Congratulations, Class of 2026!
UW ECE offers our congratulations to the graduating Class of 2026. We wish you all the best for the future!
https://ece.uw.edu/spotlight/https-www-ece-uw-edu-news-events-graduation-2/
https://ece.uw.edu/spotlight/2026-graduation-student-speakers/
Two student speakers selected for UW ECE Graduation
UW ECE is proud to announce that Khushbu Patel (MSECE ‘26) and Kathryn Fehme (BSECE ‘26) have been selected to speak at this year's Graduation Ceremony.
https://ece.uw.edu/spotlight/2026-nsf-grfp-anders-pearson/
UW ECE undergraduate Anders Pearson awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
UW ECE undergraduate student Anders Pearson has been awarded a fellowship by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). The NSF GRFP recognizes outstanding graduate students pursuing research-based degrees in STEM.
https://ece.uw.edu/spotlight/2026-graduation-jared-k-jordan/
Jared K. Jordan of Capital One to speak at UW ECE Graduation
UW ECE is proud to announce that alumnus Jared K. Jordan (BSEE ‘05) will serve as honored guest speaker for the UW ECE 2026 Graduation Ceremony. Jordan is a managing vice president at Capital One, a leading financial services corporation, and serves as head of Capital One Garage, the company’s innovation accelerator.
https://ece.uw.edu/spotlight/a-new-type-of-optical-chip/
UW research team creates a new type of optical chip
A research team led by UW ECE and Physics Professor Arka Majumdar has engineered a new type of optical microchip that is low power, electrically reconfigurable, and can be mass-produced. This programmable photonic integrated circuit could be used in a wide range of advanced technologies.
https://www.washington.edu/news/2026/04/13/qt3-quantum-computing-testbed-lab-dilution-fridge/
At quantum testbed lab, researchers across the UW probe ‘spooky’ mysteries of quantum phenomena
UW ECE Assistant Professor Max Parsons is featured in this UW News article about the Quantum Technologies Training and Testbed lab.
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[_finalHTML:protected] => https://ece.uw.edu/spotlight/https-www-ece-uw-edu-news-events-graduation-2/Congratulations, Class of 2026!
UW ECE offers our congratulations to the graduating Class of 2026. We wish you all the best for the future!
Two student speakers selected for UW ECE Graduation
UW ECE is proud to announce that Khushbu Patel (MSECE ‘26) and Kathryn Fehme (BSECE ‘26) have been selected to speak at this year's Graduation Ceremony.
UW ECE undergraduate Anders Pearson awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
UW ECE undergraduate student Anders Pearson has been awarded a fellowship by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). The NSF GRFP recognizes outstanding graduate students pursuing research-based degrees in STEM.
Jared K. Jordan of Capital One to speak at UW ECE Graduation
UW ECE is proud to announce that alumnus Jared K. Jordan (BSEE ‘05) will serve as honored guest speaker for the UW ECE 2026 Graduation Ceremony. Jordan is a managing vice president at Capital One, a leading financial services corporation, and serves as head of Capital One Garage, the company’s innovation accelerator.
UW research team creates a new type of optical chip
A research team led by UW ECE and Physics Professor Arka Majumdar has engineered a new type of optical microchip that is low power, electrically reconfigurable, and can be mass-produced. This programmable photonic integrated circuit could be used in a wide range of advanced technologies.
At quantum testbed lab, researchers across the UW probe ‘spooky’ mysteries of quantum phenomena
UW ECE Assistant Professor Max Parsons is featured in this UW News article about the Quantum Technologies Training and Testbed lab.
Khushbu Patel (MSECE '26), at left, and Kathryn Fehme (BSECE '26), at right, will speak at this year's Graduation Ceremony, which will take place in the Alaska Airlines Arena at Hec Edmundson Pavilion on Wednesday, June 10, from 7 to 9 p.m.[/caption]
UW ECE is proud to announce that in addition to UW ECE alumnus Jared K. Jordan (BSEE ‘05), two students have been selected to speak at our 2026 Graduation Ceremony. Khushbu Patel (MSECE ‘26) will offer remarks on behalf of graduate students, and Kathryn Fehme (BSECE ‘26) will represent undergraduates. Patel and Fehme were selected for this honor because of their academic achievements, extracurricular activities, and service to the Department. This year’s Graduation Ceremony will take place in the Alaska Airlines Arena at Hec Edmundson Pavilion on Wednesday, June 10, from 7 to 9 p.m. The event will be presided over by UW ECE Professor and Chair Eric Klavins.
“We have two outstanding students from our graduating class speaking at this year’s Graduation Ceremony,” Klavins said. “Khushbu has done exemplary work in our Professional Master’s program while working full-time in aerospace engineering. Kathryn has excelled academically and in her internships while gaining hands-on project experience here at UW ECE. I’m very much looking forward to hearing what they both have to say.”
Learn more about both students below:
Graduate student speaker
Khushbu Patel
(MSECE ‘26)
[caption id="attachment_41082" align="alignright" width="575"]
Khushbu Patel (MSECE '26)[/caption]
Khushbu Patel is graduating from UW ECE’s Professional Master’s Program in electrical and computer engineering. She pursued her degree while working as an engineering leader at Gravitics, an aerospace startup designing and manufacturing space station modules. There, she leads multidisciplinary teams developing onboard systems, such as avionics and flight software, for space station technologies.
She has worked across the space industry, bridging the gap between simulation and flight operations for complex systems. Her previous roles at Virgin Orbit and Relativity Space focused on high-fidelity test systems, vehicle software, launch vehicle avionics, and critical life support technologies.
Khushbu’s passion for space began at an early age, leading her to an internship at NASA Johnson Space Center, followed by studies in aerospace engineering and computational sciences at The University of Texas at Austin. She has since built a career dedicated to advancing humanity’s presence in space.
Beyond her technical work, Khushbu is passionate about mentorship. Through the UW ECE Industry Mentorship Program, Wired for Success, and For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Robotics, she has mentored students pursuing engineering pathways, with a focus on encouraging young women in STEM. After graduating, Khushbu hopes to continue building technologies that push humanity forward while helping others see a place for themselves in engineering and beyond.
Undergraduate student speaker
Kathryn Fehme
(BSECE ‘26)
[caption id="attachment_41084" align="alignright" width="575"]
Kathryn Fehme (BSECE '26)[/caption]
Kathryn Fehme is graduating with a bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering. As a child, Fehme dreamed of becoming an engineer, which inspired her passion for aerospace and technical innovation. During her time at UW ECE, she specialized in control systems and hardware through internships and hands-on engineering experience. Her senior capstone project, completed in partnership with General Dynamics, was designing and building a 3D drone simulator in MATLAB using advanced control system concepts.
Fehme’s experiences in aerospace and engineering leadership shaped her passion for solving complex technical challenges while building strong professional communities. After two internships with Boeing, she will continue her career in Boeing’s flight test sector, working on sensors and signal conditioning while pursuing a dual master’s degree focused on electrical engineering and engineering leadership.
Beyond her technical work, Fehme is dedicated to mentorship and creating opportunities for future engineers. Through the Society of Women Engineers, where she served in the UW student chapter as vice president of corporate relations, she mentored fellow students and helped connect aspiring engineers with industry professionals through professional development, recruitment, and networking opportunities. After graduation, Fehme plans to remain involved with SWE and continue mentoring students pursuing careers in STEM.
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UW ECE undergraduate student Anders Pearson has been awarded a fellowship by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). The NSF GRFP recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics at accredited U.S. institutions.[/caption]
UW ECE is proud to announce that undergraduate student Anders Pearson has been awarded a fellowship by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). The NSF GRFP recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics at accredited U.S. institutions. The fellowship provides a competitive annual stipend for three years, along with a cost-of-education allowance provided in partnership with the student’s institution.
Pearson is part of UW ECE’s Combined Bachelor of Science – Master of Science program, and is expected to earn his bachelor’s degree this spring before entering the Department’s master’s degree program in the fall.
“I am very honored to receive this award and thankful for those who helped me achieve it,” Pearson said. “I plan to take full advantage of this opportunity to explore ambitious research directions.”
Pearson is advised by UW ECE Professor Joshua Smith, who holds a joint appointment in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Smith leads several high-profile research efforts at the University, including work on wireless power transfer systems for lunar environments. In Smith’s Sensor Systems Laboratory, Pearson conducts research at the intersection of machine learning and wireless communication networks. This work is supported by Smith’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Early Stage Innovations grant, “Deep Contact Graph Routing for Lunar Operations.”
Specifically, Pearson is developing machine-learning-driven frameworks to model radio wave propagation in extreme environments, such as the surface of the moon. His research will support future NASA lunar surface missions and help enable more resilient wireless communication networks on Earth. He is lead author of an upcoming paper about this work and presented his research at the 2026 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP). As a graduate student under Smith’s supervision, Pearson plans to continue research related to 6G and non-terrestrial wireless communication networks.
“Anders is incredibly focused, productive, and creative,” Smith said. “The results he has already delivered as an undergraduate would be impressive for a doctoral student, so I can’t wait to see what he accomplishes in graduate school.”
To view all 2026 NSF GRFP recipients nationwide, visit the NSF GRFP website.
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UW ECE is proud to announce that alumnus Jared K. Jordan (BSEE ‘05) will serve as honored guest speaker for the UW ECE 2026 Graduation Ceremony, which will take place in the Hec Edmundson Pavilion on Wednesday, June 10, 2026, from 7 to 9 p.m. Jordan is a managing vice president at Capital One, a leading financial services corporation, and serves as head of Capital One Garage, the company’s innovation accelerator.[/caption]
The University of Washington Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering is proud to announce that alumnus Jared K. Jordan (BSEE ‘05) will serve as honored guest speaker for the UW ECE 2026 Graduation Ceremony. This year’s ceremony will take place in the Hec Edmundson Pavilion on Wednesday, June 10, 2026, from 7 to 9 p.m. The event will be presided over by UW ECE Professor and Chair Eric Klavins.
“We are excited to welcome Jared as our graduation speaker. He has built a distinguished career as an engineering leader across several top-tier companies,” Klavins said. “His work has impacted countless people around the world, and he is widely respected for his commitment to building and supporting diverse, inclusive teams. I very much look forward to hearing what he will share with our graduating class.”
Jordan is a managing vice president at Capital One, a leading financial services corporation, and serves as head of Capital One Garage, the company’s innovation accelerator. In this role, he leads multidisciplinary teams across engineering and product development to advance innovation in developer platforms, artificial intelligence labs, and customer experiences. His work is helping transform how Capital One delivers smarter, technology-driven solutions to millions of people worldwide.
Before joining Capital One, Jordan built a distinguished career leading engineering teams at renowned technology companies, such as Google, YouTube, Netflix, and Microsoft. At Google, he served as director of engineering for Gmail, where he helped shape AI-powered tools that changed how millions of people interact with email. At YouTube, he led the launch of Primetime Channels and developed features supporting live sports and on-demand streaming. While at Netflix, he drove global engineering initiatives that contributed to significant market growth. Earlier in his career at Microsoft, he developed and deployed business-wide solutions supporting company objectives.
Throughout his career, Jordan has been a champion of inclusive, high-impact engineering cultures that value diverse perspectives and approaches. He is actively involved in multicultural community initiatives and mentoring programs that support underrepresented groups in technology, helping to cultivate the next generation of technology leaders. His work reflects a deep commitment to mentorship, organizational excellence, and turning bold ideas into reality.
In addition to receiving his bachelor’s degree from UW ECE, Jordan is now pursuing a master’s degree in business administration from Cornell University’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. Widely recognized as an outstanding leader, he is also a member of the UW College of Engineering Advisory Board.
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[post_content] => By Wayne Gillam / UW ECE News
[caption id="attachment_40966" align="alignright" width="600"]
A research team led by UW ECE and Physics Professor Arka Majumdar has engineered a new type of optical microchip that is low power, electrically reconfigurable, and can be mass-produced. This programmable photonic integrated circuit (closeup shown above) could be used in a wide range of applications, including information processing, sensing, imaging, and artificial intelligence. Photo by Jayita Dutta.[/caption]
As technology advances, and the demand for faster, higher-bandwidth, and more energy-efficient data processing continues to grow, scientists and engineers search for ways to improve electronic systems. One avenue they have been exploring is optoelectronics — the study and application of electronic devices that interface with light by detecting, emitting, or converting it into electrical signals. Optoelectronics offers significant advantages over conventional electronics, including faster speed, higher bandwidth, lower power consumption, and improved reliability.
One particularly promising direction in optoelectronics has been the development of the photonic integrated circuit — an optical microchip that uses light (photons) instead of electricity (electrons) to sense, process, and transmit information. These optical chips are already being used in many advanced technologies today, such as high-speed fiber-optic communications, data center interconnects, sensors for autonomous vehicles, and hardware accelerators for machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Despite these advantages, photonic integrated circuits present a major challenge: each optoelectronic application requires a separate photonic integrated circuit design, much like application-specific integrated circuits, or ASIC chips for conventional electronics. This lengthens the prototyping cycle and increases costs. As a result, engineers have been developing programmable photonic integrated circuits, which enable the circuit to be reconfigured by users after manufacturing to perform specific, customized computational and signal-processing tasks. This type of circuit is an optical counterpart to the more commonly known electronic field-programmable gate array, or FPGA, which is used in many of today’s high-performance and advanced technologies.
However, programmable photonic integrated circuits present their own challenges. Many consume significant power, occupy large physical footprints, and suffer from unwanted heat transfer in densely packed systems. High power demand arises because most optical chips require a constant flow of electricity, even during static operation. These limitations have slowed the adoption of programmable photonics beyond specialized research environments.
[caption id="attachment_40968" align="alignleft" width="450"]
UW ECE and Physics Professor Arka Majumdar (left) and UW ECE alumnus Rui Chen (Ph.D. ECE ‘25, right), who was the lead author of the Science Advances paper. Chen is a postdoctoral research associate in the Photonics Materials Lab at MIT, and he was a doctoral student in Majumdar’s lab when this research took place. Photo of Majumdar by Ryan Hoover / UW ECE.[/caption]
Now, as described in the journal Science Advances, a research team led by UW ECE and Physics Professor Arka Majumdar has engineered a new type of optical chip — a programmable photonic integrated circuit that is low power, electrically reconfigurable, and can be mass-produced. This programmable microchip addresses issues with device footprint and heat transfers by using phase change materials — a technology that consumes no static power. The chip has the potential to be applied in a wide range of technologies, including information processing, sensing, imaging, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
“This optical chip could help to accelerate the prototyping cycle while reducing power consumption for applications like AI computing. Our study is also the first time someone has shown that these kinds of optical circuits can be controlled with electrical signals, reliably and very accurately,” said lead author and UW ECE alumnus Rui Chen (Ph.D. ECE ‘25). Chen is a postdoctoral research associate in the Photonics Materials Lab at MIT, and he was a doctoral student in Majumdar’s lab when the bulk of this research took place. He added, “We built our circuit using common foundry processes, which demonstrates the scalability of the system.”
Chen and Majumdar’s research team fabricated their chip in the Washington Nanofabrication Facility, on silicon wafers provided by Intel Corporation. Intel and the National Science Foundation’s Future of Semiconductors Program provided funding and support for the work, which took place over the last four years in Majumdar’s lab and at the WNF. Other team members included UW ECE doctoral students Andrew Tang, Jayita Dutta, and Virat Tara as well as UW alumni Julian Ye (BS Physics ‘25) and Zhuoran Fang (Ph.D. EE ‘23).
Low power, reconfigurable, scalable
A key advantage of the team’s optical chip is that it consumes substantially less power than its counterparts. It accomplishes this by using phase-change materials to store, process, and transmit data. Phase-change materials, which are used to house data on CDs and DVDs, can contain information in a stable, “nonvolatile” state, requiring little to no power to do so. Until now, the challenge with using phase-change materials in programmable photonic integrated circuits has been optical loss and data bit precision, but Majumdar and Chen’s team found ways to address both of those issues.
“Typical ways of building optical circuits require you to input constant power into your system. That’s problematic for a lot of applications that require reconfiguration of the circuit, such as artificial intelligence,” Chen said. “Here, we’ve created a system you can change and leave in place without any power supply, and it maintains its state by itself.”
This optical chip can also be reconfigured, or reprogrammed, by the user for multiple applications. Chen said he saw this chip as a platform for enabling a wide range of technologies, especially high-demand, complex computation applications, such as training neural networks in artificial intelligence. And because the research team has demonstrated the scalability of the circuit by fabricating it using conventional foundry processes, this chip is on a trajectory to move from the lab into the real world.
Looking ahead
This ongoing work highlights the growing role of UW ECE in advancing scalable optoelectronic technologies, but Chen noted that there is still more research and development to do before their optical chip will be ready for the marketplace. The UW and MIT are working together on this long-term effort, and Chen intends to continue his collaboration with Majumdar.
“An important next step is to test this optical chip in some real applications,” Chen said. “We’d like to put this circuit in application scenarios, such as AI computing, optical switches in data center infrastructure, and optical sensing.”
Another upcoming project will be for the team to build a larger-scale optoelectronic system containing the optical chip. This system will include the chip, an electrical control board, and automated algorithms. Chen said that he and Majumdar will also be working on increasing the speed and number of times the phase-change materials in the circuit can be switched from one state to another. This impacts the types of applications the chip might be a good fit for.
“This new optical chip provides a pretty powerful platform for the advancement of optoelectronics in the sense that it can promise a larger-scale system, it doesn’t need a complicated control scheme, and it doesn’t require static power,” Chen said. “Those factors, taken together, promise scalable optical systems, which eventually could lead to lower power consumption and reduced cost for many advanced applications and technologies coming online today.”
For more information about this research, read “NEO-PGA: Nonvolatile electro-optically programmable gate array” in Science Advances.
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[post_content] => [caption id="attachment_41079" align="alignright" width="575"] Khushbu Patel (MSECE '26), at left, and Kathryn Fehme (BSECE '26), at right, will speak at this year's Graduation Ceremony, which will take place in the Alaska Airlines Arena at Hec Edmundson Pavilion on Wednesday, June 10, from 7 to 9 p.m.[/caption]
UW ECE is proud to announce that in addition to UW ECE alumnus Jared K. Jordan (BSEE ‘05), two students have been selected to speak at our 2026 Graduation Ceremony. Khushbu Patel (MSECE ‘26) will offer remarks on behalf of graduate students, and Kathryn Fehme (BSECE ‘26) will represent undergraduates. Patel and Fehme were selected for this honor because of their academic achievements, extracurricular activities, and service to the Department. This year’s Graduation Ceremony will take place in the Alaska Airlines Arena at Hec Edmundson Pavilion on Wednesday, June 10, from 7 to 9 p.m. The event will be presided over by UW ECE Professor and Chair Eric Klavins.
“We have two outstanding students from our graduating class speaking at this year’s Graduation Ceremony,” Klavins said. “Khushbu has done exemplary work in our Professional Master’s program while working full-time in aerospace engineering. Kathryn has excelled academically and in her internships while gaining hands-on project experience here at UW ECE. I’m very much looking forward to hearing what they both have to say.”
Learn more about both students below:
Graduate student speaker
Khushbu Patel
(MSECE ‘26)
[caption id="attachment_41082" align="alignright" width="575"] Khushbu Patel (MSECE '26)[/caption]
Khushbu Patel is graduating from UW ECE’s Professional Master’s Program in electrical and computer engineering. She pursued her degree while working as an engineering leader at Gravitics, an aerospace startup designing and manufacturing space station modules. There, she leads multidisciplinary teams developing onboard systems, such as avionics and flight software, for space station technologies.
She has worked across the space industry, bridging the gap between simulation and flight operations for complex systems. Her previous roles at Virgin Orbit and Relativity Space focused on high-fidelity test systems, vehicle software, launch vehicle avionics, and critical life support technologies.
Khushbu’s passion for space began at an early age, leading her to an internship at NASA Johnson Space Center, followed by studies in aerospace engineering and computational sciences at The University of Texas at Austin. She has since built a career dedicated to advancing humanity’s presence in space.
Beyond her technical work, Khushbu is passionate about mentorship. Through the UW ECE Industry Mentorship Program, Wired for Success, and For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Robotics, she has mentored students pursuing engineering pathways, with a focus on encouraging young women in STEM. After graduating, Khushbu hopes to continue building technologies that push humanity forward while helping others see a place for themselves in engineering and beyond.
Undergraduate student speaker
Kathryn Fehme
(BSECE ‘26)
[caption id="attachment_41084" align="alignright" width="575"] Kathryn Fehme (BSECE '26)[/caption]
Kathryn Fehme is graduating with a bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering. As a child, Fehme dreamed of becoming an engineer, which inspired her passion for aerospace and technical innovation. During her time at UW ECE, she specialized in control systems and hardware through internships and hands-on engineering experience. Her senior capstone project, completed in partnership with General Dynamics, was designing and building a 3D drone simulator in MATLAB using advanced control system concepts.
Fehme’s experiences in aerospace and engineering leadership shaped her passion for solving complex technical challenges while building strong professional communities. After two internships with Boeing, she will continue her career in Boeing’s flight test sector, working on sensors and signal conditioning while pursuing a dual master’s degree focused on electrical engineering and engineering leadership.
Beyond her technical work, Fehme is dedicated to mentorship and creating opportunities for future engineers. Through the Society of Women Engineers, where she served in the UW student chapter as vice president of corporate relations, she mentored fellow students and helped connect aspiring engineers with industry professionals through professional development, recruitment, and networking opportunities. After graduation, Fehme plans to remain involved with SWE and continue mentoring students pursuing careers in STEM.
[post_title] => Two student speakers selected for UW ECE Graduation
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[post_content] => [caption id="attachment_41029" align="alignright" width="550"] UW ECE undergraduate student Anders Pearson has been awarded a fellowship by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). The NSF GRFP recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics at accredited U.S. institutions.[/caption]
UW ECE is proud to announce that undergraduate student Anders Pearson has been awarded a fellowship by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). The NSF GRFP recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics at accredited U.S. institutions. The fellowship provides a competitive annual stipend for three years, along with a cost-of-education allowance provided in partnership with the student’s institution.
Pearson is part of UW ECE’s Combined Bachelor of Science – Master of Science program, and is expected to earn his bachelor’s degree this spring before entering the Department’s master’s degree program in the fall.
“I am very honored to receive this award and thankful for those who helped me achieve it,” Pearson said. “I plan to take full advantage of this opportunity to explore ambitious research directions.”
Pearson is advised by UW ECE Professor Joshua Smith, who holds a joint appointment in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Smith leads several high-profile research efforts at the University, including work on wireless power transfer systems for lunar environments. In Smith’s Sensor Systems Laboratory, Pearson conducts research at the intersection of machine learning and wireless communication networks. This work is supported by Smith’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Early Stage Innovations grant, “Deep Contact Graph Routing for Lunar Operations.”
Specifically, Pearson is developing machine-learning-driven frameworks to model radio wave propagation in extreme environments, such as the surface of the moon. His research will support future NASA lunar surface missions and help enable more resilient wireless communication networks on Earth. He is lead author of an upcoming paper about this work and presented his research at the 2026 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP). As a graduate student under Smith’s supervision, Pearson plans to continue research related to 6G and non-terrestrial wireless communication networks.
“Anders is incredibly focused, productive, and creative,” Smith said. “The results he has already delivered as an undergraduate would be impressive for a doctoral student, so I can’t wait to see what he accomplishes in graduate school.”
To view all 2026 NSF GRFP recipients nationwide, visit the NSF GRFP website.
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[post_content] => [caption id="attachment_41013" align="alignright" width="525"] UW ECE is proud to announce that alumnus Jared K. Jordan (BSEE ‘05) will serve as honored guest speaker for the UW ECE 2026 Graduation Ceremony, which will take place in the Hec Edmundson Pavilion on Wednesday, June 10, 2026, from 7 to 9 p.m. Jordan is a managing vice president at Capital One, a leading financial services corporation, and serves as head of Capital One Garage, the company’s innovation accelerator.[/caption]
The University of Washington Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering is proud to announce that alumnus Jared K. Jordan (BSEE ‘05) will serve as honored guest speaker for the UW ECE 2026 Graduation Ceremony. This year’s ceremony will take place in the Hec Edmundson Pavilion on Wednesday, June 10, 2026, from 7 to 9 p.m. The event will be presided over by UW ECE Professor and Chair Eric Klavins.
“We are excited to welcome Jared as our graduation speaker. He has built a distinguished career as an engineering leader across several top-tier companies,” Klavins said. “His work has impacted countless people around the world, and he is widely respected for his commitment to building and supporting diverse, inclusive teams. I very much look forward to hearing what he will share with our graduating class.”
Jordan is a managing vice president at Capital One, a leading financial services corporation, and serves as head of Capital One Garage, the company’s innovation accelerator. In this role, he leads multidisciplinary teams across engineering and product development to advance innovation in developer platforms, artificial intelligence labs, and customer experiences. His work is helping transform how Capital One delivers smarter, technology-driven solutions to millions of people worldwide.
Before joining Capital One, Jordan built a distinguished career leading engineering teams at renowned technology companies, such as Google, YouTube, Netflix, and Microsoft. At Google, he served as director of engineering for Gmail, where he helped shape AI-powered tools that changed how millions of people interact with email. At YouTube, he led the launch of Primetime Channels and developed features supporting live sports and on-demand streaming. While at Netflix, he drove global engineering initiatives that contributed to significant market growth. Earlier in his career at Microsoft, he developed and deployed business-wide solutions supporting company objectives.
Throughout his career, Jordan has been a champion of inclusive, high-impact engineering cultures that value diverse perspectives and approaches. He is actively involved in multicultural community initiatives and mentoring programs that support underrepresented groups in technology, helping to cultivate the next generation of technology leaders. His work reflects a deep commitment to mentorship, organizational excellence, and turning bold ideas into reality.
In addition to receiving his bachelor’s degree from UW ECE, Jordan is now pursuing a master’s degree in business administration from Cornell University’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. Widely recognized as an outstanding leader, he is also a member of the UW College of Engineering Advisory Board.
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[post_date] => 2026-04-30 09:21:23
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[post_content] => By Wayne Gillam / UW ECE News
[caption id="attachment_40966" align="alignright" width="600"] A research team led by UW ECE and Physics Professor Arka Majumdar has engineered a new type of optical microchip that is low power, electrically reconfigurable, and can be mass-produced. This programmable photonic integrated circuit (closeup shown above) could be used in a wide range of applications, including information processing, sensing, imaging, and artificial intelligence. Photo by Jayita Dutta.[/caption]
As technology advances, and the demand for faster, higher-bandwidth, and more energy-efficient data processing continues to grow, scientists and engineers search for ways to improve electronic systems. One avenue they have been exploring is optoelectronics — the study and application of electronic devices that interface with light by detecting, emitting, or converting it into electrical signals. Optoelectronics offers significant advantages over conventional electronics, including faster speed, higher bandwidth, lower power consumption, and improved reliability.
One particularly promising direction in optoelectronics has been the development of the photonic integrated circuit — an optical microchip that uses light (photons) instead of electricity (electrons) to sense, process, and transmit information. These optical chips are already being used in many advanced technologies today, such as high-speed fiber-optic communications, data center interconnects, sensors for autonomous vehicles, and hardware accelerators for machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Despite these advantages, photonic integrated circuits present a major challenge: each optoelectronic application requires a separate photonic integrated circuit design, much like application-specific integrated circuits, or ASIC chips for conventional electronics. This lengthens the prototyping cycle and increases costs. As a result, engineers have been developing programmable photonic integrated circuits, which enable the circuit to be reconfigured by users after manufacturing to perform specific, customized computational and signal-processing tasks. This type of circuit is an optical counterpart to the more commonly known electronic field-programmable gate array, or FPGA, which is used in many of today’s high-performance and advanced technologies.
However, programmable photonic integrated circuits present their own challenges. Many consume significant power, occupy large physical footprints, and suffer from unwanted heat transfer in densely packed systems. High power demand arises because most optical chips require a constant flow of electricity, even during static operation. These limitations have slowed the adoption of programmable photonics beyond specialized research environments.
[caption id="attachment_40968" align="alignleft" width="450"] UW ECE and Physics Professor Arka Majumdar (left) and UW ECE alumnus Rui Chen (Ph.D. ECE ‘25, right), who was the lead author of the Science Advances paper. Chen is a postdoctoral research associate in the Photonics Materials Lab at MIT, and he was a doctoral student in Majumdar’s lab when this research took place. Photo of Majumdar by Ryan Hoover / UW ECE.[/caption]
Now, as described in the journal Science Advances, a research team led by UW ECE and Physics Professor Arka Majumdar has engineered a new type of optical chip — a programmable photonic integrated circuit that is low power, electrically reconfigurable, and can be mass-produced. This programmable microchip addresses issues with device footprint and heat transfers by using phase change materials — a technology that consumes no static power. The chip has the potential to be applied in a wide range of technologies, including information processing, sensing, imaging, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
“This optical chip could help to accelerate the prototyping cycle while reducing power consumption for applications like AI computing. Our study is also the first time someone has shown that these kinds of optical circuits can be controlled with electrical signals, reliably and very accurately,” said lead author and UW ECE alumnus Rui Chen (Ph.D. ECE ‘25). Chen is a postdoctoral research associate in the Photonics Materials Lab at MIT, and he was a doctoral student in Majumdar’s lab when the bulk of this research took place. He added, “We built our circuit using common foundry processes, which demonstrates the scalability of the system.”
Chen and Majumdar’s research team fabricated their chip in the Washington Nanofabrication Facility, on silicon wafers provided by Intel Corporation. Intel and the National Science Foundation’s Future of Semiconductors Program provided funding and support for the work, which took place over the last four years in Majumdar’s lab and at the WNF. Other team members included UW ECE doctoral students Andrew Tang, Jayita Dutta, and Virat Tara as well as UW alumni Julian Ye (BS Physics ‘25) and Zhuoran Fang (Ph.D. EE ‘23).
Low power, reconfigurable, scalable
A key advantage of the team’s optical chip is that it consumes substantially less power than its counterparts. It accomplishes this by using phase-change materials to store, process, and transmit data. Phase-change materials, which are used to house data on CDs and DVDs, can contain information in a stable, “nonvolatile” state, requiring little to no power to do so. Until now, the challenge with using phase-change materials in programmable photonic integrated circuits has been optical loss and data bit precision, but Majumdar and Chen’s team found ways to address both of those issues.
“Typical ways of building optical circuits require you to input constant power into your system. That’s problematic for a lot of applications that require reconfiguration of the circuit, such as artificial intelligence,” Chen said. “Here, we’ve created a system you can change and leave in place without any power supply, and it maintains its state by itself.”
This optical chip can also be reconfigured, or reprogrammed, by the user for multiple applications. Chen said he saw this chip as a platform for enabling a wide range of technologies, especially high-demand, complex computation applications, such as training neural networks in artificial intelligence. And because the research team has demonstrated the scalability of the circuit by fabricating it using conventional foundry processes, this chip is on a trajectory to move from the lab into the real world.
Looking ahead
This ongoing work highlights the growing role of UW ECE in advancing scalable optoelectronic technologies, but Chen noted that there is still more research and development to do before their optical chip will be ready for the marketplace. The UW and MIT are working together on this long-term effort, and Chen intends to continue his collaboration with Majumdar.
“An important next step is to test this optical chip in some real applications,” Chen said. “We’d like to put this circuit in application scenarios, such as AI computing, optical switches in data center infrastructure, and optical sensing.”
Another upcoming project will be for the team to build a larger-scale optoelectronic system containing the optical chip. This system will include the chip, an electrical control board, and automated algorithms. Chen said that he and Majumdar will also be working on increasing the speed and number of times the phase-change materials in the circuit can be switched from one state to another. This impacts the types of applications the chip might be a good fit for.
“This new optical chip provides a pretty powerful platform for the advancement of optoelectronics in the sense that it can promise a larger-scale system, it doesn’t need a complicated control scheme, and it doesn’t require static power,” Chen said. “Those factors, taken together, promise scalable optical systems, which eventually could lead to lower power consumption and reduced cost for many advanced applications and technologies coming online today.”
For more information about this research, read “NEO-PGA: Nonvolatile electro-optically programmable gate array” in Science Advances.
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[post_title] => At quantum testbed lab, researchers across the UW probe ‘spooky’ mysteries of quantum phenomena
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