ESL team celebrates extraordinary achievements

The most coveted faculty, student, and staff achievements of 2019 were recognized Thursday, Dec. 5th at the annual awards event hosted by The Ohio State University ElectroScience Laboratory (ESL). 

Serving as a gathering of the ESL community, the celebration took place at the Blackwell Inn and Conference Center on campus. Attendees were treated to lunch before Dr. Richard Ridgway, director of ESL, highlighted a selection of the center’s extraordinary accomplishments. 

During his presentation, Ridgway noted “an extraordinary gift to ESL” by alumnus Dr. Burn Lin, which established an endowed professorship. As a result, Professor Joel Johnson was named the first recipient of the Burn and Sue Lin Endowed ElectroScience Laboratory Professorship earlier this year. 

Ridgway recognized the award of two joint-university Center of Excellence grants as “an extraordinary win.” 

The Ohio State University College of Engineering and Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering at the University of Florida will collaborate on the endeavor, which aims to advance the area of hardware-enabled cybersecurity by developing new analog and mixed-signal (AMS) domain security. Waleed Khalil, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Ohio State, will serve as co-director of the center. 

Additional achievements acknowledged included “an extraordinary research site” and “an extraordinary result.” 

For the research site, Ridgway recognized the two ESL graduate students, Oguz Demir and Brandi Downs, who are part of the largest Arctic research expedition in history, MOSAiC. For the result, Ridgway showcased a bistatic radar image of the Amazon River Basin using GPS signal that was captured by Andrew O’Brien, a research scientist at ESL, and Eric Loria, a graduate research associate at ESL. 

A plethora of other accolades was also highlighted, including research awards, faculty awards, student awards, poster awards, and best student papers. 

ESL presented awards to individuals in the following categories: 

A monetary award for the 2019 Best Dissertation and 2019 Best Paper Award came courtesy of the Robert B. Dybdal Gift Fund.

2019 Best Dissertation

Matthew Buchanan 

For the dissertation entitled “Investigation of Advanced Spaceborne GNSS-R Techniques Using the SMAP Satellite”

2019 Best Paper Award

Cagdas Gunes, Shah Chowdhury, C. Zuccarelli, Q. Marashdeh, Fernando Teixeira
For the paper entitled “Toward Electrical Capacitance Tomography of Water-Dominated Multiphase Vertical Flows”
Published in IEEE Sensors Journal

2019 Best Paper Award – Runner Up

Vigyanshu Mishra and Asimina Kiourti
For the paper entitled “Wrap-Around Wearable Coils for Seamless Monitoring of Joint Flexion”
Published in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering

2019 Best Paper Award – Runner Up

Jiu-kun Che, Chi-Chih Chen, Joel T. Johnson, E. Kraus, D. Laczkowski, M. A. Solly, and K. Horgan
For the paper entitled “6 GHz to 40 GHz CubeSat Radiometer Antenna System”
Published in IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation

2019 Test of Time Award

Ronald M. Reano
For the widely referenced 2014 paper entitled “Hybrid silicon and lithium niobate electrooptical ring modulator”

Above and Beyond – Staff Award

Spencer Smith
In recognition of excellent service to the ESL community.
Smith received numerous nominations for the award, including one which read “he is the glue that holds ESL together, and he does it with a smile."

Above and Beyond – Researcher Award

Christopher Ball
In recognition of excellent service to the ESL community.
Ball was highlighted in nominations for being an excellent team player and community builder at ESL. 

Above and Beyond – Student Award

Ramy Tantawy
In recognition of excellent service to the ESL community.
Tantawy's nominations highlighted his willingness to support and advise fellow students.

Special Appreciation Award

Mallory Aliff, Leigh Zircher, and Sarah Vanadia
In recognition of excellent service to the ESL community.
As three members of the Engineering Research Administration (ERA) team, Aliff, Zircher, and Vanadia help support human resources and fiscal needs of ESL. Their nominations celebrated their helpful, encouraging, and positive presence within the ESL community. 

This year, the ESL awards committee was comprised of Christopher Ball, Teh-Hong Lee, Christopher Neese, and David Nippa. Gain additional insight into award categories, criteria, and past recipients.