Electrical, Computer & Energy Engineering Department News - February 24, 2025

There will be no department meeting this week. Instead, please attend Haiman Hu’s seminar. 

Russell Everett Hayes

A dear colleague to many of us old-timers, Professor Emeritus Russell Hayes passed away on February 9, 2025. 

Prof. Hayes received his PhD from Stanford in 1963 and joined our department the same year. He was an active faculty member for more than 35 years, and became Emeritus professor after retiring in 1999. His research area was in semiconductors with a focus on microwave and optical devices. He was an excellent teacher and mentored several outstanding PhD students, among them our own Prof. Bart Van Zeghbroeck and Dr. James Crescenzi, former president of the IEEE MTT Society.

Prof. Hayes led an active and productive life and was loved and respected by his colleagues and students. He stayed in touch with several department faculty after retirement, and he will be missed by many.  

The Department will post a link to the obituary and memorial service when available. 

The College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS) has announced the recipients of its inaugural class of Innovation & Entrepreneurship (I&E) Fellows, a new program designed to support faculty, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students in advancing cutting-edge research with commercial potential. The fellowships are supported by the CEAS I&E initiative and Venture Partners at CU Boulder. 

Congrats to the following faculty and graduate students for being inaugural recipients for the fellowship:

• Tsung-Han Wu, postdoctoral researcher and Professor Scott Diddams
• Aoife Henry, graduate student
• Laila Fighera Marzall, research faculty

📅 Date: Monday, February 24,  2025

⏰ Time: 11:15 AM – 11:45 AM

📍 Location: Engineering Center, ECEE 1B32, CU Boulder

📅 Date: Monday, February 25,  2025

⏰ Time: 12:55 PM – 1:45 PM

📍 Location: Engineering Center, ECES  1B12, CU Boulder

📅 Date: Friday, February 28, 2025

⏰ Time: 11:10 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

📍 Location: Koelbel Building: Leeds School of Business, 352

Abstract: High-performance systems are increasingly bottlenecked by the energy and communications costs of interconnecting numerous compute and memory resources. Current systems face a gap of nearly two orders of magnitude between on-chip, intra-socket, communication capacities, and the capacities of links transporting data over longer distances. The per bit energy cost of data movement dominates that of data processing, as does density, throughput, and latency. Integrated silicon photonics offer the opportunity of optical connectivity that delivers high off-chip communication bandwidth densities with low power consumption. To realize these benefits the co-integration of photonics with the compute and memory is critical. This talk will cover approaches for leveraging photonic IO that can scale to realize Petabit/s chip escape bandwidths with sub-picojoule/bit energy consumption, as well as new architectural approaches that enable flexible connectivity tailored to accelerate distributed AI/ML applications.

Bio: Keren Bergman is the Charles Batchelor Professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University where she also serves as the Faculty Director of the Columbia Nano Initiative. Bergman received the B.S. from Bucknell University in 1988, and the M.S. in 1991 and Ph.D. in 1994 from M.I.T. all in Electrical Engineering. At Columbia, Bergman leads the Lightwave Research Laboratory encompassing multiple cross-disciplinary programs at the intersection of computing and photonics. Since 2023 Bergman is the Director of the Center for Ubiquitous Connectivity (CUbiC), a 5-year multi-university center funded by DARPA and the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) under the Joint University Microelectronics Program 2.0 (JUMP 2.0). Bergman serves on the Leadership Council of the American Institute of Manufacturing (AIM) Photonics leading projects that support the institute’s silicon photonics manufacturing capabilities and Datacom applications. She is the recipient of the IEEE Photonics Engineering Award and is a Fellow of Optica and IEEE.

📅 Date: Monday, March 10, 2025

⏰ Time: 11:10 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

📍 Location: Engineering Center, ECEE 1B32, CU Boulder

Bio: Dr. Frank Barnes is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Biomedical group of the Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering Department at the University of Colorado Boulder, as well as a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Barnes received his B.S. from Princeton University in electrical engineering in 1954, his M.S. Engineer and PhD from Stanford University in 1955, 1956 and 1958. He joined the University of Colorado in 1959. He was appointed a Distinguished Professor in 1997. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2001 and received the Gordon Prize 2004 for innovations in Engineering Education from the National Academy. He is a fellow of IEEE, AAAS and served as Vice President of IEEE for publication and as Chairman of the Electron Device Society and President of the Bioelectromagnetics Society, and as U.S. Chair of Commission K-International Union of Radio Sciences (URSI). 

The sessions will explore the creation of a School of Sustainable Engineering. The focus will be on opportunities, aspirations and results that could be achieved through the formation of such a school.  Climate action, water resource management, infrastructure resilience and renewable energy are only a few of the topics that our faculty can address through research, education, outreach and workforce development.

• Tuesday, Feb. 25, 10-11 a.m. DLC 1B70 or on Zoom
• Tuesday, March 4, 10-11 a.m., SEEC S228 or on Zoom

Phase 1 of the secure computing initiative is underway. Please respond promptly to Bret Moreland and assistants’ requests for identifying every computer in use in offices and labs and return the required information. The completion date for this project is February 15. Questions about this initiative should be directed to Robin Elliot.

IT Support:

• Teaching Labs (Capstone, Embedded Systems, Power Lab, Optics, RF, Highspeed Measurements, Circuits) IT Support: http://itll.link/servicedesk
• Research Labs License Server Support: support@craftypenguins.net
• Research Computing: https://www.colorado.edu/rc/
• Research License Server (ecee-flexlm-2.colorado.edu): Submit a request to: support@craftypenguins.net
• Conference Rooms ECEE 1B55 & 1B45: Send an email to ECEE IT support: http://itll.link/servicedesk
• 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.
• 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.
• 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  Andy Garcia, Andrew.Garcia-3@colorado.edu, in the Mechanical Engineering department for scheduling and technical assistance
• OIT Website https://oit.colorado.edu/support
• All other issues, contact Robin.McClanahan@colorado.edu or 303-492-6736