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✨ Lightsaber-style antennas are here! ECE PhD student Prya Darshni and Cirrus Logic Distinguished Professor Paul Franzon have demonstrated the first-ever plasma beam antenna, using a laser to turn a thin beam of air into an antenna that transmits radio waves. 🌌🪐💫☄️
By adjusting the laser, the team can control the antenna`s length and angle, so it can sweep a broad range of frequencies without bulky mechanical parts. They also built a contactless feed that drives the plasma beam without touching it, a promising step for satellites and space exploration. The work is published in the IEEE Journal of Microwaves.
Proud to see our ECE graduate students leading research that has never been done before! 📡
Read more: http://ncst.at/kFo250ZUHNS
🐺 Computer engineering breaks into the top 20! NC State`s undergraduate computer engineering program is now No. 19 in the nation in U.S. News & World Report`s 2027 Best Colleges rankings.
Among public universities, computer engineering ranks No. 12 and electrical engineering No. 14. The College of Engineering is rising too, moving up to No. 32 nationally (No. 18 among publics) with eight programs in the top 20.
Interim Dean Veena Misra, former ECE department head, credits "engineering excellence at scale." We couldn`t agree more. Proud of our ECE students, faculty and staff! ❤️🏆
🐺 Fall kickoff, Wolfpack style! Despite a rain delay, hundreds of students turned out for POP Back on Centennial Campus, grabbing free food, playing games and connecting with dozens of student groups and employers.
Our ECE community was right there in the mix, kicking off the year by building the connections and community that make Centennial Campus feel like home.
Here`s to a great year ahead! 🎉
Read more: http://ncst.at/vYCc50ZRELu
☀️ Bright ideas for the power grid! ECE PhD student Arundhuti Haldar co-authored new research showing that combining machine learning models can improve day-ahead solar power forecasts by up to 13% - helping utilities better balance supply and demand as solar energy use grows nationwide.
Published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, the team tested seven forecasting models across two California utilities and found that blending forecasts and tailoring them to each region delivers the biggest gains.
Proud to see our ECE graduate students contributing to research that keeps the clean energy transition running smoothly! 🔋
Read more: http://ncst.at/Uce850ZPEg9
🎉 Congratulations to ECE Associate Professor Hantao Cui on winning the prestigious IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) Prize Paper Award!
Only two papers are selected each year from thousands published across PES Transactions journals, and Cui`s research on Virtual Inertia Scheduling is helping keep our power grid stable as we shift to clean, renewable energy. ⚡
We`re proud to see his innovative work, including the open-source ANDES simulator he developed, representing ECE on the national stage!
Read more: http://ncst.at/4gkX50ZNzvN
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! 🔋