Events Listing

Confluence of Electromagnetics, Circuits and Systems Enables the Third Wireless Revolution

ICs have fueled several revolutions that have deeply impacted modern society, including the computing revolution, the internet and the first two wireless revolutions. We are at the dawn of the third wireless revolution, which I call the Wireless Mobile Reality revolution. Over the next fifteen years, new wireless paradigms spanning from RF to mmWave/THz will change the way in which we interact with the real world, through applications such as mobile virtual and augmented reality, vision quality imaging, gesture recognition and bio- and materials-sensing. However, ICs are starting to run out of steam - scaling is no longer yielding better transistors that are faster and lower power. Therefore, circuit design needs to be refreshed with new tools that draw inspiration from the layers below (electromagnetics and device physics) and the layers above (communication systems and networking). In this talk, I will describe research along these lines from the CoSMIC lab at Columbia University.

Speaker bio

Harish Krishnaswamy is a Professor and the Director of the Columbia High-Speed and Millimeter-Wave IC Laboratory (CoSMIC). In 2017, he co-founded MixComm Inc., Chatham, NJ, USA, a venture-backed start-up, to commercialize CoSMIC Laboratory’s advanced wireless research. MixComm was acquired in February 2022 by Sivers Semiconductors for $155M, where he is currently MD of the Wireless Business Unit. His research interests include integrated devices, circuits, and systems for a variety of RF, millimeter-wave (mmWave), and sub-mmWave applications. Krishnaswamy has been the recipient of seven Best Paper Awards, the Best Thesis in Experimental Research Award from USC in 2009, the DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2011, the 2014 IBM Faculty Award, and the 2019 IEEE MTT-S Outstanding Young Engineer Award. He has been a member of the TPC of several conferences, and served as a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE SSCS and on the DARPA Microelectronics Exploratory Council.

Established in 2009, the Eleanore Hale Wilson Fund supports engineering field leaders for travel to Minnesota to share their expertise and discoveries with University of Minnesota graduate students, faculty, and alumni. The Fund also supports the reception held in honor of each speaker.

Join us this summer at the "Quantum + Chips" program. Led by Paul Palmberg Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Tony Low, the 10 day program is designed for undergraduate students (from freshmen to seniors) to introduce them to key topics in quantum phenomena and their computing devices. The next program runs from July 31 through August 11. 

Participating companies include Intel, Skywater, 3M, Seagate, Quantinuum, and Google.

The "Quantum + Chips" feature carefully curated lectures designed by Professor Low and team, computer labs, experimental labs demo and tours, company visits, and talks by industry and academia experts on frontiers computing device and technologies. Check out our program agenda page for more information! Limited travel scholarships for undergrad students from US institutions, so apply now! Breakfast, lunch and snacks are provided at the summer school. We only have limited capacity, so attendance is only for selected students. Interested students please send your resume to:

Professor Tony Low (tlow@umn.edu) and Professor Steve Koester (skoester@umn.edu)

More information

Hosted by the Bell Museum

Recommended for all ages

Join us for our next in-person Star Party! We’re going back to the basics this time. We’ll have telescopes set up by our Learning Landscape, and our expert staff will be there to show you the cosmic sights. There will not be an indoor portion to this star party.

Registration is requested

Event details and how to register

Hosted by the Bell Museum

Recommended for all ages

Spotlight Science is a regular program connecting you to current research at the University of Minnesota and giving you the chance to meet the scientists and students who make the projects possible. Join us for special conversations and unique interactive experiences.

SciPride celebrates the scientific contributions of the LGBTQIA+ community at the University of Minnesota. Kick off Pride Month by connecting with a diverse group of students, faculty, and research staff working across scientific fields. Learn about their work through hands-on activities and demonstrations all around the museum, with topics ranging from sea anemones and brains to solar energy and satellites.

This is an in-person event at the Bell Museum. Activities and events will be held throughout the museum and are included in the cost of regular admission.

Get details and learn more 

For information about conferral ceremonies, tickets, ceremony regalia, and other details check the University's Commencement  2023 website. 

Visit the College of Science and Engineering (CSE) Commencement website for additional details.

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering will be hosting a celebration for our graduating students, both graduate and undergraduate. We will post additional details for each celebration as soon as we finalize them. So watch this space! 

ECE Graduate Students Celebration

Date & Time: Friday, May 12, 1:00 PM
Place: Malcolm Moos Health Sciences Tower, Room 2-650

ECE Undergraduate Students Celebration

Date & Time: Friday, May 12, 3:30 PM
Place: Malcolm Moos Health Sciences Tower, Room 2-650

Room 3-210 in Keller Hall will be an overflow seating space with live streaming of the event as it takes place in Moos Tower. 

There will be a reception with light refreshments and beverages in Keller Hall outside room 3-210 between the graduate and undergraduate celebrations: 2 - 3:30 PM

Continuous measurement of molecular biomarkers - in vivo

A biosensor capable of continuously measuring specific molecules in vivo would provide a valuable window into patients’ health status and their response to therapeutics. Unfortunately, continuous, real-time molecular measurement is currently limited to a handful of analytes (i.e. glucose and oxygen) and these sensors cannot be generalized to measure other analytes. In this talk, we will present a biosensor technology that can be generalized to measure a wide range of biomolecules in living subjects. To achieve this, we develop synthetic antibodies (aptamers) that change its structure upon binding to its target analyte and produce an electrochemical current or emit light. Our real-time biosensor requires no exogenous reagents and can be readily reconfigured to measure different target analytes by exchanging the aptamer probes in a modular manner. Importantly, we will discuss methods for generating the aptamer probes which are at the heart of this biosensor technology.

About Prof. H. Tom Soh

Dr. H. Tom Soh is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Radiology at Stanford University. He earned his B.S. with a double major in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science with Distinction from Cornell University and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Between 1999 and 2003, he served as a technical manager of MEMS device research group at Bell Laboratories and Agere Systems. Between 2003 and 2015, he was the Ruth Garland Professor at UC-Santa Barbara in the department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials. His lab moved to Stanford in 2015. He is a recipient of numerous awards including MIT Technology Review’s “TR 100” Award, ONR Young Investigator Award, Beckman Young Investigator Award, NIH TR01 Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, Humboldt Fellowship, and was a Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator. He is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and member of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).

Cracking the Code: New Leader Roles in Cybersecurity

Speaker: Jodie Kautt, Vice President of Cyber Security, Target Corporation

Technically Speaking is a free lively series of discussions that explores the intersection of technology and business. Each of our speakers plays a leadership role in the tech sector: they share their career journeys, what they've learned along the way, and how they believe new innovation will reshape their industries. Networking time before and after the talk as well as an extended Q&A makes this a unique and dynamic opportunity for technology students who want to learn more about the business of tech.

Robustness of gradient methods for data-driven decision making

Gradient descent and its accelerated variants are increasingly used for learning and data-driven control of uncertain dynamical systems in which an approximation of the gradient is sought through noisy measurements. In the first part of the talk, we utilize techniques from control theory to quantify robustness of accelerated first-order algorithms to stochastic uncertainties in gradient evaluation. We identify fundamental tradeoffs between noise amplification and convergence rates for any acceleration scheme similar to Nesterov's and heavy-ball methods. We also examine performance and efficiency of model-free reinforcement learning methods which attempt to find an optimal control action for an unknown dynamical system by searching over the parameter space of controllers. For systems with unknown state-space parameters, we provide theoretical bounds on the convergence rate and sample complexity of the random search method applied to the standard linear quadratic regulator problem.

About Prof. Mihailo Jovanovic

Mihailo Jovanovic is a professor in the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the founding director of the Center for Systems and Control at the University of Southern California. He was a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, from 2004 until 2017, and has held visiting positions with Stanford University, the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, and the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing. Prof. Jovanovic received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation in 2007, the George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award from the IEEE Control Systems Society in 2013, and the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2014. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). 

Speaker Rigbeselam (Rigbe) Mengistu is a University of Minnesota Duluth alumna. 

Join speaker Rigbeselam (Rigbe) Mengistu, MA in a workshop on the topic of Cultural Integration in the workplace. We all come from different cultural identities and backgrounds which likely involve different norms and values of importance. In exploring potential workplaces we may wonder of any barriers that may emerge in navigating a new work culture. Rigbe will lead us in activities that help us to understand our cultural identities, and how to integrate our cultural identities in work settings in ways that work best for us leading to feelings of empowerment and increased confidence. Rigbe completed her Bachelors at University of Minnesota Duluth, and now holds a Masters in Industrial Organizational Psychology from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. She has over 10 years of experience in Human Resources and Organizational Management. This event is hosted by UMN Career Services with support from Student Services Fee Funding. 

Please register for the event

Students in the ECE senior design course and ECE honors project students will be demonstrating the projects they have worked on over the semester as part of their graduation requirements. This is a joint event, so students from the mechanical engineering department will be presenting their design projects too. Stop by and check out what our soon to be graduates have worked on throughout the semester.