ECE Newsletter 2022

I am pleased to share with you some of the exciting news and accomplishments from our faculty and students from 2022.

ECE faculty continued to be highly successful in research, bringing in over $5M of new external research grants again this year. Dr. Arafa won the 2022 NSF CAREER Award for his research on timely information transfer for communication networks. Dr. Tabkhi was awarded additional funding for his existing NSF Smart and Connected Communities project on real-time computer vision for public safety, bringing the total funds for the project to over $2.3M. Dr Chowdhury partnered with NC State University and Clemson to win an NSF Planning grant for an engineering research center that is focused on achieving a carbon neutral electric grid. Dr. Ebong was awarded new funds from the DoE for solar cell metallization. Dr. Kamalasadan was awarded funding from Siemens Energy for developing digital twin power system models. These stories and other news are included in this Newsletter.

We are excited to see increasing interest in the newly developed MS in Computer Engineering program. Interest in several newly developed courses on Machine Learning, AI, real-time systems, IoT, and robotics is growing at a rapid pace. This year, three new faculty members were hired in the areas of AI, medical imaging, and computer architecture. ECE is looking forward to further expansion of cross-disciplinary programs and research in the areas of AI, visualization, simulation, and cyber-physical security for which UNC Charlotte received $40M of funds from the “Engineering North Carolina’s Future” that was initiated by the North Carolina General Assembly this year. ECE will be partnering with other departments of the Williams States Lee College of Engineering, the College of Computing and Informatics, and the School of Data Science on this initiative that is being planned over the next two years.

I wish you all a healthy and happy New Year!

Kind regards

Asis Nasipuri, Professor and ECE Department Chair