News

WNCG faculty member Haris Vikalo has been promoted to full professor. Vikalo’s was one of five promotions celebrated by the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department (ECE) this week; Profs. Deji Akinwande and Ali Yilmaz were also promoted to Professor, while Prof. Mohit Tiwari made tenure as an Associate Professor, and Prof. Mark McDermott was promoted to Professor of Practice.

WNCG student Ahmed Kord recently won first place in the student design competition at the IEEE 2017 International Microwave Symposium held in Honolulu, Hawaii. Kord received the award, given by the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society, for his work entitled “Magnetless Parametric Circulator Design.” As first prize winner, Kord received a $2,000 award.

WNCG student Ahmed Kord won first place in the student poster competition at the Texas Symposium on Wireless and Microwave Circuits and Systems 2017 in Waco, Texas. He received the award for his poster entitled “Active Electromagnetic Devices for Next-Generation Wireless Communication Systems.” The first place winner also receives $500.   “This recognition and appreciation of my work motivates me to work even harder,” Kord states. “I want to have an actual and useful imprint on the microwave field during my PhD, and receiving this award means I am one step closer to my goal.”

Former WNCG Postdoctoral Researcher, Dr. Yakir Hadad, recently joined the faculty in the School of Electrical Engineering and the Department of Physical Electronics at Tel-Aviv University in Israel. His role as a tenure track Senior Lecturer is the equivalent of a tenure track Assistant Professor in the United States’ academic system.

WNCG student Ahmed Kord was recently awarded a Graduate Dean’s Prestigious Fellowship Supplement for the 2016-2017 academic year. The award was presented in recognition of Kord’s receipt of an external Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship earlier this year. “This award bespeaks [Kord’s] excellent performance, his initiative to go after external support for his research, and his program’s enthusiastic support of him,” Marvin Hackert, Interim Dean of Graduate Studies at UT Austin, stated in Kord’s acceptance letter.

WNCG student Ahmed Kord received a 2016 Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship for his project entitled, “Fully-Integrated Reconfigurable Magnet-less Non-reciprocal Components for Next-Generation Wireless Communication Systems.” The project was completed in collaboration with Negar Reiskarimian at Columbia University.