Changing the Guard

In May 2006 the Department of Electrical Engineering honored Professor Yih-Fang Huang with a luncheon and good-natured roast for eight years of service as department chairman, a position from which he officially resigned effective June 30. Huang, who received his master’s degree in electrical engineering from Notre Dame in 1980, returned as an assistant professor in September 1982 and has served the department and the College of Engineering in numerous ways since that time.

A fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and winner of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society’s Golden Jubilee Medal, Huang’s research interests are in the area of statistical communications and signal processing, specifically detection and estimation. After a well-earned sabbatical, he will continue his current research, which explores spatial diversity and multiuser diversity for improvements of multiple-input, multiple-output systems.

Noting that he was following in distinguished footsteps, Professor Thomas E. Fuja began his tenure as department chair on July 1. Fuja joined the University in 1998. Prior to that he had served on the faculty of the University of Maryland for 11 years. His research focuses on digital communications, error control coding, joint source-channel coding, and information theory.