FAYETTEVILLE – The University of Arkansas College of Engineering recognized Alan Mantooth and Magda El-Shenawee with Imhoff Awards at its annual Alumni Awards Banquet on Saturday, April 16. This award was established in 2004 by John Imhoff, former head and founder of the industrial engineering department, to recognize faculty members who have excelled in research and teaching in the College of Engineering.

Mantooth, who received the Imhoff Award for Research, is a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Arkansas and the 21^st Century Endowed Chair in Mixed-Signal IC Design and CAD. His research focuses on power electronics and circuit design, and in 2009 his work was recognized with an R&D 100 award. That award, which Mantooth’s research group shares with Arkansas Power Electronics International, ROHM and Sandia National Laboratories, was for the creation of the world’s highest temperature 1,200-volt power module. This module, which can operate at temperatures as high as 250 degrees Celsius, is being commercialized by APEI for insertion into military vehicles. This work has led to two current joint efforts with Toyota into power electronics for future vehicle models such as the Toyota Prius.

In 2010, Mantooth and his doctoral student Avinash Kashyap created the world’s first computer-based model of high-voltage on-chip transistors that can predict what happens to electrical circuits at temperatures from as low as -230 degrees Celsius to as high as 125 degrees Celsius. Using this technology, researchers can design the next generation of electronics for space travel: circuits that can withstand conditions on the moon and Mars without enclosing the electronics in environmentally controlled protection boxes. 

In 2005, Mantooth helped establish the National Center for Reliable Electric Power Transmission. He serves as executive director for this center, as well as two of its constitutive National Science Foundation centers of excellence: the GRid-connected Advanced Power Electronic Systems and the Vertically-Integrated Center on Transformative Energy Research.

Mantooth is a Fellow of IEEE and registered professional engineer in Arkansas, as well as a member of Georgia Tech’s Council of Outstanding Young Alumni and the Arkansas Academy of Electrical Engineers.

Magda El-Shenawee, recipient of the Imhoff Award for Teaching, is a professor of electrical engineering. Her research areas are rough surface scattering, computational electromagnetics, subsurface sensing of buried objects, breast cancer modeling, numerical methods, and microstrip circuits. She is a member of Eta Kappa Nu electrical engineering honor society.

As a teacher, Magda has provided research and study abroad opportunities for both graduate and undergraduate students. Recently, she helped five of her undergraduates participate in the National Science Foundation’s International Research and Engineering Education program. Three of these students studied at the University of Technology of Troyes in France and two spent semester studied at the University of Dundee in Scotland.

El-Shenawee has played a major role in several breast cancer research projects, such as the development of a microwave-imaging system that will help radiologists distinguish between tumors and benign hard tissue and a detection system in which sensors read the unique signals released by activity within and around a growing tumor. In the fall of 2010, she organized the Breast Cancer Research Workshop, which gathered leading breast cancer researchers from many different areas. One of her current goals is locating resources that can help encourage graduate students to enter this important field.

El-Shenawee is currently on sabbatical, doing research at Nice-Sophia Antipolis University in France. Juan Balda, the interim department head of electrical engineering, accepted the award in her place.