Speaker: Mr. Harold Allen, Embedded Engineering Manager, Eaton Corporation –  Lighting, Connected Buildings

Speaker: Mr. John Lanza, Foley and Lardner LLP

Title: Imaging at relativistic speeds; the new space between sensing and imaging

Abstract:
How would you design a camera that has a shutter speed comparable to the speed of light? What would you do with such capability? Today, ultrafast imaging and time-of-flight imaging are at the core of autonomous navigation, depth mapping, and remote sensing applications. My talk will cover some breakthroughs in ultrafast imaging systems, components, and methodologies which will enable future applications. The developed techniques realize exotic imaging modalities that can scan through closed books page by page, see around the corner, and sense through thick tissue at infrared wavelength. The talk will further elaborate on redesigning optics in the time dimension and applying computational methods and machine learning to exploit the temporal and spatial information.

Researchers and students interested in computational imaging, THz sensing, LIDAR systems, augmented reality displays and the physics of light should find this talk exciting. 

Speaker Bio:
Barmak Heshmat is head of optics at Meta Augmented Reality and former research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He lead the ‘inverse problems in light propagation’ subgroup in the Camera Culture group where they developed tools and solutions for imaging beyond conventional limitations of optics using ultrafast optics, nano optics and computational methods. Barmak has given invited talks at six TEDx events, three NASA’s cross industry innovation summits, and numerous other venues and academic institutions.

Barmak received his Ph.D. (on optoelectronics and nanomaterials) at the University of Victoria in 2013 where he invented a THz receiver with an order of magnitude better sensitivity compared to the state of the art at the time. He is the  inventor of time-folded optics, time-encoded sub-diffraction limit imaging, Tyndall windows, optical brush and many more devices, gadgets, and methods.He has published 22 journal papers and filed 15 patents. Some of these papers and inventions have been featured on MIT cover page, BBC, TechCrunch and many other media outlets. Barmak is also the cofounder of the 'Imaginarium of Technology' (iMT) which is a platform for envisioning engineering ideas and providing academic illustration services.

Speaker: Mr. Paul M. Emerson, Director, LP Next

Madhavan Swaminathan

John Pippin Chair in Microsystems Packaging & Electromagnetics

Director, Center for Co-Design of Chip, Package, System (C3PS)

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Tech (GT), USA

www.c3ps.gatech.edu

Abstract:
A combination of "Moore" (IC) and "More than Moore" (package) scaling has led to the shrinking of electronic systems over the last several decades, and this trend is expected to continue into the future. PRC has pioneered package scaling over the last 24 years. As the first NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) at Georgia Tech, it also created history and set the stage for future such centers at Georgia Tech. Being a legacy center, the question remains as to what should be the future trajectory for PRC and how should PRC organize itself as we address interesting and challenging problems of the future.

This vision talk will cover the past, present and future in the field of packaging and package scaling based on interactions with industry, govt. labs, sponsoring agencies and academia over a period of two decades. This talk will also cover the presenter’s vision for building a mega center in packaging that covers electronic systems in its entirety, thus enabling Georgia Tech to be at the forefront of packaging in the future.

Speaker Bio:
Madhavan Swaminathan is the John Pippin Chair in Microsystems Packaging & Electromagnetics in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Director of the Center for Co-Design of Chip, Package, System (C3PS), GT. He formerly held the position of Joseph M. Pettit Professor in Electronics in ECE and Deputy Director of the NSF Microsystems Packaging Research Center, GT. Prior to joining GT, he was with IBM working on packaging for supercomputers. He is the author of 450+ refereed technical publications, holds 30 patents, primary author and co-editor of 3 books, founder and co-founder of two start-up companies, and founder of the IEEE Conference Electrical Design of Advanced Packaging and Systems (EDAPS), a premier conference sponsored by the EPS society. His research work has been recognized through several awards including 21 best paper and best student paper awards, 2018 Scott D. Wills Distinguished Mentor Award, GT ’17,  Outstanding Achievement in Research Program Development Award, GT ’14, Distinguished Alumnus Award from NITT (India), 2014 Outstanding Sustained Technical Contribution Award from IEEE EPS Society, 2007 Technical Excellence Award from Semiconductor Research Corporation, 2003 Outstanding Faculty Leadership Award for the advisement of GRAs, GT ’02, Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award from ECE, GT and IBM Outstanding Faculty Award in 2004 and 2005. He is an IEEE Fellow and has served as the Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE EMC society. Forty two PhD and twenty MS students have graduated under his supervision. He received his BE degree in Electronics and Communication from NIT, Trichy in 1985 and MS/PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Syracuse University in 1989 and 1991, respectively.

Speaker: Ms. Laura S. Huffman, Intellectual Property Practice Attorney

Title: Salt Geometry Reconstruction In Seismic Imaging

Abstract:
Full-Waveform Inversion attempts to estimate a high-resolution model of the Earth by inverting all the seismic data. This procedure fails if the Earth model contains high-contrast bodies such as salt. These bodies are important for hydrocarbon exploration. We propose a parametric level-set method to estimate these geometries by incorporating prior information about their properties. Tests on a suite of idealized salt geometries show that the proposed method is stable against a modest amount of noise.

Speaker Bio: Ajinkya Kadu is a Ph.D. student at Mathematical Institute of Utrecht University in The Netherlands. He completed his bachelor's and master's degrees from Department of Aerospace Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 2015. For his Ph.D., he's working with Tristan van Leeuwen and Wim Mulder to develop mathematical methods for inverse scattering problem. His Ph.D. is supported by Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and Royal Dutch Shell.

Speaker: Mr. Timothy Jones, General Manager, National Intelligence Division, Aerospace Corporation

Pizza refreshments will be provided! 

Speaker: Ms. Kathy M. Bowland, Research Engineer II and Dr. Nelson E. Lourenco, Research Engineer II, Advanced Concepts Laboratory - GTRI

Speaker: Ramachandra Achar, Carleton University (Ontario, Canada)

Location: Pettit Microelectronics Research Center Building, Room 102

Registration Deadline: October 22nd, 9:00AM

Registration and further information: https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/m/178706

Speaker: Muhannad S. Bakir, Georgia Institute of Technology

Location: Centergy One Building, Room 5126

Registration Deadline: October 23rd, 11:59PM

Registration and further information: https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/m/178175

Speaker: Mr. Keefe Bohannan, Applications Engineering District Manager, Keysight Technologies, Inc.

Speaker: Mr. Tanmay Bangalore, Autonomous Vehicle Software Engineer, General Motors Corporation

Speaker: Mr. Jordan Cole - Engineer, ExxonMobil Corporation

Jordan Cole ’15 has worked for the past three years as an Instrumentation Engineer at the ExxonMobil Refinery in Beaumont, TX. His area of expertise involves instrumentation associated with Petroleum Coking Process and Catalytic Hydrodesulfurization.

At Georgia Tech Mr. Cole graduated with a bachelors in Electrical Engineering focusing on industrial control systems. He completed three co-op terms at Kimberly Clark in Paper Manufacturing. His favorite course was Senior Design, where his team built an autonomous electrical vault inspection drone.

Before attending Georgia Tech Cole worked many jobs including farmer, electrician, draftsman, and Peace Corps volunteer. These experiences, along with his education at Tech served as useful training for troubleshooting skills required to work at a large manufacturing site.   

Speakers: 

Ms. Brittany Robinson, Environmental Program Manager, International Paper

Ms. Rachel Moore, Process Control Engineering Manager, International Paper

Mr. Michael George, Process Control Engineer, International Paper

Mr. Jonathan Boysen, Reliability Engineer, International Paper

Brittany Robinson graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in Chemical Engineering.  While at Georgia Tech, she was a co-op student at the Environmental Protection Agency.  Upon graduation, she went to work at the International Paper’s Savannah Mill as an Environmental Engineer. She has held various positions in the company and is currently an Environmental Program Manager working for the corporate office. Ms. Robinson is a Professional Engineer in the states of North and South Carolina. She served on the Georgia Tech Alumni Association Board of Trustees from 2005-2008, is the 2004 Georgia Tech Outstanding Young Alumni, and 2007 Outstanding Young Engineer from the Georgia Tech School of Engineering.

Rachel Moore has 25 years of industrial automation experience. She is currently the Mill-wide Process Control Manager for the International Paper Flint River Mill. Prior to managing the controls team she supported the Fiberline Operations as a Process Control Engineer. She has provided the Pulp Business with knowledge and experience in project management, process analysis, and process optimization. She has developed process relational databases for instrument management systems, Honeywell Distributed Control Logic programming, and process modeling. Rachel has provided leadership in the development of Best Practices for paper mill operations while utilizing the Management of Change process and procedures. 

Michael George graduated from University of Iowa with a degree in Electrical Engineering in 2015. While at Iowa Michael interned at ESCO Automation Group, an industrial integrator, for 2 years. Upon graduation, he went to work at the International Paper’s Savannah Mill as a Process Control Engineer. He has continued his work as a process control engineer for his entire career at International Paper but has rotated through every area of the mill based upon their current needs. He currently is responsible for number 5 and 6 Paper Machines and the Power House.

Jonathan Boysen graduated from Auburn University with a degree in Electrical Engineering. While in school, he gained experience with Mercedes. Upon graduation, he began his career with International Paper at the Savannah Mill in the Electrical Reliability Department. He then became a Front Line Leader/Shift Manger in the Finished Products Department. Upon completion of that experience, he has returned to work in Electrical Reliability in Finished Products.

Speaker:  Will Cross

Will Cross received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Georgia Tech, in mechanical engineering and control systems. He joined John Deere to learn electrical engineering so that he could be a complete engineer designing and deploying electric drives on a variety of John Deere equipment.

Mr. Cross will present some of his work in deploying electric drive systems on Deere vehicles while giving an overview of the myriad contributions electrical and computer engineers make to the development of John Deere equipment.

Speakers: Prof. Dr. Peter Zeller and Christoph Diendorfer

Abstract:
DC power distribution systems have numerous benefits compared to AC systems such as no skin effect, no reactive power, and reduced dielectric losses. With the increasing performance of power electronic semiconductors, DC systems can be an economical solution for medium voltage systems and could become an important technology for electrical energy supply.

DC systems come with their own set of challenges. One issue researchers have to investigate is the different fault behavior such as stable glowing contact and arcing effects, and special DC (surface) breakdown effects. All around the world, the scientific community is focusing on novel monitoring solutions for DC insulation systems and the detection and localization of arcs, to provide fundamental technologies and realize early switch-off approaches, which would limit the negative effects of arc fault in electrical equipment.

The seminar will be split into two selected topics out of the whole DC system protection aspects: (1) DC surface breakdown effects and arc and glowing contact detection in DC (PV) systems, and (2) DC surface breakdown experiments at a gap distance of 1 cm with different levels and types pollution and insulator materials. The talk will describe the experimental setup, the instrumentation, and discuss the measurement results.
Initial arcing experiments have been carried out using a 400 V PV system with a special contact system, providing the spectrum of contact current and voltage in order to analyze the different spectra of healthy contacts, glowing contacts, and arcing contacts. The introduced results (high speed filming of the arc) show details of arc behavior originating the measured spectra. A comparison of the spectra indicates an appropriate approach to identify arcs, but not glowing contacts in DC systems.

Biographies:
Dr. Peter Zeller graduated from the Technical University Vienna in Electrical Energy Engineering.With his PhD work he investigated the interaction of the arc plasma with the cold surrounding air in arc chutes. He was the head of the international development department for surge arresters at ABB Switzerland before he joined the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria. Currently he is the head of the international (and in English taught) study programs bachelor and master of Electrical Energy Engineering. Dr. Peter Zeller researches in the fields of high voltage engineering, electric arcs and DC Grid technology.

Christoph Diendorfer MSc graduated from the university in applied science Upper Austria in Automation Engineering. His Master thesis focused on a fully automated recovery in a Medium Voltage Direct Current shipboard power system in less than 8 ms. Later he started his career as a researcher in the University of Applied Science Upper Austria in the field of high-current engineering.

This event is jointly organized by the IEEE PES Georgia Tech Student Branch, the Energy Club at Georgia Tech, and the Plasma and Dielectrics Lab. Light refreshments will be served.

Speaker: Andrea Comsa

Title: Software Defined Radio: Motivation and State of the Art

Abstract: Software Defined Radio (SDR) has been, like many technologies, just around the corner, for many years. Recent advances in portability, modularity, and standards have moved SDR from the realm of single purpose, hobbyist, narrow bandwidth processors to multi-waveform , almost generic, processing engines. So much so, that if you can afford a rack of Zeon servers, you can move the processing stack to start directly at the output of the Analog-Digital Converter, and move the algorithm between platforms at will.  Now that this pure software portability has been achieved, what are the solutions for embedded systems that have limited Size, Weight and Power? Until recently, that answer has looked like custom ASICs or FPGAs, performing a single waveform, or at best, a single waveform family.  This hardware limitation doesn’t have to occur however. In engineering, a good rule of thumb is that the most difficult, or state of the art, attempt will always require customer logic / expensive development, but as capabilities increase, designers can afford to trade off implementation efficiency for ease of re-use and modularity. With the latest FPGAs available, the market has developed enough excess capacity that we can afford to be non-optimal in our efficiency, and thus make the equivalent of libraries in hardware that allow an algorithm to be implemented in SW or in HW. This talk will cover a short background in SDR and some of the open-source frameworks for SDR. We will examine some reasons (but not all) why it is important and some challenges. I will talk about REDHAWK, a US Government curated standard for SDR , and I will demonstrate the ADS-B waveform running on a laptop, in an laptop/FPGA and entirely in an FPGA; examining some of the trade offs.

Speakers Bio: Matthew Clark joined NGIT-TASC in 2007, with the goal of converting signal processing algorithms into embedded hardware and software. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computing Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, focusing on the implementation of signal processing algorithms in hardware. He joined Northrop Grumman after 20 years with TRW, Hughes, Raytheon, Nortel, and Intel where he worked primarily in FPGA and ASIC design. While at Northrop Grumman, he has served as the Chief Engineer and/or program manager on a variety of IRaD and CRaD embedded signal processing programs. Matthew is currently working to define a canonical FPGA/embedded processing architecture for REDHAWK.

Title: Novel Optical Material Platforms for Nanophotonics
Date and Time: Wednesday, August 15, 12:00-1:00 pm

Location: Bunger-Henry Building, Room 388

Pizza/Drinks will be provided!

Abstract

Light is one of the most important carriers of energy and information. Optical materials play important roles in the future development of technologies that are based on the generation, transmission and processing of light. In this talk, I will introduce our recent efforts in 2 research directions on optical materials. One is the investigation of optical materials for novel metaphotonic applications. By introducing materials with different optical responses to the design of metamaterials, we are now able to achieve a much wider range of optical functionalities. For example, by utilizing a phase change material vanadium dioxide to construct a completely reconfigurable “meta-canvas”, we can easily write and erase a metaphotonic structure on the “canvas” and such processes can be repeated for at least hundreds of times.

The other is the exploration of new materials with fundamentally new optical responses and their optoelectronic and nanophotonic applications, such as van der Waals materials with semiconducting properties. We have discovered room-temperature high-polarization valleytronic behaviors in a van der Waals material, tin monosulfide (SnS), which has non-degenerate valleys due to its strong in-plane anisotropy. I will discuss its unique performance and the physics behind those behaviors.

Speaker Bio

Prof. Jie Yao obtained his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 2010 and did postdoctoral research at Stanford University after that. He joined the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UC Berkeley as an assistant professor in 2013. His research interests are mainly focused on optical materials and nanophotonics, including the exploration of new material platforms, such as 2D materials, phase changing materials, etc., for nanophotnic applications. Prof. Yao has won the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation and Early Career award from SPIE. He is also a recipient of the Hellman Fellowship from the Hellman Foundation and Bakar Fellowship from the Bakar Fellow program at UC Berkeley.

Surname/Last Name: A thru I
Date:  Thursday, August 16
Time:  9:30 - 11:30
Location:  Klaus 2443                                            

Surname/Last Name: J thru S
Date: Thursday, August 16
Time: 1:30 - 3:30
Location: Klaus  2443
 

Surname/Last Name: T thru Z and students who missed August 16
Date: Friday, August 17
Time: 9:30 - 11:30
Location: Klaus 2443

Surname/Last Name: A thru I
Date:  Thursday, August 16
Time:  9:30 - 11:30
Location:  Klaus 2443                                            

Surname/Last Name: J thru S
Date: Thursday, August 16
Time: 1:30 - 3:30
Location: Klaus  2443
 

Surname/Last Name: T thru Z and students who missed August 16
Date: Friday, August 17
Time: 9:30 - 11:30
Location: Klaus 2443

Surname/Last Name: A thru H
Date: Thursday, August 16
Time: 9:30 - 11:30
Location: Classroom 241 - Van Leer                       
 

Surname/Last Name: I thru Z
Date: Thursday, August 16
Time: 1:30 - 3:30
Location: Classroom 241 - Van Leer

Welcome remarks from Dr. Ben Klein and school chair, Dr. Magnus Egerstedt - 1:00 p.m.

Fall Advisement Sessions for new graduate students will be held as follows:

Ph.D. Advisement Sessions

Surname/Last Name: A thru H
Date: Thursday, August 16
Time: 9:30 - 11:30
Location: Classroom 241 - Van Leer                       
 

Surname/Last Name: I thru Z
Date: Thursday, August 16
Time: 1:30 - 3:30
Location: Classroom 241 - Van Leer

M.S. Advisement Sessions

Surname/Last Name: A thru I
Date:  Thursday, August 16
Time:  9:30 - 11:30
Location:  Klaus 2443                                            

Surname/Last Name: J thru S
Date: Thursday, August 16
Time: 1:30 - 3:30
Location: Klaus  2443
 

Surname/Last Name: T thru Z and students who missed August 16
Date: Friday, August 17
Time: 9:30 - 11:30
Location: Klaus 2443

RSVP here

Title: Lattice Reduction Aided Precoding and Detection Designs for Multiuser Large MIMO Systems

Abstract:
Multi-input multi-output (MIMO) technology has been intensively studied and incorporated into latest wireless communication standards since it can greatly improve the capacity and reliability of wireless systems. For example, the LTE standard supports up to 8 base station (BS) transmit antennas and up to 8 receive antennas in the user equipment (UE). To further reap the benefits of MIMO, massive MIMO has been proposed by equipping each BS with hundreds of antennas or more. One key issue in such large-dimension MIMO system is the design of efficient precoding/detection algorithms, especially when the total number of serving UE antennas is close to that at the base station, in which case linear schemes fall short in performance due to high orthogonality deficiency of the MIMO channel. Recently, lattice reduction (LR)-aided detections have been proposed in MIMO systems to achieve near-optimum bit-error-rate (BER) performance with average-case polynomial complexity. In this talk, we will dive deep into the analysis and applications of LR algorithms in multiuser large MIMO systems. Specifically, we propose a LR-aided precoding scheme and a LR-aided detection scheme. Compared to other state-of-the-art schemes, LR-aided designs achieve superior BER while maintaining low complexity.

Speakers Bio:
Yiming Kong is a Ph.D. student working with Professor Xiaoli Ma with a research focus on the design and application of low-complexity high-performance detectors for large MIMO systems. Her other research interests include applying machine learning algorithms in telecommunication systems/networks, and mining telecom data. She was a research intern with FutureWei Technologies during 2016 and summer 2017. Before coming to Georgia Tech, she obtained her bachelor of engineering at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.

Please RSVP at https://b.gatech.edu/2vyC0Nw before Friday, April 27th.  Desserts will be included.

We encourage ECE Staff to bring their lunch and learn more about faculty research, special topics of interests, and more during our ECE Brown Bag series.

Speaker Title: Director, LP Next

Seminar Title: Change = Opportunity:  Building a fulfilling career

Abstract of Talk:
Paul will share his experiences and advice for building a fulfilling career starting with his first real job through the graduate coop program at Georgia Tech, up to his current position where he leads an advanced development team within the Linear Power business at Texas Instruments in Dallas including many roles in-between such as leading Kilby Labs Dallas and running a half billion dollar / year business at TI. Paul will reveal some of the lessons that he has learned the hard way as well as by observing others with the desire that some of these will benefit students who are embarking on the next step of their career.

Biographical Sketch of the Speaker:
Paul Emerson is currently the director of Linear Power Next and technologist for the Voltage Reference and Supervisor product line (VRS) which is part of the Analog Power Products division of Texas Instruments.  From 2012 to 2017, Paul served as the general manager of Kilby Labs Dallas.  Prior to managing the lab, Paul spent three years managing HVAL’s  (High Volume Analog and Logic) New Business Proving Grounds where he led a team focused on new business and technology development. Paul’s career at TI started in 1996 and he has served as analog design engineer, engineering manager, product line manager and business unit manager all for the Storage Products Group (SPG). Paul was elected to the TI Technical ladder in 1999 and promoted to Senior Member, Technical Staff in 2003. He is the inventor or co-inventor of 10 patents in HDD (Hard Disk Drive) read/write preamplifier circuit design and 1 patent in ink jet printing of sensors.

Prior to joining TI Paul worked as an analog design engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company in El Segundo, California. He earned his Bachelors of Electrical Engineering (BEE) in 1991 and Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering (MSEE) in 1992 from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Outside of work, Paul is a busy parent of three who is actively involved in church, as a founding board member of a Camp in North Alabama, his sons’ scouting, an avid road cyclist, and various projects at home.

Title: Visual Texture Analysis: From Similarity to Material Properties

Abstract:
Texture is an important visual attribute for both human perception and image analysis. It provides important clues for object shape and boundary detection, as well as material identification. Our research has initially focused on texture similarity, which is important for a variety of applications, including image compression and content-based retrieval. We have proposed a new class of structural texture similarity metrics (STSIMs) that account for human visual perception and the stochastic nature of textures. They rely entirely on local image statistics and allow substantial point-by-point deviations between textures that according to human judgment are similar or essentially identical. We have also developed new testing procedures for objective texture similarity metrics. We have identified three operating domains for evaluating the performance of such metrics, each with different performance goals and testing procedures. We have also proposed ViSiProG (Visual Similarity by Progressive Grouping), a new procedure for collecting subjective similarity data.

Our current goal is the extraction of material properties.  We propose techniques that account for dramatic changes in texture appearance due to variations in illumination and viewing conditions.  The key elements the proposed approach are (1) the use of ViSiProG for identifying clusters of visually similar textures; (2) the characterization of each material with a small set of exemplars; (3) the use of machine learning techniques for training STSIMs to separate the textures according to the material they correspond to.  We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques using "CUReT," a fully labeled database of real-world surfaces, viewed under different illuminations and viewing angles at a fixed distance.  However, the proposed approaches can be applied to domains where semantic labeling is not available, for example, a database of satellite images, and a database of building fronts obtained from "Google Earth Street View.”

Speakers Bio:
Thrasos Pappas received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT in 1987. From 1987 until 1999, he was a Member of the Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ. He joined the EECS Department at Northwestern in 1999.  His research interests are in human perception and electronic media, and in particular, image and video quality and compression, image and video analysis, content-based retrieval, model-based halftoning, and tactile and multimodal interfaces. Prof. Pappas is a Fellow of the IEEE, SPIE and IS&T.  He has served as editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (2010-12), elected member of the Board of Governors of the Signal Processing Society of IEEE (2004-07), chair of the IEEE Image and Multidimensional Signal Processing Technical Committee (2002-03), and technical program co-chair of ICIP-01 and ICIP-09.  He has also served as VP-Publications for the Signal Processing Society of IEEE. From 1997 to 2017, he has served as co-chair of the SPIE/IS&T Conference on Human Vision and Electronic Imaging. He is currently a founding Editor-in-Chief of the IS&T Journal of Perceptual Imaging.

Speaker Title: Founder and CTO

Seminar Title: From Engineer to Entrepreneur

Abstract of Talk:
How does an engineer go about starting a company? What should you do before you graduate to prepare for life as an entrepreneur? Do you need a Business degree along with your ECE degree? Where can you go in the Tech community to get advice or help with developing a business plan? Jim Stratigos will recount his experience as an entrepreneur and founder of four start-ups since he graduated from Tech. He will provide humorous and frightening examples of the things entrepreneurs go through to help you decide if the world of a start-up is right for you.

Biographical Sketch of the Speaker:
Jim Stratigos, is founder and CEO of Cognosos Inc., and president of Broadband Strategies. He is an active angel investor, mentor and advisor to a variety of early-stage technology companies. He brings more than 35 years of experience as a successful technology entrepreneur and industry leader. At Broadband Strategies, Jim has advised private companies and venture capital firms in the telecom, wireless, semiconductor and energy industries.

Jim’s career includes CEO, executive management, marketing, and engineering positions in semiconductor, wireless and satellite technology companies, including Cognosos, Sytheros Communications, Jacket Micro Devices, Echostar, Media4 AT&T, Tridom, Scientific-Atlanta and Motorola. He has been a founder or CEO of five technology companies and was directly involved in raising more than $75 million in venture capital.

Jim is active in the Atlanta high tech community and is a founding member of Atlanta Technology Angels, an Atlanta-based, early stage investment group. He also serves on the advisory boards of several portfolio companies and is past chairman of Georgia Advanced Technology Ventures.

A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Jim earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1974, and a master's degree in electrical engineering, also from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1980. Jim is a member of the IEEE, the Georgia Tech College of Engineering Advisory Board and a member of the Georgia Tech Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni

Seminar Title: "Parity-time symmetry and the emerging field of non-Hermitian photonics."

Abstract: 

Interest in non-Hermitian systems has been sparked after the realization that a large class of non-Hermitian Hamiltonians can exhibit entirely real spectra as long as they respect parity-time (PT) symmetry. In most cases, such PT-symmetric Hamiltonians involve complex potentials with symmetric and anti-symmetric distributions of their real/imaginary parts. Even though the practicality of this theory, is still a matter of debate in its original community, recently it has been noted that optics, due to the abundance of non-conservative elements of gain and loss, can provide a fertile ground for observing and fruitfully utilizing parity-time symmetry. 

In this talk, the ramifications of parity-time symmetry in optics will be discussed. PT-symmetric structures by utilizing balanced regions of gain and loss can exhibit peculiar properties which do not have a counterpart in traditional Hermitian systems. This has inspired the broader field of non-Hermitian photonics targeting new devices and structures with novel properties and functionalities by exploiting gain and loss as extra degrees of freedom. In particular, I will discuss selective PT-symmetry-breaking in multimode laser cavities as a new approach to enforce single-mode operation. In addition, I will discuss the possibility of breaking the reciprocity of light in a multimode cavity optomechanical system, highlighting the importance of drives and dissipations.

Bio:

Mohammad-Ali Miri is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Shiraz University and Sharif University of Technology in 2008 and 2010 respectively and a Ph.D. in Optics from CREOL, the College of Optics and Photonics, at the University of Central Florida, where he received the Best Doctoral Dissertation Award in 2015. 

Dr. Miri’s research interests are in the broad areas of optics and photonics, light-matter interaction, and nonlinear wave dynamics with a particular emphasis on the physics of parametric and active/passive non-Hermitian systems and their applications in integrated photonics. He has authored and co-authored more than 100 scientific contributions including over 40 publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Title: Synchronization algorithms for multi-carrier systems

Abstract:
As the cell synchronization is performed as the very first step when user equipment wants to camp on any cell, synchronization is one of the critical issues for wireless communications.  In the orthogonal frequency multiplexing (OFDM) systems, synchronization algorithms have been widely researched to estimate and compensate timing and carrier frequency offsets with either data-aided or non-data-aided schemes. Despite the promising techniques offered by OFDM systems, different training sequences or synchronization algorithms can be required for different multi-carrier systems such as filter-bank multi-carrier with offset QAM (FBMC-OQAM). In this talk, I will discuss the conventional synchronization algorithms for OFDM systems and new synchronization techniques for FBMC-OQAM systems

Speakers Bio:
Hyunwoo Cho is a Ph.D student advised by professor Xiaoli Ma. His research interests are in the areas of digital signal processing for wireless communication systems. He received his B.S degree from Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea.

Speaker Title: President, GT Alumni Association

Seminar Title: The GT Alumni Association – What it is and what it can do for you               
Abstract of Talk:
Some of the many and various functions of the GT Alumni Association will be presented.

Biographical Sketch of the Speaker:
Mr. Joseph P. Irwin is the President of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association. He joined the Alumni Association in 1999. Irwin began his career with Russell Corporation as a Los Angeles sales representative in 1980 and worked his way up to JERZEES Division president in 1994 – a division with $500 million in sales and 10% net operating profits, a $25 million budget and a staff of 135.

Irwin performed graduate work in a master’s program at the University of North Texas, a graduate of the Center for Creative Leadership, and he has continued his education through a variety of professional-development programs.

Speakers' Titles: Module Engineering Lead, John Deere Enterprise Electric Drives Services Group

Seminar Title: Electrification of agricultural machinery               

Abstract of Talk:
Credible projections of world population growth estimate a peak of nine billion people in the year 2050 from the seven+ billion today. This larger population and increasing global affluence will drive a need for a doubling of global agricultural output over the same period.  This increased output must come from an increase in agricultural productivity, and John Deere will play a key role in helping farmers worldwide provide for these human needs.  Increased precision and productivity in farm machinery will come largely from electronics, sensors, field robotics, automation, electric drives, control systems, and other areas that require premier electrical and computer engineering talent.

Attend this presentation to see some of the interesting things John Deere does in the electrical and computer engineering field to engineer equipment that plays a part in feeding, clothing, and sheltering the world.

Biographical Sketch of the Speaker(s):
Van Godbold received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of South Carolina. Will Cross got his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the proper university, Georgia Tech, but he got them in the wrong discipline, mechanical engineering.  Fortunately, he was hired into John Deere to engineer electric drives and thereby rectified his youthful error.

Will and Van will present some of their electrical engineering work in deploying electric drive systems on Deere vehicles while giving an overview of the myriad contributions electrical and computer engineers make to the development of John Deere equipment.

The vision talk will be streamed live and will be posted to the site after all candidates have interviewed.

The vision talk will be streamed live and will be posted to the site after all candidates have interviewed.

Speakers' Titles: Mr. Wes Williams – Senior Electrical Engineer | Mrs. Emily Caldwell—Electrical Engineer II

Seminar Title: Eastman Chemical Company               

Abstract of Talk: This presentation will provide an overview of Eastman Chemical Company. It will cover who we are, the everyday products that we are involved with, where we are located, and what an electrical engineer can expect in a chemical company.

Biographical Sketch of the Speaker(s):
Wes Williams - I’m a 2004 Graduate of the University of Tennessee with a BS in Electrical Engineering. After graduating, I worked for two EPC (Engineering Procurement and Construction) firms in Knoxville, TN (CH2M Hill and Barge Waggoner Sumner and Cannon) prior to starting with Eastman in 2015 as a Senior Electrical Engineer. I’m a registered Professional Engineer and I currently hold licenses in ten states: AL, GA, KY, MA, NC, PA, SC, TN, VA, and WV.

Emily Caldwell - I’m a 2015 Graduate from the University of Tennessee with a BS in Electrical Engineering. In addition to my engineering degree I hold a Bachelors of Business Administration in Marketing from East Tennessee State University.  I began my engineering career with Eastman in 2013 where I completed two summer internships. Then, after graduating from UT I hired on as a full-time entry level engineer and have recently been promoted to Engineer level II.

Title:
Recovery of Sign Vectors in Quadratic Compressed Sensing

Abstract:

In certain applications, recovering the signs of values may be more critical than the values themselves. Inspired by advances of sparse recovery of signals with fewer measurements, we would like to study the sign recovery problem and generalize it from a linear case to a non-linear setup. We focus on the sign values in quadratic measurement systems and provide theorems for the consistency condition, which ensures the signs are recovered correctly with probability close to 1. In deriving the consistency condition, we adopt a new penalty term using the trace operation and transform the optimization problem to the widely known Lasso problem. We also present simulation results to verify the correctness of our theorems.

Speakers Bio:
Hang Zhang is a fourth year Ph.D. student working with Prof Faramarz Fekri with research focus on applying sparse recovery to miRNA sensing problem in biological signal processing. Before coming to Georgia Tech, he obtained his bachelor’s degree from Peking University, with a major degree in Electronics and Information Technology and Science and a minor degree in applied mathematics.

Speaker’s Title: Executive Director, Engineering

Seminar Title: From Engineering to Business Leader: An ECE Grad’s Journey               

Abstract of Talk:  What happens when you look forward to a career in engineering, but yearn to be involved in bringing your designs and products to market? What happens when you are excited about a career in engineering, but want to organize, manage, and lead teams? You feel too confined by doing solely design and development work and want to one day influence engineering and business strategy. Now that you are an engineer, you can become a business leader as well! This seminar aims to cover an ECE grad’s journey with these questions and struggles and to describe what it looks like to be at the intersection of business, product development, and engineering strategy.

Biographical Sketch of the Speaker:
Fred Anochie has been with Cox Communications for the past 12 years where he has held several leadership positions across Network Engineering, Operations, and Application Development. He is currently responsible for program delivery and deployment of Advanced Access technologies (FTTH, DOCSIS 3.1, Remote PHY, Full Duplex) across the entire enterprise. The combined programs represent a significant strategic investment over the next 5-10 years that will accomplish a generational network transformation and help future-proof the company’s broadband service offerings. 

Fred has over 20 years of professional experience in Telecommunications, Consulting, and IT. He has a demonstrated track record of successfully implementing complex large-scale, multi-year technology programs. 

He is a proud ECE graduate of Georgia Tech and readily credits the school with providing him the foundation to be successful in his early technical career and giving him a competitive advantage in his chosen field. 

Speaker: Dr. Rajkumar Raman, Director Program Analysis & Evaluation Marine Corps Headquarters

Abstract: Program Analysis and Evaluation (PA&E) within the Headquarters Marine Corps at the Pentagon serves the primary function of providing resource informed decisions to the Commandant, Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps and the Deputy Commandant of Programs and Resources. PA&E analysts are involved in a wide range of topics requiring data analytics, modeling and simulation and operations research.
Significant emphasis is placed on critical thinking skills for problem formulation and an analytical approach leading to an executable solution. Students interested in learning more about the Pentagon and in pursuing internship opportunities are encouraged to attend.

Biography: Dr. Rajkumar Raman is the Director for Program Analysis and Evaluation (PA&E) Division and is responsible for providing the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps and the Deputy Commandant for Programs and Resources with analysis and assessment of the relative capabilities, effectiveness, and costs of alternative programs and program proposals. In addition, Dr. Raman provides independent advice to the senior Marine Corps leadership and is responsible for identifying and developing resource strategies, issues, and program assessments to be addressed in the Marine Corps and Navy Program Objective Memorandum (POM). Dr. Raman came to the Marine Corps from the Office of Secretary of Defense Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, where he was a senior operations research analyst and led several Independent Cost Estimates for Major Defense Acquisition Programs such as the VH-92 Presidential Helicopter Replacement, CVN-79 the second ship of the Gerald R. Ford Class of aircraft carriers, and CH-53K Heavy Lift Helicopter Replacement. He has extensive experience with the Defense Department’s Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution System pertaining to high visibility programs. Dr. Raman’s previous assignments include several positions of increasing responsibility in acquisition and financial management. At RAND, he led several efforts sponsored by the Department of Defense, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense. At Naval Air Systems Command, he was the airframe manufacturing cost lead for the Joint Strike Fighter Program. Early in his career at MATSYS and BDM Federal, he was the technical lead on several Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funded efforts. Dr. Raman holds a Bachelor of Technology in Chemical Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India; Master of Science in Chemical Engineering from Montana State University; a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from State University of New York at Buffalo, and a post-doctoral fellowship from Pennsylvania State University. He has authored/co-authored over 20 peer reviewed publications and 5 US patents.

The vision talk will be streamed live and will be posted to the site after all candidates have interviewed.

The vision talk will be streamed live and will be posted to the site after all candidates have interviewed.

Speaker’s Titles: Systems Engineering Senior Manager & Program Manager,  Lockheed Martin Aeronautics

Seminar Title: Overview of Lockheed Martin with an emphasis on the Aeronautics business sector                  

Abstract of Talk: Will provide an overview of the business units of the Lockheed Martin Corporation, with an emphasis on the Aeronautics business unit. Perspectives will be provided from an engineering and program management domain areas.   

Biographical Sketch of the Speaker:
Jerry Lambert is currently the C-5 chief engineer for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics. He holds a B.S. in electrical and computer engineering and a M.S. in systems engineering. He has been with Lockheed Martin for 24 years and has worked on the C-130J, F-35, and C-5 aircraft platforms.

Komal Patel is the C-5 software development programs program manager for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics. She holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech. She has been with Lockheed Martin for 14 years and has worked on the C-130J and C-5 aircraft platforms concentrating in Avionics systems.

Visit this link to reserve student tickets.

Abstract:
Improvements in neural recording technologies have rapidly increased the number of neurons that it is now possible to record from. Along with these improvements, analyses of neural information processing are moving from single neuron to population-level analyses. One promising approach for understanding information processing across large populations of neurons is to use methods for dimensionality reduction; such approaches aim to find low-dimensional structure in the joint activity of many neurons over time. In this talk, I will describe my lab's efforts to learn low-dimensional structure present in large-scale neural recordings, both from electrophysiology recordings in motor cortex and from two-photon calcium movies in primary visual cortex. Our findings suggest that dimensionality reduction techniques can be used to pull out structure from neural activity to solve a range of decoding and classification problems.

Speaker’s Bio:
Eva Dyer is currently an Assistant Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. Eva runs the Neural Data Science (NerDS) Lab, where she and her team develop new machine learning and data science approaches for making sense of large-scale neural datasets. Before joining Georgia Tech, she was a Research Scientist in the Bayesian Behavior Lab at Northwestern University, where she worked with Konrad Kording. Eva completed all of her degrees in Electrical & Computer Engineering, including a Ph.D. and M.S. from Rice University, and a B.S. from University of Miami. While at Rice, she worked in the Digital Signal Processing Group with Richard Baraniuk and had the opportunity to co-develop the edX MOOC Discrete-Time Signals and Systems. During her undergraduate studies at the University of Miami, she worked as a sound designer for the award-winning documentary One Water: A collaborative effort for a sustainable future.

Speaker’s Title: Senior Associate – Intellectual Property Practice Group

Seminar Title: Intellectual Property:  The Economic Engine of Knowledge                 

Abstract of Talk:  Intellectual property is the backbone of the world economy.  It plays a role in everyone’s life.  It is particularly important for engineers, whether you are in research and development, an entrepreneur, a business manager, or any other technology career.  We will discuss the various types of intellectual property (patents, trade secrets, copyrights, and trademarks) including what they protect and how they are acquired.             

Biographical Sketch of the Speaker:   Laura Huffman is a proud graduate of Georgia Tech, holding the BEE and MSEE degrees.  She began her career at Bell Laboratories in research and development in optical fiber and cable.  She subsequently moved into business management for Lucent Technologies and OFS, with global responsibility for product management, product marketing, business development, intellectual property strategy and public policy.  After that career, she obtained her JD degree from Emory University, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Emory International Law Review, and participated in the joint Georgia Tech Emory TI:GER program.  She is currently a senior associate at King & Spalding in the Intellectual Property practice group.

Abstract:

Traditional techniques in Radar Imaging, and specifically, Synthetic Aperture Radars (SAR) require the use of perfectly linear or circular motion paths. Deviations from them need to be carefully compensated through numerous techniques, which increase the complexity of these algorithms. Most of these techniques are also limited to providing only two-dimensional imagery. Three-dimensional SAR imaging usually requires multiple passes, such as Interferometric SAR or multipass Circular SAR.

The talk will offer an overview of SAR technology and its various techniques, offering a brief history of the development and taxonomy of SAR algorithms. We will also look at a more intuitive way of approaching Radar Imaging in the wavenumber (k) space, through Ewald Sphere visualization of scatterer profiles in k-space. The Ewald Sphere, combined with angle isomorphism between scatterer view angles and the corresponding sample in k-space allows us to develop a Stolt transformation based imaging algorithm. This algorithm, which uses a novel Huygens-Fresnel processing method, gives us the ability to perform two and three-dimensional aperture synthesis to create volumetric images of objects moving in highly non-linear paths from a single pass. The algorithm also supports coherent multi-band fusion, as well as spatial sub-aperture fusion of data from sparse sensor swarms.

Speaker’s Bio:

Skanda Prasad is a fourth year PhD student working with Prof Christopher Barnes with a research focus in Synthetic Aperture Radars and Radar Imaging based on diffractive wave field inversion. Before coming to Georgia Tech, he was working in the industry, first as a telecommunication software engineer at Alcatel-Lucent, and later, as a DSP Hardware Engineer at Applied Micro. 

Seminar Title: Applying technology within the Intelligence Community

Abstract:
Mr. Doshi will be talking about his work researching and applying cutting-edge technologies to unique national security space challenges. Past focus areas are wireless, cloud computing, and satellite command and control. Future research areas are software defined networking, security, big data, among others.

Speaker Bio:
Mr. Prashant Doshi is an alumnus of Georgia Tech. He completed his BS in Computer Engineering in 2002 and MS in ECE with a CS minor in 2003. Mr. Doshi has spent the last 11 years working for the Aerospace Corporation supporting intelligence satellite programs within the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Mr. Doshi has presented his work in cloud and wireless computing at various forums.

Title:
Statistical Signal Processing Enhanced Digital Mobile Fronthaul

Abstract:
The emerging demands on virtual reality (VR) and 5G-New Radio, will quickly deplete the bandwidth resource of current transport and access networks, which forces researchers to think about revolutionary technologies empowering future digital radio over fiber (D-RoF) based mobile front haul (MFH). Although, D-RoF features lower transmission efficiency, it inherits part of the advantages from both analog-RoF (A-RoF) and functional split. D-RoF is format agnostic with simple hardware implementation at radio access units (RAU). Meanwhile it benefits from digitization with high robustness against nonlinear degradations. In my PhD work, to improve the bandwidth efficiency and capacity of D-RoF systems, research topics in the following directions have been studied: (a) fast statistical estimation, relaxed Lloyd algorithm, and differential coding are proposed and jointly applied for data compression to reduce the quantization noise and improve the compression gain in a digital MFH; (b) advanced modulation formats and statistical digital signal processing (DSP) techniques in coherent optical systems acting as 5G high-capacity MFH networks; (c) advanced multiband modulation techniques for spectral efficient bidirectional data transmission and multiplexing in digital fronthaul systems.

Bio:
Mu Xu grew up in Anhui, China. He’s currently is a Ph.D. student at Georgia Institute of Technology. Before that, he received his B.S. and M.S. at Tianjin University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2010 and 2013 respectively. His research mainly focuses on system design and networking in optical mobile fronthaul as well as digital signal processing in radio-over-fiber systems.

Title: China as a Path to Global Impact in Multidisciplinary Engineering

Abstract: The Zhejiang University/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Institute (ZJUI) is an engineering college on the new Zhejiang University (ZJU) International Campus in Haining, China, about 120 km southwest of Shanghai. ZJUI is a unique peer partnership of two leading global universities. The programs and research themes build on more than 100 years of University of Illinois involvement in China, and decades of active research collaborations between the two partners. ZJUI conducts teaching and research in broad program themes of engineering and system sciences; information and data sciences; and energy, environment, and infrastructure sciences. Undergraduate and graduate degrees are offered in civil engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. Numerous faculty positions are open.

This talk describes how projects and issues in China illustrate fundamental global development challenges. Examples are presented in terms of infrastructure, energy, environmental impact, advanced manufacturing, data sciences, and other major topics. In each case, innovations in the United States and in China have huge potential global impact if they can be scaled up and applied broadly. The talk discusses how  a  new generation of science and engineering faculty with multidisciplinary interests and global aspirations will be developed to lead global impact.

Speaker Bio: Philip Krein holds the Grainger Endowed Chair Emeritus in Electric Machinery and Electromechanics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also Executive Dean of the Zhejiang University/University of Illinois Institute in Haining, China, and a faculty member at ZJU in Hangzhou, China. From 2003 to 2014 he was a Founder and Director of SolarBridge Technologies, Inc., Austin, TX, a developer of long-life integrated inverters for solar energy. He holds 41 U.S. patents. His current research interests include power electronics, machines, drives, electric transportation,  and  renewable energy, with  an emphasis on  nonlinear control approaches. Dr. Krein received the IEEE William E. Newell Award in Power Electronics and is a past President of the IEEE Power Electronics Society. In 2015-2016, he was Chair of the IEEE Transportation Electrification Community. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and a Foreign Expert under the China 1000 Talents Program.

Title: The Physics of Active Matter

Abstract: Assemblies of interacting self-driven entities form soft active materials with intriguing collective behavior and mechanical properties. Examples abound in nature on many scales, from the flocking of birds to cell migration in morphogenesis. They also include synthetic systems, from engineered microswimmers to self-catalytic colloids and autonomously propelled liquid crystals. What unifies these systems is that they are driven out of equilibrium by dissipative processes that act on each individual particle, hence break the time reversal symmetry of the dynamics at the microscale. This results in surprising behavior. For instance, active fluids flow with no externally applied driving forces, active gases do not fill their container, and active particles spontaneously organize when passive ones would not. Since time reversal symmetry of the microdynamics and the associated detailed balance of forward and reverse processes are built into the foundation of equilibrium statistical physics, the description of active systems poses a new theoretical challenge. In this talk I will discuss the physics of active matter with examples from both the living and non-living worlds. I will show that by combining minimal physical models with continuum theory and simulations we are making advances towards capturing quantitatively the laws of spontaneous organization of active systems. This theoretical progress has implication for both formulating design principles for new smart materials and understanding cellular and multicellular organization.

Speaker Bio: Cristina Marchetti is the William R. Kenan Distinguished Professor of Physics at Syracuse University, where she heads the Soft and Living Matter Program, and currently a Simons Distinguished Visiting Scientist at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) at the University of California Santa Barbara. She received her Laurea in physics from the University of Pavia, Italy, and her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Florida. She has held postdoctoral positions at the University of Maryland, Rockefeller University, and City College of CUNY. Marchetti is a versatile theoretical physicist who has worked on a broad range of problems including supercooled fluids, glasses and superconductors. Currently, she is interested in understanding the emergent behavior of soft and biological materials, from flocks of engineered microswimmers to cells in living tissues. Marchetti is currently co-editor of Annual Reviews of Condensed Matter Physics and co-Lead Editor of Physical Review X. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has held elected positions in the American Physical Society, and continues to play a leadership role in the scientific community.

Reception to follow.

Seminar Title: Entering the Consulting Engineering World: Personal Experience from a Georgia Tech Graduate

Abstract:
Whether you're going to graduate soon and will be looking for a job or if you're just interested in what it's really like transitioning from the academic world to a career in consulting engineering, this talk will cover what it is like to be an electrical engineer working in a multi-discipline consulting engineering firm. Topics will include types of building electrical systems, interfacing with other building design disciplines, typical electrical “deliverables” and engineering services and tips for getting into the business of consulting engineering.  

Speaker Bio:
Michael Wagner, PE is a senior electrical engineer with Clark, Richardson, Biskup (CRB) with over 24 years of experience in the consulting engineering industry.  Michael’s experience includes design of power distribution, lighting, fire alarm, security, voice/data, lightning protection, grounding, and emergency power supply systems for various industry sectors. Michael has worked in a multitude of industries during his career which have included life sciences, mission critical data centers, cellular telecommunications, higher education, K-12 schools, municipal, government, industrial manufacturing, aerospace, healthcare, commercial, and green energy projects. In his current position at CRB, Michael works with clients in the life sciences sector, such as pharmaceutical and biomedical industries, in developing innovative designs for manufacturing and research facilities.

Michael served in the U.S. Air Force (1984–1988) as an Autotracking Radar Repairman and is a Georgia Tech graduate (Class of ’93). He became a professional engineer in 1998 and is licensed in 10 states.  He has been involved with various construction projects at Georgia Tech including the Stephen C. Hall building renovation (2010), ARRA Stimulus Projects Campus Lighting Retrofits (2011), the Clary Theater renovation at the Student Success Center (2014) and various lab projects with the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). Michael has also served as the consulting industry representative for Georgia Tech’s Consortium for Energy Efficient Thermal Management (CEETHERM), which focuses on the thermal management problems of data centers.

Seminar Title: Understanding the Performance Effects of Resilience Mechanisms in High-Performance Computing Applications

Abstract:
Fault-tolerance poses a major challenge for future large-scale high-performance computing (HPC) systems and the important applications running on them. Alarming projections of high failure rates driven by the increasing scale and complexity of HPC systems have, over the past few years, motivated significant research into methods and techniques for providing resiliency while maintaining scalability in such systems. Our group at Sandia National Laboratories has worked to develop insights into selection and tuning of these methods and techniques. In this talk, I will describe our simulation-based framework for analyzing the performance effects of resilience activity. I will also present some recent research results obtained using our framework and discuss how those results have contributed to our understanding of the performance implications of resilience strategies for HPC applications.   

Speaker Bio:
Patrick Widener is a Principal Member of Technical Staff in the Center for Computing Research at Sandia. Dr. Widener’s research interests include the design and development of system software to support large-scale data-centric computational science, tools for examining performance interference caused by in-situ analytics, and software architectures for describing and exchanging data in computational science workflows. He is also a Research Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of New Mexico, and prior to joining Sandia was research faculty in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Emory University. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Title: Bio-inspired Materials: New Approaches to Molecular Building Blocks

Abstract: Marine organisms use organic building blocks in unique ways to achieve materials with exceptional properties. With inspiration from these natural systems, the design of synthetic building blocks to mimic these capabilities and extend them to common polymeric materials will be described.

Bio: Professor Craig J. Hawker, FRS is the Clarke Professor and holds the Alan and Ruth Heeger Chair of Interdisciplinary Science at UCSB where he directs the California Nanosystems Institute and the Dow Materials Instiutute. He came to UCSB in 2004 after eleven years as a Research Staff Member at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA.

Professor Hawker’s research activities focus on synthetic polymer chemistry and nanotechnology, integrating fundamental studies with the development of nanostructured materials for advanced properties and functions in microelectronics and biotechnology. This work has led to over 500 peer-reviewed papers and 70 patents with a number of materials being commercialized. He has helped establish a range of start-up companies - Relypsa, Intermolecular, Olaplex, Tricida and has been elected to the National Academy of Inventors. For his pioneering studies, Professor Hawker’s recent honors include the 2017 Charles G. Overberger International Prize for Excellence in Polymer Research, the 2016 Belgian Polymer Award, the 2013 American Chemical Society Award in Polymer Chemistry, the 2012 Centenary Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry and an Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society in 2011. Professor Hawker has been honored with election to the Royal Society in 2010.