Dr. Steven M. Bowers, an assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Virginia has received the ECE Department Faculty Research Award.This award is given for outstanding innovations, breakthroughs, and impact in research and scholarship. Dr. Bower's research team collective contributions to the development and advancement of ultra-low power wakeup receivers have resulted in technologies critical to applications such as healthcare, smart cities, environmental and industrial monitoring, security and surveillance, and agriculture.
“Our approach has enabled wireless systems that do not require any battery replacement for several years,” Bowers said. “Our research has resulted in more than three orders of magnitude improvement in the sensitivity of energy-efficient receivers that consume as little power as self-leakage rate of a coin-cell battery.”
Dr. Bowers appreciates the support of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) through the NZero program and colleagues in the University of Virginia ECE department. “The collaborative environment of our department provides the opportunity to innovate through co-design across traditionally separated disciplines such as radio frequency, analog, digital and electromagnetic hardware design and to leverage the incredible complexity available in integrated circuits,” Bowers said.