Three Rice University Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) students are among 28 doctoral students worldwide receiving the 2021-2022 IEEE Solid State Circuit Society (SSCS) Predoctoral Achievement Award in recognition of their academic achievements and exceptional publications. The awardees are Yingying Fan, Yan He, Zhanghao Yu.
The SSCS has more than 10,000 members worldwide. Although it officially became known as the SSCS IN 1997, the organization was founded after the launch of the International Solid-State Circuits Conference ISSCC in 1955. The group is dedicated to fostering innovation and excellence in solid-state circuits through education, communication and networking opportunities.
Yingying Fan is a Rice third-year Ph.D. candidate working in the Rice Integrated Systems and Electromagnetics (RISE) Lab, headed by Taiyun Chi, assistant professor of ECE. Her research focuses on developing biology-electronics hybrid systems.
Fan was awarded the 2021 Cadence Women in Technology Scholarship, and is one of two students worldwide to win the 2021 IEEE MTT-S Graduate Fellowship Award for Medical Applications. In 2015 she was awarded the China National Scholarship by the Ministry of Education.
Yingying’s interdisciplinary research has been recognized by competitive graduate fellowships from two IEEE societies – Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) and Solid State Circuit Society (SSCS). Only a few people have achieved this in the past, making Yingying stand out among her peers. I’m very proud of her.
-Taiyun Chi
Yan He and Zhanghao Yu are both fourth-year Ph. D. candidates doing research at the Secure and Intelligent Micro-Systems (SIMS) Lab, directed by Kaiyuan Yang, assistant professor of ECE.
“It is fortunate for me to have Yan and Zhanghao working in my lab. They are both talented and hardworking engineers and researchers. Yan developed multiple state-of-the-art circuit techniques for securing IoT devices, while Zhanghao contributed to the development of world’s first magnetoelectrically powered and controlled batteryless bioelectronic implant and coordinated networks of such implants,” Yang said.
Yan He earned his B.S. in electronic science and technology from Zhejiang University in 2018 and his M.S. in ECE from Rice in 2021. He did research internship with NVIDIA in 2021. His research focuses on low power digital and mixed-signal circuits, power management, and hardware security.
In addition to first-authoring three papers at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), he received the 2021 Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC) Best Paper Award and multiple scholarships for outstanding merits at Zhejiang University.
Zhanghao Yu earned his B.E. in integrated circuit design and integrated systems from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in 2016, and his M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California in 2018. His research lies in circuit and system designs for bioelectronics, wireless power transfer, and power management.
Yu has five (co-)first-author publications in Nature Biomedical Engineering, Journal of Solid-State Circuits, Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), and Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC). He received the Best Paper Award at the 2021 CICC and was named a Best Student Paper Award Finalist at the 2019 CICC. He also received the John Clark Fellowship Award from Rice University and multiple scholarships for academic excellence at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.
Taiyun and I were recipients of the SSCS predoctoral awards in 2017 and 2016 respectively. It is fantastic to see our first batch of students getting recognized by this prestigious award. It is a great honor and encouragement for our growing research programs on integrated circuits at Rice ECE.
-Kaiyuan Yang