Fall Conference Season Brings an Abundant Harvest for ECE Researchers
by A.J. Kleber
BU ECE researchers have had a strong start in the current conference season, earning three best paper awards in September/October 2024.
Streamlined Diagnostics for the Cloud
“Unleashing Performance Insights with Online Probabilistic Tracing” earned the top prize at IEEE’s International Conference on Cloud Engineering. First author Mert Toslali (PhD’23) worked with co-author Professor Ayse Coskun before graduating and beginning work as a Research Scientist at IBM Research; he was joined by current Coskun’s current PhD student, Syed Qasim, as well as Professor Gianluca Stringhini and colleagues at IBM Research and the University of Maryland. Their paper addresses challenges with distributed tracing, a popular diagnostic tool for cloud performance issues, via the development of a distributed tracing platform which uses novel techniques to streamline the process.
Deep Insights Into Deep Learning
Meanwhile, at the IEEE Workshop on Machine Learning for Signal Processing, Professor Prakash Ishwar and colleagues from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Tufts University were recognized for their work “On Neural Collapse in Contrastive Learning with Imbalanced Datasets.” The paper uncovers a complete description of the geometry of optimum representations learned by a deep neural network when trained for a classification task on imbalanced datasets, and provides a computationally-efficient method to find such representations.
Stabilizing Power Flow for a Renewable Future
The newest member of the ECE faculty, Professor Emiliano Dall’Anese, received his award at the IEEE Power & Energy Society Innovative Smart Grid Technologies (ISGT) Europe, held in Croatia in mid-October. “A Robust Incremental Volt/VAR Control for Distribution Networks,” co-written by colleagues from the University of Liège in Belgium, and the University of Colorado, Boulder, proposes a novel optimization approach to controlling the balance of voltage and reactive power in increasingly complex, greener power distribution networks. Their method shows promise in smoothing out the fluctuations and reliability issues users have seen as power systems incorporate renewable resources, demand response programs and other environmentally-conscious innovations which complicate their operations.
Professor Ayse Coskun is the Director of the Center for Information & Systems Engineering (CISE) and served as interim Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development in AY 2023-24. Her accolades include a 2020 IBM Faculty Award and the 2024 Donald O. Pederson Best Paper Award at TCAD.
Associate Professor Gianluca Stringhini was recently named a Distinguished Faculty Fellow by the BU College of Engineering; he is also the recipient of a 2020 NSF CAREER Award, among other honors. His research has been featured by the BBC, the New York Times, and other major news outlets.
Professor Prakash Ishwar joined the BU ECE faculty in 2005. His accolades include a 2005 NSF CAREER Award and the BU College of Engineering’s 2021 Faculty Service Award. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, and has served as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.
Associate Professor Emiliano Dall’Anese recently joined the BU ECE faculty from the University of Colorado Boulder; he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Padova, Italy, in 2011. He has been the recipient of two prior Best Paper Awards from IEEE PES in 2020 and 2021, and another in 2023 from IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems. He received an NSF CAREER Award in 2020.