News & Events

Saransh Sharma, advised by Azita Emami, Andrew and Peggy Cherng Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering; Executive Officer for Electrical Engineering; Director, Center for Sensing to Intelligence, and Ryoto Sekine, advised by Alireza Marandi, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics, have been selected to receive the 2023 Jakob van Zyl Predoctoral Research Award. The Jakob van Zyl Predoctoral Research Award is given in the memory of Electrical Engineering alum Jakob van Zyl, who led significant research efforts at JPL and also taught classes at Caltech for many years.

Mohammad Mirhosseini, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics, has received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program offers the NSF's most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. Mirhosseini receives the award for his proposal titled "Quantum silicon phononics: Harnessing long-lived phonons for memories and interconnects."

Alireza Marandi, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics, has been awarded a 2023 Sloan Research Fellowships. Awarded annually since 1955 by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the fellowships "honor extraordinary U.S. and Canadian researchers whose creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of leaders," according to the foundation's announcement. A total of 156 Caltech researchers have received the awards to date. [Caltech story]

As part of Conversations on Artificial Intelligence, a webinar series hosted by the Caltech Science Exchange, Andrew and Peggy Cherng Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering Azita Emami discusses how her lab incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) into medical devices to improve health and enhance quality of life. Watch the conversation. [Caltech story]

Researchers, led by Lihong Wang, Bren Professor of Medical Engineering and Electrical Engineering, have made a major step forward in medical imaging by taking inspiration from the field of astronomy. In astronomy, the light that reaches telescopes is distorted by the earth's atmosphere, resulting in blurry images of planets, satellites, and other cosmic objects. The earth's atmosphere is what's known as a scattering medium; it scatters light, making images appear unfocused and cloudy. Wavefront shaping is a method of generating focused light by reversing the optical distortion caused by the atmosphere. In this method, a reflective device, like a mirror, "shapes" light waves to counterbalance distortion. It's similar to a person wearing active noise-cancelling headphones to combat ambient noise. [Caltech story]