Student Awards

International Microwave Symposium (IMS) Student Design Competition

Davi V. Q. Rodrigues, Prateek Nallabolu, and Daniel Rodriguez from Dr. Changzhi Li's group were awarded Second Place in the IMS Student Design Competition for their High-Sensitivity Motion Sensing Radar.

The student design competition was part of the technical program competitions hosted by the 2021 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS), which is the largest annual conference in the world focused on RF/microwave theory and techniques (7,300 to 12,000 total attendance in recent years). The students had to design a radar sensor to detect and measure the mechanical motion of a metal plate. The designed radar system was evaluated based on the minimum displacement measured by the prototype, the normalized response time (measured time/vibration period), the DC power consumption of the device, its weight, and its size. The distance between the prototype and the metal plate was 0.8m.

metal plate

Victoria OBrien – Awarded First Place at the Power and Energy Conference at Illinois

Victoria Obrien was awarded the first-place best paper award at the Power and Energy Conference at Illinois in March 2022. The paper was titled “Detection of False Data Injection Attacks in Battery Stacks Using Physics-Based Modeling and Cumulative Sum Algorithm,” led by her advisor Dr. Vittal Rao of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the Edward E. Whitacre Jr. College of Engineering at Texas Tech University and Co-author Rodrigo Trevizan of the Energy Storage Technology & Systems group at Sandia National Laboratories. This research is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Electricity, Energy Storage Program, and the U.S. Department of Education's program on Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) grant. The paper proposed a Cumulative Sum (CUSUM) algorithm that was used to detect False Data Injection Attacks (FDIA) injected into one or more voltage measurements in a battery stack, which was an extension to a previous paper focused on detecting FDIA in single cells. Failure to detect attacks on batteries' voltage sensors could result in battery degradation or thermal runaway events. Residual values for each voltage sensor were calculated using an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and the resulting residuals were run through the CUSUM algorithm to determine the presence of FDIA. The CUSUM algorithm was able to detect small-magnitude FDIA in voltage measurements with no false positives. The battery stacks were more robust to sensor failures than a single battery cell, and a time-to-detection analysis proved that the algorithm could be used in real-time applications.

William Brooks - Recipient of the 2022 Arthur H. Guenther Pulsed Power Student Award

William Brooks is a graduate student studying pulsed power in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Edward E. Whitacre Jr. College of Engineering at Texas Tech University. He was awarded the 2022 Arthur H. Guenther Pulsed Power Student Award for which he says he has been "fortunate to be involved in [work] that is impactful," and is excited to follow in the footsteps of whom the award was named after as Brooks says, "Dr. Guenther was involved in over 350 publications - I haven't even left the starting line." He thanks Dr. Andreas Neuber for being his advisor on this journey, and his colleagues Raimi Clark, Jacob Young, and Michael Mounho because his "recent efforts would have been impossible without [them]."

The Pulsed Power Science and Technology Committee's Outstanding Pulsed Power Student Award (established 1997) was renamed the Arthur H. Guenther Pulsed Power Student Award following the passing of Dr. Guenther. The Award is to recognize outstanding contributions as a student in pulsed power engineering, science or technology. A recipient is selected each year but awarded biennially at the Pulsed Power Conference Banquet.

Some previous award winners from our center over the past 15 years are Greg Edmiston, Andrew Young, Jonathan Foster, Jacob Stephens, Sterling Beeson, and Shelby Lacouture.
William will receive the award at the 2023 Pulsed Power Conference.

Dr. Rui He - Student Spotlight

Dr. Rui He and her graduate students Gaihua Ye and Zhipeng Ye of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department in the Edward E. Whitacre Jr. College of Engineering at Texas Tech University worked with collaborators from other universities to recently publish the paper titled, "Twist engineering of the two-dimensional magnetism in double bilayer chromium triiodide homostructures" in the distinguished journal, Nature Physics. This research is related to her NSF grant of $257,821 titled “Collaborative Research: Probing quasiparticle excitations in TMDC Moiré superlattices for revealing and understanding novel two-dimensional correlated phases.” More information about this group's innovative work is below.

"Thanks to the development of two-dimensional (2D) atomic crystals, researchers have managed to create a new kind of periodic lattice that arises from the interference of two vertically stacked 2D atomic lattices. The existence of this so called "moiré superlattice", has been theoretically predicted and experimentally demonstrated. In this collaborative project, the research team studies a family of such moiré superlattices made from transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDC). The team aims at understanding the key questions of how semiconducting TMDC monolayers turn into unconventional insulators, magnets, or even superconductors when stacked together vertically, by probing the dynamics of the periodic lattices, the charge carriers, and the magnetic moments in these TMDC stacked structures. The project is further integrated with education and outreach activities to recruit and mentor underrepresented and first-generation students, present demo experiments and tutorials to K-12 students, and introduce the background and results from collaborative research to the general public. These activities involve a wide group of participants and promote science, technology, and engineering among K-12 students and the public."

Abstract

Twist engineering—the alignment of two-dimensional (2D) crystalline layers with a specific orientation—has led to tremendous success in controlling the charge degree of freedom, particularly in producing correlated and topological electronic phases in moiré crystals. However, although pioneering theoretical efforts have predicted that non-trivial magnetism and magnons can be made by twisting 2D magnets, the experimental realization of engineering the spin degree of freedom by twisting remains elusive. Here we fabricate twisted double bilayers of a 2D magnet, namely, chromium triiodide (CrI3), and demonstrate the successful twist engineering of 2D magnetism in them. We identify signatures of a new magnetic ground state that is distinct from those in natural two-layer (2L) and four-layer (4L) CrI3. We show that for a very small twist angle, this emergent magnetism can be well approximated by a weighted linear superposition of those of 2L and 4L CrI3, whereas for a large twist angle, it mostly resembles that of isolated 2L CrI3. However, at an intermediate twist angle, there is a finite net magnetization that cannot be simply inferred from any homogeneous stacking configuration, but emerges because spin frustrations are introduced by competition between ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic exchange coupling within individual moiré supercells.

IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES)

IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) membership is comprised of over 40,000 industry professionals, academics, and students from around the world with a common interest in the electric power industry. IEEE PES has a vibrant international community at the local chapter at Texas Tech University (TTU), where the Ph.D. students in Electrical Engineering Rabindra Bhatta from Neal, Laura Arce from Colombia, Mahtab Murshed from Bangladesh, Ayda Demir from Turkey, Rajendra Shrestha from Nepal, and Leandro Bastias from Chile are the Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, and Membership Lead, respectively. Konrad Kork Schmitt from Brazil is the student advisor, and Dr. Stephen Bayne, who is the Department Chair and Professor in Electrical Engineering at TTU, is the faculty advisor.

IEEE and PES strongly focus on the development of future engineering professionals by creating student chapters at the university level. In 2021, TTU opened its IEEE PES Student Branch Chapter. The Chapter aims to initiate the undergraduate and graduate students' engagement with IEEE and PES during their college tenures to train and educate them for advanced professional skills in the power and energy field.

The Chapter consists of volunteering student members and, by their dedication, develops several educational, technical, and informative projects to improve the students' professional and interpersonal skills. This earlier learning prepares the students in advance for professional life. Our IEEE PES TTU Student Branch Chapter has its doors open to any proactive students that want to become part of the organization and improve their skills for a successful professional career.

For more information, please contact Dr. Bayne at Stephen.Bayne@ttu.edu. IEEE

Celebrating our Students

students Warmest congratulations to the Texas Tech Electrical and Computer Engineering Class of 2021. The graduation dinner was held at Orlando's on December 9, 2021. We can't wait to see all your accomplishments in the next chapter. Guns up forever!

students We were so happy to be able to put on Texas Tech Electrical and Computer Engineering's Spring IEEE Banquet on April 22, 2022! It was our first banquet since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic two years ago, and it was a great success. Congratulations to Helene Deng awarded Freshman of the Year, Precious Elele awarded Sophomore of the Year, Merek Brister awarded Junior of the Year, Ashley Beard awarded Senior of the Year, Tyler Watson awarded MSEE Student of the Year, and Jill Mayeda awarded Ph.D. Student of the Year. Thank you to everyone who came out to support the department, and we can't wait to see you next time!

Getting to Know the Students

Anna Bartley is a Texas Tech undergraduate student majoring in Computer Engineering and minoring in Cello Performance. She was inspired to pursue music alongside engineering because she was “fascinated and excited by both careers” and, ever since then, her love for both areas have never left. When asked how she manages her time between both interests, she says that she “focuses on only one thing at a time” and “ALWAYS [tries] to get a full night's sleep” because “doing poorly on one assignment is better than losing an entire day of learning and productivity.” After graduating, Bartley will be doing validation engineering at Texas Instruments in California. She will also perform in a music festival in Prague after finishing out the Lubbock and Amarillo Symphony seasons. For students who are thinking about minoring in fields outside of STEM, Bartley encourages them to do so because “much of who [she] is as an engineer…has been influenced by all of [her] other interests,” and she gives the advice that, “companies love diverse interests! Much of my TI interview was spent talking about my leadership role in my old fraternity.” Thank you for your hard work and insights Anna! Link to Anna's Senior Cello Recital: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJYQL5OvmWU

Paul Leonard graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Texas Tech about 20 years ago. The little girl in his graduation photo is his daughter, Daphni Brymer, who graduated in 2021 with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Texas Tech with her own little boy. She is now working full-time at Samsung Austin Semiconductor in Austin, TX. We love to see the family tradition at Texas Tech!