funding, and collaborating on research at the Center, under the supervision of its executive director and founder, Marlin Mickle, PhD, Bell of PA/Bell Atlantic Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

The Center is one of the world’s leaders in radio frequency identification technology and research. The RFID Center of Excellence serves as an international resource to academics and members of the business community. Since 2004, four companies have formed as a direct result of Pitt’s RFID intellectual property holdings and research, including E-SOC in San Francisco, Calif.; FireFly Power Technologies LLC in Pittsburgh; and Supply Systems Inc. in New Stanton, Pa. Through the Center, the University of Pittsburgh was responsible for establishing the basis of the 915 MHz standard for the U.S. Department of Defense.

“It’s definitely my honor to be working with Dr. Mickle, a world-renowned RFID expert,” Dr. Sejdic said. “The RFID Center of Excellence is one of the top three research facilities in the world, and my goal is to continue with this tradition by seeking novel applications of the RFID technology. I am particularly interested in health applications, and how RFID can benefit the health care systems but also to improve the lives of patients. I truly believe that the applications of RFID technology are in its early stages, and RFID still has endless opportunities to enhance our daily lives.”

“I am pleased to have Dr. Sejdic join me as associate director, and continue his research at the Center,” Dr. Mickle said. “Along with our outstanding graduate students, Dr. Sejdic and I are exploring new RFID applications from healthcare and computer science to energy and secure credit card transactions. He is a fine collaborator and engineer, and I look forward to our continued success.”

Dr. Sejdic holds a B.E. Sc. and PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Western Ontario. During his undergraduate studies he specialized in wireless communications while his PhD research focused on signal processing. From 2008-2010 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto with a cross-appointment at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, Canada’s largest children’s rehabilitation teaching hospital. During his postdoctoral fellowship, Dr. Sejdic focused on rehabilitation engineering and biomedical instrumentation. He was also a research fellow in medicine at Harvard Medical School cross-appointed at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (July 2010-June 2011), where he focused on cardiovascular and cerebrovascular monitoring of older/diabetic adults.

After joining the University of Pittsburgh in 2011, Dr. Sejdic established the iMED (Innovative Medical Engineering Developments) lab with the goal of becoming an international leader in dynamical biomarkers indicative of age- and disease-related changes and their contributions to functional decline under normal and pathological conditions.

He was Co-chairman of the Pittsburgh Modeling and Simulation Conference for over 20 years, and previously served as member, Editorial Board of IEEE Micro, Integrated Computer - Aided Engineering Journal; New Products Editor, IEEE Micro; Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics; founding Co-Editor of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Modeling and Simulation; Editor, International Journal of Radio Frequency Identification Technology and Applications, Co-Guest Editor of IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, Special Issue on RFID Systems; Vice-President, Confer-ence and Meetings, of the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Systems and Networks. He is co-author and co-editor of over 20 books and over 200 publications in refereed journals, conference proceedings, etc. He holds patents on a magnetically levitated gyro, a gyro optical sensor, energy harvesting and antennas on a CMOS chip. Among his many awards and accomplishments, Dr. Mickle was the 2011 recipient of the Ted Williams Award in Electrical Engineering. Presented annually by the Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility, the Ted Williams award recognizes innovative and exceptional contributions that further the growth of the industry through their work as an educator and entrepreneur. Named in honor of Ted Williams, an industry innovator, collaborator, and long-time member of the AIM Global Technical Symbology Committee, the award is one of the most respected in the field.

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Dissecting the Distinctive Walk of Disease

Dr. Yiran Chen to Participate in NAE’s 2013 US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium

Yiran Chen, PhD, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at

the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, was invited to participate in the National Academy of Engineering’s 2013 US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium September 19-21. The symposium, hosted by DuPont, is a three-day meeting that brings together 100 of the nation’s outstanding young engineers (ages 30-45) from industry, aca-demia, and government to discuss pioneering technical and leading-edge research in vari-ous engineering fields and industry sectors. The invitees are selected from the applicants, who must be nominated by the members of National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

This is the second consecutive year that a Swanson School faculty member was invited

to participate. In 2012 the NAE selected Steven Little, PhD, Associate Professor, CNG Faculty Fellow and Chair of the Swanson School’s Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering. The four topics to be covered at the 2013 symposium are: Designing and Analyzing Societal Networks, Cognitive Manufacturing, Energy: Reducing Our Dependence on Fossil Fuels, and Flexible Electronics.

Dr. Chen’s research interests include nano-electronic devices (silicon and non-silicon), low-power circuit design and computer architecture, emerging memory technologies, nano-scale reconfigurable computing system and sensor system, energy harvesting for alternative renewable energy.

Pitt multidisciplinary research team proposes mathematical model that examines multiple walking patterns and movements in adults older than 65

Older adults diagnosed with brain disorders such as Parkinson’s disease often feel a loss of independence because of their lack of mobility and difficulty walking. To better understand and improve

these mobility issues – and detect them sooner – a University of Pittsburgh multidisciplinary research team is working toward building a more advanced motion test that addresses a wider range of walking patterns and movements.

In a recent issue of IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, researchers from Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, and School of Medicine propose a mathematical model that can examine multiple walking, or gait-related, features in healthy and clinical populations. To date, no study has brought together such a team to examine such a high number of movement features comparing healthy and clinical older adults. Previous studies have typically only measured one or two types of movement features in just one population.

“Right away, you can tell whether an older individual has difficulties walking by conducting a simple gait test,” said Ervin Sejdic, lead author of the paper

and an assistant professor of engineering in the Swanson School. “But can we quantify these changes and document them earlier? That’s the biggest issue here and what we’re trying to model.”

Thirty-five adults older than 65 were recruited for the study, including 14 healthy participants, ten individuals with Parkinson’s disease, and 11 adults who had impaired feeling in their legs owing to peripheral neuropathy (nerve damage). Walking trials were performed using a computer-controlled treadmill, and participants wore an accelerometer – a small box attached with a belt – and a set of reflective markers on their lower body that allowed for tracking of the participants’ movements through a camera-based, motion-analysis system. These two systems allowed the team to examine the torso and lower body movements of patients as they walked. Participants completed three walking trials on the treadmill – one at a usual walking pace, another while walking slowly, and another that included working on a task while walking (i.e. pushing a button in response to a sound).

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The accelerometer signals were used to examine three aspects of movement: participants moving forward and backward, side to side, and up and down. The researchers then used advanced mathematical computations to extract data from these signals.

The results – integrated into the mathematical models – showed significant differences between the healthy and clinical populations. These metrics were able to discriminate between the three groups, identifying critical features in how the participants walked.

The Pitt team is now looking to conduct this type of study on a larger scale – evaluating the gait patterns of older adults residing within independent living facilities.

“Our results indicate that we can potentially develop these mathematical models as biomarkers to predict changes in walking due to diseases like Parkinson’s disease,” said Sejdic. “Now, we want to take it further. We’re especially hoping to help those individuals in independent living facilities by predicting the declines in their walking even earlier.”

“What also makes this study unique is the multidisciplinary team approach we used,” said Jennifer S. Brach (SHRS ’94G, ’00G) coprincipal investigator of the study and associate professor in Pitt’s Department of Physical Therapy. “Here we brought together a research team that included engineers, physical therapists, and experts in geriatrics to work on an important problem in older adults – changes in mobility.”

Members of the Pitt research team also include coprincipal investigator Mark S. Redfern, vice provost for research and William Kepler Whiteford Professor of Bioengineering; alumnus Kristin A. Lowry (SHRS ’87, ’02G), a postdoctoral scholar in the School of Medicine’s Geriatric Fellowship Training Program; and alumnus Jennica Bellanca (ENGR ’09, ’11G), now an engineer at the Office of Mine Safety and Health Research in the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

The paper, originally published online June 6, is titled “A Comprehensive Assessment of Gait Accelerometry Signals in Time, Frequency, and Time-Frequency Domains.” The research was supported by the Pittsburgh Older Americans Independence Center.

ECE Chair Dr. William Stanchina Appointed to Swedish Science and Technology Advisory Board

William E. Stanchina, professor and chair in the Swanson

School of Engineering’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineer-ing, has been appointed a member of the International Science and Technology Advisory Board for Myfab in Stockholm, Sweden.

Myfab is an open Swedish research infrastructure that focuses on the research and development of materials science, nanotechnology, and information and communica-

tions technology. In his role, Dr. Stanchina will provide guidance toward improving Myfab’s strategic plan.

Dr. Stanchina joined the department as Chair and Professor after 21 years at HRL Laboratories (formerly Hughes Research Laboratories) in Malibu, CA. At HRL he was directly involved in the research, development, and low volume production of high speed (40-150 GHz clock frequency) integrated circuits (ICs) based on indium phosphide heterojunction bipolar transistor technology. Since 1997, he was the Director of the Microelectronics Laboratory – an approximately 90 person organization that conducted R&D and pilot production of cutting-edge compound semiconductor IC technology including space-qualified InAlAs/InGaAs HEMT MMICs, GaN microwave and millimeter-wave MMICs, and ultra-low power narrow bandgap semiconductor ICs along with novel high frequency antennas and tunable filter technologies.

At Pitt, Dr. Stanchina is initiating a research program that investigates both the nano-scale potential and high voltage potential of wide bandgap heterostructure semiconductor devices and ICs. In addition to developing a fabrication capability utilizing the infrastructure available at the university, he is also establishing a device characterization laboratory for micro and nano-scale electronic devices in order to characterize their semiconductor device structure properties and to extract their equivalent circuit models.

Contributing author: B. Rose Huber

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U.S. Dept. of Energy NETL-RUA Grid Technologies Collaborative Seeks to

Advance Energy Needs and Technologies for the 21st Century

The five research university members of the Grid Technologies Collaborative (GTC) met in Arlington, Virginia to

define a future research agenda and identify government and industry partners to address the needs of an aging and nearly century-old electric grid system.

Representatives from Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech, and West Virginia University, which form the U. S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Tech-nology Laboratory-Regional University Alliance (NETL-RUA), along with the URS Corporation, were among more than 70 energy professionals in attendance at the Grid Technologies Collaborative 2013 National Conference on June 10. NETL-RUA established the GTC in 2012 to further research and development of advanced power electronics technologies, especially with utility-scale transmission and distribution.

The University of Pittsburgh and its Swanson School of Engineering are key players in the GTC and believe its formation represents an academic and research powerhouse necessary to solve the myriad problems facing the nation’s electric grid.

Wayne Honath, Director of Program Develop-ment with the non-profit University Energy Partnership, said “The first national confer-ence of the Grid Technologies Collaborative brought together our research team with key representatives of the utility industry, manu-facturers, and governmental bodies. This initial meeting will serve as the foundation for much of the future in power electronics research, and establishes important partnerships within the energy field. We were delighted to have a great turnout for our first conference, and will build on the knowledge and insight provided during the breakout sessions.”

Following a keynote address by Patricia Hoffman, assistant secretary, U. S. Department

of Energy, Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, attendees participated in breakout sessions with three goals: to define a future research agenda based on the assessment of work on the next generation power converter project; to identify possible government and industry partners to provide advice and direction and sponsor research; and to ensure alignment of future research plans with government and industry needs.

“Improving and expanding the nation’s electricity transmission and distribution sys-tem is not simply an infrastructure issue or a political issue, it’s also an economic and national security issue,” explains Gregory Reed, PhD, the GTC’s

director and technical lead, and director of the Electric Power Initiative at Pitt’s Center for Energy, and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Swanson School. “The grid is such a critical part of everyday life, and most Americans don’t even think about its existence until a natural disaster, a powerful storm or even a blown transformer disrupts their power supply. By leveraging the research abilities of the Regional University Alliance and NETL, we can further develop technologies that will improve power transmis-sion and distribution.”

According to the GTC, advanced power electronics technologies are at the core of improving the performance of the grid. Power electronics are devices and systems that more effectively facilitate the delivery of electricity from generators to end users. When deployed on the grid, as they have been for four decades

in the form Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS) and High Voltage DC Systems (HVDC), advanced power electronics systems provide four primary benefits:

• Enhancing existing grid performance to mitigate the need of building new transmission capacity

• Supporting liberalized electricity markets and better enabling consumer participation

• Integrating renewable and distributed generating resources and energy storage

• Increasing power system stability, security, and reliability

Dr. Reed also serves as the associate director of Pitt’s Center for Energy, which is housed in the Swanson School of Engineering and dedi-cated to improving energy technology develop-ment and sustainability. More than 70 faculty members already working in energy research from the Departments of Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Geology, and Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science are able to leverage their work and expertise through the Center. Its five key research areas include Advanced Materials for Energy-Related Applications; Carbon Management & Utilization; Energy Delivery and Reliability; Direct Energy Conver-sion and Recovery; and Unconventional Gas Resources. Many of the faculty who collaborate through the Center for Energy potentially will also contribute to the GTC’s success.

“Because of the size and scope and econom-ics involved, government or industry alone can’t begin to answer the challenges facing our electricity transmission system,” Dr. Reed says. “But by collaborating with the University of Pittsburgh and our other RUA partners, and leveraging our collective capabilities, we’re developing new advanced grid technologies for emerging AC and DC infrastructure and secur-ing a more reliable power system for the U.S.”

n Fall 2013 | 11ENGINEERING.PITT.EDU

Over 200 faculty, staff, alumni and friends of the Swanson School of Engineering

gathered in April to recognize this year’s Distin-guished Alumni Award recipients at the School’s annual banquet in the University of Pittsburgh’s Alumni Hall. Gerald D. Holder, US Steel Dean of Engineering, presented awards honoring alumni from each of the School’s six departments, as well as for the Swanson School overall.

Alvin L. Hillegass, BSEE ’49, Retired President and Chief Executive Officer, Camp-Hill Corporation and Retired Group Vice President-Steel, U.S. Steel, was named the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering’s Distinguished Alumnus. Mr. Hillegass played a key role in the iron & steel industry beginning in his hometown of McKeesport, PA at U.S. Steel’s former National Works.

Mr. Hillegass graduated from McKeesport High School in 1944 and received an athletic

scholarship to Auburn University. However, like most his age he was called to serve in World War II in the U.S. Navy. Following his navy service he enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh where he earned his BSEE in 1949. He later earned a Masters in Business from Indiana University.

Mr. Hillegass had a 33 year career with U.S. Steel rising to the position of Group Vice President - Steel, with overall responsibility for steel operations, sales, engineering and research. Following a successful US Steel career, Mr. Hillegass joined with Pat Campana to form Camp-Hill Corp that went on to purchase and restart three shut down pipe manufacturing facilities. All are still operating today. They have subsequently been acquired as operating facilities by new owners.

Mr. Hillegass is now retired and continues investing in entrepreneurial projects.

Alvin Hillegass Recognized as 2013 Distinguished

Alumnus of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Dr. Hai Li Receives 2013 DARPA Young Faculty Award

Hai (Helen) Li, PhD, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at

the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, was named the 2013 recipient of the DARPA Young Faculty Award. Dr. Li’s winning proposal was “An Adaptive Information Processing System Resilient to Device Variations and Noises.”

The objective of DARPA’s 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 Defense Department needs and DARPA’s program development process. The YFA program provides funding, mentoring, and industry and DoD contacts to these faculty members early in their careers to develop their research ideas in the context of DoD needs. The program focuses on untenured faculty, emphasizing those without prior DARPA funding.

The long-term goal of YFA is to develop the next generation of academic scientists, engineers, and mathematicians in key disciplines who will focus a significant portion of their career on DoD and National Security issues.

YFA was initiated as a DARPA program in 2006. Technical areas of interest included electronics, photonics, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), architectures, and algorithms. The program was expanded in 2009 and again in 2010 to address additional DARPA core research areas. Current YFA efforts are two years in duration with approximately $150,000 per year for projects. Each YFA is assigned a DARPA program manager who is closely aligned with their technical interests. A highlight of YFA is DARPA-sponsored military visits. All YFA recipients are expected to partici-pate in one or more military site visits or exercises to help them better understand DoD.

In its relatively short history, YFA has funded nearly 100 up-and-coming junior faculty members, many of whom have also become engaged with DARPA and DoD in other programs.

This is Dr. Li’s second national recognition in as many years. In 2012 she received a CAREER Award, the National Science Foundation’s top accolade for junior faculty who stand to assume significant leadership roles in their fields.

(L to r): Dean Holder, Mr. Hillegass and Dr. Stanchina.

1140 Benedum Hall 3700 O’Hara Street Pittsburgh PA 15261

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH | SWANSON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING | ECE NEWS | FALL 2013

30%

post-

consumer waste content

Industry professionals seeking to advance their knowledge of state-of-the-art electric power

engineering while studying online now have in the opportunity to earn a post baccalaureate certificate in this increasingly important field. This fall, the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering launches its new Electric Power Engineering Post-Baccalaureate/Graduate Certificate program available in either in-classroom or via the Swanson School’s distance-enabled synchronous network.

This 15-credit program, part of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering’s graduate course offerings, is built around the principles of

electric power engineering, enhanced reliability of electric power grid infrastructure, renewable energy integration, power electronics, and smart grids. According to Department Chair William Stanchina, PhD, the curriculum is specifically crafted to address the needs of industry profes-sionals and their employers, as well as recent electrical and mechanical engineering graduates.

“As technologies continue to advance in the areas of power system engineering, power electronics, and control systems, today’s professionals are looking to broaden their knowledge base and employers are building a more engaged workforce,” Dr. Stanchina said. “By offering this certificate through synchronous, distance-enabled courses, we’re enabling professionals to learn from home or at work, anywhere in the world, and participate in a live classroom experience through their computer.”

In addition to the standard coursework under the direction of Gregory Reed, PhD, Director of Pitt’s Electric Power Initiative, the program will present a series of special topics each semester that address recent advances in electric power technologies. Initial topics include renewable and alternative energy systems; smart grid technolo-gies and applications; advanced power electronics featuring Flexible Alternating Current Transmission Systems (FACTS) and High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC), and protective relaying and automation.

Admission requirements include a bachelor of science in electrical engineering from an ABET-accredited university program (no industry experi-ence required) or a bachelor of science in any engineering field with a minimum of three years of power industry experience. The program does not require GRE scores. At least two references are recommended. For more information and to apply visit engineering.pitt.edu/powercertificate.

Swanson School Launches New Online Electric Power Engineering Certificate for Professionals