Professors Named IEEE Fellows; Comet Athlete Joins NCAA Committee

Two University of Texas at Dallas electrical and computer engineering professors have been named IEEE fellows.

Dr. Bilal Akin earned the honor for his contributions to the control, diagnosis and condition monitoring of AC drives, and Dr. Carlos Busso was recognized for his contributions to speech and multimodal affective signal processing and their technology applications.

IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization, has more than 400,000 members in 160 countries. The rank of fellow is conferred for outstanding accomplishments in any IEEE field and is the highest grade of membership. Fewer than 0.1% of IEEE members were named fellows this year.

Dr. Bilal Akin

Akin’s research focuses on the design, control and condition monitoring of power electronics systems and motor drives. AC devices are used to control the speed of electrical motors and to optimize various applications that rely on electric motors. His research is applied to technologies that include electric vehicles and renewable energy systems.

“Dr. Akin’s research is very relevant to the Jonsson School’s focus on expanding and building significant thrust in energy and transportation-related technologies,” said Dinesh Bhatia MS’87, PhD’90, professor and interim co-head of electrical and computer engineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science. “Power electronics and motor drives are fundamental to our focus on energy and transportation systems. He is a renowned power electronics and motor drives expert who collaborates extensively with many industry partners.”

Akin, professor of electrical and computer engineering, has previously served as co-editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technologies. He also served as guest editor-in-chief and associate editor for other IEEE societies, chaired an IEEE conference in 2021 and served as steering committee member and technical program chair for several IEEE conferences. He was recognized with a Prize Paper Award in 2018 by the IEEE Industry Applications Society.

“To me, IEEE represents top-notch quality in the engineering field,” Akin said. “I have been actively publishing in IEEE to share our findings with the finest engineering readers. It has been an honor to serve such an organization in various positions.”

Akin is director of the Power Electronics and Drives Lab. He earned a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award in 2015.

Dr. Carlos Busso

Busso, professor of electrical and computer engineering, directs the Multimodal Signal Processing Laboratory. His work focuses on making technical applications more human-friendly, enabling robots to detect emotions, and vehicles that are more sensitive to changes in driver behavior. Because people communicate in multiple modalities, researchers focus on a number of human cues that applications can recognize.

“My team has worked in this area for the last 19 years,” Busso said. “I have several best paper awards, the most recent one being the 2021 Best Paper Award from the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing. My team has also developed several databases that are widely used by the community.”

Bhatia said: “Professor Busso has made stellar contributions to speech and multimodal emotion recognition and is considered one of the top researchers in the world. His publication citation record shows the importance of his fundamental contributions. Furthermore, his research tremendously impacts the emerging virtual agent development community. Besides being a top researcher, Dr. Busso is a respected teacher for our undergraduate students.”

Busso’s work includes the areas of affective computing, multimodal human-machine interfaces, in-vehicle active safety systems and machine learning systems for multimodal processing. He received an NSF CAREER award in 2015 and is senior editor of IEEE Signal Processing Letters and associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing.

“My previous and current undergraduate, master and PhD students are key reasons for our success,” Busso said. “The brainstorming meetings with them are some of the most exciting moments of my job here at UT Dallas. These discussions have led to many of the contributions that resulted in this recognition.”

Comet Appointed to NCAA Advisory Committee

University of Texas at Dallas men’s cross country runner Rohan Springer has been selected to represent student-athletes from the American Southwest Conference and the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference on the NCAA Division III Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC).

Springer, who is also a member of the UT Dallas men’s track and field team, is the third Comet to serve on SAAC, following Joseph Weber BS’17 and Isaiah Swann BS’20.

“Representing UTD Athletics at the national level is a truly surreal experience,” said Springer, an accounting major in the Naveen Jindal School of Management. “While the task is large and most definitely arduous, I plan to lead, learn and legislate with the support of my fellow student-athletes, staff, administrators, and everything that makes this school and program great.”

His three-year appointment began in January.

A native of Plano, Texas, Springer has been an active member of the UT Dallas Student-Athlete Advisory Committee since his arrival on campus in fall 2021. He currently serves as the executive administrator for the UTD committee.

The NCAA Division III SAAC reviews legislation, identifies significant student-athlete issues, implements national student-athlete-based initiatives, encourages community outreach, and enhances student-athlete involvement in and understanding of Division III in general. The committee, composed of 21 student-athletes each representing two conferences, is also primarily responsible for maintaining and coordinating the division’s nationwide partnership with Special Olympics.

Accolades is an occasional News Center feature that highlights recent accomplishments of The University of Texas at Dallas faculty, students and staff. To submit items for consideration, contact your school’s communications manager.