Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) faculty members Azadeh Ansari, Morris Cohen, Asif Khan, Brendan Saltaformaggio, Patricio Vela, and Shimeng Yu have been awarded promotion and/or tenure by the Board of Regents.

“ECE is a leader in academic programming and cutting-edge research thanks to the hard work, selflessness, and leadership of our faculty,” said Arijit Raychowdhury, Steve W. Chaddick School Chair and professor in ECE. “Azadeh, Morris, Asif, Brendan, Patricio, and Shimeng exemplify this perfectly. I would like to thank them for their significant contributions and look forward to celebrating many more of their career milestones.”

Congratulations to the faculty members for achieving these career milestones:
 

Promotion to Professor

Morris Cohen
Morris Cohen joined the ECE faculty in 2013. Cohen is interested in the natural electricity of the Earth, including lightning, the electrically charged upper atmosphere, and the radiation-filled space environment. He uses radio waves at low frequencies measured all around the world to understand them, and develops resulting practical applications. His group also works on novel techniques to generate low frequency waves with nonconventional electrically-short antennas.

Patricio Vela
Patricio Vela came to Georgia Tech as a post-doctoral researcher in computer vision and joined the ECE faculty in 2005. His research interests lie in the geometric perspectives to control theory and computer vision. Recently, he has been interested in the role that computer vision can play for achieving control-theoretic objectives of (semi-) autonomous systems. His research also covers control of nonlinear systems, typically robotic systems.

Shimeng Yu
Before joining Georgia Tech ECE in 2018, Shimeng Yu was an assistant professor at Arizona State University. Yu’s research interests are nanoelectronic devices and circuits for energy-efficient computing systems. His expertise is on the emerging non-volatile memories (resistive and ferroelectric memories) for different applications such as in-memory computing, AI hardware, neuromorphic computing, monolithic and heterogeneous 3D integration.

Promotion to Associate Professor with Tenure

Azadeh Ansari
Azadeh Ansari is the Sutterfield Family Early Career Professor in ECE and came to Georgia Tech as an assistant professor in 2017 after spending a year as a postdoctoral scholar in the physics department at Caltech. Ansari’s current research focuses on the design and fabrication of radio frequency MEMS resonant systems for wireless communication and sensing, as well as micro robotics for exploration and biomedical applications. 

Asif Khan
Asif Khan holds the onsemi Junior Professorship in ECE with a courtesy appointment in the School of Materials Science and Engineering. He joined the ECE faculty in 2017. Khan’s research focuses on advanced semiconductor devices that will shape the future of computing in the post-scaling era. His current research group works on all aspects of ferroelectricity ranging from materials physics, growth, and electron microscopy to micro-/nano-fabrication of electronic devices, to ferroelectric circuits and systems for artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data-centric applications.

Brendan Saltaformaggio
Brendan Saltaformaggio came to Georgia Tech in 2017, holding a majority appointment with the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and minority appointment with ECE. He also holds a courtesy appointment in the School of Computer Science. His research interests lie in computer systems security, cyber forensics, and the vetting of untrusted software with a mission to further the investigation of advanced cybercrimes and the analysis and prevention of next-generation malware attacks, particularly in mobile and IoT environments.