ECE/WINLAB researchers win NSF SWIFT award

Rutgers ECE/WINLAB researchers, Associate Professor Chung-Tse Michael Wu (PI) along with Distinguished Professor Narayan Mandayam and Professor Waheed Bajwa (co-PIs), are the recipients of an award from the National Science Foundation under the Spectrum and Wireless Innovation enabled by Future Technologies (SWIFT) program for the project entitled "Intelligent Spatio-Temporal Metamaterial Massive MIMO Aperture Arrays with Hybrid Learning-based Channel Classifiers for Spectrum-Efficient Secured Wireless Communication."

This three-year project funded at $750,000 aims to harness the spatial dispersion control capability and introduce time modulation for subwavelength metamaterial (MTM) unit cells to create a new intelligent space-time modulated MTM (IST-MTM) antenna aperture, which not only can provide dynamic control of radiation characteristics allowing the optimal spectrum utilization, but also physical-layer (PHY) secure transmission for wireless links enabled by directional modulation (DM). In addition, a new hybrid model-based and learning-based approach (HyPhyLearn) will be incorporated to conduct channel classification even when limited training samples are available. The IST-MTM-based secure communication scheme along with the HyPhyLearn channel classifier is expected to have a profound impact in next-generation wireless networks by providing a highly secured and spectrum-efficient communication scheme, which can be deployed in future 6G networks for smart homes/cities and vehicle-to-vehicle communications.

More information can be found here: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2229384
 
Congratulations to Mike, Narayan and Waheed!

WINLAB faculty Dipankar Raychaudhuri wins new NSF grant

Prof. Dipankar Raychaudhuri and his collaborators (Dr. William Lehr, MIT and Prof. Douglas Sicker, Colorado) have been awarded an NSF SAI (Strengthening American Infrastructure) planning grant entitled SAI-P: Public Multi-Access Edge Cloud (pMEC) as a Community-Based Distributed Computing Infrastructure for Emerging Real-Time Applications. $150K/1 year (Rutgers' share is $60K).

This SAI planning project is aimed at development of a full proposal for an interdisciplinary project that enables the deployment of “public mobile edge clouds” (pMEC) as computing infrastructure for the next generation of mobility applications. The public mobile edge cloud (pMEC) is envisioned as a ubiquitous local computing infrastructure that supplements emerging next-generation wireless networks (5G) which are currently being deployed by traditional cellular service providers. The planning project will include technology considerations for the pMEC, along with a study of viable economic/business models with end-user adoption properties necessary to enable and sustain widespread deployment.
 
Congratulations to Ray and his collaborators!

SoE Among Universities Leading NSF-Funded Project to Develop Center for Smart Streetscapes

Rutgers University is one of four partner institutions, along with Florida Atlantic University, University of Central Florida, and Lehman College, in a Columbia University led team that has received a $26 million, five-year NSF award to create a new Gen-4 NSF Engineering Research Center for Smart Streetscapes (CS3). 

The new CS3 will create livable, safe, and inclusive communities using  advanced wireless communications technologies that promote privacy and security while incorporating community-defined feedback. 

Jorge Ortiz, an assistant professor in the  School of Engineering’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), will serve as the institutional lead for Rutgers. His team includes ECE distinguished professor and WINLAB director Dipankar Raychaudhuri; WINLAB chief technologist Ivan Seskar; Peter Jin, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; and Mubbasir Kapadia, an associate professor of computer science in Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences. 

“This grant allows us to develop a comprehensive research program centered around future human-streetscape interaction – interaction with intelligent agents on a large scale,” reports Ortiz.   

“It will also allow us to explore the common system-related elements necessary to enable a general platform that opens the streetscape to future developers and a wider innovation pipeline. Moreover, it will bring issues of equity and ethics to the fore in the development of these technologies.” 

A New Ecosystem for American Streetscapes 

The more than 80% of U.S. residents  who live in urban areas face increasing threats to their quality of life. Through this project, data can be harnessed for the public good from the urban streetscapes that encompass neighborhood streets, sidewalks, and public spaces.  

The CS3 project will ultimately devise a new ecosystem that deploys public interest technology to recast the American streetscape as one capable in everything from guiding disabled pedestrians and sensing human behavior to amplifying emergency services and protecting people from environmental and health threats.  

“Rutgers has long been deeply involved in research focused on future urban, suburban and rural streetscapes, including applications for improved open road and traffic safety, improved situational awareness, and future human-streetscape interactions,” says SoE professor and ECE chair Yingying Chen.   

“And from the beginning,” she adds, “we have been a lead researcher on COSMOS -- a multi-million dollar NSF-funded proving ground for next generation wireless technologies and applications that push the limits of wireless networking,” 

Rutgers’ project activities, according to Ortiz, will include data collection from the Smart Mobility Testing Ground in New Brunswick, the COSMOS testbed in Harlem, and the West Palm Beach Wireless testbed.  

Drawing on Deep Expertise 

Rutgers faculty will apply their expertise in wireless, edge-cloud, and future networking technologies beyond 5G, machine learning and AI in crowd modeling, traffic engineering, and human-computer interaction to develop innovative communication technologies, architectures beyond 5G, and machine learning/AI algorithms that use multimodal data streams from intersections, vehicles, and people to enable new services and novel interactions that will improve safety, efficiency – and the quality of life for citizens.  

Rutgers students, too,  will play a key role in the project by  conducting primary research, and taking part in teaching and outreach in program-developed cross-institutional courses in streetscape technology. 

A Revolutionary Exploration 

For Ortiz, the project is personally impactful. “One of its goals is to enable equitable access to future technologies in future streetscapes to improve the quality of life for all citizens,” he says. “Having grown up in an inner city, I know how the lack of access to technology can negatively affect the population by widening the gap between those that benefit from innovation and those that do not. Studying novel forms of interaction that don't require personal ownership of technology is a project goal.”  

By incorporating feedback from a broad spectrum of community stakeholders such as community organizations, municipalities, and K-12 schools, the researchers will be able to determine and prioritize what is most important and what concerns need to be addressed as new technologies are developed. “This is quite revolutionary in engineering and the exploration of new technology,” Ortiz adds.  

Rutgers Welcome Week

Rutgers Welcome Week will set the foundation to support your academic and personal journey and will focus on providing you opportunities to foster connections, learn about Rutgers culture and learn to navigate the campus and all its resources.

The complete Welcome Week schedule will also offer School Academic Welcome Sessions, Student Success resources and Open Houses, and more! 

 

Jorge Ortiz (Site PI) receives NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) grant

The Rutgers University Wireless Information Network Laboratory (WINLAB) and the School of Engineering have been awarded a major National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center (ERC) with Columbia University, Florida Atlantic University, the University of Central Florida, and Lehman College. The new Engineering Research Center for Smart Streetscapes (CS3) will be supported for five years with $26 million; renewable for an additional five years, for a total of up to $52 million. The ERC program is NSF’s flagship engineering program to catalyze convergent research to address large-scale societal challenges. As one of the most competitive research programs in the country, CS3 was selected from among hundreds of candidate centers. 

Currently, more than 80% of Americans and over half the world’s population live in urban areas. High-density cities are transforming how people live, work, travel, and manage urban infrastructure. With the nation’s urban areas facing challenges that threaten livability, safety, and inclusion, it is streetscapes – neighborhood streets, sidewalks, and public spaces – that are at the center of public and commercial activities, where data can be harnessed for the public good. Understanding complex streetscapes in real-time require progress in fundamental engineering knowledge and enable exciting opportunities for deploying public interest technology: A smart streetscape of the future can instantly sense human behavior and guide disabled pedestrians, collect refuse, control pests, amplify emergency services, and protect people against environmental and health threats. In addition, it can address unmet needs in road and public safety, traffic efficiency, assistive technologies, outdoor work, and hyper-local environmental sensing.

The Rutgers team, led by site PI Prof. Jorge Ortiz of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will work on two main efforts for the center. The first effort will be overseen by Prof. Dipankar Raychaudhuri and Prof. Ivan Seskar. They will work on enhancements to the WiEdge infrastructure based on COSMOS and smart city applications research designed and implemented by Prof. Jorge Ortiz. Prof. Jorge Ortiz will focus on application-driven research in human-streetscape interaction, expanding the interaction surface by combining multi-modal sensing, sensor fusion, and interactive machine learning that improves situational awareness. He will also examine systems aspects for enabling a shared API substrate (i.e., an operating system) to enable applications across different streetscapes. The Rutgers team also includes Prof. Peter Jin from Civil Engineering and Prof. Mubbasir Kapadia from the Computer Science department; they will work on crowd-based modeling and real-time traffic engineering for improved road safety, respectively.

Rutgers’ funding share is ~$2.2M.

Congratulations to Jorge and the team! 

Yingying Chen receives NIH grant for using smartphone app to examine effects of cannabis use on driving behavior

ECE and WINLAB Professor Yingying Chen is the recipient of an award from the National Institute of Health R21 for the project “Smartphone App to Examine Effects of Cannabis Use on Driving Behavior.” This is a two-year collaborative project of $409,236 with Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Yingying serves as a MPI on this project.

Driving under the influence of cannabis (DUIC) nearly doubles car crash risk, with medical cannabis (MC) patients representing an at-risk group for DUIC. This R21 aims to advance efforts to reduce DUIC through the innovative combination of a smartphone app for objective detection of aberrant driving behaviors, Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA), and biological sampling to examine effects of cannabis use on driving behavior in real-world conditions among MC patients. Study Phase will use qualitative data to refine the app and identify new app features to be added to prevent DUIC in future work. The innovative use of a smartphone app for objective detection of aberrant driving behavior, combined with EMA and biological sampling will provide important, new findings on effects (subjective and objective) of cannabis and compensatory "effort" on driving behavior in daily life in MC patients to enable urgently needed advances to reduce DUIC. More details on the project can be found at here: https://reporter.nih.gov/search/rODoT1uAjUGW_dzAnHdkoQ/projects

Congratulations to Yingying and the team!

ECE Welcomes New Undergraduate Director Sasan Haghani

Sasan Haghani has joined the ECE Department as a Non-Tenure Track Visiting Professor. He received his M.Sc and Ph.D. in the Electrical Engineering from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada in 2002 and in 2007, respectively. In 2021, Sasan was awarded UDC Founder's Day Dr. Marjorie Holloman Parker Distinguished Educator’s Award. His research interests include applied signal processing with applications in biomedical and environmental domains, network science, smart cities, renewable energy and smart grid, microgrids, home automation systems for smart grid, wireless sensor networks, and broadband communications.

Beginning September 1, 2022, Sasan will serve as the ECE Undergraduate Director and the ECE Capstone Coordinator. 

Welcome Shriram Ramanathan

The Rutgers Board of Governors appointed Shriram Ramanathan as the first holder of the Rodkin-Weintraub Chair in Engineering. The chair was established in 2018 through a gift from the Rodkin Family Foundation and a matching gift by an anonymous donor.

Ramanathan, who will join the faculty at Rutgers School of Engineering in the fall of 2022 from Purdue University, is widely recognized for his scholarly contributions and leadership in metastable semiconductors and device physics for artificial intelligence, robotics, brain-machine interfaces and adaptive electromagnetic materials and devices.

A professor in the School of Engineering at Purdue, Ramanathan received his Ph.D. from Stanford University and was a research staff member at Components Research Labs at Intel for over three years. He then served on the applied physics faculty at Harvard University for nearly a decade. Their group conducts research in oxide semiconductors for neuromorphic computing, optoelectronics and haptic intelligence, and collaborates with a broad set of research groups across engineering and natural sciences.

Ramanathan has a strong record of securing external funding from the U.S. Department of Defense and from the National Science Foundation, publishing more than 195 peer-reviewed articles in major research journals. He has delivered numerous invited talks and plenary addresses at international conferences, and has been invited to attend workshops organized by the United States National Academy of Sciences Keck Futures Program and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering Symposium and has served as a Kavli Fellow Lecturer for the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

By Carissa Sestito for Rutgers Today
December 7, 2021
 
Media Contact
Carissa Sestito

Welcome Guosong Yang

Guosong Yang has joined the ECE Department as a new Assistant Professor. Guosong received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Chanpaign, IL in 2013 and 2017, respectively. His research interests include switched and hybrid systems, networked control systems, learning in games, and their applications to cyber-physical systems and network security. His work has won the ACM SIGBED HSCC Best Paper Award in 2019. 

Welcome Daniel Burbano Lombana

Daniel Burbano Lombana has joined the ECE Department as a new Assistant Professor. Daniel received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Naples Federico II, Italy in 2015, and his M.S.c degree in Industrial Automation from the National University of Colombia in 2012. His research interests include dynamical systems and control theory with an emphasis on distributed network systems, collective animal behavior, swarm intelligence, and robot autonomy.

Pages

Subscribe to Rutgers University, Electrical & Computer Engineering RSS