UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON

ECE NEWS
DEPARTMENT OF
ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER YEAR IN REVIEW
ENGINEERING 2008-2009

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Giri Venkataramanan
Innovation Day winner graduates and Tom Jahns in the
wind tunnel. The tunnel
after four years of success will be a key testing
facility for wind-energy
onvincing people to wake up in the

C
projects.
morning and play a game on a sandy
beach with palm trees seems like a
marketable idea, especially if the game helps
people sleep more effectively and stay alert
throughout the day.
That’s exactly what inventor Justin Beck
(BS ’09) hopes is true, and the judges at the
2009 Innovation Day competition thought he
was on to something. In February, Beck, along
with his partner Daniel Gartenberg, a psychology
and neuroscience student, won $10,000 at

the 15th anniversary of the Schoofs Prize for
Creativity, an annual UW-Madison undergraduate
invention competition that rewards innovative
and marketable ideas.
Their winning idea, called Proactive Sleep,
is a software application for the iPhone and the
iPod touch that serves as a sophisticated alarm
clock, waking users during the light sleep phase
of their cycle. In the morning, users play an easy
game—which currently is depicted on a
beach scene—that tests alertness.
The software then automatically
reconfigures as it learns the user’s
unique sleep cycle, ultimately elimi-
nating morning grogginess and
helping users stay more alert
all day. Beck and Gartenberg
plan to put Proactive Sleep
on the market in the next
few months via the Apple
application store.
Proactive Sleep
is only one of
many inventions
Beck created while
he was a student at UW-
Madison. He participated in
Innovation Day three times
(Continued on page 5)
Vestas partnership
yields DOE grant for wind energy curriculum
new wind energy curriculum will be developed by several UW-Madison engineering and
A atmospheric and oceanic sciences faculty and staff thanks to a nearly $400,000 grant
from the U.S. Department of Energy. Principal investigators include Associate Professors
Giri Venkataramanan and Bernie Lesieutre, Professor Tom Jahns, and Atmospheric and Oceanic
Sciences Assistant Professor Ankur Desai.
The curriculum will include a series of undergraduate and graduate-level courses offered on campus
and online that center on wind energy and power engineering. Four power engineering courses will
be available, including Wind Turbine Electric Generators and Controls, Power Electronic Converters
for Wind Turbines, Electric Utility Wind Power Integration and Small Wind Turbine Design.
Students who take these courses and complete an internship at a utility or energy-related
company will be eligible for a new certificate program in wind energy. Several wind-energy policy
and economics electives will be offered through other departments on campus. A periodic seminar
series addressing wind energy integration and an annual professional conference from the
Wisconsin Public Utility Institute will also be developed from the DOE grant.
The DOE grant is due in part to the support of Vestas, the world’s leading producer of wind
power technology, which recently entered into a strategic partnership with the College of Engineering
that promises to propel wind energy research, provide student learning opportunities and give the
company a long-term presence in Madison.
“Wind energy is a growing source of new power generation in the world and the technology
has even greater untapped potential,” says Jahns, who directs the Wisconsin Power Electronics
Research Center and helped establish the partnership. “By teaming with an industry leader like
Vestas, our research environment will thrive and Wisconsin will see expanded opportunities in
wind energy and other renewable energy options.” (Continued on page 6)

ECE 1 NEWS
www.engr.wisc.edu/ece

Message from the Chair
I
t is my great pleasure to introduce
myself as the new ECE department
chair. I am joined by Professor
Yu Hen Hu, who will serve as the vice chair
for operations. Some of you know me and I
would sincerely appreciate hearing from you
with updates on how you are doing. Others I
have not had the pleasure to meet; however,
I would love for you to introduce yourselves
by E-mail, phone or a drop-in visit. If there
is any way in which I can be of assistance,
please do not hesitate to contact me.
On behalf of the entire ECE family, I wish
to express deep gratitude to Professors
Parameswaran Ramanathan and Amy
Wendt, department chair and co-chair from
2005-2009. With their outstanding leader-
ship and dedicated service, the department
enters the next decade with many strengths
and opportunities upon which to build. I feel
extremely fortunate to have inherited the role
of chair from their successful stewardship.
It is no secret that ECE
and higher education
We would like
in general are
affected by the to hear from you!
same challenges Please send updates about your
(economic, promotions, honors, family news, etc.,
environmental and to ecenews@engr.wisc.edu.
infrastructural) that are
facing individuals, the nation
and the globe. I see these challenges as a
stimulus to reexamine many aspects of the
department and seek improvements in how
we affect learning, deliver support services
and facilitate research.
While new approaches will address using
financial resources more efficiently, our
principal priority will remain on maintaining
and improving the quality of student learning
and research impact. In the coming year, we
will conduct an intensive strategic planning
initiative that will examine and revise our
organizational structure, curriculum,
instructional approaches and external
communication. For example, a recent up-
date to our department’s strategic five-year
plan organizes our research profile emphases colloquia with publicly available video
into the timely categories of energy,
information and health. These priorities
ECE 2 NEWS
John Booske, Chair
2416 Engineering Hall
1415 Engineering Drive
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: 608/262-3840
Fax: 608/262-1267
E-mail: ecechair@engr.wisc.edu
Web: www.engr.wisc.edu/ece
reflect the importance of electrical and
computer engineering in finding solutions
to grand societal challenges in these areas.
We are also actively contributing to the
College of Engineering 2010 and Beyond
Initiative to transform engineering education
to meet the needs and realities of the future.
Examples of successful course innovations
led by ECE faculty under this initiative
include Introduction to Society’s Engineering
Grand Challenges and a new Engineering
for Energy Sustainability
certificate program.
One important
area of emphasis
during the next
several years will
be to develop and
nurture our community
of alumni and supportive
friends and family, both individual and
corporate. Their collective expertise, diverse,
successful career experience, and memories
of UW-Madison and ECE represent a crucial
pool of knowledge and professional support
resources that we wish to more fully engage
to ensure the success of our future students,
faculty and staff.
By recognizing the importance of
developing our resources to maintain our
quality, we are aligning our department with
the college’s plan to endow the department
chair position. This will establish a flexible
pool of resources to support priority
investments in faculty recruitment start-up
packages, teaching fellows, departmental
archives, and funds to incubate new explor-
atory initiatives in teaching and research.
UW-Madison computer scientist
elected to national academy
A
UW-Madison professor is among
65 engineers and nine foreign
associates elected
to the National Academy of
Engineering (NAE) in 2009.
John P. Morgridge Professor
and E. David Cronon Professor
Gurindar (Guri) Sohi has
been ranked among the most
distinguished engineers in the
nation, peer-elected for their exceptional
contributions to engineering research,
practice or education.
Sohi joined the UW-Madison faculty in
1985 and holds appointments in both ECE
and the computer sciences department,
which he chaired from 2004 to 2008. His
research on high-performance computer
system design led to papers and patents
that have influenced both research and
commercial microprocessors. The NAE
election honors his contributions to the
design of high-performance, super-scalar
computer architectures.
“I am proud to be a faculty member at
Wisconsin, whose environment allowed
me to carry out the work for which this
recognition is being given,” Sohi says.
Read more about Sohi’s work at:
www. engr.wisc.edu/ece/newsletter/
article03_sohi.html.
As state budgets struggle with increasing
public obligations and declining revenues, we
will increasingly rely on the philanthropy of
those who have a symbiotic relationship with
us. This will be critical to sustain and improve
the exceptional learning and research that
we are committed to providing as our faculty
and students continue to achieve exceptional
outcomes in the lab and the classroom.
I feel fortunate to have been a member of
an outstanding and deservedly high-ranked
department for almost 20 years, and I look
forward to serving the colleagues, students,
supportive alumni and industrial partners of
ECE as we set sail to an exciting future.
Duane H. & Dorothy M. Bluemke Professor
John H. Booske, Chair—ECE Department
 irports need regular area surveys to map out possible

A obstructions that could affect construction, tree maintenance

or runway approach patterns. A promising alternative to
expensive physical surveying is airborne light detection and ranging (lidar).
Christopher Parrish, a civil and environmental engineering graduate
student, is studying lidar, and he sought advice from ECE McFarland-
Bascom Professor Rob Nowak. Together, Nowak and Parrish developed
a new workflow for processing data from waveform lidar by taking into
account models for both distortion and signal characteristics.
The approach resulted in a robust, reliable obstruction mapping
method that addresses previous challenges while simplifying workflow.
Parrish applied the new methods to lidar signals collected around the

New airport survey method takes flight

Madison area with great success, and the two
published their results in the May 2009 issue
of the Journal of Surveying Engineering.
“This is a huge advance,” says Nowak.
“It totally revolutionizes how well they are
able to do these automatic airborne surveys
of airports.” Parrish estimates a 46-percent
decrease in total obstruction survey completion
time and a 38-percent decrease in human
Rob Nowak
labor time, according to the most recent
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration
National Geodetic Survey (NGS) lidar obstruction survey.
Lidar works similarly to radar but uses laser light as its signal. As a
surveying plane flies over an area officials want to map, it sends out a
laser pulse. Sensors on the plane detect the signal as the laser reflects
off the surfaces it encounters. Then, engineers collect data from all the
beams that scanned a particular point in space and map all the detected
reflections in a scatterplot. Officials can use the resulting point clouds
to determine the shape, size and location of obstructions.
(From left): Photos, discrete lidar and waveform lidar point-
clouds of common airport obstructions—a tree (top) and tower
(bottom)—showing the achievable point density increase using
full-waveform data.
NGS has researched lidar for the past decade. Traditionally, NGS
has used discrete data, focusing on only the initial return of each
laser pulse, or the “front edge” of the return signal. Now, systems
can digitally acquire and save the entire laser return, a process
known as waveform lidar, which results in scatterplots with an
average of 252 percent more data points than traditional methods.
“Traditional methods focus on what happened to the signal and
the process that distorts it, but they ignore the physical characteristics
of the signal itself,” says Nowak. The new obstruction mapping
method could be applied to a variety of signals that are distorted,
incomplete or noisy. One example is MRI, which Nowak says is a
great example of how the new method could make a big difference
beyond airports.

Draper wins CAREER award for streaming media architecture, design and feedback
ssistant Professor Stark C. Draper The central technical question Draper will

A has received a prestigious 2009

Faculty Early Career Development
Award (CAREER). CAREER awards recognize
faculty members who are at the beginning of
their academic careers and have developed
creative projects that effectively integrate
advanced research and education.
Draper, who joined the UW-Madison faculty
in fall 2007, is researching how to rethink the
fundamental architectures of digital commu-
nications to improve the delivery of streaming
data. The long-term potential of his work
could be improved digital communications
service and broader availability for lower cost.
The project will be funded by the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
address is how feedback should be used to
transmit delay-sensitive data in real-world systems
that are faced with resource-constrained and noisy
feedback. The project will address new scenarios
(e.g., wireless fading, multiuser networks, inter-
action with queuing) to develop architectural
insights, appropriate classes of error correcting
codes, and improved network protocols.
The research will be incorporated into a
variety of UW-Madison courses addressing
coding and information theory, as well as the
freshman undergraduate course Introduction
to Society’s Engineering Grand Challenges.
Draper and his team also work with the UW
Engineering Summer Program to promote
STEM fields to high-school students.

ECE 3 NEWS
 (Continued from front page)
FACULTY NEWS
STUDENT NEWS

dam Hughes is guided by the wind,

A and his interest in renewable energy

has taken him to New Zealand,
the Bahamas and a basement laboratory in
Engineering Hall.
The ECE senior is currently at work on an
independent study project on vertical axis
wind turbines under Associate Professor Giri
Venkataramanan and the Wisconsin Electric
Machines and Power Electronics Consortium.
Hughes is researching and testing optimal
designs for inexpensive, low-power wind
turbines that can be installed in rural areas
of developing countries.
His project is a culmination of four years
of experience with renewable energy
technologies and rural communities.
“If you find something you love, you have
to take the initiative to
find opportunities and
learn about what you Independent study and travel
enjoy,” he says. “I have
maximized my opportu- power a passion for renewable energy
nities in order to learn
as much as I can within my field.”
Hughes, a Madison, Wisconsin, native,
began his engineering education focused
on computers. He credits the University of
Wisconsin Hoofers Club with his transition
to renewable energy—he joined the outdoor
group as a freshman and was influenced by
other members with strong environmentalist
beliefs. To learn more about how engineering
could benefit the environment, Hughes joined
the Future Energy Challenge competition. He
also became an active member of Engineers
Without Borders and Business Action for
Sustainable Enterprise, where he worked on
biodiesel engineering and advocacy projects.
“It was great experience,” he says of his
involvement with the student organizations,
especially Future Energy Challenge. “I had a
lot of exposure to renewable energy system
design as a whole.”
In fall 2006, Hughes studied abroad in
New Zealand, where he joined the organization
World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms,
which pairs volunteers with farmers who need
help with sustainable agriculture and design
projects. Hughes branched out from his
biodiesel background and worked on a small
hydroelectric power project.
His experience working with local commu-
nity members to implement power systems
was useful when Hughes returned from New
Zealand and took a co-op with Madison Gas
and Electric upgrading rural power systems.
Adam Hughes (right) with University of Monterrey, Mexico, student Cesar Suarez (left) and
ECE senior Nate Kautzer (center) pictured with a vertical axis turbine.
“The part I enjoyed most was being able to “yaws,” to face into the wind. Alternatively,
travel to the countryside, meet Wisconsin’s vertical axis turbines, which have vertical
local farmers and work together with them rotor shafts and therefore a perpendicular
to ensure safe and reliable access to electricity axis of rotation, can collect wind from any
on their land,” he says. direction without turning. This means the
After his co-op, Hughes traveled again vertical turbines can be implemented in a
to work on renewable energy technologies. wider variety of terrains and don’t waste
He joined Cape Systems Limited, an energy on yawing.
environmental advocacy and consulting “Our project is aimed at people who don’t
firm affiliated with the Island School in the have electricity at all and would like a few
Bahamas. Hughes was part of solar and lights in their home or want to charge a cell
wind energy systems for residential and phone,” Hughes says. “It really needs to be
small commercial clients and helped maintain affordable and simple to construct.”
and upgrade turbines for the school. After his independent
When Hughes returned to UW-Madison study project, Hughes
in fall 2008, he looked for opportunities to will focus on
conduct an independent study project in wrapping up his
renewable energies. He met Venkataramanan, undergraduate
who put him to work on the vertical axis education and
project in spring 2009. graduate in
The project began when an entrepreneur in December
Kenya connected with Madison-based product 2009. He
development company Design Concepts to is currently
create low-cost, low-power turbines for exploring both
terrain with unsteady air flow less than ideal graduate school
for traditional wind turbines. Design Concepts and employment
contacted Venkataramanan, who then involved options in renew-
Hughes in the project. able energy.
Traditional turbines, like the giant ones in
western and southern United States, have
a horizontal axis of rotation that is parallel
with the ground. When the direction of the
wind changes, the whole turbine turns, or

ECE 4 NEWS
 A year of breakthroughs:
Awards and funding for Jack Ma

T
he past year has
been a dynamic
one for Associate
Professor Zhenqiang (Jack) Ma.
In December, Ma was among
67 researchers honored with a
Presidential Early Career Awards
for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) at a
White House ceremony.
The annual PECASE awards honor the
most promising researchers in the United
States based on nominations by nine federal
Congrats to 2009 recipients of prestigious Grainger awards departments and agencies. Ma, nominated
by the Department of Defense for his leading-
On April 14, 2009, nearly 50 UW-Madison engineering faculty, staff, students, friends edge flexible electronics research, will receive
and family members gathered for a banquet at the University of Wisconsin Foundation. $1 million over five years to continue his
A celebration of Grainger Power Engineering Award and Fellowship recipients, the work with nanomembrane-based flexible
event honored nine electrical and computer engineering students who already are making electronics, with emphasis on nanophotonic
meaningful contributions in their field. Sponsored by The Grainger Foundation, the awards devices that detect or emit light.
recognize students for their academic success in the field of power engineering. Pictured In January, Ma and colleagues Max Lagally,
(back row, from left): College of Engineering Dean Paul Peercy, Marcus Hammonds, a professor in Materials Science & Engineering,
Robert Sandy, Andrew Redon, Adam Anders and Jonathan Lee; (front row) Adam Hughes, and University of Michigan Professor Pallab
Zeb Breuckman, Brenton Smith and Jeffrey Gobeli. Bhattacharya were featured on the cover of
Applied Physics Letters. The trio has developed
a flexible light-sensitive material that could
revolutionize photography and other imaging
technologies. The group created curved
Justin Beck (left) and Daniel Gartenberg photodetectors with specially fabricated
with their first-place winning invention, nanomembranes—extremely thin, flexible
Proactive Sleep. sheets of germanium, a very light-sensitive
material often used in high-end imaging
sensors. Researchers then can apply the
nanomembranes to any polymer substrate,
N T O I N V E N TI O N such as a thin, flexible piece of plastic. The
TIO group demonstrated photodetectors curved in
IRA

INNOVATION one direction, but Ma hopes next to develop

• INSP

hemispherical sensors.
TH E U

Most recently, Ma has received a three-

DIS O

year, $402,595 grant from the Office of Naval

NIV

ER
MA

Justin Beck (Continued from front page)
as an undergraduate, which made his senior
year victory all the more special. During his
sophomore year, Beck and four other students
founded UW Innovators, an organization that
pools talents to help inventors develop their
ideas. He was also an exhibitor at Engineering
EXPO 2007 and 2009.
Beck worked as an intern for Google,
Microsoft, Mechantronics and Cuna Mutual
Group, which gave him the confidence to found
his own software company, PerBlue. PerBlue
is working on a variety of projects, including a
SIT
Y O F WIS C O N SI
video game called Parallel Kingdom, and more
than 42,000 user accounts for the game have
already been opened.
Beck’s commitment to innovation and
entrepreneurship is exactly the kind of spirit
Richard Schoofs (BSChE’ 53), the founder and
sponsor of the Schoofs Prize, hopes Innovation
Day attracts. “If you’re creative and enjoy what
you’re doing, you don’t have to worry about
finances because they seem to roll in,” says
Schoofs. “We’ll have couple of millionaires
assuming Proactive Sleep is approved by
Apple for sale in the application store.”
N-
Research to conduct fundamental research
on graphene. Graphene, containing single
layer of carbon atoms, is a new type of
high-mobility material with promise for future
high-speed nanoelectronics.
However, the major obstacle to using
graphene in electronics applications is that it
lacks a bandgap. Current bandgap-opening
methods dramatically reduce the mobility,
meaning any devices made from such
graphene would be slower.
Ma will use this grant to investigate a
novel method to open the bandgap and study
the fundamental physical properties of the
bandgap-opened graphene.

ECE 5 NEWS
 FACULTY NEWS
Hagness wins teaching award
The February 6 issue of Institute,
rofessor Susan C. Hagness has received a 2009

P
the publication of IEEE, featured
Alliant Energy Underkofler Excellence in Teaching
Professor Susan Hagness
Award. Four awards of $3,500 were offered to
among four new fellows. The
faculty or staff from UW System schools within the Alliant
article highlighted Hagness’ medical imaging
Energy service area. Award recipients were especially selected for displaying an
research, particularly her use of computational
uncommon commitment to teaching and effective teaching strategies, as well as
electromagnetics to develop and investigate
enabling former students to make notable achievements.
microwave imaging for breast tissue.
Hagness was recognized for her belief that students are more motivated to
learn if they see the relevance of the subject matter and that students learn most
On March 10, Forbes.com
effectively when they are engaged in an active learning environment that recognizes
featured microgrid technololgy
different learning styles. Hagness also believes that students find learning to be
developed by Professor Emeritus
most meaningful and enjoyable when they see their instructor as an advocate.
Robert Lasseter. The microgrid
She has been involved in developing or revamping multiple engineering classes
concept was one of five trends to watch in the
in her 10 years at UW-Madison. One notable example is her Grand Challenges
2009 Clean Energy Trends report published
course, which was developed for the COE 2010 Initiative. Grand Challenges
by market researcher Clean Edge. Microgrids,
introduces freshmen to engineering disciplines from the perspective of how
local energy grids with their own generation
engineers can address the problems faced by society in the 21st century.
and storage, could provide all or part of the
She also has integrated her research into the classroom by developing
power for a building or neighborhood and
computer-based educational tools for visualizing electromagnetic phenomena.
serve as backup in case of larger grid failures.
Hagness focuses on computational and experimental applied electromagnetics,
Currently, microgrid systems are in place
with an emphasis on bioelectromagnetics and the development of diagnostic
at the Sacramento, California, Municipal
and therapeutic technologies for biomedical applications.
Utility District, the Santa Rita Jail in Alameda
County, California, and in Wal-Mart stores.

In June, Professor Emeritus Don

Novotny received the IEEE Nikola
Tesla Award as part of the 2009
IEEE Awards Presentations. The Vestas partnership (Continued from front page)
IEEE Nikola Tesla Award recognizes Novotny Under the partnership, Vestas will provide funding support beginning this year to
for pioneering contributions to the analysis as many as 10 graduate and undergraduate students working on wind technology
and understanding of AC machine dynamic projects. The company also plans to provide visiting scholars to campus and start
behavior and performance in adjustable- a small research and development facility on the engineering campus.
speed drives. This award is one of the highest The plans grow significantly more ambitious over time, ultimately leading to
professional acclaims that a researcher can the formation of a multidisciplinary center for advanced wind power technology.
receive from IEEE peers. The 2009 award Another stage of the partnership will support named professorships or endowed
winners have the special distinction of chairs with expanded focus on wind-energy research and education. One named
receiving recognition on the occasion of the
professorship will focus on developing new curriculum materials to support the
125th anniversary of the IEEE.
emerging energy and sustainability fields.
“The Vestas partnership is an exciting addition to the range of energy research
A March 8 story in the Air Force
and education at the college,” says COE Dean Paul Peercy. “Once we solve energy
Times quoted Professor Amy
storage issues, wind power potentially could supply as much as 20 percent of
Wendt. In the story, “Female
the nation’s energy needs by 2030. Our students will be highly motivated to
airmen under-represented in tech
participate in this growth industry.”
field,” Wendt pointed out that although high
According to the DOE, recently funded wind-energy projects will begin to
school girls take as many math and science
address market and deployment challenges identified in the 2008 report,
courses as boys do, they are less likely to
“20 Percent Wind Energy by 2030.” Increasing wind energy genera-
continue pursue a career in technical fields.
tion will be a critical factor in achieving the Obama administration’s
In part, she says, it’s marketing: Engineering
goals for clean energy, while also supporting new green jobs.
and other technical fields often receive
To read more about the Vestas partnership, visit:
attention for being technically rigorous and
www.engr.wisc.edu/news/headlines/2009/Apr01.html.
difficult, which might appeal more to men, but
factors that could appeal more to women—
creativity and the ability to make a difference
in people’s lives—aren’t highlighted, she said.

ECE 6 NEWS
POWER STRUGGLE: Advocating for energy consumers
oo-high electricity bills can leave consumers wondering if their energy providers are become the only provider

T cheating them. According to Associate Professor Bernard Lesieutre, they just might be.
Lesieutre and his research group are trying to determine whether electricity suppliers
in an area for a time. “If
they know or can guess
can manipulate the markets to their advantage. that, they can raise their
Current guidelines overseeing energy markets are based on financial models and regulations for prices to make more
market share; however, those models don’t take into account the physical limitations of the energy money,” explains Lesieutre. Lesieutre
grid. Power lines have a limited capacity for how much electricity they can carry before they “They know their electricity
become congested, and too much power can physically warp the cables. Even an exceptionally is no longer substitutable. People can’t get
hot day could reduce the amount of energy the lines can tolerate. their energy from somewhere else because
Because the lines cannot carry any more power, when conditions create congestion, competitors the grid is overloaded.”
might not be able to supply power to where it’s needed. As a result, one power company might Based on sensitivity analyses, Lesieutre’s
group has determined that such inflation
is possible. While there are regulations for
substantial manipulation, current measures
only apply to instances where prices increase
by 300 percent or more.
“Our concern is this high threshold. It
doesn’t detect a lot of times when rates
are noncompetitive,” says Lesieutre. “Our
research is to come up with something with
a much finer resolution than that.”
Having identified scenarios with potential
for market manipulation, the group’s next step
is to develop measures to determine when
companies are taking advantage of those
A map of the scenarios. Ultimately, Lesieutre hopes to
United States electrical grid prevent this market manipulation.

FORECAST: Increased chance of a blackout?

n August 14, 2003, the largest fuse blows to prevent an overload from ety,” says Dobson. “We need reliable electrical

O electrical blackout in U.S. history

knocked out power in the north-
eastern United States and parts of eastern
Canada. For up to four days, the outage
brought the lives of some 50 million people to a
standstill, at a cost of $4 billion to $10 billion.
Six years later, re-
searchers worldwide still
study the event, hoping
(among other things) that
the evidence will help
them identify the perfect
balance between the risk
of another blackout and
Dobson the reliability of a massive,
intricately interconnected
power system. “It’s both a very interesting
problem and an important problem to keep
the lights on and to have enough reliability
in our power system so that we can use
electricity,” says Professor Ian Dobson.
A failure in your home electrical system
might mean that a circuit breaker trips or a
melting down the whole system. Similarly,
the nation’s power grid is designed with
enough redundancy and robustness to handle
isolated failures, such as a lightning strike
or even a scheduled line maintenance.
However, at the heart of a blackout are
failures that propagate, or cascade, through-
out the power system. “The distinctive thing
about cascading failure is that one failure
happens and it maybe weakens the system a
little bit,” says Dobson. “It’s more likely that
the next failure can happen after that.”
And just by chance, he says, the failures
continue to snowball until there’s a blackout.
While blackouts such as the August 2003
event can wreak havoc for days, they actually
are relatively infrequent, occurring every
couple of decades. As a result, it’s not
necessarily cost-effective to take measures
to eliminate them entirely. Extra transmission
lines, for example, add additional reliability—
yet cost more than $1 million per mile to
construct. “There’s a balance here, as a soci-
power, but we also need inexpensive electrical
power. And so how much do we all pay in our
electricity bills in order to pay for reliability?”
Using computer models, Dobson, his
students and colleagues are studying cascad-
ing failures at a very basic level. “Even though
they’re very complicated in all the details, we
can look at blackouts and try to estimate how
big the initial disturbance was and how much,
on average, it tended to propagate,” he says.
“Looking at blackouts in this way is a very
high-level description, but I hope to learn infor-
mation that will help people understand the risk
of these large blackouts and help us to put
approximate numbers on how likely they are
and what are the consequences for our society.”
The result might be that electrical system
operators can “forecast” an increased chance
of a blackout for a given time period. Those
projections, in turn, could help utilities better
determine how much to invest in adding
robustness and redundancy to the nation’s
transmission grid.

ECE 7 NEWS
 Send address changes and other correspondence to:

Turning down the noise helps

researchers ‘listen’ to the brain
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering

T
o study how regions of the brain
1415 Engineering Dr.
communicate, neuroscientists
Madison, WI 53706
often use a technique called
electroencephalography (EEG), which reads
electrical activity in the brain through sensors
on the scalp.
However, the skull and the scalp blur
these EEG readings. In addition, a multitude
of signals from “background” processes
make it difficult to pinpoint electrical activity
corresponding to specific tasks. “It’s like
standing outside a crowded party and trying
to sort out individual conversations,” says
Professor Barry Van Veen.
Van Veen and his students use signal-
processing techniques to filter out that noise
and enable them to study how one area of
the brain influences another (see graphic
below). “The brain is active all the time,” he
says. “It’s in the midst of that background
noise that you have to identify a specific set
of connections associated with a task.”
One research paradigm is working
memory, a type of task-oriented short-term
memory. For example, working memory
allows a person to remember a phone
number long enough to dial it, or to remem-
ber a series of notes or pattern of shapes long enough to repeat it. Neuroscientists hypothesize that several
regions of the brain are connected in working memory tasks. Van Veen and his students use their signal-
processing techniques to identify electrical connections from EEG data and determine how they change
under different conditions, such as task difficulty or recall accuracy.
The group also is interested in how connectivity in the brain changes between waking and sleep,
and more complicated activity such as language processing.
Van Veen is hopeful that, as the research progresses, his methods will provide some insight into
the workings of the brain and lead to better understanding for treatment of medical conditions like
epilepsy or schizophrenia.

Professor Barry
Van Veen (center)
with students
(from left to right)
Patrick Cheung,
Pam Limpiti,
Andrew Bolstad
and Matt Rebholz.

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