News
On April 20, 2022, at the annual Grainger Scholars ceremony, three ESCE students received the prestigious Grainger Scholars Award, which is given every spring. Prof. Emeritus Sheppard Salon gave a talk to start the awards, after which the award winners shared their journey to studying Electric Power. Funding for the awards is provided by the Grainger Foundation, a private organization based in Lake Forest, IL which supports U.S.
Neelanga Thelasingha is a Ph.D. student working with Prof. Agung Julius on optimal control and motion planning in autonomous systems like unmanned aerial vehicles. He earned his MS in Computer and Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2021 and his BSc. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering with first-class honors from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, in 2017. He became interested in autonomous exploration planning through his undergraduate research.
ECSE PhD Students Anindita Ghosh and Anmol Dwivedi were selected to receive the Baliga Award! The B. Jayant Baliga ’74 Graduate Student Support Fund shall be used each year to provide the B. Jayant Baliga ’74 Award. The award is given to graduate students who wish to pursue a Ph.D. in the area of solid state technology in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering (ECSE), with primary consideration given to a citizen of India who has obtained a Bachelor’s degree in technology from an Indian Institute of Technology.
Two new research projects from the School of Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have been selected by the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Institute to receive funding to develop tools that will address critical aspects of robotic manufacturing technologies.
The projects were chosen as they focus on modernization priorities set by the U.S. Department of Defense while strengthening U.S. manufacturing and empowering workers.
Manoj R. Shah, former Professor of Practice at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for his “technical advancements in design, analysis, and applications of electric machines.” As a Professor of Practice in Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering (ECSE) at Rensselaer, Dr. Shah taught courses in electric power engineering bringing theory and practice together. Dr. Shah continues his engagement with the ECSE department at Rensselaer as a Senior Research Scientist.
Lisha Chen and Burak Varici were selected to receive the School of Engineering Belsky Award for Computational Sciences and Engineering. The award was named in the memory of Dr. Vladimir Belsky, who came to Rensselaer from Russia in the 1990’s and performed research in computational mechanics as a Postdoctoral Fellow for three years. Four awards are given to graduate students in the School of Engineering to support their research activities.
Xing Tong and Ahmed Elmenshawi were selected by Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI) to receive the 2021 and 2022 Outstanding Student Designer Award, respectively. The award is presented annually by ADI at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). Since 1997, this award has recognized excellence in system-level integrated circuit architectures or in analog, mixed-signal, or digital integrated circuit design. Both Tong and Elmenshawi were nominated by ECSE faculty for this honor.
Prof. Sawyer received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Hampton University in 2003 and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer in 2006. Her research focuses on developing fundamental understanding and processes for hybrid inorganic/organic materials for optoelectronic devices and sensors. Her recent research on sensor development to better understand the harmful algal blooms was featured here.
In the annual FIRST Robotics Competition, teams of high school students will spend several weeks designing and building a robot to address a specific challenge. This year's challenge focuses on transportation with the goal to "reimagine the future of safe, high-speed travel, and lightning-fast deliveries to propel the next evolution of transportation forward."
A grant from the National Science Foundation will allow Shayla Sawyer, a professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Rick Relyea, a professor of biological sciences at Rensselaer, to better understand the growing problem of harmful algal blooms (HABs).