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School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
New software engineering and data analytics degreesI N S I D E
Director’s Message
Dear alumni and friends,
After more than a decade of dedicated service, Behrooz Shirazi has stepped down from his
position as school director. I am honored to serve as the interim director as we conduct a search
for a permanent director. I would like to express my sincere appreciation for Behrooz’s hard work
and leadership during several years of tremendous growth in the school, including in our research
endeavors, student enrollment, and faculty.
Our programs have expanded on the Pullman campus as well as across the state in Everett
and Bremerton, and we are very excited to begin offering several new degree programs this fall.
These include new majors in software engineering and data analytics in Everett, Pullman, and
through the online Global Campus, and a new electrical engineering degree at Olympic College
in Bremerton (p. 10). These new programs will address the dramatic industry need in Washington
and around the United States for qualified engineers and computer scientists. We look forward to
watching new students thrive in these high-demand fields.
As our programs have grown, we have also added several new faculty members who are making
a difference both in the classroom and with their innovative research. These include Dae Hyun
Kim (p. 6) and Assefaw Gebremedhin (p.5), who both have received prestigious early career awards.
Dr. Kim is conducting research in three-dimensional integrated circuits while Dr. Gebremedhin
is developing a software tool that will quickly identify bacterial strains. Some of our other new
faculty members include Anamika Dubey and Noel Schulz (p. 13) in power engineering, Jana
Doppa and Shuiwang Ji in machine learning, Yinghui Wu in data science, Venera Arnaoudova and
Haipeng Cai in software engineering, and Subhanshu Gupta in microelectronics.
Meanwhile, we continue to expand our efforts to grow enrollment and provide a better experi-
ence for our students. Professor Shira Broschat is leading efforts to introduce young women to
computer science and provide encouragement once they get here (p. 11). We are also part of a new
National Science Foundation grant that will look at why women study engineering at higher rates
in several other countries and what we might be able to learn from them (p. 12).
I look forward to leading the school during this time of transition so that our progress remains
unhindered and we achieve new laurels in research and teaching. Thank you for your continuing
support of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Partha Pande
CONTENTS
Research Health analytics work gets underway ..................................... 2
Smart City moves forward ..................................................... 3
Data-center-on-a-chip cuts energy use ................................... 4
WSU software catalogs pathogens ......................................... 5
Conference focuses on power grid protection ....................... 5
Teaching robots new tricks ..................................................... 6
Prestigious grant supports 3-D circuit design research ............ 6
Students Inspiring next-generation engineers ....................................... 7
Going viral ............................................................................. 9
Training for success ................................................................ 9
Student receives Goldwater award ......................................... 9
School news New engineering, computer science degrees ....................... 10
Computer science for all ...................................................... 11
Learning from Muslim countries .......................................... 12
Sign up: Upcoming summit on renewables .......................... 12
Faculty awards and honors ................................................... 13
The EECS Newsletter is irregularly published for the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Washington State University, PO Box 642752, Pullman, Washington, 99164-2752 by Washington State University, PO Box 645910, Pullman, Washington, 99164-5910. Distribution is free to EECS alumni, friends, personnel, and students. Volume 6, Issue 1, Spring 2017. Editor: Tina Hilding, [email protected]
On the Web: eecs.wsu.edu
1072
@WSUVoiland
@wsu.eng.arch
linkedin.com/groups/1900440
E E C S . W S U . E D U 1
Research
Community Health Analytics Initiative Gets UnderwayFor most of the twentieth century, people didn’t worry about an
illness like strep throat or an infected cut because they could go
to the doctor for a quick dose of antibiotics, which was invariably
followed by a quick recovery.
Slowly, however, microbes developed resistance to the miracle
drugs, and in the United States, at least two million infections and
23,000 deaths are attributable to antibiotic-resistant bacteria each
year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Researchers in the School of Electric Engineering and Computer
Science are leading a five-year, $4.9 million initiative to look at
social determinants of antimicrobial resistance in human and
animal populations. The initiative, called the Community Health
Analytics Initiative (CHAI), will boost WSU’s ability to analyze
extensive datasets known as “big data” and to promote informa-
tion-based health care research. Supported by WSU, the multi-
disciplinary initiative, in partnership with the Voiland College of
Engineering and Architecture, the College of Veterinary Medicine,
the College of Medicine, and the College of Arts and Sciences, tack-
les the University’s Grand Challenges in health as well as equity and
opportunity. The initiative, slated to become a University research
institute, includes the establishment of a new graduate degree pro-
gram in health analytics.
“Data science has been of great interest to the University, and this
project is a natural outgrowth of that interest,” said Behrooz Shirazi,
Huie-Rogers chair professor in the School of Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science, who is leading the initiative. “The planned
research institute brings together
researchers in math and computing with
the School of Global Animal Health
and the new College of Medicine to
begin making sense of data that health
care researchers have been and will
be collecting.”
Medicine has traditionally been done
by looking at a patient’s symptoms,
giving standard tests based on those
symptoms, and then prescribing a
standard dose of medicine. In addition, medical studies are often
controlled experiments, which are limited, expensive, and time
consuming, he said. Community-based analytics, on the other
hand, allow researchers to find patient-specific information that
would be very difficult to spot with traditional research methods in
a large community and region—and oftentimes more quickly and
cost effectively.
“We need to move away from the cookie cutter solutions we now
have in medicine,” he said. “We want to get a lot more precise about
patient data in the context of community information and develop
more proactive public health solutions.”
The initiative will initially focus on antimicrobial resistance in
Eastern Washington. The region provides an opportunity for a
fresh way of looking at the problem since many studies have been
focused in urban areas near academic medical centers.
Behrooz Shirazi
Researchers will use analytics to improve understanding of microbial resistance.
2 S C H O O L O F E L E C T R I C A L E N G I N E E R I N G A N D C O M P U T E R S C I E N C E
Smart City Living Lab Moves ForwardWashington State University has joined
with six private and public partners on a
formal agreement to develop Spokane’s
University District into a smart city living
laboratory.
“We’re excited to be part of this group
that is leading smart city innovations for
healthier people, safer neighborhoods,
smarter infrastructure, and a more
sustainable environment,” said Kim
Zentz, director of WSU’s Engineering
and Technology Management program,
who is leading the project.
The group, which also includes Avista,
the City of Spokane, Itron, McKinstry,
and the University District Development
Association, has signed a memorandum
of understanding. The partners will
align efforts to create a living laboratory
for the design of cities of the future in
the 770-acre University District, which
is located north of I-90 and east of
Division Street adjacent to Spokane’s
downtown core.
Improving urban health, safety, sustainability
The newly named initiative,
called Urbanova, formalizes a more than
two-year effort to harness data to gain
insights, empower people, and solve urban
challenges in new ways. The living labora-
tory will operate on the principles of open
architecture, standards-based open data
and, open analytics. The focus is upon
solutions that are replicable, scalable, and
sustainable for cities of all types.
“This collaborative
partnership allows us to
develop high impact
integrated solutions to
infrastructure and
health challenges of our
urban environments
while improving the livability and
workability of cities,” Zentz said.
The partnership is already involved
in several smart city pilot projects, includ-
ing a smart and connected streetlight
project and a “Shared Energy Economy”
model. In it, the partnering entities will
share energy assets—from solar panels
and battery storage to traditional utility
assets—to improve system efficiency and
grid resiliency.
Many areas for WSU researchWSU is also supporting a $1.5 million
smart city research grant. WSU’s initiative,
which got underway this summer, is
developing a framework to monitor,
predict, and control energy and air
quality in the urban environment and
record resulting health impacts in the
University District.
The project includes researchers in
WSU’s Energy Systems Innovation Center,
the Laboratory for Atmospheric Research,
and the Institute for Sustainable Design
working with Urbanova partners. It initially
calls for deploying a small network of air
quality sensors in parallel with a smart and
connected street lights pilot developed by
Avista and Itron in the district.
The project aims to establish WSU as
a center for research and analytics in the
design, engineering, and application of
smart systems that will serve and ensure
healthy, resilient communities, said Anjan
Bose, regents professor in the School of
Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science and a WSU project coleader.
“There are more and more people on the
planet relying on urban infrastructure,” he
said. “We can’t tear out and replace all of
our infrastructure, but we have to increase
its capability and make the most of the
resources we have.”
Smart homes, smart energy useWSU has a long history of work in smart
environments. The Center for Advanced
Studies in Adaptive Systems has been devel-
oping smart environment and smart home
solutions since 2007. As part of a national
effort to test new smart grid technologies,
a group of WSU researchers worked with
Avista Utilities on a five-year demonstra-
tion project to make Pullman the region’s
first smart grid community.
Researchers in the Energy Systems
Innovation Center are partnering with
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and
the University of Washington on a project
to research, develop, and demonstrate
technologies to create smart buildings,
campuses, and cities to better manage
energy use. The WSU team is installing
photovoltaic modules on the Pullman
campus and integrating them into WSU’s
smart city test bed.
Kim Zentz
E E C S . W S U . E D U 3
Wireless Data-Center-On-A-Chip Aims To Cut Energy Use
A Washington State University research
team has designed a tiny, wireless data
center that someday could be as small as a
handheld device and dramatically reduce
the energy needed to run such centers.
Their idea is a paradigm shift in the
management of big data, said Partha Pratim
Pande, a computer engineering professor
in the School of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science.
Pande, who is collaborating with WSU
professor Deuk Heo and a team from
Carnegie Mellon University, presented
the preliminary design for a data-center-
on-a-chip at the Embedded Systems Week
conference in Pittsburgh. The researchers
recently received a $1.2 million National
Science Foundation grant to further
develop their transformative idea.
Sustainable computingData centers and high performance
computing clusters are energy hogs,
requiring enormous amounts of power
and space. Often requiring air conditioners
to cool their many processors, data
centers consumed about 91 billion
kilowatt-hours of electricity in the United
States in 2013, which is equivalent to
the output of 34 large, coal-fired power
plants, according to the National Resources
Defense Council.
Large data farms run by companies like
Facebook have made significant energy
efficiency improvements, but many data
servers at small businesses around the
country still consume significant resources.
Sustainable computing has become of
increasing interest to researchers, industry
leaders and the public.
“We have reached our power limit
already,” said Pande. “To address our energy
efficiency challenges, this architecture
and technology need to be adopted by the
community.”
3-D chip three times more efficientUnlike portable devices that have gone
wireless, data farms that provide instant
availability to text messages, video down-
loads, and more still use conventional
metal wires on computer chips, which
are wasteful for relatively long-range data
exchange.
Most data centers are made up of several
processing cores. One of their major
performance limitations stems from the
multihop nature of data exchange. That
is, data has to move around several cores
through wires, slowing down the processor
and wasting energy.
Pande’s group in recent years designed
a wireless network on a computer chip.
Similar to the way a cell phone works,
the system includes a tiny, low-power
transceiver, on-chip antennas, and
communication protocols that enable
wireless shortcuts.
The new work expands these
capabilities for a wireless data-center-on-a-
chip. In particular, the researchers are
moving from two-dimensional chips to
a highly integrated, three-dimensional,
wireless chip at the nano- and micro-scales
that can move data more quickly and
efficiently.
For instance, the researchers will be
able to run big data applications on their
wireless system three times more efficiently
than the best data center servers.
Personal cloud computing possibilities
As part of their grant, the researchers
will evaluate the wireless data center
to increase energy efficiency while also
maintaining fast, on-chip communications.
The tiny chips, consisting of thousands of
cores, could run data-intensive applications
orders of magnitude more efficiently
compared to existing platforms. Their
design has the potential to achieve a
comparable level of performance as a
conventional data center using much less
space and power.
It could someday enable personal cloud
computing possibilities, said Pande,
adding that the effort would require
massive integration and significant
innovation at multiple levels.
“This is a new direction in networked
system design,” he said. “This project
is redefining the foundation of on-chip
communication.”
Research
Partha Pande
4 S C H O O L O F E L E C T R I C A L E N G I N E E R I N G A N D C O M P U T E R S C I E N C E
Software Improves Ability To Catalog PathogensWashington State
University research-
ers have developed
a new software tool
that will improve
scientists’ ability
to identify and
understand bacterial
strains and acceler-
ate vaccine development. RepeatAnalyzer
is able to track, manage, analyze, and
catalogue the short, repeating sequences of
bacterial DNA.
The researchers used the software
to characterize Anaplasma marginale, a
tickborne bacteria that affects cattle, and
published their work in the journal BMC
Genomics. The research team includes
computer science student Helen Catanese;
Kelly Brayton, Department of Veterinary
Microbiology and Pathology; and Assefaw
Gebremedhin, School of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science.
Like many types of bacterial pathogens,
A. marginale has a huge variety of strains
and is widely distributed geographically,
which makes vaccine development
challenging. Scientists use short repeating
sequences of DNA, called repeats, to
understand the bacteria, its heredity, and
geographic distribution, and to determine
how harmful it is.
But for A. marginale, for instance,
researchers have found more than
235 short, repeating DNA sequences.
Without any kind of database, researchers
had to mine published literature to
keep track of the sequences. The task is
also error prone when done manually,
said Brayton.
“We developed RepeatAnalyzer precisely
to bridge that gap,” said Gebremedhin.
They developed the software for A.
marginale, but it can be extended to any
other species with similar repeating DNA
sequences. It also provides a visualization
tool so researchers can track strains on a
world map, said Catanese.
“This reliable software tool can fuel
research and collaboration and accelerate
the path to the discovery of a vaccine,”
said Gebremedhin.
RepeatAnalyzer has garnered significant
interest, and Brayton’s collaborators in
South Africa and China are already using it,
she said.
“Here is something that was overlooked
and didn’t exist,” said Gebremedhin.
“More than anything, it will help people.
When you have a tool, and the right
metrics and analysis, you may find things
you might not have known before.”
The researchers are working to extend
the software to collect and handle
similar datasets on other bacteria, as well
as expanding on the visualization and
analysis functionalities.
The work was supported by
Gebremedhin’s National Science
Foundation CAREER award, which
supports development of fast and scalable
algorithms for solving problems in
data science.
Research
Conference Focuses On Power Grid Protection More than 500
industry and
academic research-
ers gathered to
discuss state-of-
the-art research at
Washington State
University’s 43rd
annual Western
Protective Relay
Conference. The conference, which was
held earlier this year in Spokane, is the
world’s largest on power system protection
and relaying. Attendees representing
more than 193 organizations came from
38 states and 14 countries from around
the world.
With over 60 presentations, participants
learned about a variety of topics, including
protection strategies for renewable energy
sources, updated industry standards and
cybersecurity challenges, and mitigation
strategies for electric power systems.
“WSU is continuing its long-term
legacy of bringing together international
experts in the area of protection to share
best practices and discuss state-of-the-art
industrial activities and research advances,”
said Anjan Bose, WSU Regents Professor
and chair of the conference. Bose leads the
WPRC program committee that includes
North American experts from utilities,
consultants, and manufacturers.
“WSU is a leading university in the
power engineering area, and this confer-
ence will continue to help advance our
activities towards our Drive to 25 goal,”
he added.
WPRC is coordinated by WSU’s Energy
Systems Innovation Center. This year’s
conference will be held October 17–19
in Spokane.
Assefaw Gebremedhin
“Here is something that
was overlooked and didn’t
exist, More than anything,
it will help people.”
—Assefaw Gebremedhin
Anjan Bose
“...this conference will
continue to help advance
our activities towards our
Drive to 25 goal.”— Anjan Bose
E E C S . W S U . E D U 5
Research
Animal Training Techniques Teach Robots New TricksResearchers at Washington State University
are using ideas from animal training to help
nonexpert users teach robots how to do
desired tasks.
The researchers recently presented their
work at the international Autonomous
Agents and Multiagent Systems conference,
a leading scientific gathering for agents and robotics research.
As robots become more pervasive in society, humans will want
them to do chores like cleaning house or cooking. But to get a robot
started on a task, people who aren’t computer programmers will
have to give it instructions.
“We want everyone to be able to program, but that’s probably
not going to happen,” said Matthew Taylor, Allred Distinguished
Professor in the WSU School of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science. “So we needed to provide a way for everyone to
train robots—without programming.”
User feedback improves robot performanceWith Bei Peng, a doctoral student in computer science, and col-
laborators at Brown University and North Carolina State University,
Taylor designed a computer program that lets humans teach a vir-
tual robot that looks like a computerized pooch. Noncomputer pro-
grammers worked with and trained the robot in WSU’s Intelligent
Robot Learning Laboratory (http://irll.eecs.wsu.edu/).
For the study, the researchers varied the speed at which their vir-
tual dog reacted. As when somebody is teaching a new skill to a real
animal, the slower movements let the user know that the virtual
dog was unsure of how to
behave. The user could then
provide clearer guidance to
help the robot learn better.
“At the beginning, the
virtual dog moves slowly.
But as it receives more
feedback and becomes more
confident in what to do, it speeds up,” Peng said.
The user taught tasks by either reinforcing good behavior or
punishing incorrect behavior. The more feedback the virtual dog
received from the human, the more adept the robot became at pre-
dicting the correct course of action.
Applications for animal trainingThe researchers’ algorithm allowed the virtual dog to understand
the tricky meanings behind a lack of feedback—called implicit
feedback.
“When you’re training a dog, you may withhold a treat when it
does something wrong,” Taylor explained. “So no feedback means it
did something wrong. On the other hand, when professors are grad-
ing tests, they may only mark wrong answers, so no feedback means
you did something right.”
The researchers have begun working with physical robots as well
as virtual ones. They also hope to eventually use the program to
help people learn to be more effective animal trainers.
Funding for the project came from a National Science
Foundation grant.
Prestigious Grant Supports Research In 3-D Circuit DesignAssistant professor Dae Hyun Kim of the School
of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
earned the prestigious Defense Advanced
Research Program Agency (DARPA) Young
Faculty Award for his work with three-dimen-
sional integrated circuits.
The DARPA award identifies and engages
rising research stars in junior faculty positions
at U.S. academic institutions and introduces them to Department
of Defense (DoD) needs, as well as DARPA’s program development
process. The YFA program provides funding, mentoring, and indus-
try and DoD contacts to awardees early in their careers so they may
develop their research ideas in the context of DoD needs.
With the two year, $500,000 award, Kim will be designing a 3-D
stacked microprocessor that will be 10 to 20 times faster than the
traditional 2-D microprocessors. Designing the microprocessor
in multiple stacked layers increases the data transfer capability,
enables integration of more processing elements, and improves the
performance of the processing elements, all of which contribute to
the performance improvement.
“It’s not only about transferring a lot of data quickly, it’s about
processing it all quickly,” he said.
Kim is using an emerging 3-D integration technology to develop
new microarchitectures to improve the performance of the modern
microprocessors. Transistors, the basic computation elements, are
fabricated on silicon. Stacking multiple silicon layers and connect-
ing them requires bonding the silicon layers and fabricating vertical
wires to connect the transistors. The researchers are working to
stack the microprocessor to reduce the distance between transistors,
reduce its signal time, and make the processor faster. Kim will use a
microarchitecture simulator to demonstrate the performance of the
new microprocessor.
“Higher speed microprocessors have always been in high demand
in the past years. The radical performance improvement we will
achieve in this project will be able to quench the thirst for the time
being,” he said.
Matt Taylor
Dae Hyun Kim
6 S C H O O L O F E L E C T R I C A L E N G I N E E R I N G A N D C O M P U T E R S C I E N C E
StudentsInspiring Next-Generation Engineers and ScientistsEvery Monday after school, Washington
State University student Brandon Clark fin-
ishes his electrical engineering classes at the
University’s campus in Everett and drives
to Fernwood Elementary in the Northshore
School District. Standing before a group
of 35 children from ages five to eleven, he
transforms from a student into a teacher.
Clark, who lives in Bothell, is a volunteer
teacher for a science, technology, engineer-
ing, and math (STEM) program through the
YMCA called Kids University.
“It’s a true thrill to see science come
alive for these young kids and for them to
have fun with it,” Clark said. “I hope that
this and other exposures to STEM will help
ignite a curiosity which can help them into
high school and beyond.”
Students in the 12 week course meet to
explore STEM learning by planning, design-
ing, and building a number of projects.
Subjects include exploring density, building
bridges, and exploring electricity. The final
project is a two liter bottle rocket launch
powered by water and air.
“In two- or three-week increments, we
spend a class exploring a scientific subject
to influence a project and design it. The
following week we build and test those
designs,” Clark said.
The first major project was designing and
building a bridge with popsicle sticks. In
groups of five, the children came up with
unique ideas about what would work best.
Some were clearly based on bridges they
had seen. Some designs came only from
their imagination.
“I really feel a need to give back. There
are so many people that have helped and
been a role model for me in my life. I want
to pass it on to the next generation,” Clark
said. “I look at this class like I looked at my
time with Cub Scouts: fun with a purpose.
The more fun we have, the more fun the
kids have. The other important aspect
is to give them an opportunity to learn
something.”
Before studying at WSU in Everett, Clark
was a commercial diver. “I loved it, but it
was dangerous and took me away from
home for most of the year, which was
hard with a young family,” Clark said. He
says he chose to study electrical engineer-
ing because, “I wanted a secure future for
my family, for my kids to know that they
can do hard things, and I want to make
the world a better place than I found it.
Engineers have the training to tackle prob-
lems and do exactly that.” He chose to focus
on electrical engineering thanks to the job
outlook in the region and because he was
fascinated by the subject matter.
“I look at this class like I
looked at my time with
Cub Scouts: fun with a
purpose. The more fun
we have, the more fun
the kids have.”
—Brandon Clark
Brandon Clark spends the afternoon at Kids University.
E E C S . W S U . E D U 7
Students
Another Successful Semester: Students present their senior design projects
8 S C H O O L O F E L E C T R I C A L E N G I N E E R I N G A N D C O M P U T E R S C I E N C E
Students
Training For Success
For student-athlete Paige Danielson, balancing academics with
rowing takes preparation.
Washington State University is full of new and returning
students whose schedules are filled with classes, homework,
projects, and studying.
With so much to do, how do we make sure it all gets done
on time?
Write it down, said Paige Danielson, an Honors College
sophomore majoring in electrical engineering, and a member of
Washington State University’s women’s rowing team.
Taking a bowDanielson, from St. Cloud, Minnesota, came to WSU without the
intention of rowing, but her plans quickly changed.
“I was here for Alive! orientation and there was an activity fair,”
she said. “The rowing team had a table there and when I walked by
it, one of the coaches just said, ‘Do you want to join? Come to our
meeting.’ So I did—and it stuck.”
By the end of last year, the walk-on student-athlete held the bow
seat position in the varsity four boat. On an average day, she is in
the gym training by 6 a.m. She then goes to classes from 8 a.m. until
3 p.m. After a quick break, she heads out with the team to Snake
River for a three-hour practice. Finally, after training, classes, and
practice, Danielson uses the rest of her day to do homework and
take some time for herself.
Going ViralBalancing an internship with classes, coursework, 36 hour hack-
athons, and becoming the next YouTube sensation was all in a
day’s work for Kaitlyn Franz. Prior to graduation, the electrical
engineering major interned at Diligent, the Pullman-based electrical
engineering products company, where she wrote documentation,
moderated forums, answered customer questions, guided new
interns, and made promotional videos for the company. Franz was
hired by Diligent after graduating last summer.
The Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture has an internship
and cooperative education program that links qualified students with
employers to fill engineering and technology positions. For more informa-
tion, visit vcea.wsu.edu/ppel.
WSU Student Receives National HonorRyan Summers, a computer engineering
student from Stanwood, has received a
prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship
award. He will receive up to $7,500.
Summers is interested in how parallel com-
puting can help improve machine learning
algorithms and make them more useful.
He’s also interested in pervasive computing,
or how computers can be implemented into
many parts of our lives. He will do a summer internship at SpaceX,
entrepreneur Elon Musk’s aerospace manufacturer and space trans-
port services company.
For five years, he has tried to perfect an autonomous lawn mower
with his software engineer dad, Kevin (’80 electrical engineering).
“I love to tinker around and build robots and other contraptions,”
said Summers, president of the Robosub Club of the Palouse, team
leader in the WSU Robotics Club, and an organizer of the WSU
Hardware Hackathon.
Kaitlyn Franz
Paige Danielson
Ryan Summers
E E C S . W S U . E D U 9
School News
WSU Answers Demand For Engineers, Computer ScientistsNew degree programs get underwayWashington State University has begun
new programs in software engineering,
data analytics, and electrical engineering
to meet the high demand for engineers and
computer scientists in the state.
The data analytics and software engineer-
ing degrees will be offered at WSU North
Puget Sound at Everett and at Pullman, and
a master’s degree in software engineering is
available online. The school is also starting
an electrical engineering degree on the
campus of Olympic College in Bremerton.
The programs continue the state’s efforts
to educate more engineers and computer
scientists to meet industry needs. In 2011,
a Washington Technology Alliance report
found that while the state employs the
highest percentage of science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics (STEM)
workers per capita in the nation, it was
near the bottom among the states in
graduating students in STEM fields.
To meet the demand, WSU’s Voiland
College of Engineering and Architecture
has increased its undergraduate enrollment
by 65 percent to more than 4,500 students
in the past seven years. The college also
started engineering programs at Olympic
College and WSU North Puget Sound
at Everett.
Meanwhile, with the continual increase
in data generation and capture, businesses
across the Pacific Northwest and beyond
have a growing need for skilled
professionals who can apply sophisticated
data science techniques to address specific
industry needs. According to the U.S.
Department of Labor, data related
employment opportunities are expected
to rise dramatically over the next decade.
Land-grant mission to address community needs
The new degrees will promote significant
enrollment growth, while offering them
in Everett and Bremerton will remove the
barriers to higher education often encoun-
tered by place-bound and nontraditional
students.
The software engineering programs
will prepare students for developing and
maintaining large and complex software
with advanced courses in software
development, testing and validation,
maintenance, security, and management
and integration—all specialties of high
demand among the state’s computing
and IT industries.
Bremerton’s electrical engineering
program will train students in the design,
research, testing, development, and
manufacturing of electronic systems and
equipment, with specializations in general
electrical or power engineering.
Meanwhile, the data analytics degree,
one of only two such programs at a research
university in the United States, will be a
uniquely interdisciplinary degree focused
on data analysis and application. Graduates
will be trained to “speak the language” of
both data science and one of eight domain
specializations. The curriculum includes
hands-on experience managing and
analyzing real industry datasets to solve
problems, guide decision-making, and
make predictions.
The Everett and Bremerton programs
will include a combination of local and
Pullman-based faculty with courses
originating at the local and Pullman
locations. Students will follow WSU’s
semester system and pay WSU tuition.
WSU North Puget Sound at Everett’s first commencement was held in May in the Museum of Flight.
10 S C H O O L O F E L E C T R I C A L E N G I N E E R I N G A N D C O M P U T E R S C I E N C E
School News
Computer Science For AllWashington State University is
committing to bring 150 high school
girls to campus annually to introduce
them to computer science. The effort
was featured as part of the White House
Computer Science for All Initiative,
which aims to help more students gain
access to computer science educational
opportunities and learn computational
thinking skills.
In the WSU School of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science, the
groups will spend a half day learning from
college students with a meet-and-greet,
facilities tour, robotics lab activity,
overview of computer science club and
research activities, panel discussion
and mentoring activity, and hands-on
programming.
Visitors’ “eyes light up” at fun activities
The program is part of School of EECS
efforts to increase interest in the field,
especially for groups who haven’t
traditionally been represented, and to
retain students who enter the major.
Industry demand for computer scientists
is high, especially in the state of
Washington, and continues to grow.
Last year, the school invited a first cohort
of high school students from eastern
Washington to the University for a day
of programming. The school also began
offering awards and scholarship
opportunities for high school girls in
computer science. For many of the students,
WSU’s event was their first experience with
an interesting, fun, and challenging field
of study.
“You should have seen
their eyes light up when
they did the Python
programming or the app
design activity,” said Shira
Broschat, professor in the
School of EECS who is
leading the efforts. “Some didn’t have any
idea what to do at first, but we went around
the room and said, ‘Come up with
something you like to do.’ And then they
were off.”
Once young women decide to study
computer science at WSU, the school is also
making a concerted effort to keep them
in the program. It is working to provide a
gathering room for women computer
science students. Having a place set aside
for women has been shown to help them
stay in male-dominated programs.
Mentoring, other support important
At the same time, students
in the women’s WSU
chapter of Association of
Computing Machinery
have begun mentoring
female students in the
program. The club is one
of two new groups in the school tailored
specifically for women.
The school has begun working with
introductory programming course
instructors to make classroom and lab
environments more supportive for women
by, for instance, bringing female students
together in lab sessions. Usually, women
drop out from computer science and
engineering programs because of the lack
of support around them, not because they
can’t succeed in classes, said Sakire Arslan
Ay, assistant director of the School of EECS,
who is leading retention efforts.
“The goal is to have junior and senior
students help the incoming female
students adjust to the program and help
them to overcome the obstacles that they
might experience during their first year,”
said Arslan Ay. “We hope that catching
problems early on and providing help to
solve them will help retain more females in
the program.
“As a female computer scientist, I have
experienced the same problems that today’s
computer scientists have,” she added.
“But, we need women in computer science
and engineering; I would like to help the
new generation of women become aware
of their qualities and not let anything
stop them.”
The School of EECS presented awards to high school women interested in computer science.
“You should have seen
their eyes light up when
they did the Python
programming or the app
design activity.”
—Shira Broschat
Shira Broschat
Sakire Arslan Ay
E E C S . W S U . E D U 11
School News
Learning From Muslim Countries A new study co-led
by researchers at
Washington State
University aims to
understand why
significantly more
women study
engineering in some predominantly
Muslim countries than in the United States.
Funded by a two-year, $589,200 National
Science Foundation grant, the study seeks
to identify the mechanisms that motivate
women to pursue engineering in Jordan,
Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia,
where participation rates by women are as
high as 50 percent. In the United States,
approximately 15-20 percent of
engineering students are women.
“The U.S. government, industry, and pro-
fessional societies have allotted tremendous
resources to increase women’s participation
in engineering—with minimal impact,”
said Julie Kmec, professor of sociology and
Edward R. Meyer Distinguished Professor of
Liberal Arts at WSU, and one of the study’s
two principal investigators.
The researchers hope the work leads to
greater understanding of the constraints
that shape women’s participation in
engineering and new ways to increase the
number of women studying engineering in
the United States.
Ashley Ater Kranov, an adjunct associate
professor in the WSU School of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science
and interim vice dean of electronic and
distance learning at Princess Nourah bint
Abdulrahman University in Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia, is also a coprincipal investigator
on the project. President of the consulting
firm Global Professional Skills Assessment,
she researches direct methods to teach and
measure the professional skills necessary for
twenty-first century engineering workplace
success and how to increase gender equity
in engineering.
March 21–22: Energy And Renewables Conference
Researchers and industry leaders from
around the United States will gather in
Spokane in March to discuss renewable
energy and its integration into the electric
power grid.
Washington State University’s Power and
Energy Automation Conference (PEAC),
set for March 21–22 in Spokane’s historic
Davenport Hotel, will be focused on the
integration of renewables and energy stor-
age, including discussions of case studies
and pilot projects in smart grid, power
grid automation, and intelligent control.
WSU’s Energy Summit, sponsored by WSU’s
Energy Systems Innovation (ESI) Center,
will be held in conjunction with the con-
ference on March 23 and will address the
integration of solar energy into power grids.
WSU’s unique power conference, in its
19th year, brings together professionals
from around the world to share knowl-
edge about the intelligent automation and
control of electric power transmission and
distribution systems. The conference aims
to facilitate development and implemen-
tation of modern technology to improve
the reliability, efficiency, and capability of
power grid systems.
WSU has one of the top power engineer-
ing programs both in the United States
and internationally with well-recognized
programs. The ESI Center conducts mul-
tidisciplinary research involving power,
engineering, economics, sociology, and
public policy to address issues on smart
grids in a societal context. The conference
and summit are opportunities for faculty
and students to interact with professionals
from industry and other universities.
If you would like to attend the
summit, please register at
https://cm.wsu.edu/ehome/peac/419737/
Ashley Ater Kranov
12 S C H O O L O F E L E C T R I C A L E N G I N E E R I N G A N D C O M P U T E R S C I E N C E
School News
Faculty Awards and HonorsCook named a fellow of NAI
Diane Cook, a Washington State University
researcher who created one of the first fully
instrumented, smart home test sites and
has equipped 100 smart apartments with
sensor networks in 10 countries, has been
named a fellow of the National Academy
of Inventors.
Election is accorded to academics who
have demonstrated innovation in
creating or facilitating inventions that have made a tangible
impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare
of society. Cook, who is Huie-Rogers chair professor in the School
of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, conducts research
in data mining and artificial intelligence, focusing on the design of
smart homes that use machine learning to provide health
monitoring and intervention.
Schulz recognized as fellow of IEEEProfessor Noel Schulz has been named a
fellow of the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE). She was
recognized for leadership in advancing
women in engineering and electric ship
technologies. Schulz joined Washington
State University after serving as associate
dean for research and graduate programs in
the Kansas State University College of
Engineering.
Liu named outstanding researcherProfessor Chen-Ching Liu received the
2016 Voiland College of Engineering and
Architecture’s Anjan Bose Outstanding
Researcher award. Liu, who joined WSU in
2011, is the founding director of WSU’s
Energy Systems Innovation Center. He is
an international leader recognized for
his pioneering contributions to the
development of decision support systems
for power systems and as a leader in power system restoration.
He is part of a team in partnership with PNNL and University of
Washington that earlier this year received a $4.5 million grant from
the State of Washington Clean Energy Funds and Department of
Energy for the Energy Storage and Solar Energy Devices project.
Mehrizi-Sani receives teaching award Ali Mehrizi-Sani received the Voiland
College of Engineering and Architecture’s
Reid Miller Excellence in Teaching Award.
In 2013, he was one of seventy faculty
around the nation chosen to attend the
National Academy of Engineering’s
Frontiers of Engineering Education. He has
received National Science Foundation
funding to support innovative work to
develop a software learning tool for his power electronics course.
Shirazi is MLK service award recipientBehrooz Shirazi, Huie-Rogers chair
professor, was recipient of WSU’s Martin
Luther King Jr. Distinguished Service
Award. The award is given annually to
individuals or groups at WSU who have
demonstrated altruism, community service,
efforts to advance diversity, and an
educational commitment to inclusion.
Shirazi was honored for his work in
building a diverse faculty and for fostering an inclusive environ-
ment in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science (EECS).
Heo named Frank Brands Distinguished ProfessorDeukhyoun Heo has been named Frank
Brands Distinguished Professor in Analog
Electronics in the School of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science. The
professorship aims to support faculty and
program enhancement in microelectronics
at WSU. Since coming to WSU in 2003, Heo
has been researching ultra-high frequency
communication circuits and systems, and
intelligent power management circuits for high performance
System-on-Chip designs. His work is intended for deployment in
post-5G cellular systems, other next-generation communication
infrastructure, and a variety of low power applications ranging from
high performance, ultra-short range wireless network on-chip
designs for next generation high-performance computers, to
implantable biomedical sensors.
Brands, a 1960 alumnus, taught in the school from 1955 until
1998. The professorship was established upon his retirement, and
he passed away in 2005. In addition to individual contributions,
the Frank Brands Distinguished Professorship received support
from several corporate contributors, including Fluke Corporation,
Hewlett-Packard Company, Crane/Eldec Corporation, Data I/O,
and Tektronix.
E E C S . W S U . E D U 13
