UCSB Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

07/30/2026

🏆Congrats to Prof. Pradeep Sen and former PhD student Nima Kalantari who were just awarded the SIGGRAPH Test-of-Time Award for their 2015 paper that transformed computer graphics rendering!

Before their paper, realistic Monte Carlo rendering meant noisy images unless you waited for more samples.⌛️Sen, Kalantari, Steve Bako had a better idea: train a neural network to filter the noise using extra info renderers already produce (albedo, normals, depth).🧠✨

It was the first ML approach to Monte Carlo denoising and the ideas still power nearly every modern denoiser today. This is what the SIGGRAPH 2026 Test-of-Time Award honors: research whose impact only grows with age. 🕰️

Huge congrats to the team. Nima is now an Associate Professor at Texas A&M, and Steve Bako is at Aurora Innovation. Proud to see our research community shaping the future of graphics, 10+ years on!🎓🖥️

Read more here👇
tinyurl.com/mvh569zx

The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering
UC Santa Barbara

07/08/2026

🔵⚡Big feature in CNN this week on our very own Prof. Shuji Nakamura (Materials & ECE). The man who lit up the world with blue LEDs, and now wants to power it too.

In 2014, Nakamura won the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing blue LEDs; the breakthrough that made phones, screens, traffic lights, and energy-efficient lighting possible. Some call it as important as Edison's light bulb.💡

Now, at 72, he's chasing something even bigger: laser-driven nuclear fusion. His company, Blue Laser Fusion, uses tech derived from his LED work to drive fusion reactions. No uranium, minimal radioactive waste.⚛️

The target: a 1-gigawatt pilot fusion plant near Santa Barbara by 2032. Which would be enough to power 750,000–1,000,000 homes.

When CNN asked him if this could be his greatest gift to the world yet, Nakamura simply said: "yeah, yeah" No hesitation. 😄

His advice to the next generation of scientists: "Taking a risk is most important."🚀Proud to have him as part of the UCSB ECE family.

🔗https://tinyurl.com/msm4h9bf

UC Santa Barbara The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering

06/18/2026

🎉 Congratulations to Fatih Dinç, postdoc in UC Santa Barbara ECE and the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, on winning the Richard C. DiPrima Prize from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). 🏆

Awarded every two years to *one* outstanding early-career researcher *worldwide*, the DiPrima Prize recognizes Fatih's research building a bridge between mathematics and neuroscience.

His work delivers algorithms that pull clean signals out of terabytes of messy brain-imaging data, along with mathematical frameworks that explain how stable thoughts and behaviors emerge from the seemingly chaotic activity of millions of neurons. 🧠

At UCSB, Fatih is co-advised by ECE Professor Nina Miolane and KITP Professor Boris Shraiman.

🔗 Read the full story:
https://lnkd.in/gd27SUAA

We're proud to have him in the community. Congratulations, Fatih! 👏

06/05/2026

🎓After 38 years, Professor Forrest Brewer is retiring from UCSB ECE. His work in asynchronous logic, VLSI design, and sigma-delta computation has left a deep mark on this department and on the students he mentored along the way. We are grateful for every one of those 38 years.🙏

🎉Celebrate with him today, Friday, June 5 at 4:30 PM in ESB Room 2003

06/04/2026

🏆Congratulations to Prof. Elaheh Ahmadi, recipient of the 2026 Young Investigator MBE Award from the International MBE Advisory Committee!

Her research on novel ultra wide bandgap devices is pushing the boundaries of high power, high frequency, and quantum applications.🔬⚡

This award, supported by ICMBE2026, recognizes exceptional contributions to molecular beam epitaxy by researchers under 40. Prof. Ahmadi is a deserving honoree and we couldn't be prouder. 💛💙

The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering UC Santa Barbara

05/22/2026

is ranked #3 academic institution in the world for automation and control by the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities 🏆

At the heart of this success is the Center for Control, Dynamical Systems, and Computation!

Learn more 👉

An interdisciplinary field that is focused on the study of how the nervous system generates perception, behavior and cognition.

05/21/2026

🏆 Congratulations to ECE Professor and Aeluma CEO Dr. Jonathan Klamkin on receiving the prestigious IPRM Award from Compound Semiconductor Week!

The award recognizes his pioneering contributions to InP and GaAs photonic and electronic materials and their heterogeneous integration on mismatched substrates.🔬

"The award reflects the wonderful mentors, colleagues, researchers, and engineers I've worked with throughout my career." – Dr. Klamkin

Dr. Klamkin will be honored at the CSW Conference on May 25 in Kumamoto, Japan. We're so proud! 🎉

Read more here👇
tinyurl.com/apx9phhc

The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering
UC Santa Barbara

05/20/2026

🏥Congratulations to ECE Prof. Ramtin Pedarsani's team on receiving a UC Noyce Initiative award to develop robust vision-language models for clinical applications — part of a $3.4M UC-wide research push for computational health and cybersecurity.🤖

🔗https://tinyurl.com/mm9jb8x

The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering, UC Santa Barbara

05/18/2026

🔬How do you study thousands of neurons at once? You build better tools.

ECE Prof. Spencer Smith's SLAB Lab designed a scan angle multiplier that achieves the laser scanning trifecta: high speed, high resolution, and a larger area.🧠⚡

"…we want to see hundreds of neurons, thousands of neurons, with the ultimate goal of being able to look at how individual neurons work together across the entire brain." – Postdoc Che-Hang Yu

This paper was published last week in Optica, and spin-out company Pacific Optica is now bringing this tech to labs worldwide.🌎

📜https://tinyurl.com/36j7pa3d

The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering UC Santa Barbara

05/15/2026

🎉Congrats to ECE undergraduate Roland Yin on receiving the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship — one of the most prestigious honors in STEM!🏆

Roland investigates kagome superconductors for quantum sensing applications, including RF detection in quantum computers.⚛️🔬

"Receiving the NSF GRFP is both exciting and deeply validating…it affirms that I have the potential to grow into an independent researcher" – Roland Yin

Selected from nearly 14,000 applicants, the GRFP provides $159,000 in support over five years. A well-earned honor!👏

We can't wait to see where your PhD journey takes you!🎓

The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering UC Santa Barbara

🔗https://tinyurl.com/63h5hvfz