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Welcome to the ECE family! 🎉 We`re thrilled to introduce two new Assistant Professors joining our department this fall: Brittany N. Smith and Wei-Hsi Chen.
Brittany directs our new Fabrication Laboratory for Active Microelectronics (FLAME). This combines cleanroom techniques with 2D-printed electronics to build next-gen sensors, transistors and micro-scale robotics. Think wearables and space tech.
Wei-Hsi leads our Function-Oriented Robotics Geometry and Engineering (FORGE) lab, working to turn robot design into an engineering discipline driven by computational tools and first principles.
We`re proud to have both of them bringing new energy and expertise to NC State ECE! 🙌
Read more: http://ncst.at/RysH50ZJCr6
📡 ECE Assistant Professor Vijay K. Shah is leading a $1M NSF award (with Yale University) to develop ARMANI, AI-native tools that help next-gen 5G/6G wireless networks manage themselves, getting faster, smarter and more reliable.
"It is just as much about people as technology," says Shah, whose lab has become a hub for AI-native 6G research. Graduate and undergraduate students in the lab will get hands-on experience in wireless networking, machine learning and system prototyping as part of the project.
Read more: http://ncst.at/t9ux50ZJC2g
Congratulations to Aydin Aysu, ECE associate professor, on receiving the 2026 DAC Under-40 Innovators Award!
The award honors up to five researchers each year. They`re pushing the boundaries of electronic design and automation. Aysu earned his spot for making hardware security a built-in part of chip design instead of an afterthought.
His lab, HECTOR, tackles the physical side of cybersecurity. It shows how attackers could steal an AI model just by reading a chip`s power signature. Then it builds the defenses to stop it. That work is shaping how we protect AI accelerators and post-quantum cryptographic hardware for years to come.
Congrats again, Aydin!
Earlier this week, NC State announced that Engineering Building II is now Christina Hammock Koch Hall, honoring the three-time NC State graduate whose Artemis II mission carried her around the moon and back. 🚀 🐺
Engineering Building II broke ground in October 2003 and opened in August 2005, just in time for fall classes, becoming home to NC State ECE. It was one of two buildings, alongside Engineering Building I, that formed the start of the Oval on Centennial Campus, funded by North Carolina`s $3.1 billion higher education bond referendum.
As Koch put it: "A building becomes so much more than just a name. It can define everyone`s experiences."
Two decades of ECE students have walked through these doors. Now they walk through hers.
🤖 Exciting partnership news for ECE!
NC State`s College of Engineering is joining Red Hat`s asago (AI Safety And Governance Orchestration) community to help build safer, more accountable AI systems.
ECE Professor Edgar Lobaton, director of applied AI for the College of Engineering, is helping lead NC State`s involvement, working to turn complex AI policy guidelines into automated, production-ready safeguards.
Partnerships like this connect our ECE research strength in AI security directly to what industry needs next.
Proud to see our department at the center of responsible AI innovation!
Read more: http://ncst.at/m3M550ZygV2
🌿 Pokeweed to the rescue! ECE Professor Michael Kudenov co-led a DARPA-funded study developing a UV spectroscopy technique that measures rare earth elements — like dysprosium, used in magnets for EVs, wind turbines and smartphones — as they build up inside plant tissue. Partnering with NC State`s Colleen Doherty, the team used the humble pokeweed plant to advance "phytomining," a method that could one day help clean up industrial waste sites while recovering critical minerals the U.S. needs to reduce its reliance on foreign supply chains. Great to see ECE engineering expertise applied to sustainability and national security challenges! 🔬 Read more: http://ncst.at/HwIj50Ztgzf
NC State has been selected to lead three U.S. Department of Energy Genesis Mission projects using AI to accelerate scientific discovery.
ECE Assistant Professor Michela Becchi is leading one of them, developing an AI-powered framework to help researchers program next-generation computing hardware, in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory.
NC State is also partnering on two additional Genesis Mission projects tied to nuclear energy, including the $60M Prometheus project.
Proud to see our ECE faculty at the forefront of applying AI to push the boundaries of scientific discovery! ⚡
Read more: http://ncst.at/AvZP50ZwhSl
🎉 Congratulations to ECE Assistant Professor Aritra Mitra on winning a prestigious NSF CAREER Award!
The National Science Foundation grant will fund Mitra`s research into robust reinforcement learning, building AI decision-making systems that can filter out corrupted or noisy data and stay reliable in the real world, with applications spanning wireless networks, robotics and power systems.
This early-career honor recognizes both Mitra`s research excellence and his role as a mentor and educator here in ECE. Proud to see our faculty pushing the frontiers of trustworthy AI! 🤖
Read more: http://ncst.at/cfKr50Zwb5i
🧬 Predicting how DNA binds just got a major AI upgrade! ECE Professor James Tuck co-led a team that built BINND (Binding and Interaction Neural Network for DNA), a deep learning model that predicts which DNA sequences bind to each other with 83.5% accuracy - at least 10% better than the previous state of the art. Trained on a massive dataset of 144 million sequence pairs, BINND opens doors for biomedical diagnostics and DNA-based computing, where DNA itself is used to store and retrieve data. Proud to see our ECE research pushing the boundaries of what`s possible at the intersection of engineering and biology! 🔬 Read more: http://ncst.at/6PYn50Ztz9S
Quantum computing, meet real-world impact! ⚛️ ECE`s Sabre Kais, the Goodnight Distinguished Chair in Quantum Computing, chaired NC State`s first Summer Workshop on Quantum Machine Learning, drawing 150 researchers and industry leaders from IBM, NVIDIA, Yale and more to campus. From new algorithms to hands-on quantum programming, the week showcased why NC State ECE is training the next generation of the quantum workforce. Proud to have our faculty leading the way! 🔬 Read more: http://ncst.at/GM9q50ZkFpr
🩹 Congratulations to ECE Assistant Professor Amay Bandodkar on winning a prestigious NSF CAREER Award! The grant will fund his lab`s work on battery-powered wireless smart bandages that safely sample wound fluid and relay real-time updates on wound healing through non-toxic, flexible thin-film batteries and biofuel cell sensors powered by the body itself.
This early-career recognition from the National Science Foundation gives Bandodkar`s research group the support to tackle major challenges in sensors, batteries and personalized diagnostics. Congratulations, Amay, on this well-deserved honor! 🔋
Powered by moisture, not toxins! 🔋 ECE Assistant Professors Amay Bandodkar and Abraham Vazquez-Guardado co-led a team — with NC State graduate student Akshay Bhardwaj as co-first author — that created a non-toxic, stretchable battery that runs on ambient humidity, even in desert-dry climates. Inspired by pangolin scales, the flexible battery could power next-gen wearables and IoT devices, and even includes a built-in kill switch that can destroy sensitive surveillance gear if tampered with. Big things happening in our labs! 💧 Read more: http://ncst.at/5uV550ZkFhO
Four College of Engineering seniors earned Outstanding Senior Awards at this year`s Engineering Awards Banquet, and ECE students were nominated across every category.
The annual awards, presented by the College`s Office of Academic Affairs, recognize seniors for Citizenship & Service, Humanities, Leadership and Scholarly Achievement. ECE nominees included Riley Corn, Campbell Depken and Willard Sheets, honored for the impact they`ve made on campus and beyond during their time at NC State.
Congratulations to all of this year`s honorees and nominees for representing the best of NC State Engineering. 🎓
Read more: http://ncst.at/vJ2M50ZeJUz
NC State ECE hosted the second annual Green-G Conference this year — the first time the event has been held in the U.S., bringing together researchers working at the intersection of biology and engineering.
Chaired by Professor Michael Daniele and co-organized by Professor Alper Bozkurt, the May 5-6 conference drew experts exploring how engineering principles can advance biological research, from sensing technologies to bio-integrated systems.
Hosting Green-G put NC State ECE`s growing bioelectronics community on an international stage. 🌱
Read more: http://ncst.at/VEFc50ZeTQi
NC State`s Integrated Circuits and Systems Lab (ICaSL), led by Professor Suresh Venkatesh, is teaming up with Axiro Semiconductor to advance next-generation phased-array and integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) technology.
The collaboration combines ICaSL`s research strength in advanced circuit design with Axiro`s semiconductor manufacturing expertise, aiming to push phased-array systems that can sense their surroundings and communicate at the same time — a capability increasingly important for wireless networks, radar, and autonomous systems.
Partnerships like this one show how NC State ECE research translates into real-world hardware, giving students hands-on exposure to industry-driving technology along the way. 📡
Read more: http://ncst.at/3ezm50ZeL4h