2023 ECE Day: Seminars and Student Research Competition

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology held its annual ECE Day event on April 7, 2023. The department hosted research panels, a research seminar, and a student research competition. 

Seventy-seven students competed in various research presentation categories, including undergraduate students, master’s students, and Ph.D. students. There were a total of 25 student finalists.

The ECE Day event included a seminar titled “My Journey in Academia, Corporate, and Investment Worlds” by Mostafa Analoui (M.S. ECE ’88). Analoui is the managing director at Pickwick Capital Partners and an adjunct professor at both Brown University and the University of Connecticut.

“We would like to thank Mostafa Analoui for his seminar presentation. Mostafa is an industry leader in the biomedical and technology fields with a vision for business and investment opportunities. He has previously worked for Pfizer, spearheaded an investment banking division in New York, founded startups, and much more. In his seminar, Mostafa shared valuable lessons and insights from his many years of experience across many sectors,” says Walter and Harriet Filmer Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering Jafar Saniie.

The event concluded with an award ceremony announcing the winners of the student competition. Congratulations to the following winners:

UNDERGRADUATE TEAM CATEGORY

First Place—Lydia Bell (EE 5th Year), Xavier Crawford (EE, M.S. EE 4th Year), Nicholas Rybka (EE 5th Year)—“Remote Controlled Rescue Robot” 
Adviser: Walter and Harriet Filmer Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering Jafar Saniie

Second Place—Daniel Arechiga (EE 4th Year), Grant Couper (CPE, M.A.S. CPE 4th Year), Ralph-Moussa Estephan (CPE 5th Year)—“IOT Modular Agriculture Data Collection System”
Adviser: Walter and Harriet Filmer Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering Jafar Saniie

Third Place—Omar Hakawati (CPE 4th Year), Phu Trinh (CCSE, M.S. CPE 5th Year), Ziyad Yacoubou (CPE, M.A.S. CS 4th Year)—“Autonomous Robot Service Dog” 
Adviser: Walter and Harriet Filmer Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering Jafar Saniie

MASTER’S CATEGORY

First Place—John Ford (CCSE, M.S. CPE 5th Year)—“Environment Provisioning and Management for Cybersecurity Education”
Adviser: Walter and Harriet Filmer Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering Jafar Saniie

Second Place—Manav Tailor (EE, M.S. ASR 4th Year)—“Application of Machine Learning and Image Recognition for Driver Attention Monitoring”
Adviser: Walter and Harriet Filmer Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering Jafar Saniie

Third Place—Nebojsa Bogdanovic (M.S. EE)—“Domain-Aware Machine-Learning for Medical Image Quality Assessment”
Adviser: Professor Jovan Brankov

PH.D. CATEGORY: Digital Systems and VLSI 

First Place—Hans Johnson (M.S. EE ’21, Ph.D. EE Candidate)—“Optimizations for FPGA-Based Controls Hardware for Experiments Using Superconducting Quantum Computing”
Adviser: Walter and Harriet Filmer Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering Jafar Saniie

Second Place—Heekyung Kim (B.S. CPE ’15, M.S. CPE ’17, Ph.D. CPE Candidate)—“A Scalable CNN-Based Accelerator Design for a Fast and Energy Efficient Object Detection System on FPGA”
Adviser: Associate Professor Ken Choi

Third Place—Nader Alnatsheh (EE ’22, M.S. EE ’22, Ph.D. EE Candidate)—“A Novel Low Power 8T XNOR SRAM: Computing in Memory Design for Binary/Ternary Deep Neural Network”
Adviser: Associate Professor Ken Choi

PH.D. CATEGORY: Networks, Communications, and Cybersecurity

First Place—Ziru Chen (M.S. ’17, Ph.D. EE Candidate)—“How Could RIS and NOMA Help? Sum-Rate Maximization for RIS-Assisted Uplink NOMA”
Adviser: Associate Professor Lin Cai

Second Place—Oluwaseun Ajayi (Ph.D. EE Candidate)—“Machine Learning Assisted Capacity Optimization for B5G/6G Integrated Access and Backhaul Networks”
Adviser: Professor Yu Cheng

Third Place—Suyang Wang (M.S. EE ’17, Ph.D. EE Candidate)—“A Deep Learning Assisted Approach for Minimizing the Age of Information in a WiFi Network” 
Adviser: Professor Yu Cheng

PH.D. CATEGORY: Power Systems and Electronics

First Place—Mamoud Alashi (M.S. EE ’19, Ph.D. EE Candidate)—“High Temperature Superconducting (HTS) Pulse Transformer for Series-Type Hybrid Circuit Breaker Application”
Advisers: Associate Professor Ian Brown, Adjunct Faculty John Shen, and Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering Thomas Wong

Second Place—Triston Cooper (Ph.D. EE Candidate)—“Superconducting Momentary Circuit Interrupter: Ultra Fast Response for Turboelectric Aircraft”
Adviser: Associate Professor Ian Brown

Third Place—Ziyan Zhang (Ph.D. EE Candidate)—“Time-Efficient Modeling of Switched Reluctance Motors for Multi-Objective Optimization”
Adviser: Professor Mahesh Krishnamurthy

PH.D. CATEGORY: Signal and Image Processing

First Place—Xirang Zhang (M.S. EE ’17, Ph.D. EE Candidate)—“A Comparative Study of Deep Learning and Traditional Methods for Motion Compensation in Cardiac Gated SPECT Images”
Adviser: Harris Perlstein Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Yongyi Yang

Second Place—Mehdi Toumi (Ph.D. EE Candidate)—“Edge Preserving Convolutional Neural Network for Image Denoising in Low Dose SPECT Myocardial Perfusion Imaging”
Adviser: Professor Jovan Brankov

Second Place—Xinrui Yu (B.S. EE ’13, M.S. EE ’17, Ph.D. EE Candidate)—“Analysis of Embedded Systems and SoC Devices for Assisting the Visually Impaired” 
Adviser: Walter and Harriet Filmer Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering Jafar Saniie

Third Place—Purva R. Chopde (M.S. EE ’21, Ph.D. CPE Candidate)—“Renal Autoregulation Assessment in Conscious Rates Using Deep Learning”
Adviser:  Duchossois Leadership Professor Geoffrey Williamson

Image: From left to right, Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Jafar Saniie, Colin Prochnow (CCSE, M.S. CPE 5th Year), Saurabh Saluja (CPE, M.S. CPE 5th Year), Filip Živko (EE, M.S. CPE 4th Year)