ECE Doctorate Student Carlos Cela to meet with Nobel Laureates
June 21, 2007
Come this July, forty-nine graduate research students from across the world will attend the 57th Lindau Meeting of the Nobel Laureates and Students in Lindau, Germany. Among these students will be Carlos Cela, a doctoral student in NC State's ECE department, who has been selected by the Department of Energy Office of Science (DOE-SC) to attend the meeting.
Started in 1951 by Count Lennart Bernadotte, the Lindau Meeting of the Nobel Laureates was established to allow for informal forums and meetings between the laureates and hundreds of young researchers and students from around the world.
At the meeting, the laureates will lecture on topics of their choice during the mornings as well as participate in informal discussions with small groups of students during the afternoons and evenings.
CISCO Support Goes to Fund ECE/CSC Game Room and Student Organizations
June 12, 2007
Pictured in this photo from left to right: Wayne Clark from Cisco Systems; Kyle Luthy, President of GSA; Glen Garner, President of HKN; Ahmed Bakir, ECE; Mike Cho, Cisco Systems; Dawn Johnson, Cisco Systems; Tara Britt, Director of Corporate Relations, ECE; Andrew Pita, President of SHPE; Kimberly Quinn, Cisco Systems and Greg Mulholland, ECE.
Soon students in Electrical and Computer Engineering as well as Computer Science will have a place on Centennial Campus to socialize and have a little fun. With generous support from Cisco, a game room will be up and running in Engineering Building II in a room just off of the atrium. The game room comes complete with a ping pong table, air hockey table, foosball machine, a large television with PlayStation II games as well as Guitar Hero and Dance Revolution. Student organizations will also provide board games from various cultures so that all students can enjoy this room.
"We are so appreciative of the support Cisco provides to our programs and our students. They are a great partner to both the CSC and ECE departments and we appreciate their continued interest in our students," said Tara J. Britt, Director of External Relations for the ECE department.
The support from Cisco makes it possible for students who are in these organizations to attend leadership conferences, establish outreach efforts in the community, compete in national competitions and help fellow students with tutoring and other educational needs.
Dawn Johnson, University Relations Manger for Cisco, said, "Cisco has had a very long-standing partnership with NCSU, and we are very proud to have been able to contribute funding for the game room. As a corporate partner with NCSU it is imperative that we take notice of other ways that we can enhance student life. Cisco recognizes the need for both academic and social experience to foster a true higher education. With the opening of the game room we hope to promote a place for social gathering with students that normally would not have the opportunity to engage with one another. Education does not just happen in the classroom, but also when students from various background can come together and learn about each other and share their cultures, backgrounds and experiences."
ECE Professor John Muth Produce Fibers that Mimic Human Muscle
June 11, 2007
Dr. John Muth, an ECE Associate Professor, and his colleague Dr. Tushar Ghosh, a Textiles professor, have discovered plastic tubule structures that can be manipulated by electricity to behave similar to how muscle fibers act. Such a discovery paves the way for advancements in such fields as robotics, prosthetics, biotechnology, and "smart textiles".
While electroactive polymers - plastics that can expand and contact when a current is applied - have been successfully demonstrated previously, the duo has shown for the first time that plastic tube structures in the shape of human muscle strands can be manipulated with electricity.
Muth and Ghosh used polyurethane and silicone tubes in their experiments. The tubes exhibited movements and produce forces similar to that of human muscle when a current was applied to them. The tubes, roughly the size of a pencil lead, are the first artificial muscle-like fibers produced in a lab. Their next goal is to scale the fibers down to the size of muscle fibers.
"We have developed a fiber at a large scale and demonstrated that you can generate significant levels of force. The muscles in our bodies are made of fibers, and if we can mimic those fibers, get them down to scale and bundle them in the same way, we believe we can make very useful devices with them," says Ghosh.
"We've been interested in these ideas of being able to control the shapes of fabrics using electricity or some other forces for some time. There are a wide variety of potential uses for these types of fibers. A good next step would be to reduce the size of these fibers to a smaller scale," Muth says.
We salute you Graduates of 2007 and we applaud your achievements! Friday, May 11, 2007 was a day of great celebration and pride for many ECE students, families and friends. You, ECE graduates, are among the best and the brightest this university has educated. We hope you leave NC State with a sense of great accomplishment and great affection for your time spent here. We also hope you will continue your relationship with this department and come back to campus often to participate in events and share your experiences here with others that you meet.
Wes Covell, an ECE alumni from the Class of 1984, was the featured speaker this year. Mr. Covell delivered words of great inspiration through his speech this day.
Mr. Covell is division vice president of Engineering for the Government Communications Systems Division (GCSD) at Harris, reporting to the division president. GCSD develops and produces advanced communications and information systems for the Department of Defense and other government agencies and their prime contractors. Prior to being named to his current position, Mr. Covell was corporate vice president of Technology and Government Segments Growth Programs. Previously, he was vice president of Engineering for GCSD's Department of Defense (DoD) Programs business unit. He joined Harris in 1990 as a lead engineer. Before joining Harris, Mr. Covell was a communications systems engineer for The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Mr. Covell has a B.S.E.E. degree from North Carolina State University and an M.S.E.E. degree from The Johns Hopkins University.
He is also a graduate of the Mahler Advanced Management Skills Program.
Mr. Covell is a member of the IEEE, the University of Central Florida School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Industry Advisory Board, and the North Carolina State University School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Industry Advisory Board. He is on the Board of Directors for the Boys and Girls Club of Central Florida, Brevard County.Harris Corporation is an international communications technology company focused on providing assured communications™products, systems, and services for government and commercial customers in more than 150 countries. The company's operating divisions serve markets for government communications, RF communications, broadcast communications, and microwave communications.
This was a year where student feedback became action plans for this department. We installed ECE student feedback boxes in all of our buildings. A game room was funded in EBII so students on Centennial Campus have a place to relax and talk with other students and faculty. An ECE Arts Committee was formed and the first ECE Art Contest was held. Many requests from students resulted in our first student graduation speaker. This goes to show that your input does make a difference!
ECE is also proud of our first student graduation speaker, Joy Johnson. Joy has been accepted into graduate school at MIT. Joy had many accomplishments while a student here in the ECE department such as: Vice President of National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE); Co-Founder of Community Solutions in Technology Expansion, a community service organization with fellow Park Scholars to aid schools and non-profit agencies in the use of technology to more efficiently serve their target populations and eventually expand that population; Editor of Nubian Message.
Joy also received many honors and awards while she was a student here in the ECE department including:
GEM Masters Fellowship Recipient [2006]
Phi Kappa Phi Honors Society
Tau Beta Pi, Engineering Honors Society
Eta Kappa Nu ECE Honors Society
Roy H. Park Scholar
Dean's List [every semester]
NCSU Honors Program
International Baccalaureate Diploma Recipient
Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
This year's class was comprised of 219 graduates. There were sixty-three undergraduates who received a dual degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering. Twenty-seven students received a Computer Engineering degree and fifty-four students received an Electrical Engineering Degree.
The following awards were given to many of our outstanding undergraduate students in the ECE department
Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Senior Scholar Nominee: Ryan Michael Field
Electrical and Computer Engineering Leadership Award: Ryan Michael Field
Electrical and Computer Engineering Humanities Award: Jared Scott Everett
Electrical and Computer Engineering Scholarly Achievement Award: Amit Manmohan Lakhani
Electrical and Computer Engineering Service and Citizenship Award: Ryan Michael Field
Outstanding Electrical Engineering Senior Award: Ryan Michael Field, Benjamin Erik Gaddy, Amit Manmohan Lakhani, Matthew Joseph Lenzo, Daniel Francis Patrick
Outstanding Computer Engineering Senior Award: Brandon Cranford Hussey, Joshua Allen Willis, Thomas Edward Setz
Outstanding Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Award: Weston Ryan Boyd, David Lyall Brown, Alan Gelancz Graham, Shaunak Joshi, John Wade Kelly, Thomas Rorie Mason, Michael Alan Oakley, Jason Andrew Poovey, Paul Steven Sheeran, Charles Eugene Suslowicz, David Dean Thornton, Stephen David Herr
The graduate class was comprised of 17 PhD's, 26 MS-EE's, 22 MS-CPE's and 8 MS-C's.
Come this July, forty-nine graduate research students from across the world will attend the 57th Lindau Meeting of the Nobel Laureates and Students in Lindau, Germany. Among these students will be Carlos Cela, a doctoral student in NC State's ECE department, who has been selected by the 
Pictured in this photo from left to right: Wayne Clark from Cisco Systems; Kyle Luthy, President of GSA; Glen Garner, President of HKN; Ahmed Bakir, ECE; Mike Cho, Cisco Systems; Dawn Johnson, Cisco Systems; Tara Britt, Director of Corporate Relations, ECE; Andrew Pita, President of SHPE; Kimberly Quinn, Cisco Systems and Greg Mulholland, ECE.
Dawn Johnson, University Relations Manger for Cisco, said, "Cisco has had a very long-standing partnership with NCSU, and we are very proud to have been able to contribute funding for the game room. As a corporate partner with NCSU it is imperative that we take notice of other ways that we can enhance student life. Cisco recognizes the need for both academic and social experience to foster a true higher education. With the opening of the game room we hope to promote a place for social gathering with students that normally would not have the opportunity to engage with one another. Education does not just happen in the classroom, but also when students from various background can come together and learn about each other and share their cultures, backgrounds and experiences." 
"We have developed a fiber at a large scale and demonstrated that you can generate significant levels of force. The muscles in our bodies are made of fibers, and if we can mimic those fibers, get them down to scale and bundle them in the same way, we believe we can make very useful devices with them," says Ghosh.
We salute you Graduates of 2007 and we applaud your achievements! Friday, May 11, 2007 was a day of great celebration and pride for many ECE students, families and friends. You, ECE graduates, are among the best and the brightest this university has educated. We hope you leave NC State with a sense of great accomplishment and great affection for your time spent here. We also hope you will continue your relationship with this department and come back to campus often to participate in events and share your experiences here with others that you meet. 
He is also a graduate of the Mahler Advanced Management Skills Program. 
Joy also received many honors and awards while she was a student here in the ECE department including: 
The following awards were given to many of our outstanding undergraduate students in the ECE department 
