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CSSI in the News

November 2006

ECE Graduate Students Wins Best in Session Award

ECE graduate students Padmini Gopalakrishnan and Nishant Sinha received Best in Session Awards at the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) Student Symposium last month in Cary, NC. The event, held for the first time this year, provided 150 SRC funded graduate students with the opportunity to share their research with companies representing the semiconductor industry.

Gopalakrishnan and Sinha's work are both part of the Center for Silicon System Implementation (CSSI) at Carnegie Mellon. Gopalakrishnan's paper, "A Metric-Embedding Inspired Approach to FPGA Placement," was presented during a session on integrated circuit and systems sciences/integrated systems. She was selected as a SRC graduate fellow in 2003, following a nationwide contest for outstanding academic achievement and microelectronics research. As a fellow, Gopalakrishnan is mentored by two industrial advisors from IBM. Her faculty advisor at Carnegie Mellon is Larry Pileggi, Tanoto Professor of ECE, who directs the CSSI.

Sinha's paper, "Compositional Verification of System-on-Chip Soc Designs," was a winner under the computer aided design and test sciences: verification category. His work is conducted under the guidance of his faculty advisor, Edmund Clarke, and is supported by a 2005 grant from the SRC, titled "Verification for System Level SoC Design." With the funding, they have developed an automatic and compositional verification methodology for hardware design languages, such as Verilog. Their approach exploits the modularity of the design by carrying out the verification task in a "divide-and-conquer" fashion.


ECE graduate students Padmini Gopalakrishnan and Nishant Sinha received Best in Session Awards at the SRC Student Symposium last month. Gopalakrishnan and Sinha's work are both part of CSSI. Gopalakrishnan's paper, "A Metric-Embedding Inspired Approach to FPGA Placement," was presented during a session on integrated circuit and systems sciences/integrated systems. Her faculty advisor at Carnegie Mellon is Larry Pileggi, who directs the CSSI. Sinha's paper, "Compositional Verification of System-on-Chip SoC Designs," was a winner under the category for computer aided design and test sciences/verification. His work is conducted under the guidance of his faculty advisor, Edmund Clarke. (More info...)


August 2006

CSSI Hosts Alumni & Friends Reception at DAC

The Center for Silicon System Implementation (CSSI) hosted its annual alumni and friends reception at the 43rd IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC) on July 25 in San Francisco. DAC is the premier electronic design automation (EDA) and silicon solution event. Guests enjoyed catching up with old friends and plenty of good food during the CSSI reception at the San Francisco Marriott. Many of our alumni have remained friends and colleagues over the decades. Our Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) liaisons are also invited to the gathering.


July 2006

Blanton Wins Prestigious Emerald Award for Outstanding Recruitment of Minorities

Carnegie Mellon University's Ronald D. (Shawn) Blanton has won a 2006 Emerald Award for outstanding leadership in recruiting and mentoring minorities for advanced degrees in science and technology. Blanton, scheduled to be honored Sept. 16 during a gala celebration at the Baltimore Convention Center, joins an elite group of past winners who have done everything from designing missile defense systems for the U.S. Navy to helping computerize the U.S. government.

"It is both an honor and a privilege to be recognized by peers for my work in recruiting African Americans into the exciting fields of engineering and science," said Blanton, a professor in electrical and computer engineering and associate director of the Center for Silicon System Implementation (CSSI), where semiconductors are designed and tested.

The Emerald Awards, sponsored by Science Spectrum magazine, are billed as the premier awards for African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans and Native Americans working in the research sciences. A distinguished panel of academic and business professionals looks for candidates with extensive management and financial responsibilities, innovators in science and technology, and those who are respected within their organization.

In addition to being recognized at the ceremony, this year's 25 award recipients will also be featured in Science Spectrum. The awards ceremony is the grand finale of the three-day Minorities in Research Science conference that attracts more than 4,000 participants to its numerous career fairs, training seminars and networking sessions.

"Multicultural communities are where the action is in finding, preparing and recruiting a new generation of science researchers in the United States," said Tyrone D. Taborn, editor-in-chief of Science Spectrum and CEO of Career Communications Group Inc., the company that produces the Minorities in Research Science conference and publishes Science Spectrum.

Pradeep K. Khosla, dean of Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering, said Blanton's excellent research reputation, commitment to education and dedication to recruiting and mentoring underrepresented students in engineering made him an exceptional candidate for the Emerald Award. He also praised Blanton for his critical role in developing and implementing innovative recruitment programs at the recent National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) convention in Pittsburgh.

At the March convention, Blanton led an effort that doubled the number of prospective minority Ph.D. applicants who were interested in applying for graduate school at Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering. The Carnegie Mellon exhibit, which featured graduate students, research scientists and professors from across the university, drew more NSBE participants than exhibits from other colleges and universities.

"We need to entice more precollege and college students to seriously consider pursuing doctoral degrees in engineering and the sciences, and the Emerald Awards help showcase that need," Blanton said. "We must also continue to stem the tide of post-secondary sluggish test scores in math and science, which is why the broader-impact mandate required by the National Science Foundation to integrate education and outreach with cutting-edge research is so critical to the nation," said Blanton, who was recently a member of a committee that reviewed the Division of Computing and Communication Foundation of the NSF.

Despite efforts in many states to bolster science and engineering education, a key national test shows no improvement in middle and high school students' grasp of the subjects. The results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are likely to heighten concern about the future competitiveness of American workers in science and technology, and to fuel corporate pressure on states and the federal government to do more for science education.

"Clearly, if we are to bring on a new cohort of science talent, we will have to engage the interests and dreams of people in the multicultural communities," Taborn said.

Blanton earned a bachelor's degree in engineering from Calvin College in 1987 and a master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Arizona in 1989. He was awarded a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering in 1995 from the University of Michigan.


Best Student Paper Awarded to ECE Graduate Student & Advisor

ECE graduate student Jung-Chun (Mike) Kao received a Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE International Workshop on Wireless Ad-hoc and Sensor Networks (IWWAN) for "Eavesdropping Minimization via Transmission Power Control in Ad-Hoc Wireless Networks," written with his advisor, Radu Marculescu, Associate Professor of ECE. The paper proposes to use transmission power control as an effective mechanism to minimize the eavesdropping risk in ad-hoc wireless networks. A seed grant provided by the Carnegie Mellon CyLab last year funded the research.

The conference was held June 28-30 in New York City, and was hosted by Polytechnic University and Bell Laboratories Lucent Technologies. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. sponsored the student paper award competition. According to the event's website, the conference highlights the growing applications and power of ad-hoc and sensor networks in achieving ubiquitous, pervasive communications in next generation networks, including interoperation with fixed and cellular networks.

Jung-Chun is a recipient of the Frank J. Marshall Graduate Fellowship. In addition to the CyLab, his work is also affiliated with the System Level Design Group and the Center for Silicon System Implementation.


CSSI hosted its annual alumni and friends reception at the 43rd IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC) in San Francisco. DAC is the premier electronic design automation (EDA) and silicon solution event. (More info. | Photo Gallery)


Shawn Blanton Wins Prestigious Award

Shawn Blanton won a 2006 Emerald Award for outstanding leadership in recruiting and mentoring minorities for advanced degrees in science and technology. Blanton is a professor of ECE and associate director of the Center for Silicon System Implementation (CSSI). (More info...)


June 2006

Diana Marculescu, Associate Professor of ECE, has been elected Vice Chair for Special Interest Group (SIG) Development on the Executive Committee of the SIG Governing Board of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).


Several ECE faculty members are authors of the most cited papers since 1990 in the IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems. Our professors on the recently released list include: Rick Carley, Edmund Clarke, Diana Marculescu, Radu Marculescu, Larry Pileggi, Ronald Rohrer, and Rob Rutenbar.

Many of our alumni have remained friends and colleagues over the decades, and during the CSSI alumni and friends reception at the San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina on June 5 during the 44th IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC), guests enjoyed catching up with old friends. Our Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) liaisons are also invited to the gathering.


May 2006

Two ECE Students Awarded Intel Ph.D. Fellowships

ECE graduate students Brandon Salmon and Roland Wunderlich have been awarded two-year Intel Foundation Ph.D. Fellowships, which will cover their tuition and fees as well as a stipend. They will be paired with a mentor from Intel, and will receive an Intel microprocessor-based computer and travel costs for the Fellowship Forum at Intel this October, which they both plan on attending. In addition, they will have an opportunity to intern with the company.

The Intel Foundation Scientific Advisory Committee selects students focusing on semiconductor technologies for the fellowship based on their academic achievement and the relevance of their research to Intel's industry.

Roland's research is affiliated with the Computer Architecture Lab at Carnegie Mellon (CALCM) and the Center for Silicon System Implementation (CSSI). His advisor, James Hoe, the lab's co-director, explains the challenges of Roland's research: ""Modern microprocessors embody a host of ""smart"" mechanisms in an effort to speed up generic off-the-shelf binaries. Increasingly, we are finding the unpredictable nature of these hidden mechanisms can come to work against explicit attempts to maximally tune HPC High Performance Computing applications,"" he said. ""Roland is a member of the SPIRAL group and is developing new high-resolution performance analysis techniques that are necessary to really understand how software behave on today's microprocessors.""

Brandon's work is affiliated with the Parallel Data Lab (PDL), which is directed by his advisor, Greg Ganger, who has seen his area of study develop rapidly: ""Brandon's focus on distributed storage architecture and management for the home has quickly grown into a hot topic in industry,"" said Professor Ganger. ""Brandon has begun collaborating with Intel people across multiple groups, making him an excellent representative of the Intel Ph.D. Fellowship program.""

Brandon is planning to intern at Intel this summer, and previously spent summers with Microsoft and VMware. Roland interned with Intel, as well as with IBM. Both students have collaborated on projects with Intel's Research Pittsburgh laboratory and earned their M.S. degrees in ECE at Carnegie Mellon. Brandon received a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University, while Roland has a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Rutgers University.

Other Intel fellowships awarded in recent years include Vyacheslav Rovner (2005-2006), and John Griffin and Tom Wenisch (2003-2004).


Two ECE Graduate Students Win SRC Funding

Two ECE graduate students won prestigious Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) funding this year: Jeffrey Nelson1 received an IBM/SRC Fellowship through the SRC Graduate Fellowship Program and Shadi Saberi2, an Intel Foundation/SRC Education Alliance (SRCEA) Scholarship through the SRC Master's Scholarship Program. Each award includes full tuition and fee support, a stipend, an annual gift to the department, a link with industry advisors, opportunities for internships at SRC member companies, and travel expenses to the SRC Student Symposium in North Carolina this October.

""Shadi is an intelligent engineer with good intuition as a circuit designer. Her current research focus is on the development of very low power adaptive equalizers for high-speed serial links at a data rate above 20 Gb/s,"" said Patrick Yue, her faculty advisor. The two have already begun collaborations with the Circuit Research Lab at Intel.

Shadi received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Iran, an engineering school known for analog circuit design. During a summer in college, she interned at the Iran Microelectronic Research Center. Her research at Carnegie Mellon is associated with the Center for Silicon System Implementation (CSSI), as is her fellow awardee, Jeff Nelson's; Jeff's work is also a part of the Carnegie Mellon Laboratory for Integrated Systems Test (CM-LIST).

Before coming to Carnegie Mellon, Jeff earned a B.S. in ECE from Rutgers University and interned at Intel. He received his M.S. in ECE here in 2003 and is now working toward his Ph.D. under the guidance of ECE faculty members Shawn Blanton and Wojciech Maly.

""Next-generation electronic integrated circuits ICs are becoming very difficult to manufacture. The project that Jeff is working on is key to understanding why certain ICs will not yield,"" said Professor Blanton. ""We nominated Jeff for the SRC fellowship because of the great interest in his research work and it potential to make a real difference for the SRC member companies.""

Both Jeff and Shadi are active in the community: Jeffrey belongs to the IEEE, and Shadi is vice president of Carnegie Mellon's Persian Student Organization.

Other SRC fellows in the ECE Department include Brian Taylor, who received an AMD/SRC Fellowship last fall, and Padmini Gopalakrishnan and Nick Zamora, who were awarded funding in 2002 and 2003, respectively."


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