ECEE Amplified - Electrical, Computer & Energy Engineering Department News - April 25, 2024

There will be no department this week, but lunch from Tazikis will be served for staff & faculty members if you’d like a break and chance to catch up with your colleagues!

• If you missed last week’s department meeting you can find the notes here: Department Meeting.docx

• Congratulations to PhD student Connor Nogales (Lasser Group) for successfully defending their thesis on April, 25, 2024!

• Congratulations to PhD student Tony Romano (Popovic Group) for successfully defending their thesis on April 26, 2024!

When: Wednesday, May 8th, 2 p.m. - 3:30 p.m..

Where: DLC 1B70

About Kumar: Kumar Vijay Mishra holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and M.S. in mathematics from The University of Iowa, along with an M.S. in electrical engineering from Colorado State University. He obtained his B.Tech. summa cum laude from the National Institute of Technology, Hamirpur. He currently serves as a Research Scientist at the Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland, College Park, and holds advisory roles in various radar startups. Dr. Mishra has had research appointments at esteemed institutions worldwide. He has received numerous awards and recognitions for his work, including Distinguished Lecturer appointments from multiple IEEE societies, prestigious fellowships, and Best Paper Awards. He is actively involved in various IEEE committees and serves as Chair or Vice-Chair for several technical working groups. Additionally, Dr. Mishra is engaged in editorial roles for several IEEE transactions and is involved in editing upcoming radar-related books. His research interests span radar systems, signal processing, remote sensing, and electromagnetics.

Abstract: In this talk, we focus on the recent signal processing strategies and challenges associated with the development of sensing and communication systems that coexist with the vehicles and road infrastructure deployed in a given area. We consider a broad definition of coexistence, which covers joint communication and sensing, collaborative communication and sensing, and also interference. We consider an aspect of the coexistence paradigm where the two systems support each other beyond interference mitigation such as sensor-aided communications and communications-aided sensing. This opens up the avenue for the development of multivehicle sensor fusion strategies. We describe recent works that define topologies for combining radar and communication functionalities into the same equipment, drawing on the spectrum scarcity and possible gains from the reuse of resources. In particular, we focus on the joint design of a waveform to mitigate interference, including communications-centric waveforms (OFDMA and 802.11ad), radar-centric waveforms (PMCW), or unified waveforms achieving optimal trade-offs between the two systems.

When: Tuesday, April 30th, refreshments at 3:30; talk begins at 4:30

Where: CASE Auditorium

About Jeff:Jeff Thompson is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering as an Associated Faculty in the Princeton Materials Institute. 

Abstract: Neutral atom quantum computing is a rapidly developing eld. Exploring new atomic species, such as alkaline earth atoms, provides additional opportunities for cooling and trapping, measurement, qubit manipulation, high-delity gates and quantum error correction. In this talk, I will present recent results from our group on implementing high-delity gates on nuclear spins encoded in metastable 171Yb atoms [1], including mid-circuit detection of gate errors that give rise to leakage out of the qubit space, using erasure conversion [2,3]. I will conclude by discussing several new directions including spectroscopy and modeling of 171Yb Rydberg states and interactions, and the construction of high-speed modulators for local gate addressing.

• Academic year starts August 26, which means faculty report for classes on August 19.

• Similar later start to Academic year as last.

• Faculty on 9-pay-9 pay schedules can expect smaller August pay.

• A calculator can be used by faculty to calculate their expected pay. Resources can be found here! 

Did you know that ECEE has a central place for department policies & procedures and a template for documenting them? The policy & procedure template and folder is contained in the department shared folder on Microsoft Teams (ECEE-SD-EXCHANGE). As we all know, if it’s not written down, it’s not happening. Documentation is a critical component of our department. Policies and procedures are vital to our business operability, business continuity, consistency within our department, training new employees, controlling risk, meeting regulatory compliance requirements, and so much more. Every ECEE committee is encouraged to use the policy & procedure template and store the policies and procedures in the folder.

Canvas has announced they will be enforcing their Canvas discussions and announcements redesign for all customers on July 20, 2024. To minimize disruption for summer 2024 courses, the discussion and announcement redesign will be enforced at CU Boulder starting on May 10, 2024.

The redesigned discussions and announcement solutions in Canvas include an updated user interface, additional features, but maintains feature parity with the current discussions and announcement functionality. No migration steps are required; on May 10 all discussions will automatically transition to the redesigned interface and include the additional features. Instructors may choose to enable the discussion/announcement redesign on a course-by-course basis prior to May 10, and instructors are encouraged to explore the redesigned features in a sandbox course.

OIT's Academic Technology Consultants will be hosting Canvas Support office hours to assist instructors with questions or previewing the discussion redesign features in Canvas. Instructors can also schedule a consultation for one-on-one help if unable to attend office hours. 

For additional information for discussions and announcement redesign, please review the following information and resources:

Instructor resources

• How to enable discussion/announcement redesign in a Canvas course

• Discussion redesign data sheet

• Announcement redesign guides

• Discussion redesign guides

• Video preview of new and improved discussion features

Student resources

• Announcement redesign guides

• Discussion redesign guides

Have additional questions or want additional support? Schedule a consultation with an Academic Technology Consultant or contact the IT Service Center at 303-735-4357 or oithelp@colorado.edu.

In an ongoing effort to better secure personal and financial data at CU Boulder, Duo multi-factor authentication (MFA) will be required when using CU Boulder’s VPN service starting March 14. In the same way you use Duo MFA to access Buff Portal or MyCUInfo, you will be prompted to authenticate with Duo when you manually connect to a campus VPN. Users of the Always On VPN will not be prompted to authenticate with Duo. Learn more about CU Boulder’s VPN. 

Starting March 26, external emails sent to CU Boulder students, faculty, staff and retirees will be tagged with a warning label: [External Email - Use caution]. Emails from approved sources like other CU campuses, the system office, and university-supported platforms, should not include the external tag. You can learn more about this upcoming change in OIT’s External Email Tagging FAQs where you will also find a link to the External Email Tag Exception Request form. If you have questions about this new feature or about CU Boulder email accounts in general, please contact the IT Service Center at oithelp@colorado.edu or 303-735-4357.

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 and More Here!