In this high-tech era, wearable devices such as smartwatches have proven to be invaluable companions for the health conscious. But a new study from the University of Utah shows that for a small group of people, some of these electronic fitness gadgets could possibly be risky to their health — even potentially deadly.

University of Utah electrical and computer engineering USTAR associate professor Rajesh Menon has been recognized as a 2023 Fellow of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. He is one of 83 new SPIE fellows elected for 2023.

Modern lifestyles are triggering stress at higher rates for longer periods of time than ever before seen. Unfortunately, chronic or long-term stress can pose negative impacts to our overall health. In collaboration with members of both the chemical engineering and psychology departments, University of Utah electrical and computer engineering assistant professor Benjamin Sanchez Terrones is developing an Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) device that can calculate energy expenditure and mental stress in real-time.  

University of Utah electrical and computer engineering assistant professor Yi Zhou has received the National Science Foundation’s prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award for his research into multi-agent reinforcement learning as a framework for managing multi-agent systems that involve heterogeneous agents in complex and structured environments. Zhou is the first John and Marcia Price College of Engineering faculty member to receive an NSF career award for 2023. 

University of Utah electrical and computer engineering assistant professors Weilu Gao and Cunxi Yu were recently published in the Laser and Photonics Review Journal for a collaborative paper they wrote on end-to-end computing system design. The paper investigates the use of machine learning and AI in the automation of system design from scratch.  

The HydroFlex technology, developed by a team of electrical and computer engineering researchers at the University of Utah in partnership with the energy company Grid Elevated, has just won the grand prize in the third and final phase of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hydropower Operations Optimization (H2Os) Competition. The team also won the grand prize in both the first and second phases of this competition, making a full sweep with this final win.

In a world where renewables are the future of energy generation, researchers around the world are constantly chasing the best, most efficient technologies for each kind of clean energy source.

University of Utah electrical and computer engineering Ph.D. graduate Arkka Bhattacharyya recently won the Young Researcher Paper Award at the International Workshop on Gallium Oxide and Related Materials 2022 (IWGO-4) held last fall in Nagano, Japan. This conference is one of the most competitive in its field, with participants’ live presentations being judged on the significance of the scientific progress of their project, the design of their experiments, the presentation itself, and the Q&A session.

University of Utah electrical and computer engineering associate professors Rong-Rong Chen and Mingyue Ji have received a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to support the development of new technologies to build smart radio environments. This grant is part of a partnership between the U.S., Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland. Partners in Northern Ireland include Dr. Dmitry Zelenchuk and Dr. Muhammad Ali Babar Abbasi from Queen’s University of Belfast (QUB), and partners in the Republic of Ireland include Dr. Arman Farhang from Trinity College, Dublin (TCD).

University of Utah Electrical and Computer Engineering Chair Florian Solzbacher has been named one of the newest Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the organization announced Dec. 8. He is the only U professor to be named to the new class.