The Columbia Electrical Engineering Department hosted its highly anticipated annual Fall 2024 Research Project Info Session last Friday, drawing a crowd of eager students looking to engage with innovative research opportunities. Six leading labs presented their work, each led by a distinguished professor and their student researchers, to highlight cutting-edge advancements and recruit aspiring collaborators. EE graduate student-run club GEEC and its president Bernard Steyaert, '25 PhD, co-organized this event with Jennifer Lee, Director of Career Placement.
Below are the labs that were present during the session:
Prof. Xiaodong Wang’s Lab on Wireless Communication Systems and student researcher Amirhossein Taherpour shared the lab’s innovative work on next-generation communication networks captivated attendees, showcasing advancements in wireless communication technologies poised to reshape connectivity.
Prof. Nima Mesgarani’s Neural Acoustic Processing Lab took the stage, represented by student researcher Linyang He. Their presentation focused on identifying and modeling the brain’s representational and computational characteristics involved in naturalistic speech communication. Mesgarani’s interdisciplinary research combines neurophysiology, neural network models for speech processing, and computational neuroscience, promising significant implications for artificial intelligence, neurolinguistics, and systems neuroscience.
Prof. Fred Jiang’s Columbia Intelligent and Connected Systems Lab (ICSL) featured Adrian Florea as the lead student presenter. The lab showcased innovations in sensing and analyzing physical data to enhance human connectivity and improve lives. Attendees were intrigued by the lab’s transformative projects designed to create more intelligent, connected systems.
The ICE Lab, directed by Prof. Dr. Tanvir Khan, highlighted their work on data center application acceleration through distributed accelerators. Student researcher Matthew Weingarten detailed the lab’s efforts to build an accelerator-centric data center simulator that addresses operational complexity and design trade-offs, with broad implications for the future of distributed applications.
Prof. Zoran Kostic and his student Chenbo Zang shared their work at Applications of AI and Deep Learning Lab (AIDL). The lab focused on deep learning applications in smart cities, medicine, mobile data, and the Internet of Things. Kostic’s broad industry expertise—spanning software-defined radios, VLSI modem design, and mobile system architecture—demonstrated a seamless blend of research and practical application.
Prof. James Anderson’s Anderson Lab focused on robust and distributed control systems, convex optimization, power networks, and smart grids. Leo Toso, the lead student researcher, shared insights into their work on improving systems, from power distribution networks to synthetic biology.
The EE Department encourages students interested in joining these innovative labs to reach out to the respective labs for more information and collaboration opportunities.
