UC Davis ECExpo 2024: Uniting Industry and Academia through Innovation
On April 5, Kemper Hall buzzed with the exchange of new ideas as the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Davis, hosted ECExpo 2024. The event was a vibrant meeting ground for over 150 industry partners, students, alumni and faculty, dedicated to showcasing the department's latest research and technological strides.
Stephan Schell, one of the department's two distinguished alumni of 2023, opened the event with his keynote, "From Academia to Apple: A Journey of Innovation and Discovery." Schell discussed the career path that led him from being a student in the department to 10 years at Apple, where he helped develop devices like the iPhone and AirPods. He retired from Apple in 2015 as a senior director of wireless systems architecture and with the prestigious, director-like title of Distinguished Engineer, Scientist, Technologist, or DEST.
"Schell was a really remarkable speaker," said Billy Putnam, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and chair of the ECExpo planning committee. "He could really connect with everyone in our audience: undergraduates, graduate students, industry folks and faculty."
Following Schell's keynote, Assistant Professor Yubei Chen, a recent addition to the ECE faculty, delivered a presentation on "Self-Supervised Learning: The Principles and the Frontier," igniting conversations on the future of artificial intelligence. Chen's talk focused on the current state of supervised learning — a process for training AI systems using labeled datasets — and how this method may be improved with self-supervised learning principles, which mimic natural learning by training the AI systems to build upon inputted data.
Department Chair André Knoesen followed Chen to provide an update on the ECE department, which included enrollment figures, faculty, alumni and student awards for 2023.
Distinguished Professor S. J. Ben Yoo and Professor Saif Islam were next. They discussed the department's participation in the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 and related workforce development programs launched by federal agencies. The Department of Defense Microelectronics Commons has designated UC Davis as part of the California-Pacific-Northwest AI-Hardware Hub. The hub, led by Stanford University and the UC Berkeley, is poised to propel AI hardware advancements while fostering workforce development and streamlining the journey from laboratory research to fabrication.
On the topic of workforce development, Islam spoke about the Center for Information Technology in the Interest of Society, or CITRIS. As its director, he mentioned how the center is pursuing innovative seed project proposals that integrate community colleges and K-12 institutions into the broader CHIPS and Science initiatives. Projects like this will play a pivotal role in crafting a skilled and ready workforce for the technological challenges of tomorrow.
Closing the afternoon's presentations, Professor Jeremy Munday provided a brief overview of the Center for Nano- and Micro-Manufacturing, or CNM2 — a 24/7 cleanroom that received a $20 million renovation in 2018.
At the event, students also had the opportunity to showcase their research during the student poster session. About 40 students presented and discussed their research with fellow undergraduates and graduate students within the College of Engineering, which ranged from robotic arms to gesture recognition technology. The poster session was followed by an ECExpo Industry Immersion networking session and social mixer hosted by the IEEE Student Club and ECE Graduate Student Association.
Watch Stephan Schell's full keynote
The cornerstone of ECExpo is the involvement of industry partners who actively engage with students, offering insights and demonstrations on emerging technologies.
"Several companies set up tables and showed off really exciting demonstrations of some of their products, and a handful of our excellent senior design project teams showcased really neat projects they're building," Putnam said. "We always have new and exciting things happening at ECExpo."
ECExpo 2024 was sponsored by Chevron, Anritsu, Digikey, Dell, Keysight, Texas Instruments and Silvaco.