Virginia Tech® home

Greetings 2015

Dear MICS Friends,

Happy New Year! Happy 2015!

I hope you took a few days off to enjoy the holiday season with family, relatives, and/or friends. I visited Korea in early January and spent a few days with my Mother and relatives in a farm village, where I grew up. The remote village has not changed much in spite of the rapid development of Korea over the past half-century. I could not access Internet at the village and felt completely isolated from the rest of the world. However, once I gave up my desire to check e-mails, it was quite relaxing, at least for a few days.

As I look back at the year 2014, MICS indeed accomplished a lot. A major accomplishment was the establishment of a sleek measurement lab. MICS took over another research group’s lab space in early 2013 and took more than a year to reorganize the lab space. The MICS lab, with about 1,400 square feet, is one of the largest labs of the ECE department, and it was visited by several high level people last year including a VP of Lockheed Martin, President of KETI, Korea, and CTO of MaxLinear. Another major accomplishment was the attraction of four companies to the MICS Industry Affiliate Program (IAP). Considering MICS is a relatively young group, it is an achievement that MICS can be proud of. It is also a good indicator that MICS research areas are well aligned with industry needs. In addition, MICS faculty members did well on funded research. Profs. Koh and Raman have been awarded with DARPA projects, and Prof. Ha a couple of new projects on energy harvesting.

MICS people work hard, but we don’t forget there is life outside of work. MICS people took one Saturday off during the peak of fall foliage season and hiked along the Appalachian Trail and had dinner together at a local restaurant famous for Southern home style cooking. As the year drew to end, MICS people and their families held an annual dinner party at Holiday Inn. Every MICS person presented his/her most memorable travel experience, and everyone enjoyed the relaxed environment as well as the delicious food.

The MICS group will have “MICS Day” in March, and I would like to invite you to attend. It is an all-day event that gives the opportunity for MICS people to present research activities and for industry people to introduce opportunities and research needs of their companies. Before I close this New Year’s greeting, I want to reiterate the goal of MICS. MICS wants to be one of the best research groups in the nation in analog and RF IC design and systems by 2020.  MICS looks forward to continued collaboration with you in student recruiting and research! Thank you very much.

 

Dong Ha, Director, January 28, 2015