The EE Department Congratulates its NSF Graduate Fellowship Winners!
The Department of Electrical Engineering would like to congratulate its students Aida Raquel Colón Berríos, Joseph Ellis, Craig Gutterman, and Jacob Rothenberg for receiving the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships! The fellowship is aimed at supporting a diverse range of outstanding students pursuing masters and doctoral degrees in the United States. It will fund each student’s tuition for three years and provide a stipend. These students are exemplary in their research and their potential contributions, both as citizens of the university and scientists at the forefront of the Columbia’s EE research.
Aida Raquel Colón Berríos is an MS and PhD candidate working in the Columbia Laboratory for Unconventional Electronics (CLUE) directed by her advisor Professor John Kymissis. She was born and raised in Puerto Rico, where she obtained her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez Campus (UPRM) and was recen tly licensed as an Engineer In Training (EIT) by the NCEES board. Her research experience is diverse, having worked for UPRM on integrated analog circuit design and digital control systems for hyper-spectral imaging. Aida has interned at the University of California, Berkeley and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) where she conducted research in relation to the development of Gravure Printed Organic Solar Cells and automated metrology systems. Her current research revolves around a system design for radio frequency applications, where she is taking part in the design and fabrication of micro electromechanical resonators (MEMS) required for the filters and will also take part in the design of the Integrated Circuit (IC) on which the MEMS will be mounted. With her island’s future always on her mind, Aida aims to acquire knowledge and give back to her community, whether as a professor or advisor.
Joseph Ellis received the B.S./B.A. degree from The University of San Diego in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics in 2007, and M.S. from Columbia University in 2014. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree under the supervision of Senior Vice Dean, Professor Shih-Fu Chang. While at UCSD, Joe participated in a study abroad program at ITESO Univeristy in Guadalajara, Mexico. He also attended ECI (Escuela de Ciencias Informaticas) at the University of Buenos Aires in the summer of 2013. He is an IGERT Trainee in the "From Data to Solutions" IGERT Program at Columbia. Joseph’s interests are in fusing multi-modal data, video analysis and machine learning. During his first two years in EE, he worked on the News Rover project, which was funded with a Magic Grant from The Brown Institute for Media Innovation. News Rover provides unique capabilities for searching large video archives, linking broadcast videos to news topics, and visualizing important information that answers question of Who, What, When, and Where for a particular news topic. His (co-authored) paper describing technologies developed for News Rover was awarded 1st place in the ACM International Conference on Multimedia - Grand Challenge Competition in Barcelona, Spain (2014). His NSF research proposal involves performing social cognitive analytics on collections of video.
Craig Gutterman, a student in the Wireless & Mobile Networking Lab (WiMNet Lab) with Professor Gil Zussman, received his B.S. degree (Summa Cum Laude) from Rutgers University in 2012. As the highest ranking graduating senior, Craig was the recipient of the John B. Smith Memorial Prize at the Department of Electrical Engineering. Upon entering Columbia University, he was designated a Tesla Scholar. Since joining Columbia University in the fall of 2012, he has been conducting research in the area of wireless and mobile networking. In particular, he has been working on developing a rate adaption framework for efficiently sending multicast traffic in WiFi networks. In the summer of 2013, Craig was an intern at BBN Technologies where he worked on developing algorithms for content distributed networks. His research interests are in the area of wireless communications, networks, and sensors, with applications to data analysis and exploration.
Jacob Rothenberg attended Skaneateles High School in the Fingerlakes Region of upstate New York and graduated in 2009. That fall, he enrolled at the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY, where he graduated in May 2013 with a B.S. in Physics and a minor in Optics. Jacob has done research at University of Colorado at Boulder designing and fabricating graphene-based electro-optic modulators under an NSF REU Felllowship. In 2013, he worked in Japan at the National Institute of Materials Science (NIMS) in Tsukuba, Japan where he experimented with novel materials to facilitate the epitxial growth of efficient ZnO based LED's on silicon while funded by an NSF Fellowship. He has also conducted research at the Nano-Optics Laboratory at the University of Rochester under Prof. Lukas Novotny. Currently, Jacob’s research interests include novel photonic devices for optical communications and innovative applications of quantum optics. He intends to utilize his fellowship to investigate the utility of grapheme for photonics integrated circuits, more specifically intergraded modulators. While working towards his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Jacob will be a member of Professor Richard Osgood’s research group, who will also serve as his advisor.
The Electrical Engineering Department is proud to number these four remarkable minds amongst its up and coming generation and looks forward to the innovations and contributions they will bring to the field.