Jake Smith and Emily Backer graduated with their MSEE this May.  Both helped tremendously with the microwave power transfer work in the lab, with Jake working on energy-harvesting circuits to drive sample light display and Emily designing a thin, holographic reflector arrays for high-powered sources.  Jake now joins Texas Instruments in Dallas, TX while Emily is staying local in Duluth, GA as she starts a position at ViaSat.  Congratulations on the great contributions you both made to our program as well as the new jobs with top-notch companies!

We should also note that Zach Silva successfully completed his MSEE, as noted earlier, but will be returning to GT for the PhD program in the Fall.

After the recent cancellation of Apple’s rollout of the AirPower, the wireless charging solution for the many different personal iDevices we have all bought over the years, there has been a lot of speculation about why these charging technologies have been so difficult to launch.  A recent WSJ article by Joanna Stern presents a nice article about the difficulties (and quotes a GT emag prof as well).  You can read the rest of the article in the Wall Street Journal here “Apple Didn’t Solve Our Horrible Gadget-Charging Mess and Nobody Else Has, Either.”

The author does a good job of explaining (with PlayDoh) some lay-physics about why wireless charge mats are so difficult to achieve: