Ramesh Rao

Ramesh Rao is the director of the Qualcomm Institute, University of California San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). In 2004, he was appointed the first holder of the Qualcomm Endowed Chair in Telecommunications and Information Technologies in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, where he has been a faculty member since 1984. Prior to becoming the Calit2 UCSD division director in 2001, he served as the director of UCSD's Center for Wireless Communications (CWC). In addition to directing Calit2 UCSD, Prof. Rao is involved on a day-to-day basis with a wide variety of interdisciplinary and collaborative research initiatives, leading several major projects at Calit2. He has been a lead investigator on dozens of major federal-, state-, foundation-, defense-, and industry-funded grants, including the NIH-funded Wireless Internet Information System for Medical Response in Disasters (WIISARD), Self-Scaling Systems for Mass Casualty Management (WIISARD SAGE), and the Multimedia Telemedical Diagnostic System (STRokE DOC), the NSF-funded Responding to Crises and Unexpected Events (RESCUE) and ResponSphere projects, multiple projects involving cognitive networking, as well as leading several international collaborations. He has authored more than 230 peer-reviewed technical papers on a wide range of research topics in wireless communications including architectures, protocols, performance analysis of computer and communication networks, adaptive systems, energy-efficient communications, disaster management applications and health-related applications, among others. He is currently engaged in numerous projects to bridge emerging technologies with medicine and healthcare and investigating the power of utilizing information technologies to enhance, even transform, healthcare resources, knowledge bases, and outcomes.

Shahrokh Yadegari

Shahrokh Yadegari, composer, sound designer, and producer, has collaborated with such artists as Peter Sellars, Robert Woodruff, Ann Hamilton, Christine Brewer, Gabor Tompa, Maya Beiser, Steven Schick, Lucie Tiberghien, Shahrokh Moshkin Ghalam, and Siamak Shajarian. He has performed and his productions, compositions, and designs have been presented internationally in such venues as the Carnegie Hall, Royce Hall, Festival of Arts and Ideas, OFF-D’Avignon Festival, International Theatre Festival in Cluj Romania, Ravinia Festival, Ruhr-Triennale, Vienna Festival, Holland Festival, Tirgan Festival, Forum Barcelona, Japan America Theatre, The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), the Institut für Neue Musik und Musikerziehung (Darmstadt), Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, and Contemporary Museum of Art, San Diego.

Yadegari holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University, a master’s in media arts and sciences from MIT’s Media Lab, and a Ph.D. in music from University of California San Diego. He has worked as a unix kernel programmer at such companies as Interactive Systems Corporation, Sun Microsystems, and ICL Inc. He has also worked at Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), and is one of the founders and the artistic director of Kereshmeh Records and Persian Arts Society, organizations dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of Persian traditional and new music. Yadegari is currently on the faculty of the department of Music at UC San Diego, and at the Qualcomm Institute he directs two groups, Sonic Arts Research and Development and the Initiative for Digital Exploration of Arts and Sciences (IDEAS).

Shirley Meng

Dr. Shirley Meng received her Ph.D. in Advance Materials for Micro & Nano Systems from the Singapore-MIT Alliance in 2005, after which she worked as a postdoc research fellow and became a research scientist at MIT. Shirley currently holds the Zable Endowed Chair Professor in Energy Technologies and is Professor of NanoEngineering and Materials Science, University of California San Diego (UCSD). She is the founding Director of Sustainable Power and Energy Center (http://spec.ucsd.edu). Shirley received the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award in 2011, UCSD Chancellor’s Interdisciplinary Collaboratories Award in 2013, Science Award in Electrochemistry by BASF and Volkswagen in 2014, C.W. Tobias Young Investigator Award of the Electrochemical Society (2016), IUMRS-Singapore Young Scientist Research Award (2017),International Coalition for Energy Storage and Innovation (ICESI) Inaugural Young Career Award (2018), American Chemical Society ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces Young Investigator Award (2018) and Finalist for the Blavatnik National Award (2018). Her research group – Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion (LESC) – focuses on functional nano and micro-scale materials for energy storage and conversion. The more recent programs include the design, synthesis, processing, and operando characterization of energy storage materials in advanced rechargeable batteries; new intercalation materials for sodium ion batteries; and advanced flow batteries for grids large scale storage. Shirley is the author and co-author of more than 160 peer-reviewed journal articles, 1 book chapter and 6 patents. She serves on the executive committee for battery division at the Electrochemical Society and she is the technical Editor for Journal of Power Sources.

G.P. Li

G.P. Li is a professor at the University of California, Irvine, with appointments in three departments: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, and Biomedical Engineering. At UCI, he also serves as division director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) and director of the Integrated Nanosystems Research Facility in The Henry Samueli School of Engineering. Li holds 18 U.S. patents, has 15 patents pending and has published more than 280 research papers involving microelectronic technologies, microwave circuit design, Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) for communication and biomedical instrumentation applications, and bio-nano-IT technology. He received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in Taiwan, and his master’s and doctorate degrees, also in electrical engineering, from UCLA. During his tenure as a research staff member and manager of the technology group at IBM’s T. J. Watson Research Center (1983-1988), Li worked in the area of VLSI technology and led a research/development team to transfer the technology into the marketplace. In 1987, he chaired a committee charged with defining IBM’s semiconductor technology roadmap beyond the year 2000. A member of numerous technical committees at professional conferences, Li was chair of the Taiwan VLSI Technology, Circuit, and System Conference in 2006. He also served as chair of the executive committee for electronics manufacturing research and new materials at the University of California. Li received an outstanding research contribution award from IBM (1987), two outstanding engineering professor awards from UCI (1997 and 2001), the UCI Innovators Award (2005), best paper award from the ITC International Telemetering Conference (2005), and outstanding Asian American and Pacific Islander Community Leaders and Role Models award by the Asian Business Association of Orange County (2009). Li has been involved in several startup companies as a co-founder or member of the technical advisory board. Currently, he directs TechPortal, a technology business incubator housed at the UCI division of Calit2, which supports and nurtures young companies and university researchers commercializing their technologies. His current research interests focus on developing technologies for efficient energy utilization and consumption, and e-health.