Accolades: Engineer Honored; Artist’s Work Featured at Alma Mater

Accolades is an occasional News Center feature that highlights recent accomplishments of UT Dallas faculty and students. To submit items for consideration, contact your school’s communication manager.

Akin, Team Receive IEEE Award for Paper

Dr. Bilal Akin, associate professor of electrical engineering, has received a first-place Society Prize Paper Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Industry Applications Society (IAS).

Akin received the award for the article “Aging Precursor Identification and Lifetime Estimation for Thermally Aged Discrete Package Silicon Power Switches.” Akin, who won a National Science Foundation CAREER (Faculty Early Career Development) award in 2015, was honored at the IAS annual conference in September along with other researchers who contributed to the paper.

“The transaction prize paper award is one of the most prestigious IEEE awards,” Akin said. “We are honored that our paper was selected from among outstanding papers reporting original and high-quality research.”

Akin and his team of researchers investigated incipient faults of silicon power semiconductor devices and created fault diagnosis and failure prognosis tools. Their goal is to lay the foundation for self-monitoring, smart-energy conversion systems that can recognize signs of failure at the earliest stage, thereby preventing catastrophic failures.

The IAS supports electrical engineers and other professionals who work in applied electronics, particularly those who create applications for use in industry and commerce. The Society Prize Paper Awards are given to the top papers published in the previous year in the IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications for originality and contribution.

Before joining the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, Akin was a research and development engineer at Texas Instruments Inc. and Toshiba Corp.

 

ATEC Professor’s Visual Art Showcased at Bowling Green

Andrew Scott, associate professor in the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication (ATEC) has his visual art included in the “So Much More … Ohio’s African- American Artists” exhibit through Oct. 21 at Bowling Green State University.

Scott is a visual artist whose work centers on the intersection of digital fabrication technologies and traditional fine arts practices. He is one of 15 Bowling Green State alumni and current students whose art is part of the exhibit.

The exhibit was developed in honor of fellow alumnus Bernie Casey, an actor, artist and former NFL wide receiver who died in September 2017. It evolved from a tribute to Casey and other African-American alumni to a broader conversation among alumni, students and invited African-American artists across the nation.

“I am honored to be included in the august company of such great Ohio artists that were chosen to honor both the athletic and creative legacy of Bernie Casey,” Scott said.

Dr. Anne Balsamo, dean of ATEC, said, “Andrew Scott’s creative practice combines applications of modern technologies with approaches of traditional studio practice to create meaning and address pressing social issues.”

Scott’s works and civic projects include a memorial to fallen police officers for the city of Gainesville, Florida, and the world’s largest gavel in a reflecting pool of the Ohio Supreme Court.