Microsoft Awards Prestigious Fellowship to Student Working at GEDC

Gerald DeJean, left, a graduate student who recently won a prestigious fellowship from Microsoft Corp., is pictured here with his adviser, Prof. Emmanouil Tentzeris inside an Anechoic Chamber, used for near/far field antenna measurements.

Gerald DeJean, a Georgia Tech graduate student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is one of 12 young U.S. and Canadian scientists to win a prestigious Microsoft Corp. fellowship.

DeJean, an electrical engineering student associated with the Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC), was recently notified he had won a two-year Microsoft Research Graduate Fellowship.

Among other things, the graduate-study award covers tuition and fees. It also provides about $20,000 a year in living expenses and about $2,000 a year in conference and travel money.

ìI feel really good about getting this award,î said DeJean. ìThis funding will help me further my work in the design and development of wideband compact antennas and antenna arrays in planar or multilayer technologies for telecom, space and millimeter-wave applications. I will have the opportunity to collaborate with some of the best minds in RF design as well as researchers in other fields such as materials science and physics.î

DeJean is advised by Prof. Emmanouil Tentzeris, a Georgia Tech associate professor who heads the ATHENA research group and is one of the founding faculty of the High-Frequency Research Lab of GEDC.

DeJean is a doctoral candidate in the ATHENA group, which is part of the High-Frequency Lab at the GEDC. The ATHENA group explores both advances in electromagnetic simulator technologies and its applications to the design and optimization of modern RF/Microwave systems.

ìGerald fully deserved this prestigious award for his breakthrough work in the area of compact planar antennas for WLAN and RFID applications,î Tentzeris said. ìHe is one of the smartest students Iíve ever had, and I expect he soon will be one of the young rising stars in the antenna research area.î

DeJean, a resident of Los Angeles, holds a masterís degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech. He received a bachelorís in electrical engineering from Michigan State University in 2001.

DeJean traveled to Seattle to compete for the fellowship with more than a hundred other applicants.

ìI presented Microsoft with some of the research I had done,î he said. ìThere were some new ideas that I thought they might be interested in.î

Joy Laskar, director of the GEDC, said DeJeanís award reflects the level of GEDCís work in high-frequency high-speed electronic design and utilization of new technology in next generation communication applications.

ìGerald is representative of the gifted young scientists we see here at GEDC,î Laskar said. ìWe are proud of his achievements.î

This yearís other Microsoft award winners come from a variety of United States and Canadian universities that include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of British Columbia, the University of California Berkeley, the University of Toronto and the University of Washington.

Microsoft Research Graduate Fellowships, first awarded in 1997, were previously given only to applicants from a list of eight top universities compiled by Microsoft. A Microsoft spokesman said that this year the awards were opened to any second- or third-year graduate students in computer science, electrical engineering or mathematics departments.

Georgia Tech has participated in the award competition since its inception. DeJean is Georgia Techís second recipient of a Microsoft Research Graduate Fellowship. The award was given in 2000-2001 to Arno Sch'dl.

The awards are given for two academic years, but can be extended to a third year at Microsoftís discretion. Recipients of the award also receive a TabletPC preloaded with Microsoft software.