News

WNCG professor Jeff Andrews has been elevated to IEEE Fellow, effective January 1, 2013. Andrews was elevated to Fellow for his contributions to cellular and ad-hoc wireless communications. IEEE Fellow is a distinction reserved for select IEEE members whose extraordinary accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest are deemed fitting of this prestigious grade elevation. Dr. Jeffrey Andrews is a professor with WNCG. His research focuses on communication theory, information theory, and stochastic geometry applied to wireless cellular ad-hoc networks.

Alan Bovik was recently named Honorary Member of the Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IST) for his influence in the growth of the perceptual image-processing field. The citation in particular mentions Boviks models of perceptual image quality, broadly used in research, and now in use by both television and cable companies to analyze and regulate image quality. Honorary Membership is the highest honor given by IST, which acknowledges exemplary contribution to the progress of imaging science and engineering. Awardees receive a silver membership card and a lifetime membership in IST.

The EURECA program has received a $340,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to continue its mission to provide research experiences for undergraduates in the area of Communications, Networks and Systems. EURECA was created seven years ago by WNCG professors Dr. Sriram Vishwanath and Dr. Bill Bard and hosts 10 to 15 undergraduates to work on research projects over the summer.

WNCG assistant professor Andrea Alu received the 2013 Adolph Lomb Medal for outstanding contributions to the fields of optical metamaterials and plasmonic optics, and for development of the concept of plasmonic cloaking.' The Adolph Lomb Medal, established in 1940, is presented to a person who has made a noteworthy contribution to optics at an early age. The candidate cannot be older than the age of 35 in the calendar year of presentation.

WNCG graduate Dr. Chan-Byoung Chae received the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) Asia-Pacific Outstanding Young Researcher Award. This award honors researchers who have been very active in ComSoc publication and conference activities over the last three years. The award ceremony was held at IEEE GLOBECOM in Anaheim, California. Dr. Chae is now with the School of Integrated Technology, Yonsei University in Korea. Prior to joining Yonsei, he was with Bell Labs in Alcatel-lucent, New Jersey. He received his Ph.D. in 2008 from UT Austin under the supervision of Prof. Robert W. Heath, Jr.

WNCG Graduate student Yang Zhao received the Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Portfolio Best Presentation Award for the presentation of her work Generalized Bloch Analysis of Twisted Plasmonic Metamaterials with Superchiral Properties at the Sixth International Conference on Surface Plasmon Photonics in Ottawa, Canada. This award is presented every spring and fall semester by UT Austins Center for Nano- and Molecular Science to nanoscience and nanotechnology doctoral portfolio program students at their year of graduation.

WNCG Director Robert Heath and several of his students have received the 2013 EURASIP Best Paper Award from the Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking for their paper 'Relay Architectures for 3GPP LTE-Advanced.' The paper was co-authored by Steven W. Peters, Ali Y. Panah, Kien T. Truong and Robert W. Heath. It appeared in the EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking in July 2009.

The Invisible Man, H.G. Wellss 1881 novella, describes invisibility and invisibility cloaking concepts that are currently being explored and discovered by a WNCG research group directed by assistant professor Andrea Alu. He used Wells story as a base for explaining his unique and innovative cloaking technique to make three-dimensional objects invisible. Alu took The Invisible Man approach in his February TedxAustin talk, which was part of the FearLess topic.

WNCG professor Alan Bovik was awarded the 2013 SPIE Technology Achievement Award for 'Broad and Lasting Contributions to the Field of Perception-Based Image Processing. According to SPIE, 'the SPIE Technology Achievement Award is given annually to recognize outstanding technical accomplishment in optics, electro-optics, photonic engineering, or imaging. The recipient shall have contributed significantly to the advancement of one or more of these areas with specific demonstrations or applications.'Dr.

WNCG director and professor Robert W. Heath, Jr. and former WNCG student Dr. Chan-Byoung Chae received the 2012 IEEE Signal Processing Society Signal Processing Magazine Award for their publication Shifting the MIMO Paradigm, which they co-authored with David Gesbert, Marios Kountouris and Thomas Slzer. This paper appeared in IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, Volume 24, Number 5, September 2007.The authors will formally receive their award will during the IEEE ICASSP 2013 Awards Ceremony, which will be held in Vancouver, Canada in May.