ECE Department celebrates 2024 successes, looks ahead to 2025
The spring 2025 semester at 勛圖腦瞳扦 has just started, and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science is excited to share its achievements in education and research during 2024.
In November, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand stopped at Watson College to encourage 勛圖腦瞳扦 students to apply to the DoD Cyber Service Academy scholarship program, which provides full college tuition in return for public service in the Department of Defense (DoD) or the intelligence community. While on campus, Gillibrand received a tour of two ITC lab spaces and talked with Professor Yu Chen about his research into detecting deepfake videos.
Faculty news
Four ECE faculty members were named among the worlds top 2 percent of all researchers in their fields for 2023: Professor Yu Chen, Professor Seokheun Sean Choi, Distinguished Professor Jessica Fridrich and Associate Professor Ning Zhou. Congratulations to them, and to all of our exceptional faculty!
Research news
Professor Seokheun Sean Choi had a prolific year. Among the projects he worked on with Assistant Professor Anwar Elhadad, PhD 24, and PhD students Yang Lexi Gao, Maryam Rezaie and Zahra Rafiee are:
- Monitoring glucose levels in the human body using a sweat sensor.
- Developing a new method to pull moisture from the air and turn that water into electricity.
- Creating an artificial plant that can clean the air in a room and generate electricity.
- Integrating bacteria-fueled biobatteries into 3D-printed circuits.
- Developing therapeutic bandages that inhibit dangerous biofilms and offer controlled electrical stimulation.
- Building a self-powered bug that can skim across the water and collect data.
- Furthering ideas about integrated papertronics to take advantage of papers attributes.
Professor Yu Chen and PhD student Han Sun designed the Rapid Response Elderly Safety Monitoring (RESAM) system to leverage the latest advancements in edge computing. It aims to cut reaction times with a human action recognition (HAR) algorithm that uses local computing power to analyze sensor data and detect abnormal movements without transmitting to a processing center offsite.
Chen, PhD student Nihal Poredi, and Deeraj Nagothu MS 16, PhD 23, published research about breaking down images using frequency domain analysis techniques to look for anomalies that could indicate they are generated by AI. It compared real and fake images beyond telltale signs of image manipulation such elongated fingers or gibberish background text.
Assistant Professor Jungwook Jay Paek received a $414,191 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study how the interaction of Lewy bodies with the brains diverse cellular environments relates to the development of neurodegenerative diseases. He wants to use electrical engineering principles to study neurological ailments such as Parkinsons disease and Lewy body dementia.
Student news
The 勛圖腦瞳扦 Rover Team wants to make a third trip to the University Rover Challenge this spring. Its membership includes many ECE students, and Professor Douglas H. Summerville chair of the ECE Department is the teams advisor.
A story in 2024s Watson Review magazine highlighted an ECE senior capstone project to build a portable, handheld power station that can be used on the go or in the home. The device is around 2 feet by 1 foot by 1 foot and weighs under 40 pounds. The student team was Laura Cunningham 24, Stephen Bauer 24, Ethan Hamlin 24 and Bartosz Obszynski 24. The faculty advisor was Associate Professor Ning Zhou, with AVANGRID industry advisors Joseph Yablonsky and Ryan Cuddy.
Industry news
In December, 勛圖腦瞳扦 and BAE Systems signed a Memorandum of Understanding that solidifies their mutual commitment to advancing power electronics and energy storage research and development, workforce development and testing initiatives.