People :: ECE 445 - Senior Design Laboratory

People

TA Office Hours

Held weekly in the senior design lab (ECEB 2070/2072). NOTE:

There are no office hours during the weeks of board reviews or final demos.

Chat Room

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Spring 2026 Instructors

Name Area
Prof. Arne Fliflet (Instructor)
3056
afliflet@illinois.edu
microwave generation and applications
Prof. Viktor Gruev (Instructor)

vgruev@illinois.edu
Prof. Joohyung Kim (Instructor)

joohyung@illinois.edu
Prof. Rakesh Kumar (Instructor)

rakeshk@illinois.edu
Prof. Michael Oelze (Instructor)
ECEB 2056
oelze@illinois.edu
Biomedical Imaging, Acoustics, Nondestructive Testing
Prof. Craig Shultz (Instructor)
CSL 220
shultz88@illinois.edu
Haptics, Human Computer Interaction, Signals, Audio, HCI, Actuators, Wearables, Interaction
Prof. Cunjiang Yu (Instructor)

cunjiang@illinois.edu
Prof. Yang Zhao (Instructor)

yzhaoui@illinois.edu
Abdullah Alawad (TA)

aalawad2@illinois.edu
Hossein Ataee (TA)

hataee2@illinois.edu
Haocheng Bill Yang (TA)

hy38@illinois.edu
Gayatri Chandran (TA)

gpc4@illinois.edu
Super-resolution imaging, force microscopy, nanoscale light-matter interactions
Aniket Chatterjee (TA)

aniketc2@illinois.edu
Shiyuan Duan (TA)

sduan9@illinois.edu
Lukas Dumasius (TA)

lukasd2@illinois.edu
Argyrios Gerogiannis (TA)

ag91@illinois.edu
Reinforcement Learning, Bandits, LLM Reasoning, Theoretical Machine Learning
Gerasimos Gerogiannis (TA)

gg24@illinois.edu
Computer Architecture, High-Performance Computing, Hardware Accelerators, FPGA
Manvi Jha (TA)

manvij2@illinois.edu
Computer Vision; Large Language Models; IoT; High Level Synthesis
Jason Jung (TA)

jasondj2@illinois.edu
Imaging Systems, Circuit design, Signal Processing, Computer Vision
Po-Jen Ko (TA)

pojenko2@illinois.edu
Weijie Liang (TA)

weijiel4@illinois.edu
Mingrui Liu (TA)

ml132@illinois.edu
Wesley Pang (TA)

qpang2@illinois.edu
Zhuchen Shao (TA)

zhuchens@illinois.edu
Yulei Shen (TA)

yuleis2@illinois.edu
Chihun Song (TA)

chihuns2@illinois.edu
Wenjing Song (TA)

ws33@illinois.edu
Eric Tang (TA)

leweit2@illinois.edu
IC, EM, proficient with PCB and soldering
Jiaming Xu (TA)

jx30@illinois.edu
Xiaodong Ye (TA)

xye11@illinois.edu
Zhuoer Zhang (TA)

zhuoer3@illinois.edu
Frey Zhao (TA)

yifeiz10@illinois.edu

Other Important People

https://ece.illinois.edu/about/directory/staff

Backpack Buddy - Wearable Proximity/Incident Detection for Nighttime Safety

Jeric Cuasay, Emily Grob, Rahul Kajjam

Backpack Buddy - Wearable Proximity/Incident Detection for Nighttime Safety

Featured Project

# Backpack Buddy

Team Members:

- Student 1 (cuasay2)

- Student 2 (rkajjam2)

- Student 3 (eegrob2)

# Problem

The UIUC campus is relatively a safe place. We have emergency buttons throughout campus and security personnel available regularly. However, crime still occurs and affects students walking alone, especially at night. Staying up late at night working in a classroom or other building can lead to a long scary walk home. Especially when the weather is colder, the streets are generally less populated and walking home at night can feel more dangerous due to the isolation.

# Solution

A wearable system that uses night vision camera sensor and machine learning/intelligence image processing techniques to detect pedestrians approaching the user at an abnormal speed or angle that may be out of sight. The system would vibrate to alert them to look around and check their surroundings.

# Solution Components

## Subsystem 1 - Processing

Processing

Broadcom BCM2711 SoC with a 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 processor or potentially an internal microprocessor such as the LPC15xx series for image processing and voltage step-down to various sensors and actuators

## Subsystem 2 - Power

Power

Converts external battery power to required voltage demands of on-system chips

## Subsystem 3 - Sensors

Sensors

Camera - Night Vision Camera Adjustable-Focus Module 5MP OV5647 to detect objects in the dark

Proximity sensor - detects obstacle distance before turning camera on, potentially ultrasonic or passive infrared sensors such as the HC-SR04

Haptic feedback - Vibrating Mini Motor Disc [ADA1201] to alert user something was identified

# Criterion For Success

The Backpack Buddy will provide an image based solution for identifying any imposing figure within the user's blind spots to help ensure the safety of our user. Our solution is unique as there currently no wearable visual monitoring solutions for night-time safety.

potential stuff:

Potentially: GNSS for location tracking, light sensor for outdoors identification, and heartbeat for user stress levels

camera stabilization

heat camera

Project Videos