News & events
- Excellence in Teaching Award Summer 2021 presented to Mr. Levente Buzas
- Excellence in Teaching Award Spring 2021 presented to Mr. Lei Zhao
- Excellence in Teaching Award Fall 2020 presented to Mr. Erfan Khorram
- Excellence in Teaching Award Fall 2019 presented to Mr. Nicholas Bruce
- Excellence in Teaching Award Summer 2019 presented to Ms. Xue Cai
- Professor Lin Cai Featured in Douglas Magazine
- Professor Reuven Gordon has been named a Fellow of the IEEE
- Excellence in Teaching Award Spring 2019 Presented to Mr. Ujwal Reddy Gondhi
- Professor Lin Cai receives 2019 E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship
- Excellence in Teaching Award Fall 2018 presented to Mr. Tunai Marques
- Excellence In Teaching Award Summer 2018 presented to Mr. Onyekachi Nwamuo
- Excellence In Teaching Award Summer 2018 presented to Ms. Ioana Sevcenco
- Professor Baniasadi Recognized for Collaboration with French Researchers
- Excellence In Teaching Award Spring 2018 presented to Mr. Alireza Rahimpour
- Excellence In Teaching Award Fall 2017 presented to Mr. Mostafa Esmaeili
- Excellence In Teaching Award Summer 2017 presented to Mr. Mostafa Esmaeili
- Excellence In Teaching Award Spring 2017 presented to Mr. Wen-Jing Wang
- Excellence In Teaching Award Fall 2016 presented to Mr. Peter Kremler
2017

Dr. Alexandra Branzan-Albu ran the ECE 399 course this year with participation from Ocean Networks Canada. The top designs competed to see who had the best set of designs. Congratulations to the winners of the design competition.
1st Prize:
Project: Intelliplug
Team Members: Riley Confrey, Alex Cote, Thomas Mastromonaco, Noah Rondeau, Sam Wheating
2nd Prize:
Project: Light Intensity over Time
Team Members: Zenara Daley, Gurjyot Grewal, Alex Fattouche, Cailan St Martin
3rd Prize:
Project: Detection of Bio-Fouling
Team Members: Chenchen Guo, Yukun Huang, Hamzah Mansour, Jake Runzer, Willy Su Yep

Congratulations to Reuven Gordon for receiving one of the Faculty of Engineering's Teaching Awards. Dr. Reuven Gordon has been an exceptional scholar and educator in our faculty since 2002. He is known for his dedication, leadership and effectiveness as a teacher.
Dr. Gordon has worked hard to engage his undergraduate students. An example of this is seen in his work with the ELEC220 Electrical Properties of Materials course, a course that was historically considered a challenging course to teach. His efforts have ensured that the material developed for this course is engaging and involves real world examples. His student evaluations are consistently outstanding and involve highly positive comments.
Dr. Gordon has also brought funding and support for graduate training as a Program Director for the "Materials for Enhanced Energy Technologies" or MEET program. Through collaboration with co-applicants, Dr. Gordon has helped develop a highly interdisciplinary and collaborative course that involves using webinars across different departments from four universities (SFU, University of Waterloo and University of Toronto). The course has been highly praised for the excellence of the instruction and the high relevance of the skills and information for the graduate students' future careers.
Four MTIS (Master of Engineering in Telecommunications and Information Security) teams have been shortlisted for the SWIFT Canada Challenge (A national competition on new cyber security solution for the banking industry).
The teams will fly to and spend one week in Toronto this October (all expenses paid), attend the SIBOS conference (over 8,000 international delegates from the financial sectors), be trained and coached in various workshops, and compete in the final challenge against 6 other top teams from across Canada, vying for the $20,000 grand prize.
On July 13th, Julie Payette is Canada's next Governor General. She is best known as a member of Canada's Astronaut Corps but she is also an accomplished electrical and computer engineer. She earned a Bachelors of Engineering in Electrical Engineering from McGill University in 1986 and obtained her Masters of Applied Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto in 1990. She has worked on high performance computing and voice recognition for IBM Canada and Bell Northern Research.
Payette holds an honorary degree from the University of Victoria (2002) and received the Engineers Canada Gold Medal - the highest honour from the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers - in 2010.
Sources:
CBC Website,
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/julie-payette-governor-general-1.4202793,
Accessed July 13, 2017.
CSA Website, http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/astronauts/biopayette.asp,
Accessed July 13, 2017.
Wikipedia entry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Payette, Accessed
July 13, 2017.

Jens Bornemann a Fellow of their institute. They have decided to award
Dr. Bornemann this award to 'recognize his excellence in engineering and
services to the profession and to society.' The council of the EIC has
since 1963 elected a limited number of people to the grade of Fellow.
The institute currently elects a maximum of 20 engineers each year to
Fellow grade. To be elected as a Fellow of the EIC is to be recognized
as one of the top engineering professionals in Canada. Dr. Bornemann
will be officially awarded his fellowship at a ceremony on April 1st in
Gatineau-Ottawa, Quebec.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1994 has been
recognized as a University of Victoria Distinguished Alumni. This award
is given to graduates of the University of Victoria who have made
significant contributions to education and their professions as well as
to society in general. Maher Fahmi will be presented with his award
during a special event held by the university.
Maher received his BASc in Engineering Physics with Great Distinction,
from the University of Saskatchewan. He served in the Canadian Navy as a
combat systems engineering officer and was the recipient of the
Westinghouse Award and Paramax Sword.
After leaving the Navy in 1992, Maher returned to university and
received his MASc. in Electrical Engineering from UVic. Maher then
joined PMC-Sierra, and was the director of product development
responsible for the design of semiconductor products for the
telecommunications markets, including SONET, ATM and PDH networks.
In 2004, Maher left PMC to co-found Teradici Corporation, a
semiconductor company specializing in the thin client computing. In
2010, Maher is now VP of product development at Microsemi Corporation.
Maher holds several patents and has contributed to numerous standards
bodies, including the International Telecommunications Union, the IEEE
and the ATM Forum.
2016
- Design Engineering Mentorship Program
- Excellence in Teaching Award Spring 2016 presented to Mr. Ahmed Al Balushi
- PhD student Yiming Huo, Dr. Xiaodai Dong and their collaborators Dr. Lianming Li, Min Xie, Dr. Wei Xu received the Best Student Paper Award at IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Wireless Broadband (ICUWB)
- Excellence In Teaching Award Summer 2016 presented to Mr. Mostafa Esmaeili
- Excellence In Teaching Award Fall 2015 presented to Mr. Babak Manouchehrinia
- Excellence In Teaching Award Summer 2015 presented to Mr. Danh Ho
- Optical Spring Detects Single Molecules
- ECE Students’ Capstone Design Project led to a $5 million provincial grant to Ocean Networks Canada for further investigation and development
- In Memoriam: Subhasis Nandi
2015
- Two ECE inventors have high hopes for robotic tree planter
- ECE Graduate Student Plays a Significant Role in Model United Nations Convention on Climate Change
- PhD students Le Liang, Yongyu Dai, Dr. Xiaodai Dong and their collaborator Dr. Wei Xu received the Best Paper Award at IEEE/CIC International Conference on Communications
- PhD student Yiming Huo, Dr. Xiaodai Dong and their collaborator Dr. Ping Lu received the Excellent Student Paper Award at the 12th IEEE International Conference on Solid-State and Integrated Circuit Technology
- Excellence In Teaching Award Spring 2015 presented to Ahmed Al Balushi
- Dr. Ashoka Bhat and his PhD student Dr. Yimian Du received the third prize paper award at The 2014 International Power Electronics Conference
- ECE students won at Western Engineering Competition
- Excellence In Teaching Award Fall 2014 Presented to Nagendrappa Harischandrappa
2014
- Listening to the "voice" of proteins
- Dr. Wu-Sheng Lu and Jie Yan receive Best Paper Award at the 2014 IEEE Asia Pacific Conference on Circults and Systems
- Excellence In Teaching Award Summer 2014 Presented to Nagendrappa Harischandrappa
- Excellence In Teaching Award Spring 2014 Presented to Hannan Lohrasbi
- Mr. Serge Vincent recipient of NSERC's prestigious Alexander Graham Bell Award
- Ms. Ioana Sevcenco recipient of NSERC's prestigious Alexander Graham Bell Award
- Fourth-Year Design Project teams featured in Victoria Times Colonist
- Excellence In Teaching Award Fall 2013 Presented to Hannan Lohrasbi
2013
- Excellence In Teaching Award Summer 2013 Presented to Shantanav Bhowmick
- Excellence In Teaching Award Spring 2013 Presented to Shantanav Bhowmick
- Mr. Hannan Lohrasbi succeeds again at the World Semi Contact (kickboxing) point fighting championship
- Excellence In Teaching Award Fall 2012 presented to Ioana Sevcenco
- Dr. Haytham El Miligi facilitates major software donation from Xilinx
- Dr. Eric Manning elected Fellow of Canadian Society of Senior Engineers
2012
- Excellence In Teaching Award Summer 2012 presented to Saeed Mosayyebpour
- Excellence In Teaching Award Spring 2012 presented to Joel Niebergal
- Our Department ranks 5th in Canada and is among the top 150 ECE Departments in the world (2012 QS World University Ranking)
- From Lego to mechatronics
- Mr. Hannan Lohrasbi, an ECE PhD student, succeeds at the World Semi Contact (kickboxing) point fighting championship
- Dr. Aaron Gulliver has been elected Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering
- Prof. Gebali's Book a Best Seller with over 6000 downloads
- Mr. Tomas Torres-Bonet received the NSERC CGS Master fellowship
- Dr. Haytham El Miligi is the recipient of the 2012 Governor General's Gold Medal Award
- Mr. Marcelo Brocardo won the prestigious NSERC Vanier Award
- ECE ranked among top-200 in the world
- Dr. R.L. Kirlin - Recipient of the 2012 Tau Beta Pi Alumnus Eminent Engineer Award
2011
- In Memoriam: Rüdiger Vahldieck
- ECE Students Excelled in Western Engineering Competition
- Dr. Andreas Antoniou and Dr. Reuven Gordon, 2 of the 7 recipients of the 2011 Craigdarroch Research Awards
- Dr. Wolfgang Hoefer is the recipient of the IMS 2011 Pioneer Award
- ECE's Engineering Entrepreneurship program ranked 7th most innovative organization in B.C.
- ECE Students Placed Third in ASUS Xtion PRO Developer Challenge
- Dr. Andreas Antoniou - Recipient of the 2011 UVic Legacy Award for Research
2010
2009
- New National Network on Computer Security has a connection to ECE
- All for McNaughton - IEEE Student Branch profiled in IEEE Potentials
- Professor W.J.R. Hoefer receives the 2009 IEEE Canada A.G.L. McNaughton Gold Medal
- Prof. Andreas Antoniou receives IEEE Circuits and Systems Society's Education Award
- Professor W.J.R. Hoefer inducted into the Canadian Academy of Engineering
- Team EV Motorcycle selected to compete in the national final of the IEEE Canada TELUS Competition
- AUVic Took Second Place in International Competition
- NSERC National Network for Faster Diagnosis of Cancers Announced with UVic Researchers
- EE graduate won IEEE Canada Student Paper Competition
2008
- Dr. Lin Cai's co-authored paper receives the IEEE ICC 2008 Best Paper Award (Advances in Networks and Internet Symposium)
- Dr. Branzan Albu co-authored paper receives Best Poster Award at the 18th Annual Canadian Conference on Intelligent Systems
- Ph.D. candidate A. Ghassemi's and Dr. T. A. Gulliver's co-authored paper receives the CNSR 2008 Best Paper Award
- Dr. Benedikt Huber Received the International Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) Award
- Dr. Thomas Darcie elected Fellow of the Optical Society of America
2007
- AUVic Succeeds at Canadian Engineering Competition
- ECE Grad-student gets listed in additional Marquis' Who's Who publications
- Dr. Reuven Gordon's paper selected to be included in the highlights of 2006
- Dr. Wolfgang Hoefer was bestowed with the degree of Doctor of Engineering honoris causa from the Technical University of Munich
- L. Kiran S. Kumar receives MITACS award
- Dr. Xiaodai Dong received one of the newly launched NSERC Discovery Accelarator Supplements
- Dr. Subhasis Nandi receives one of the PES Prize Paper awards from the IEEE Power Engineering Society
2006
2005
2003
Senate Committee on Academic Standards meets to approve Convocation lists
Isshoni: Henry Shimizu’s Paintings of New Denver Internment

Breaking the Mold

Chemistry seminar: Bing Joe Hwang, “Oxygen Evolution Reaction Mechanism of Layered Double Hydroxides”
Dr. Bing Joe Hwang
NanoElectrochemistry Laboratory, Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology
Sustainable Energy Development Center, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei 106, Taiwan
National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center, Hsin-Chu, 30076, Taiwan
The active phase and catalytic mechanisms of Ni-based layered double hydroxide (LDHs) materials for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) have no common consensus and remain controversial. Moreover,engineering the site activity and the number of active sites of LDHs is an efficient approach to advance the OER activity as the thickness and stacking structure of the LDHs layer limits thecatalytic activity[1]. This talk will present an in situ approach of tuning the site activity and number of active sites of NiX-LDHs, which exhibit the superior OER performance. The fundamentalmechanistic insights and active phases during the OER process are characterized by in-operando techniques along with the computational DFT calculations, revealing that Ni site constitutes the OERactivity and dynamically generated NiOOH moiety is the active phase. We also prove that Ni sites undergo a reversible oxidation state under the working conditions to create active NiOOH species whichcatalyze the water to generate oxygen. These findings suggest that Ni(III) phase in NiX-LDHs is the OER active site and X promotes the electronic properties of Ni sites. Utilizing in situ/in operandotechniques and theoretical calculation, we find that the in-situ intercalation of guest anions allows the expansion of the LDH layers and keeps the active NiOOH species under the oxidation state of+3 via electron coupling, which ultimately tunes the site populations and site activity toward the superior OER activity, respectively. This work provides insight into strategies to design the nextgeneration of highly active catalysts for water electrolysis and fuel cell technologies.
UVic United Way Trivia event

Are you a trivia buff? Join the UVic United Way committee for a fun lunchtime online trivia game.
Hell to Pay: Merchants and the Visualization of Morality in 14th C Italy
Creative Futures: Documenting the Climate Crisis
