ECEE Amplified - Electrical, Computer & Energy Engineering Department News - February 12, 2024

There will be no department meeting this week, please attend BME faculty candidate Melinda Perkins’ seminar instead at the same time. 

• Meet with BME Candidate Mindy Liu Perkins - sign up on the schedule here!

• Meet with Visitor Stephen Boppart - sign up on the schedule here! 

Congratulations to Professor Melinda Piket-May, recipient of the 2023 College Award for Faculty Service and to Professor Fabio Somenzi, recipient of the 2023 College Award for his most recent textbook!

We are also incredibly proud of our other ECEE nominees:

• Professor Emiliano Dall'Anese for Research

• Professor Josh Combes for Teaching

• Bret Moreland for Outstanding Staff

• Looking to nominate an outstanding fellow faculty member, staff member, post doc, or graduate student? Please fill out this ECEE Awards nomination form by February 29th!

• Graduating student award nominations are now being accepted for students graduating with their bachelor’s degree in either May or August 2024! You can refer to this list of anticipated Spring/Summer 2024 graduating ECEE undergrads. The deadline to submit a nomination form is Monday, Feb. 26. These are the categories that currently exist for College awards:

  • ​Academic Engagement Award

  • ​Community Impact Award

  • Outstanding Undergraduate of the College Award

  • Wellness Award

  • Research Award

  • Perseverance Award

  • Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (JEDI) Award

  • Global Engagement Award

Every nominee from our department is automatically considered for a departmental award, since each nomination for an ECEE student is automatically forwarded to Mona and Debbie.

We are inviting our alumni back to Boulder for our second ECEE Alumni Day on Friday, March 1st. This is your chance to network with other ECEE alumni and faculty, explore how quantum is expanding the engineering world — and enjoy some free food! Please RSVP and learn more about the event here!

RSVP Here!

• Stay Interviews with Chris Myers will occur on Thursdays at 1 p.m. To schedule, please contact Kimberly Low directly. 

• Effective immediately, please use this form for all travel reimbursements and dinner reimbursements, including Faculty Recruiting, PhD Recruiting, Recruiting Dinners, etc.

• Update your W-4 Exemptions before 2/15/24!

• The PhD recruitment visit is February 22-24. Please connect with your Graduate Committee representative to finalize your area's recruitment plan and itinerary. 

• Consider nominees for the following PhD awards:

  • Current PhD Students:

    • Graduate School Summer Fellowship: The Graduate School will once again be offering fellowships to doctoral students to provide support during the summer term. Each department is invited to submit one doctoral student for consideration for this award, and we strongly encourage every department do so! The fellowship awardees will receive a $1000 biweekly stipend, totaling $6000 over the course of the summer. Please see the student employment payroll dates for the summer biweekly payroll schedule.   

      • Due to Lori by February 20.  

  • Prospective PhD Students:
    • Dean’s Future Leaders: $2,500 awards to outstanding incoming students that would contribute to the diversity of your unitbased on their demonstrated track record, including applicants with a non-traditional educational background.
      • Due to Lori on: February 13. Must include a brief summary of how the student would contribute with actions from their application.
    • Center for Diversity & Inclusion: 2 nominees for $3,750 each 

      • Due to Lori by February 20. 

Nominees must have shown commitment to enhancing diversity that contribute to university's diversity and inclusion programs. Nominations must be based around demonstrated actions such as lived experiences, plans, research and expertise, NOT political beliefs or identities such as race or ethnicity.

We are excited to announce that Alex Plaut (she/her/hers) is joining the ECEE advising team! We are incredibly fortunate to have Alex join our team given the depth of knowledge she already possesses about the ECEE curriculum and the familiarity with many of our undergrads, faculty, and staff. Alex helped temporarily advise ECEE students last year when the team was short-staffed, has served as the dedicated academic advisor for CEAS Open Option majors since 2020, and currently serves as the main first-year advisor for ECEE majors this academic year. Moving forward, she will be advising Electrical, Electrical & Computer, and Mechanical Engineering majors.

Alex’s official reassignment date to our neighborhood is Feb. 12, and she will be closing out the first-year advising pilot and splitting her time on-campus between her ECEE office (ECEE 1B64) and an office space in Williams Village for the remainder of the academic year. Welcome to the team, Alex!

The Engineering Excellence Fund has just published its Request for Proposals (RFP) for the Spring Semester Mini and Major Proposal Cycles (Mini corresponds to amounts < $3,000 while Major is uncapped)! EEF awards funding to faculty, staff, and students for student team projects, prototyping education innovations, lab upgrades, and curriculum development. The RFPs and additional information are available on the EEF website.

Interested in building community with women & non-binary folks in graduate school? Join the Graduate Society of Women Engineers (GradSWE)! GradSWE is an inclusive community, committed to supporting women and other minorities, and is open to all who support these groups in STEM. GradSWE offers community outreach, professional development, and social events throughout the semester. Additionally, with GradSWE there are opportunities to attend regional and national conferences, including WE Local and WE National. Further, if you’re interested, you can join the GradSWE newsletter HERE and our Slack HERE to get more information about future events!  Want to help us create professional development or social events for the semester? Or maybe just want to help in general? Email Chair, Kristen Bruchko, Kristen.Bruchko@colorado.edu with any questions.

We are writing once again to invite your institution to join the 2024 Class of the Colorado Science & Engineering Policy Fellowship, co-hosted by Senators Cleave Simpson and Chris Hansen. There is a critical need for individuals at the Capitol who both understand science-based decision making and can take an objective approach to creating effective policy. The Fellowship offers students the opportunity to do so. For the past six years, the Fellowship has given talented STEM students policy-making experience and a broadened understanding of the connection between STEM disciplines and lawmaking. Over the course of the summer, each fellow will learn about the state legislative process, conduct their own research project, and ultimately pitch their own legislation. While the students are conducting their research, they are also given access to leaders in government and industry. Past speakers include Governor Jared Polis, Former Governor Bill Ritter, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, Congressman Joe Neguse, Former Majority Leader Dominick Moreno, former Mayor of Boulder and Executive Director of the Colorado Energy Office Will Toor, former Colorado Supreme Court Justice Gregory Hobbs, Senior Policy Advisor for Tesla Thad Kurowski, among others. Past site visits included the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Google Boulder Campus, Lockheed Martin, Arapahoe Basin Ski Resort, the Craig generating station and coal mine, and the National Wind Technology Center. The Fellowship will run for eight weeks from June 17 to August 9 and Fellows will work in Denver, directly within our legislative offices. Universities will assist by providing funding for each student that joins the fellowship. A $4,000 stipend will be provided for each student’s living expenses and to cover fellowship programming expenses. 

• The application window is now open and will close on Monday March 4, 2024. More information about the program and how to apply can be found here! 

Time/Location: February 12, 11 a.m. - 12:20 p.m., ECEE 1B32

Zoom Code: 918 2021 7493

About Aranya: Aranya Chakrabortty is a Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC. His research interests are in the broad areas of power systems dynamics, stability, and control, with recent interests in data-driven control and electric vehicle charging. From 2020 to 2024, Aranya also served as a program director at the US National Science Foundation (NSF) where he managed the portfolio on power and energy systems. He received the NSF CAREER award in 2011, and was named as a University Faculty Scholar in 2019.

Abstract: I will start with an overview of my research at NC State on modeling and control of large-scale power systems, emphasizing upon new nonlinear control approaches that will soon become necessary as millions of inverter-based power electronic resources penetrate the grid over the next decade. Following that, I will outline the work that I did as a program director at NSF in the space of power, controls, climate change, and clean energy. Finally, I will talk about how my NSF experience has enabled me to develop a vision for exploring new intersections between four critical elements that I believe will be imperative in shaping the future of power systems in the United States - namely, the intersection between (1) meteorology and grid resilience, (2) electric vehicles and grid stability, (3) traffic engineering and grid economics, and finally, (4) the impact of human behavior and incentivization on all of them. I will present four open mathematical problem formulations to connect the dots between these research directions, and conclude with a discussion on how engineering, climate science, and social sciences can come together to solve these complex problems in the real world.

Time/Location: February 15, 11 a.m. - 12:20 p.m., ECNW 312

Zoom Code: 918 2021 7493

About Mindy: Dr. Mindy Liu Perkins develops analytical and computational tools for guiding the design of control schemes for multicellular patterning and cellular differentiation. Her work falls at the intersection of mathematical modeling, biophysics, and control theory. She earned her B.S. in Electrical Engineering with honors from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at UC Berkeley, advised by Murat Arcak. She received the Leon O. Chua Award for excellence in nonlinear science for her thesis work on multicellular gene expression patterning in synthetic and evolved systems. She was granted the Marie Curie/EIPOD4 Postdoctoral Fellowship to work with Justin Crocker at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, where she analyzes the dynamics and accuracy of transcriptional regulation in theory and experiment. She is broadly interested in developing control theory to account for the complex realities of biochemical systems, as well as applying engineering approaches to uncover design principles in naturally evolved organisms.

Abstract: Spatial patterning of gene expression across cells is central to embryonic development and tissue regeneration. Failure to pattern correctly contributes to congenital disorders and limits the efficacy of therapeutic interventions to repair damaged tissues. In this talk, I will discuss my research into the mathematical mechanisms that guide gene expression patterning as well as the biophysical limitations that constrain it, and what these insights imply for how we can control patterning for applications in tissue engineering. First, I present my work to quantitatively validate mathematical theory for spontaneous contrasting patterning using an experimental testbed that we term cell-in-the-loop. The testbed emulates lateral inhibition among living yeast cells using light inputs calculated in silico based on real-time gene expression measurements. Second, I discuss recent work into the role of chromatin in enabling cellular differentiation. Using theory and simulation, I show that chromatin improves the accuracy and dynamic range of gene expression patterning in large networks. Surprisingly, chromatin also allows regulatory networks to productively co-opt weak or non target binding of regulatory factors to DNA binding sites. I conclude the talk with a brief overview of my future plans for combining mathematical understanding of patterning with awareness of biophysical constraints to design effective controllers for therapeutic applications.

OIT is pleased to introduce new features and offerings to enhance the value of the Zoom service for instructors and students. Included are Zoom AI Companion, App Marketplace and improved Zoom Canvas integration, all aimed at enriching the user experience for seamless collaboration and communication.

Learn More About Each Feature & More Here!

Thank you for your patience as the process to engage the ITLP for ECEE IT support continues. The MOU with OIT has been signed and the process to hire the position to support ECEE is underway. Following are resources and contacts for the interim.

• OIT Website https://oit.colorado.edu/support

• Research Computing Website https://www.colorado.edu/rc/

• IT Service Center: Contact the IT Service Center (303-735-4357 or help@colorado.edu) for help with all OIT services including email and IdentiKey, Internet connectivity and other technology-related questions.

• License Issues: Send an email to the OIT license service administration team at trouble@colorado.edu

• Buff Techs Desktop Support: OIT provides no-cost software support for laptop and desktop workstations to faculty, staff, and students. You can also register your laptop to aid in recovery in case it is lost or stolen.

• Dedicated Desktop Support: Departmental IT Support customized for your needs.

• Network Troubleshooting: Submit this form to report network connectivity issues on campus

• Lab Reporting form: Submit this form to report a problem in an OIT-Managed lab (all of our teaching labs and the SRC are managed by OIT)

• Classroom Technology Problem Reporting form: Submit this form to report an issue with technology malfunctioning in a classroom (except for the ECEE classrooms – contact Bret.Moreland@colorado or 303-503-7939 for support)

• Self-Service Help Request: Submit a request directly to the ITSC using ServiceNow 

• Lightboard: Contact Grace Karegeannes, grka7867@colorado.edu, in the Office of Academic Innovation for scheduling and technical assistance

• All other issues, contact Robin.McClanahan@colorado.edu or 303-492-6736