Dear Colleagues,

I hope that this message finds you safe and in good health. Despite the challenges presented by the novel coronavirus, our department has been hard at work in our continued pursuit of excellence in academics and research. We are especially proud of our latest NSF CAREER awardees Rose Faghih and David Mayerich. We are excited about our new campus at Katy, Texas, and our new joint program with Dalian Maritime University, China.

I invite you to read about some of our research advancements and newly funded projects. Thank you for your support, and we look forward to enhancing our collaborations.

Warm Regards,

Badri Roysam, D.Sc., Fellow IEEE and AIMBE

Member, ECEDHA Board of Directors

Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen University Professor & Chair

Electrical & Computer Engineering Department

University of Houston

Miao Pan, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Houston is among a group of four that have been awarded nearly $200,000 from the National Science Foundation to develop a map for coronavirus response via crowdsourcing.

David Mayerich, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, has received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation to develop a software platform to produce searchable digital atlases of whole organs at the cellular level.

Rose Faghih, UH assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, received a CAREER award to support her MINDWATCH proposal, which centers on algorithm-based wearable technology capable of tracking the user's emotional and cognitive state.

Harish Krishnamoorthy, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, is leading a $2.5 million effort funded by the U.S. Department of Defense to develop compact electronic power systems.

Batteries using more abundant multivalent metals could revolutionize energy storage. Researchers review the current state of multivalent metal-ion battery research and provide a roadmap for future work in Nature Energy, reporting that the top candidates — using magnesium, calcium, zinc and aluminum — all have great promise, but also steep challenges to meet practical demands.

Assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering Rose Faghih has developed a method to track the fear response from sweat and heart rate together. Her findings were reported in the journal PLOS One.

Zhu Han, the John and Rebecca Moores Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was honored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for his early to mid-career contributions with the 2021 Kiyo Tomiyasu Award.

Saurabh Prasad, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, is now the co-editor of Hyperspectral Image Analysis: Advances in Machine Learning and Signal Processing.

Both UH ECE student chapters of IEEE and HKN continue to thrive despite the challenging conditions presented by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The IEEE engineering student branch is currently expanding and will be merging with IEEE technology and IEEE NSM at UH. The organization is also working closely with the University's Makerspace to create projects that will help students build on their resumes. This includes tools such as microcontrollers, oscilloscopes, waveform generators, and a laser cutter. The two projects this semester are: (1) an autonomous drilling rig and (2) an initiative to help disabled children called ‘Go Baby Go’.

After a long hiatus, the IEEE Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) Epsilon Epsilon Chapter has been reinstated at the UH Cullen College of Engineering. The virtual induction ceremony was held on April 25 on Zoom and had nine inductees from the College of Engineering with various majors, including Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.