Faculty in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) are pushing the boundaries of what we know in many areas of electrical and computer engineering—and there are countless opportunities for students to become involved in cutting-edge, hands-on research.
Faculty Research Areas
The main research activities in the Energy and Power area focus on power system distribution, smart microgrids, cybersecurity in power systems, alternative and sustainable energy, electric and hybrid vehicles, control and sensors, energy conversion and power semiconductor device technologies.
Ian Brown
Expertise: Energy conversion with a focus on electric machines, adjustable speed drives, power electronics, and their application to renewable energy sources and sustainability.
Alexander Flueck
Expertise: "Faster than real-time" transient stability, synchrophasors, autonomous agent control of smart grids and microgrids, transfer capability of large-scale electric power grids, contingency screening of multiple branch or generator outages with respect to voltage collapse, nonlinear dynamics and bifurcation, and parallel simulation of power systems via message-passing techniques on distributed-memory computer clusters.
Mahesh Krishnamurthy
Expertise: Transportation electrification (simulation, control, and analysis of hybrid electric, plug-in hybrid electric, and hydraulic-electric hybrid drivetrain components); design, control, and analysis of power electronics, electric machines and adjustable speed drive systems for automotive and renewable energy systems, design and implementation of power electronic and motor drive solutions for improving quality of life, numerical analysis of electromagnetic energy conversion in electric machines and other electromechanical transducers, and fault detection and just-in-time maintenance in power electronic converters and adjustable speed drives.
Zuyi Li
Expertise: Power systems, smart grid, renewable energy, with an emphasis on large scale optimization, economic and secure operation of electric power systems, market operation of electric power systems, energy efficiency and cyber security in smart grid, renewable energy integration, electric demand management of data centers, and power system protection.
Mohammad Shahidehpour
Expertise: Power system operation and planning, microgrid design and operation, sustainable energy integration, stochastic optimization of electric power systems, electricity market design, infrastructure interdependency analyses, computational economics, and decision analyses.
Hassan Shanechi
Expertise: Nonlinear and intelligent systems, power system dynamics and security, analyzing stressed power systems and explaining their behavior when heavily loaded, power system planning and maintenance scheduling.
Qing-Chang Zhong
Expertise: Control/systems theory and power electronics, together with their applications in electrical engineering (renewable energy, distributed generation, microgrids, power systems, smart grids, electric drives, traction power systems for high-speed trains, marine power systems, aircraft power systems, etc.), automotive engineering (engine control, hybrid electric vehicles, energy management, etc.), chemical engineering (processes with dead time, continuous stirred tank reactors, etc.), and mechanical engineering (mechatronics, UAVs, servo systems, etc.).
Research in the area of Intelligent Systems and Embedded Computing focuses on the integration of contemporary topics including cyber physical systems, cybersecurity, Internet of Things, cloud computing, smart cities, autonomous transportations, computer vision, mobile health monitoring, and VLSI and micro/nano electronics.
Ken Choi
Expertise: Lower power VLSI design, and hardware optimization for multimedia applications
Erdal Oruklu
Expertise: Advanced computer architectures, reconfigurable computing, signal processing and imaging, ultrasound and health monitoring applications, cyber-physical systems and integration of sensors, real-time embedded processing, and networking technologies.
Jafar Saniie
Expertise: Ultrasonic imaging and signal processing, machine vision and autonomous navigation, System-on-Chip designs, and high-performance application-specific computing systems, reconfigurable architectures, computer vision and image analysis, target detection and estimation, data compression, neural networks, FPGA-based DSP systems, wireless sensor networks on medical and industrial applications for visually impaired people, smart sensors for visually impaired people and drone with applications in the area of robotics and transportations, and Internet of Things.
Jia Wang
Expertise: Electronic design automation (EDA), algorithm design on emerging cloud and large-scale distributed computing platforms, and formal methods for hardware and software design and co-design.
Won-Jae Yi
Expertise: Internet of Things (IoT), wireless body sensor networks, wearable devices for health monitoring systems, cyber physical systems and data security, low-powered wireless personal area network systems and protocols, information processing and data fusion for IoT-based embedded systems, artificial intelligence, and edge computing.
Our Signal Processing and Medical Imaging faculty are a diverse group of researchers dedicated to technological advances in signal and image processing, with a primary focus on biomedical application. The activities include development of new methods of image acquisition, image processing and analysis, machine learning, and biological system kinetic modeling. Within the group, efforts are made toward understanding the progression of kidney disease, automated recognition of animal vocalizations, the building of medical imaging devices, algorithms, and software methods for MRI, phase-contrast x-ray, mammography, CT, PET, SPECT, and fluorescence imaging to address diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, and various forms of cancer.
Jovan Brankov
Expertise: Medical image quality assessment based on a human-observer model using machine learning, analyzer-based phase contrast x-ray imaging, 4-D and 5-D tomographic image reconstruction for cardiac SPECT, and quantitative molecular imaging using dual-tracer kinetic modeling. He also established the Advanced X-ray Imaging Laboratory (AXIL) at Illinois Tech, which is currently developing a phase-sensitive X-ray device.
Jafar Saniie
Expertise: Ultrasonic imaging and signal processing, machine vision and autonomous navigation, System-on-Chip (SoC) designs, and high-performance application-specific computing systems, reconfigurable architectures, computer vision and image analysis, target detection and estimation, data compression, neural networks, FPGA-based DSP systems, wireless sensor networks on medical and industrial applications for visually impaired people, smart sensors for visually impaired people and drone with applications in the area of robotics and transportations, and Internet of Things.
Joohee Kim
Expertise: Multimedia signal processing and communication, computer vision and video analysis, 3D scene reconstruction.
Ren Wang
Expertise: Trustworthy machine learning, high-dimensional data analysis, bio-inspired machine learning, and smart grid.
Miles Wernick
Expertise: Low-dose SPECT imaging based on 4-D reconstruction and personalized imaging, crime prediction and analysis, analyzer-based x-ray imaging, imaging biomarkers based on machine learning for Alzheimer's disease and dementia, and other applications of machine learning in medicine.
Geoffrey Williamson
Expertise: Signal processing and control systems; system identification and parameter estimation, including adaptive filtering, with applications in signal processing, control, and biomedical settings; modeling vascular dynamics in the kidney to help in understanding the progression of kidney disease, developing methodologies for the automated recognition of animal vocalizations, and analyzing the dynamics of control of power electronic systems; development and analysis of algorithms and model structures for effective system identification and adaptive filtering, using both linear and nonlinear model structures.
Yongyi Yang
Expertise: Signal and image processing, medical imaging, computer vision, and applied mathematical methods.
Research in the area of VLSI & Microelectronics, Electronics & Electromagnetics focuses on the design and development of devices and components to circuits and systems—from novel device technologies and advanced design methodologies to algorithmic and application-specific techniques—in an effort to support emerging computing platforms and application domains.
Ken Choi
Expertise: Low power VLSI design, and hardware optimization for multimedia applications.
Erdal Oruklu
Expertise: Advanced computer architectures, reconfigurable computing, signal processing and imaging, ultrasound and health monitoring applications, cyber-physical systems and integration of sensors, real-time embedded processing, and networking technologies.
Jia Wang
Expertise: Electronic design automation (EDA), algorithm design on emerging cloud and large-scale distributed computing platforms, and formal methods for hardware and software design and co-design.
Thomas T. Y. Wong
Expertise: Applied electromagnetics, charge interactions in mesoscopic structures, microwave instrumentation.
The research activities of the faculty members in the Wireless Networking and Communications area cover a wide variety of topics on communication theory, coding and information theory, communication systems, communication and computer networks, wireless networks, network security, and multimedia applications.
In particular, the faculty members have made significant contributions on capacity optimization in wireless networks, multi-path routing over Internet, application-oriented multicast protocol, network coding for wireless mesh networks, resource allocation for OFDM/MIMO systems, integration of optical and wireless networks, modeling and analysis of general multi-hop multi-radio and multi-channel wireless networks, protocol design for vehicular networks, low-complexity image/video coding, multi-view video coding, 3-D video representation and transmission, distributed storage systems, information-theoretic security, intrusion detection for multimedia application over Wi-Fi, security and privacy in vehicular networks, green communications and green networking.
Guillermo E. Atkin
Expertise: Coding and information theory.
Suresh Borkar
Expertise: Wireless access and networking, mobility standards, electromagnetics, telecom technologies, telecom management, Internet of Things (IoT), future workforce, digital design, computer architecture.
Yu Cheng
Expertise: Wireless networks, next-generation Internet, network security.
Lin Cai
Expertise: Modeling and performance analysis of wireless networks, green communications, green networking, QoS provisioning and resource allocation.
Joohee Kim
Expertise: Multimedia signal processing and communication, computer vision and video analysis, 3D scene reconstruction.
Chi Zhou
Expertise: Wireless communications, mobile networks, energy management for smart grid.
