Three Engineering Professors Elected Prestigious IEEE Fellows
Three professors from the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering were recently elected 2014 Fellows of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), bringing the total number of IEEE Fellows at the School of Engineering to 33. HKUST will have the highest number of newly elevated IEEE Fellows among universities and institutions in Hong Kong.
Fellowship of IEEE is the highest grade of membership and is a distinction reserved for select IEEE members with extraordinary accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. The total number of IEEE Fellows selected in any one year does not exceed one-tenth of one-percent of the total voting membership.
The three newly elevated IEEE Fellows at HKUST are:
Prof Kevin Chen
For contributions to compound semiconductor heterojunction transistor technologies.
At the core of Prof Chen's contributions are inventions and fundamental understanding of several technologies that have advanced the commercial applications of the high-performance but difficult-to-manufacture enhancement-mode compound semiconductor transistors. These devices have been used to implement high-efficiency and high-linearity radio-frequency amplifiers in wireless mobile devices such as the world-first wrist watch mobile phones, and more recently, for realizing low-loss power switches that could lead to substantial energy saving in the conversion/utilization of electric power. “The advancements of modern semiconductor technologies are based on good understanding of the underlying physical mechanisms, and then coming up with engineering approaches to exploiting them,” said Prof Chen. He credits his achievements to a solid training in science, valuable experience in high-tech industry and the academic-freedom/strong-support at HKUST. One of his current goals is to develop highly integrated smart power IC technology that enables more efficient and compact power converters that promise to cut down the electric power conversion loss. “The energy loss occurring in the electric power conversion is currently larger than all the renewable energy generated worldwide. With the new compound semiconductor power device technologies, it is now possible to substantially cut this loss by half,” he said.
Prof Howard Luong
For contributions to CMOS radio-frequency transceiver design.
Prof Luong has been well recognized as a top researcher in radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC) design, who has single-handedly pioneered and successfully built up a world-class RFIC research program in Hong Kong. He has made significant contribution to advancement of low-voltage low-power RFIC designs by being the first to propose many innovative and useful design techniques, which has resulted in 30 JSSC papers and 9 ISSCC papers and 12 patents.
His most important contribution was to propose transformer feedback to implement ultra-low-voltage high-performance voltage-controlled oscillators. With the proposed technique, he successfully designed and demonstrated the first LC VCO at 0.35V supply, which is even smaller than the devices’ threshold voltage of 0.5V, while still achieving high frequency, good phase noise, and low power consumption. As of today, it is still the lowest supply voltage ever reported for CMOS VCOs. The idea has inspired many research activities and enabled realization of many state-of-the-art transformer-based integrated transceiver systems and building blocks for wireless communications.
Prof Philip Mok
For contributions to the design of analog power-management integrated circuits.
Prof Mok has made distinctive contributions to the design of analog power-management integrated circuits (PMIC). To maximize the battery run-time and to minimize the battery size are two important criteria for battery-operated handheld electronic devices such as smart phones, digital cameras, and tablet computer. The effectiveness of power delivery from the rechargeable battery to the handheld device in different modes of operations is highly relied on the performances of power converters inside the PMIC. Prof Mok is the leader in PMIC area and has developed numerous novel analog and mixed-signal circuit techniques and control methodologies to maximize the power efficiency of monolithic power converters, including high performance linear regulators and high-frequency switch-mode power converters. His pioneering research outcomes help pushing to the limits of system performance of handheld devices while maximizing the battery run-time, making the handheld devices smaller, thinner and lighter.
For the 2014 session, Hong Kong welcomes six new IEEE Fellows and three of them are from HKUST. With the newly elevated Fellows, the School of Engineering will have a total of 33 IEEE Fellows, including 24 from the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, seven from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and two from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
IEEE is the world’s largest professional association for the advancement of technology. Through its more than 425,000 members in over 160 countries, IEEE is a leading authority on areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics. It publishes nearly a third of the world’s technical literature in electrical engineering, computer science, and electronics, and is a leading developer of industry standards in a broad range of technologies.
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