2025: the year in perspective
As 2025 draws to a close, we take a moment to reflect on the many ways in which our students, staff, and faculty have done us proud. Their dedication to teaching and research reflects the University’s ethos of service and innovation and we are proud of their accomplishments. We are also very grateful for the support of our alumni and friends who encourage us and strengthen our mission in many ways.
Over the last 12 months, several of our faculty have been recognized for their contributions to their areas of expertise and teaching. Professor Mohammad Ali Maddah-Ali, a renowned expert in information theory, was appointed as an IEEE Information Theory Society Distinguished Lecturer. This is a two year appointment that started in January 2025.
January also saw the publication of Professor Honghong Tinn’s book, Island Tinkerers: Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan’s Computing Industry. The book explores the transnational exchanges of computing technology and expertise between Taiwan and the United States. Tinn was also a recipient of the University of Minnesota’s 2025 McKnight Land-Grant Professorship for her research and scholarship on the history of science and technology.
Professor Steven Koester, an expert in nano-scaled electronic, photonic, spintronic and sensing devices, was elected as Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), class of 2024. (Koester moved to the University of Notre Dame in summer 2025.)
Professor Kia Bazargan's deep commitment to teaching and innovating within the classroom has earned him praise from his undergraduate as well as graduate students. Earlier in the year, the College of Science and Engineering recognized his singular contributions to the classroom with the Charles E. Bowers Faculty Teaching Award.
ECE researchers led by Professor Ulya Karpuzcu successfully demonstrated a coupled-oscillator-based Ising (COBI) chip that can efficiently solve combinatorial optimization problems (COPs) in a significantly time and energy efficient manner as compared to both software algorithms and emerging quantum annealers. Follow the details in “A coupled-oscillator-based Ising chip for combinatorial optimization” published in Nature Electronics.
Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Robert F. Hartmann Chair Jian-Ping Wang was recognized with the "Faculty Innovator of the Year” award at the 2025 University of Minnesota Founder’s Day. Wang has co-founded four startup companies—Niron Magnetics Inc., Zepto Life Technology LLC, Magtection, and Universal Magnetic Systems LLC. Niron Magnetics developed Clean Earth Magnet, a rare-earth free magnet, using a proprietary manufacturing process. In 2023 it was named one of TIME magazine’s best inventions of the year. Local NBC affiliate Kare 11 covered the groundbreaking ceremony for Niron Magnetics' manufacturing facility in Sartell, Minnesota. Watch the news clip for more details.
Researchers led by Paul Palmberg Professor Tony Low of ECE and Shell Chair Bharat Jalan of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science demonstrated magnetism in ultra thin layers of ruthenium dioxide (RuO₂), establishing the potential of its use in advancing spintronic and quantum computing technologies. Follow the details in “Metallicity and Anomalous Hall Effect in Epitaxially-Strained, Atomically-thin RuO2 Films” published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.
The 2025 IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design (TCAD) Donald O. Pederson Best Paper Award was conferred on a cross-institutional endeavor comprising Louis John Schnell Professor Yu Cao of ECE, Professor Priyadarshini Panda of Yale University and their research teams. Their paper is titled “SpikeSim: An End-to-End Compute-in-Memory Hardware Evaluation Tool for Benchmarking Spiking Neural Networks.”
The 2025 IEEE International Conference on LLM-Aided Design (ICLAD) Best Paper Award was conferred on a joint team of researchers led by Professors Yang Zhao, Yu Cao (both ECE), Caiwen Ding, and Zhu-Tian Chen (both Department of Computer Science and Engineering). The team’s paper is titled, “HiVeGen - Hierarchical LLM-based Verilog Generation for Scalable Chip Design.”
In August 2025, ECE welcomed Professor Geir Dullerud as the new head of the department. Dullerud joins us from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) where he was the W. Grafton and Lillian B. Wilkins Professor in Mechanical Engineering, an affiliate professor in both Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Computer Science, and the Director of the Illinois Center for Autonomy within the Grainger College of Engineering. His research interests include optimization and machine learning in control, cyber-physical system security, cooperative robotics, and hybrid dynamical systems, and he is particularly interested in networked and mobile cyber-physical settings.
A scientific collaboration across departments at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities established a nickel-tungsten alloy (Ni₄W) as capable of generating multi-directional spin currents. Published under the title “Large Spin-Orbit Torque with Multi-Directional Spin Components in Ni₄W,” in Advanced Materials, the results of the study indicate that the alloy is a strong contender for use in energy-efficient spintronic devices. The ECE team included Distinguished McKnight Professor and Robert F. Hartmann Chair Jian-Ping Wang, Paul Palmberg Professor Tony Low, Seungjun Lee, Yifei Yang, Yu-Chia Chen, Qi Jia, Brahmudutta Dixit, Duarte Sousa, Yihong Fan, Yu-Han Huang, Deyuan Lyu and Onri Jay Benally.
In September, Professor Mingyi Hong was awarded the 2025 Egon Balas Prize by the INFORMS Optimization Society for his contributions in the area of optimization. Optimization has a wide swath of applications ranging in fields from engineering, physical sciences, and machine learning to social sciences, business, economics, and finance.
October saw Professor Gang Qiu named a recipient of the highly competitive Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award (YFA). Qiu’s project seeks to revolutionize cryogenic cooling, currently a key bottleneck in scaling quantum computing hardware.
Rhonda Franklin (McKnight Presidential Endowed Professor and IEM Abbot Professor of Innovative Education) and Bethanie Stadler (CSE Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Erwin A. Kelen Professor in Electrical Engineering) have been granted four patents over the last 12 months located at the intersection of nanotechnology and high frequency electronics, which have implications for the design of electronic devices used in fields as diverse as communications, healthcare diagnostics, robotics, and others. Their work is particularly illustrative of how research in universities drives innovation which in turn contributes to improvements in the overall quality of life.
December saw Franklin’s elevation to IEEE Fellow, class of 2026 in recognition of her “leadership in microwave engineering education and workforce development.” Professor Randall Victora was honored by the IEEE Magnetics Society with the 2026 Distinguished Service Award for his, “numerous contributions to society leadership for over two decades, particularly his impact on the TMRC conference series, and including the MagSoc Presidency, the Chairing of several Committees, and the IEEE overall.”
Our students are integral to the research teams led by our faculty and they make contributions that are integral to much of the work that is done in the department. In addition to being active members of research teams, our students also make independent contributions in other ways for which they received special recognition.
ECE Graduate students Tonushree Dutta and Sourav Kumar Ghosh and teammate Ingrid Rodriguez Aragon of the University of Minnesota Medical School won second place at the 6th Annual Interdisciplinary Health Data Competition (IHDC) hosted by the Business Advancement Center for Health.
Nishanth Somashekara Murthy has been honored by the College of Science and Engineering with the 2025 John Bowers Excellence in Teaching Assistance Award. Murthy is being recognized for his outstanding work as a teaching assistant and is one of only three teaching assistants (TA) of the 915 who served in the College over the past year.
Onri Jay Benally spoke at Q3, a joint quantum initiative between the University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Southern California. As an invited keynote speaker, Benally delivered a talk on how to utilize Blender open source creative software for the ray tracing 3D illustrations of experimental quantum chips and related hardware.
Doctoral candidate Qi Jia was the recipient of the MMM 2025 Best Poster Award for his poster titled, “DR-02: NIST SP 800-90B Compliant Perpendicular Magnetic Tunnel Junction Based True Random Number Generator.” The 70th Annual Conference on Magnetism and Magnetic Materials recently concluded in Florida. Jia's research could be impactful in accelerating the commercialization of magnetic tunnel junction-based security technologies.
In November, doctoral student Alexander Ulate won the Three Minute Thesis competition hosted by the 2025 SHPE national convention in Philadelphia. Winning the Early Stage category of the event, Ulate’s presentation was titled, “Race to freeze time: accelerating cryopreservation using radio frequency sensors.” Ulate is working on developing a digital material sensor that can test for material properties using radio frequency. He has situated his work in the cryobiology space, where it will be particularly useful for the development of cryoprotective chemicals.
Thanks to our donors, supporters, and friends, ECE had a successful Give to the Max Day on November 20. Your support will help us update and expand lab stations and equipment to give our fast-growing student body access to knowledge and training that meet industry standards. You are an important part of the ECE community and we look forward to continuing this strong relationship into the future.