Anthony Erlinger and Robert Margolies Received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

May 09, 2011

Two Ph.D. students in the department of Electrical Engineering received the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. The fellowship recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines.

Anthony Erlinger, a student in the group of Prof. Shepard, received his B.S. degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. As an undergraduate, he was involved in the development of novel applications of holography to on-chip imaging of cells for clinical diagnostic applications in mobile devices. Through this work, he co-authored six journal papers and received research scholarships from Qualcomm, Boeing, and the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Anthony also participated in a research internship at UC Berkeley in the area of developing electromagnetic simulations to assist the design plasmonic grating structures and also at UC Santa Barbara in the area of image processing applications for robotics. At Columbia, Anthony’s interests lie in the development of nanometer scale electronic devices to detect and investigate the interaction of molecular systems at very small time scales.

Robert Margolies, a student in the group of Prof. Zussman, received the B.S. degree (Summa Cum Laude) from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in 2010. Robert is the recipient of the Palmer C. Rickets Prize in Electrical Engineering for outstanding academic success at RPI as well as the Rensselaer Leadership Award and the RPI class of 2010 academic achievement award. During the summers of 2008-2010, Robert was an intern with BAE Systems and ITT Electronic Systems where he worked on military network and communications systems. Since joining Columbia University in the fall of 2010, he has been conducting research in the area of wireless and mobile networking. In particular, he has been developing an energy efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for the EnHANTs project. In addition, in collaboration with Prof. Coffman he has been studying the effects of channel fragmentation in dynamic spectrum access systems.