The forum was organized by Professor Mark Lundstrom and sponsored by NEEDS. It was on graduate education in electronic materials, devices, and systems.

The team included ECE students Debayan Das and Shovan Maity and ECE Professor Shreyas Sen.

Mark Lundstrom received the Mentoring Award, Peide "Peter" Ye received the Research Award, and the Team Award was given to the Implantable Networks of Wireless Nanoelectronic Nodes team, including Muhammad A. Alam, Pedro Irazoqui, Mark Lundstrom, and Zhongming Liu.

The winners were Ashish Hota, Mikhail Shalaginov, Sutton Hathorn, Mariam Zaim, Ian Stevenson, Thomas Craddock, Kinshuk Gupta, Akshada Kulkarni, Sutton Hathorn, Niharika Gupta, Sayan Roy.

Seven ECE faculty members were promoted this year. Zhihong Chen, Byunghoo Jung, Xiaojun Lin, Yung-Hsiang Lu, Minghao Qi, and Chih-Chun Wang were all promoted to Full Professor. Peter Bermel was promoted to Associate Professor. The promotions are effective starting with the 2017-2018 academic year.

Founded in 1886, Sigma Xi is a non-profit membership society of nearly 75,000 scientists and engineers who were elected to the Society because of their research achievements or potential. Sigma Xi has more than 500 chapters at universities and colleges, government laboratories, and industry research centers. Professor Ye's award included a plaque and $1,000.

Researchers have shown how to create a rechargeable “spin battery” made out of materials called topological insulators, a step toward building new spintronic devices and quantum computers.

The CEO and co-founder of Mobile Enerlytics LLC is ECE Professor Y. Charlie Hu. The company has developed a technology shown to extend battery life of digital devices and has received federal funding to further develop the technology that could impact billions of devices including smartphones, notebooks and smartwatches across the world.

NDSEG Fellowships last for three years and pay for full tuition and all mandatory fees, a monthly stipend, and up to $1,000 a year in medical insurance.

This two-year-long award will support Professor Zhu's research on using digital images to connect eating environment with dietary quality.