June 2024
Letter from the Guest Editor
The Summer of AI
By: Badri Roysam, University of Houston
Dear Colleagues,
The (hopefully happy) end of the Spring semester is the perfect window of opportunity to ensure student success in the Fall semester. Let us ta
Dear Colleagues,
The (hotter than before) summer is finally here, and I hope yours is going well. I took the family to Italy, and it was amazing. Back at my desk, Artificial Intelligence is sizzling – it is evolving rapidly to find new ways to be useful in our niche. The pace of innovation is breathtaking, even by ECE standards. Even more impressive is its democratization, global reach, and accessibility. While the training of large foundational models is still limited to the biggest industry players, the resulting models themselves are surprisingly accessible. This will change, faster than we can predict, and in more ways than we can imagine. Let’s watch this space.
In this issue of Source, we are delighted to welcome four new ECEDHA Board Members: Secretary Deidra Hodges, Treasurer Michael Wu, Members-at-large Chris Myers and Daniela Tuninetti. We wish them the very best in their leadership roles. We are delighted to spotlight new ECE Chair Veena Misra at NC State University, a noted expert in power electronics and power systems. As always, we have a soft spot for rising ECE students. We are especially delighted to spotlight Darianne Sinclair, an IEC 2to4 Scholar who started at San Jacinto Community College who joined Prairie View A&M University. Next, we are delighted to spotlight Duschia Bodet, an alumnus of the ECEDHA’s successful iREDEFINE program – she is completing her PhD studies at Northeastern University. Students are not only shaped by their professors, but also by their peers, and no student organization exemplifies the ideal peer learning environment than IEEE and HKN. We are delighted to feature the HKN BRIDGE magazine.
We are also delighted to spotlight AI related news at Northwestern University, Georgia Tech, Princeton, and The University of Texas at Austin. The corporate world dominates advances in AI, and we are delighted to feature three articles from Cadence Corporation. The first article provides a glimpse of the ongoing AI-powered Data Analytics revolution that is supercharging the semiconductor industry. The second article is about using generative AI to churn out chip designs, and even system designs beyond individual chips. The third mini article is an invitation to you to join Cadence’s AI blog. I am signing up – and hope you join too.
My ECEDHA colleagues and I join in wishing you a Happy and Restful Summer 2024.
ECE Conversations
Do you have an initiative in your department worth sharing? We would love to feature your efforts in the next ECE Source newsletter. Increasingly, our articles are in the form of the ECE Conversations video podcast. It is friendly, authentic, personal, and natural.
Do you have interesting initiatives in progress at your department? We would love to feature your efforts in the next ECE Source newsletter. Increasingly, our articles are in the form of the ECE Conversations video podcast. It is friendly, authentic, personal, and natural. At the conference, we plan to record a series of in-person ECE Conversations in a podcast style. Would you be interested in participating? See you there!
Here are some of the topics of current interest for future ECE Conversations:
- The impacts of AI on ECE education and research;
- Strategies and Experiences in meeting the semiconductor re-shoring challenge;
- The growing footprint of healthcare-related research in ECE departments;
- Growing the workforce for the future electronics-intensive defense industry;
- The new ECE Chair experience, the ups, and the downs;
- Teaching engineering values; and
- Strategies and best practices for developing future ECE faculty.
As always, we welcome short articles from ECE department heads & faculty on topics of broad interest to our community.
Wishing you a happy new Spring Semester,
Badri Roysam, D.Sc., Fellow IEEE, Fellow AIMBE
Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen University Professor
Chair, Electrical & Computer Engineering Department
University of Houston
Houston, Texas 77204-4005
Phone: 713-743-1773
Email: broysam@uh.edu