To learn more about prizes and key dates related to the competition, visit the InVenture Prize web site.

Dr. Harley has been the Duke Power Company Distinguished Professor in the School of ECE since 1999. He is the second faculty member at Georgia Tech to receive this award, with the first being Sakis Meliopoulos in 2005. This makes Georgia Tech the only educational institution to have two faculty members as recipients of this honor.

Dr. Romberg's research centers on the mathematics of data acquisition. In particular, he is interested in how randomness can actually help in data acquisition, potentially reducing both the cost and the computational complexity of high-resolution sensing systems. This work will influence the design of next-generation analog-to-digital converters, radar imaging platforms, and MRI systems.

Dr. Rohatgi is a Regents' Professor in ECE and is a Duke Power Distinguished Professor. He founded the University Center of Excellence for Photovoltaic Research and Education in 1992. Dr. Rohatgi is also the founder of Suniva, a start-up company that develops, manufactures, and delivers low-cost, high-efficiency silicon solar cells.

As a member of ECE Professor John Cressler's Silicon-Heterostructure Devices and Circuits research team, Jiahui's research focuses on the detailed understanding of the fundamental scaling issues of SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs), and to date centers on two areas: 1) using operating temperature a tuning knob for both enhancing performance to better define the ultimate speed limits of such devices, as well as uncovering new device physics phenomena in these operating temperature extremes; and 2) defining a viable scaling path towards TeraHertz (THz = 1,000 GHz) bandwidth in SiGe HBTs. THz electronics is a newly emergent research thrust in the electronics community, with numerous envisioned applications in the high mm-wave and THz imaging and communications areas.

The objective of the IEEE MTT-S Graduate Fellowship program is to recognize and provide financial assistance to graduate students who show promise and interest in pursuing a graduate degree in microwave engineering. Mr. Sen's research is on adaptive RF circuits and systems for low power, multi-standard and future software radio applications.

"We are pleased to be recognized among the nation's top EE and CmpE programs," said Gary S. May, Steve W. Chaddick School Chair of ECE. "Our success in ECE can be attributed to continually recruiting and retaining the finest faculty and students that are supported by a great group of staff. We can all be very proud of our accomplishments and the high esteem in which our peers hold us."

The College of Engineering moved up a notch to fourth, and Georgia Tech retained its 7th place standing among public universities. To learn how other engineering disciplines at Georgia Tech fared in the 2009 U.S. News rankings, please read the news release on the Georgia Tech web site. Congratulations to everybody!

The biennial award was presented at the PEMC Conference, held in Poznan, Poland from September 1-3.

Susceptible to rot, wooden crossarms must be inspected and replaced periodically, or otherwise lines could collapse and cause outages. Such inspections have traditionally required workers to climb poles, hit the crossarm with a hammer and judge its condition by listening to the resulting ring. But these manual inspections are imprecise, time-consuming, costly, and hazardous.

Now, researchers have merged laser vibrometry and neural networks to create a remote inspection system that analyzes crossarms from the air. The team includes ECE Professor Ron Harley, NEETRAC research engineer Paul Springer, and GTRI research engineer Jim Mahaffey.

An annual tradition at the White House during the last eight years, the Iftaar dinner is a meal served at the end of the day during the holy month of Ramadan when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. The White House event honored those members of the Muslim community who have risen to the top of their professions.

Dr. Maldonado currently serves as the associate dean for research within Texas A&M's Dwight Look College of Engineering and deputy director of the Texas Engineering Experiment Station. She is also professor in the Department of ECE.

An alumna of Georgia Tech, Dr. Maldonado received her B.E.E., M.S.E.E., and Ph.D. from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1981, 1982, and 1990, respectively. She is also a member of Tech's ECE Advisory Board.

An M.S. student in the Quantitative Ultrasonic Evaluation, Sensing, and Testing Laboratory, Mr. Pezant is advised by Jennifer Michaels. Dr. Michaels was a co-author on the paper, as was Tom Michaels, a faculty member with the QUEST Lab. Mr. Pezant's work on the poster is supported by an NSF-STTR project that aims to develop ultrasonic methods for continuous monitoring of the structural integrity of high temperature piping and pressure vessels critical to the energy infrastructure of the United States.

Eric A. Boe is one of the Tech alums scheduled to participate on this 15-day mission to the International Space Station. He earned his M.S.E.E. in 1997. Shane Kimbrough (MSOR '98) and Sandra Magnus (PhD MSE '96) are his fellow Tech alumni joining him on this voyage.

The mission focuses on delivering equipment and supplies designed to double the crew size of the station from three to six in May 2009. The station's two Solar Alpha Rotary Joints will also be serviced by the crew.

The Missouri S&T group, working with researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology, plans to use the brain power to develop a new method for tracking and managing the constantly changing levels of power supply and demand.

Led by Dr. Ganesh Kumar Venayagamoorthy, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Missouri S&T, the researchers will use living neural networks composed of thousands of brain cells from laboratory rats to control simulated power grids in the lab. From those studies, the researchers hope to create a "biologically inspired" computer program to manage and control complex power grids in Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria and elsewhere.

The research is funded through a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation. Georgia Tech researchers include ECE Professor Ronald G. Harley and Steve Potter, associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.

The Board's membership covers a wide range of expertise and comes from the academic and scientific communities, government agencies, and industry. Dr. Shamma specializes in feedback control and its applications.

Dr. Howard will receive this honor at the Georgia Tech Women's Leadership Conference, which will take place November 7-8 at the Student Center. Awards will also be given to an outstanding female staff member, graduate student, undergraduate student, and alumna.

The mission of the Women's Leadership Conference is to celebrate, recognize, and learn more about the strong leadership exhibited by women of the Georgia Tech community.

PF&R is published for senior corporate executives at power industry firms worldwide. The publication focuses specifically on financings, mergers, and risk management in the global power industry. The renewable energy piece will cover the latest developments, trends, and opportunities in solar PV, solar thermal, wind power, bio-energy, geothermal, and hydrogen/fuel cells.

In the article, Dustin talks about how he got a job checking space shuttles before launch at NASA Kennedy Space Center and offers tips on how to prepare for an out-of-this-world career. He earned his bachelor's degree in agricultural engineering from the University of Georgia in 2006 and his M.S.E.E. from Georgia Tech in 2007.

Established in 1964, the University of Patras is highly regarded by the European and international communities for its expertise in science and technology. Dr. Wolf holds the Rhesa "Ray" P. Farmer Distinguished Chair of Embedded Computing Systems at Georgia Tech and is also a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar.

Krishna Bharath received the Texas Instruments Best Student Paper Award for the paper "Multi-Layer Fringe-Field Augmentations for the Efficient Modeling of Package Power Planes" at the 17th IEEE Conference on Electrical Performance of Electronic Packaging, held October 27-29 in San Jose, Calif. Additional authors on the paper are Nithya Sankaran, Ege Engin, and Madhavan Swaminathan. Mr. Bharath is a Ph.D. student advised by Dr. Swaminathan.