This is the latest electronic update of news in the department. If you have specific news or announcements that you would like to have included in an issue of this newsletter, please send them to Howard (chair@ee.washington.edu) or Ann (annf@ee.washington.edu).

Congratulations/Announcements
Research Funding at $25 Million
Graduate Admissions: Changing Demographics
Construction Update
Faculty/Staff Retreat Reminder

Congratulations/Announcements

Congratulations to all on completion of the summer quarter--and special congratulations to all of our new BS, MS and PhD summer quarter graduates.

Kudos to graduate student Min Wang, who won the FIRST PRIZE in the graduate student poster competition at the IEEE Summer Power Meeting in Chicago. His poster was titled: "A New Method for Automatic Discrimination of Power Quality Disturbances." About 50 posters from many countries were competing at this premier power engineering conference.

Allan Yeung has been awarded an Intel-Dupont Master's Fellowship. This summer and next he will work as an intern at Intel's DuPont, Washington site with the Platform Enabling Division, a division of Intel's Enterprise Platform Group.

Congratulations to Assistant Professor Radha Poovendran, who has received the Army Research Office's Young Investigator's Program (YIP) award. For more information, see
http://www.ee.washington.edu/events/2002/radha_aroyip.html.

Congratulations to Eve Riskin and Sumit Roy. Both will become Full Professors as of September 16, 2002.

Research Funding at $25 Million

The numbers are in for the 2001-2002 fiscal year. Our external grants and contracts (as counted by the UW) totalled $22.6 million, which is an increase of more than $10M above last year. This does not include funds that are sub-accounts of projects that are based in other departments (but it does include funds that we subcontract out). By way of comparison, our 1998-1999 number was $5M. For 2001-2002, our "private research gifts" are reported to be about $2.4 million.

Congratulations to all of our hard-working researchers (and proposal preparers)!

Graduate Admissions: Changing Demographics

Based upon acceptances of admission offers, we are expecting 74 new graduate students in the Fall 2002 quarter. Approximately 40% are women (last year was 20% percent). The percentage of new graduate students who are US citizens or permanent residents is approximately 60% (last year was 40%).

Construction Update

Lots of construction has happened this summer along the "phase line" between the EE building and the new Allen Center. Particular items of note:

1. Five new Women's Rest Rooms (on the East end of the building, on Floors UB and 1-4). The "unisex" bathrooms on these floors will become Men's Rooms. Until the locking hardware is changed, please be sure to knock before entering!
2. New research labs (Modified Room 465, New 269, expanded 159 (completion in a few weeks), New 065.
3. New engineering support room 165.

Note that there is no longer an entrance to the building on the East End of the first floor. The East stairwell will be closed on the first floor for a few weeks, for structural changes to tie into the new building.

Faculty/Staff Retreat Reminder

Our annual Faculty/staff retreat is currently scheduled for September 23. Three major topics of discussion will be a review of our Strategic plan, curriculum revision, and issues related to expansion of our research activities and the use of newly-available space.

I hope that you all enjoy the rest of the summer.

Howard Chizeck