Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Electrical and computer engineering Anson Wood Burchard Chair Professor Lei Wu and School of Systems and Enterprises assistant professors Philip Odonkor and Steven Hoffenson have been awarded $590,000 by the National Science Foundation to design and implement a physical computing testbed that will foster problem-based, collaborative learning of cyber-physical systems (CPS) concepts. Cyber-physical systems combine hardware and software components into a network that controls or interacts with a physical environment.

In collaboration with the University of Cincinnati, the three-year project will fill a key gap in CPS education by developing a collaborative tool for learning the multiple complex concepts required for CPS mastery, while fostering a social approach to CPS education. The team will create a comprehensive CPS concept inventory and classification of threshold concepts for optimal CPS training and design a testbed that allows groups of students to work together and interact with cyber-physical systems using a tangible user interface.

The testbed will empower undergraduate students to engage in CPS learning through collaborative play, and the knowledge generated will benefit industry, defense and critical infrastructure by cultivating a competitive U.S. workforce with competence in cyber-physical systems.

Stevens Institute of Technology served as the inaugural university host of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) INFOCOM Conference for 2023.

The three-day event highlights both theoretical and systems research, drawing researchers from 39 countries to present and exchange innovative contributions and breakthrough ideas in the field of computer networking and closely related areas. Held on the Stevens campus May 17 through 19, the conference was chaired by Stevens President Nariman Farvardin and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Chair Min Song.

The INFOCOM 2023 program included 63 technical paper sessions, 20 workshops, a student poster session, a demo session and panel discussions. The keynote address was delivered by Ion Stoica, a professor in the Computer Science Division at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of UC Berkeley’s Sky Computing Lab.

After being held virtually for the past three years, the 42nd annual conference convened in hybrid mode, with programs taking place in person and streamed live to remote attendees via Zoom.

Elnaz Banan Sadeghian, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, recently received a $550,469 National Science Foundation CAREER Award for her project “Multitrack Read Channel Designs for Modern Two-Dimensional Magnetic Recording.” The five-year award is one of the most prestigious and competitive awards available to early-career faculty.

Banan Sadeghian’s research seeks to develop efficient noise prediction, synchronization and symbol detection algorithms that support modern and future generations of ultra-high density two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR). TDMR is a hard disk drive technology that allows for a significant increase in data storage capacity, currently allowing for a data density of up to 10 terabits per square inch.

Banan Sadeghian’s project will investigate signal processing algorithms individually and in combination to more effectively mitigate such impediments as interference and readback signal noise to improve data recovery and develop more efficient novel TDMR read channels that will increase data density beyond what current read channel designs provide.

Following a rigorous evaluation procedure, the IEEE Fellow Committee has recommended Stevens researcher Shucheng Yu for elevation to IEEE Fellow effective January 1, 2023 for contributions to information and network security. Less than 0.1% of voting members are selected annually for this member grade elevation. Yu's current research interests include information security, applied cryptography, wireless networking and sensing, distributed trust, and applied machine learning. He is also interested in practical security and privacy in IoT systems. Yu also received the Test of Time Paper Award of IEEE Infocom 2020 for his research on cloud data security. He directs the Analytics and Information Security research cluster in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.