News

ECE students might have chatted with Prof. Brian Evans during his Friday coffee/advising hours, or in the new first-year graduate student mentoring program he coordinates, or in a student organization he advises. In weekly coffee hours, now running for 19 years, Prof. Evans has been providing a comfortable space for undergraduate and graduate students to talk about what’s on their mind and help each other. But his involvement extends further beyond the ECE department to the university community as a whole. And “whole” is what he strives to make our community.

The Applied Mechanics Division (AMD) of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) has selected WNCG professor Nanshu Lu to receive the 2022 Thomas J.R. Hughes Young Investigator Award. Shawn Chester, an associate professor of New Jersey Institute of Technology, was selected jointly with Lu to receive the award, which recognizes special achievements of young researchers in applied mechanics.  Read the full article via the Department of Aerospace Engineering

WNCG faculty member Todd Humphreys has received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Humphreys was one of five faculty members from The University of Texas at Austin to receive the award for 2019. The PECASE is the “highest honor bestowed by the United States Government to outstanding scientists and engineers who are beginning their independent research careers and who show exceptional promise for leadership in science and technology.”

How electromagnetic, acoustic and optic waves interact with materials creates a foundation for various scientific and technological phenomena. With the invention of metamaterials over the last decades, wave matter interactions not found in nature have opened new possibilities for manipulating wave types across different frequencies.

WNCG Graduate Student, and recent winner of the WNCG Student Leadership Award,   Francesco Monticone, recently accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University. Monticone received a BS and MS in Electronics Engineering from Politecnico di Torino in Italy, and is a member of Prof. Andrea Alù’s Metamaterials and Plasmonics Research Group. His research interests include applied electromagnetics, metamaterials, plasmonics and nanophotonics with applications ranging from microwaves to optical frequencies.

Each year, WNCG faculty nominate one outstanding student to receive the WNCG Student Leadership Award. The award is presented to a student based on their cumulative contributions to the center, including their representation of WNCG to the greater community, their mentorship of fellow students, their research visibility and recognition from external organizations.

Prof. Evdokia Nikolova has been selected to receive a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation. The award is the most prestigious offered by NSF’s CAREER Program, providing up to five years of funding to junior faculty members who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of their organizations’ missions.

Prof. Andrea Alù has been named the recipient of the the 2014 Outstanding Young Engineer award from the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society.  The Outstanding Young Engineer Award of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) recognizes an outstanding young MTT-S member who has distinguished himself/herself through a sequence of achievements which may be technical (within the MTT-S Field of Interest), may constitute exemplary service to the MTT-S, or may be a combination of both.