Dec. 16, 2016
Lehn, Ranjram and Kish receive IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics First Place Paper Award
Professor Peter Lehn of The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE), and graduate students Mike Ranjram and Gregory Kish, received the First Place Prize Paper Award for 2015 in the IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics. Dr. Kish has since joined the faculty at the University of Alberta, and Mr. Ranjram is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Titled “A Modular Multilevel DC/DC Converter with Fault Blocking Capability for HVDC Interconnects,” the paper introduces a modular multilevel dc/dc converter, termed the DC-MMC, that can be deployed to interconnect HVDC networks of different or similar voltage levels.
IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. IEEE publishes a third of the world’s technical literature in electrical engineering, computer science, and electronics and is a leading developer of international standards that underpin many of today’s telecommunications, information technology, and power-generation products and services.
Najm and Chatterjee win IEEE/ACM William J. McCalla Award
Professor Farid Najm, ECE PhD candidate Sandeep Chatterjee and Valeriy Sukharev of Mentor Graphics won the IEEE/ACM William J. McCalla ICCAD Best Paper Award in November 2016 in Austin, Texas.
Their paper “Fast physics-based electromigration checking for on-die power grids,” presented a novel approach for EM checking using physics-based models of EM degradation, which effectively removes the inaccuracy, with negligible impact on run-time. Their main contribution is to extend the existing physical models for EM in metal branches to track the degradation in multi-branch interconnect trees. They also proposed effective filtering and predictor-based schemes to speed up implementation, with minimal impact on accuracy.
ICCAD is the premier forum to explore emerging technology challenges, present cutting-edge R&D solutions, record theoretical and empirical advances, and identify future roadmaps for design automation and other system-on-chip research areas. The IEEE/ACM William J. McCalla award is presented in memory of William J. McCalla for his contributions to ICCAD and his CAD technical work throughout his career.
EPEPS Awards Bekmambetova, Zhang and Triverio
ECE MASc student Fadime Bekmambetova and PhD candidate Xinyue Zhang, supervised by Professor Piero Triverio, were recognized at the Electrical Performance of Electronic Packaging and Systems 2016 (EPEPS) conference for the best student paper award.
Both Zhang and Bekmambetova collaborated on this paper that presents a dissipation theory for the Finite Difference Time domain (FDTD) method, a popular technique in computational electromagnetism. Numerical instability has been an ongoing challenge for advanced FDTD methods. The new theory shows how stability can be systematically guaranteed in both simple and advanced scenarios.
The conference, held in San Diego between October 23-26, 2016, is a premier international conference on advanced and emerging issues in electrical modeling, analysis and design of electronic interconnections, packages and systems.
More information:
Mireille Khreich
Event Planning Assistant
The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
416-978-1999; mireille.khreich@utoronto.ca