Features
Power Electronics: Changing the Way Electricity Is Used
A decade ago, Virginia Tech power electronics researchers adopted three verbs – standardize, modularize, and integrate – and developed a concept that not only triggered a multi-university, multi-million-dollar center, but also impacted billions of dollars of commercial technology and has the potential to slash U.S. electrical use by up to 33 percent.
Resilient & Sustainable Infrastructures
While smart grids, microgrids, and even dc-power grids are being discussed to improve the nation’s infrastructure, a team led by ECE researchers is exploring how a complex systems perspective can make power and communications networks less vulnerable to catastrophic failures.
ECE’s Leyla Nazhandali hopes to cut the energy consumption of some embedded systems by more than 90 percent with an extreme version of a well-known power-saving mode that is currently used in many digital devices including laptops.
Cancer is notoriously different for every patient. Many men who get prostate cancer die of other causes before the cancer grows harmful. Other prostate cancers are aggressive, grow quickly, and spread to other parts of the body. If doctors could know the aggressiveness of each patient’s cancer, treatment could be tailored for better results.
From jamming radio-triggered explosives to building the country’s first-of-its-kind cognitive radio testbed, Tamal Bose is applying signal processing technology to business demands of today and to the needs of tomorrow’s technology.
Making Assistive Technology Engineer-Friendly
Legally blind for his first 16 years, Jason Grieves (ECE '08) and his family were told he’d never function without his thick lens glasses and that getting his high school diploma would be extremely difficult. He enlisted the help of friends, family, faith, and assistive tools – and graduated first in his Chesapeake, Va., class.
SPACE @ VT
Electromagnetics
Photonics
Embedded Systems
- A Visual Environment for Software Designers
- Monitoring Structural Health
- Ant Behavior and Design Validation
- Speeding Up Software Testing
- Circuits for Energy Harvesting
- Power Line Comm Goes Mini
Computer Systems
Networking
Wireless@VT
- Improving Indoor GPS
- ECEs Win Twice in Smart Radio Challenge
- Hunting Network Attackers
- DEVAR for Space
- Global MANIACs Compete