2018 Outstanding Graduate Student Awards for Research
Congratulations to ECE students Hwaider Lin, PhD’18, and Yuzhang Lin, PhD’18, who have been selected for the 2018 Outstanding Graduate Student Awards for Research in Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Engineering. Hwaider’s advisor is Professor Nian Sun and Yuzhang’s advisor is Professor Ali Abur.
Hwaider arrived at Northeastern from National Tsing Hua University with a keen interest in designing, fabricating, and testing devices, such as mobile phones and radar technology, that send and receive radio-frequency microwaves. In 2014, Hwaider joined his advisor, Professor Nian Sun, in a quest to create a magnetoelectric antenna—a giant step toward device miniaturization. Within two years, their group succeeded, making headlines in leading journals and the news media, and a patent is in the works. A creative scientist who received his department’s Distinguished Research Assistant Award last year, Hwaider has made 15 presentations at international conferences and published more than 20 papers. He has also enthusiastically mentored many undergraduates.
Yuzhang came to Northeastern from Tsinghua University to pursue a doctorate in electrical engineering with Professor Ali Abur. Invited to improve Abur’s new method for parameter error detection in power systems, Yuzhang dispatched the task quickly. He then went on to uncover fundamental reasons behind undetectable errors and dramatically improve the method’s implementation speed and robustness, making it applicable to large-scale power grids. Extending this work, he designed optimal measurement configurations to eliminate undetectable cyber and random attacks to the grid. Beyond publishing 13 conference papers and journal articles in the most prestigious journal in his field, Yuzhang found time to mentor undergraduates, and for two years made key contributions to a successful industry project.