SUMMER 2025
ECE NEWS ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER ENGINEERING
Fang Peng Elected to National Academy of Engineering
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his past February, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced that University of Pittsburgh Professor Fang Peng, an internationally acclaimed power electronics researcher, is among the newest cohort elected to the academy. The NAE is recognizing Peng for “contributions to the development of high-powered electronic technologies for advanced power grid and energy conversion.” Peng, the RK Mellon Endowed Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of the Energy GRID Institute, is among the 128 new members and 22 international members announced today by NAE President John L. Anderson.
The members will be inducted at the NAE Annual Meeting this fall, October 5 in Washington, DC. Peng joins Anna Balazs, Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, and Michele V. Manuel, U. S. Steel Dean of Engineering, as Pitt’s NAE members, as well as Distinguished University Professor Emeritus Savio L-Y. Woo (1994), and alumni Marwan A. Simaan, PhD MSEE ‘70 (2000) and John A. Swanson, PhD ‘66 (2009). “Fang is a phenomenal researcher in modernization of electric power systems, which has tremendous national security importance for our nation,” Dean Manuel said. “His career contributions to electric power research and new collaboration with our diverse grid programs have helped to establish Pitt and the Swanson School as one of the nation’s leaders in this critical field.” continued on next page
Annual Publication of the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering
Transforming Immunotherapy Design Natasa Miskov-Zivanov Receives CAREER Award for Developing a System to Design New Cancer Immunotherapies
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atasa Miskov-Zivanov, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award of $581,503 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for her project titled “Artificial Intelligence-Driven Framework for Efficient and Explainable Immunotherapy Design.” Through her novel approach and the development of an automated system that leverages AI and knowledge graphs to design more effective lymphocytes, she hopes to transform the design of life-saving immunotherapies. Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell-based therapies have revolutionized the treatment of blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma, demonstrating the power of synthetic signaling receptors for immunotherapy. For these therapies, patient T cells are harvested, engineered with a CAR, and then reintroduced into the patient. However, CAR T cells have
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