Research Overview
The department is organized into three research tracks: communication and control systems, computer engineering, and electrophysics. The research areas of these tracks include analog and mixed-signal circuits; computers; communications; control systems; image processing; lasers; microwave electronics; neural computing; optics; photonics; signal processing; solid-state devices; and VLSI circuit design. Currently, we develop four research focus areas:
Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering: The department has eight faculty members in bioengineering, bio-technology and biomedical engineering. They cover a wide variety of disciplines including signal and image processing; bio-informatics; medical imaging systems; supercomputer simulation and modeling; virtual-reality visualization; devices; microwave systems; optoelectronics and lasers; computing; and analog and mixed signal circuits. Applications include non-intrusive biomedical measurements of glucose, heart beats, and breathing; biosensors and biomedical sensors for medical diagnostics; and networking and computing for remote monitoring of diabetes (a web-based service since 1999 at www.the-ohanahealth.org), imaging and simulations of tissues. Our faculty has been pursuing collaboration with researchers from other departments, units, and universities such the UH School of Medicine and Queen's Medical Center.
Computer Engineering: The computer area has research in networks, security, image processing, and parallel and distributed computing. Dr. D. Yun has a donation (valued at $1.1M by UH Foundation) of 240 Intel Celeron processors linked into a general-purpose supercomputer (aggregates to 120GHz speed, 123GB memory and 2 Terra-Bytes of storage) for use in teaching, research and application development. Dr. Yun also serves on the editorial boards of journals including Data & Knowledge Engineering (Elsevier). We are interested in adding faculty in the areas of embedded systems, bio-informatics and real-time and distributed systems.
Electrophysics: There are seven active faculty members that conduct research in sensors, devices, circuits, and systems, and are supported by extramural grants exceeding $1 million annually. A number of patents and licensing agreements arising from electrophysics research were generated for the university, as well as the establishment of start-up companies.
Information Systems and Technology: The department has a long tradition in world-class research in information transmission, storage, and processing. Past faculty members include a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and five IEEE Fellows. The research produced the most well known department project, the ALOHA network, the first wireless packet network, in the 1970s. Today, we have Dr. M. Fossorier (UH 2002 Regent's Medal for Excellence in Research, IEEE Fellow) and Dr. A. Kuh (IEEE Fellow). Two faculty, Drs. Fossorier and Host-Madsen, are currently Associate Editors of the prestigious IEEE Transactions of Information Theory and the IEEE Transactions on Communications journals. In addition, this sub-area produces the most PhDs.
Communication systems and storage have been fast growing areas which have greatly impacted our Society over the past 15 years. Maintaining our expertise in these areas is one of the main goals of our program and to this end, we expect to broaden our expertise in new communication systems such as interactive sensor networks, transmission systems with relay, high capacity storage systems.