The Marquette Embedded SystemS (MESS) Lab - part of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Marquette University - conducts research in the areas of embedded systems, multicore processors, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and software tools for optimization and automation of power distribution networks. Current efforts are concentrated on the following specific topics:

• Embedded systems (uncertainty, aerial/underwater drones, LiDARs in transportation, IoT)
• Network-on-chip based multicore processors and datacenters (energy, reliability)
• FPGAs, reconfigurable computing and parallel computing (algorithms in computer vision)
• Distribution networks and smart buildings
• Simulation and optimization of vehicle battery packs
• Electronic design automation for VLSI and FPGA circuits (placement and routing steps, parallelization techniques based on multithreading and CUDA programming)
  

Notable happenings

• Summer 2023: 3rd offering of the NSF REU Site Program, 10 students.
• April 2023, Graduated Ph.D. student, Wenkai Guan.
  
• October 2022: Served as general co-chair of NoCArc 2022 workshop. Program here. Message from chairs here.  
  
• Fall 2022: On 1st sabbatical.
  
• Summer 2022: 2nd offering of the NSF REU Site Program; 10 students; in-person.
• May 2022, Tim Radtke: 1st place at 2022 Larry Hause Poster Competition of the IEEE Milwaukee Section, in the category "Graduate: Masters Thesis and Ph.D. Dissertation Work". Poster on electronic hardware security of unmanned aerial vehicles.
• December 2021, Wenkai Guan: Best Research Video Award at the 2021 Design Automation Conference (DAC) Young Fellow Poster Session.
  
• Summer 2021: 1st offering of the NSF REU Site Program; 10 students; in-person.
  
• Summer 2021, Will serve as Technical Program Committee (TPC) Co-Chair for Int. Workshop on NoC Architectures (NoCArc), 2021.
  
• Summer 2021, Will serve as Track Co-Chair for IEEE Int. Symposium on Embedded Multicore/Many-core Systems-on-Chip (MCSoC), 2021.
  
• November 2020, Wenkai Guan: Jump Start Award in the Forward Thinking Virtual Poster Session 2020 at Marquette University.
  
• August 2020, New NSF grant (as Co-PI): SCC, Planning Grant: Safety and security of college campuses and their adjacent communities.
• May 2020, Graduated M.S. student, Jinhua Zhang.
  
• April 2020, New NSF grant (as PI): EEC, REU Site: hardware, embedded software, and analytics for environment quality monitoring. Here is the program website with application information.
  
• February 2020, Published paper, which has five undergraduates as co-authors, K. Etta, C. Gilger, A. Maatman, T. Ren, and L. Wedel.
  
• February 2020, Awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor.
  
• November 2019, Started Men as Advocates and Allies Group at Marquette, as part of the Advance Program. 
  
• September 2019, Published paper, which has six undergraduates as co-authors, K. Conley, A. Foyer, P. Hara, T. Janik, J. Reichard, and J. D’Souza.
  
• August 2019, New NSF grant (as PI): EECS, Collaborative Research: Crosslayer optimization of energy and cost through unified modeling of user behavior and storage in multiple buildings.
• August 2019, New NSF grant (as Co-PI): ADVANCE, Moving beyond boundaries to promote inclusive faculty success.
• June 2019, Participated in the Engineering Leadership Academy (ELA, photo here) and the Women's Engineering Leadership Academy (WELA, photo here) in the OPUS College of Engineering with project "Art with LEDs". 
  
• April 2019, Kelsey Conley, Alex Foyer, Patrick Hara, Tom Janik, Jason Reichard, and Jon D’Souza: 1st place at 2019 Larry Hause Poster Competition of the IEEE Milwaukee Section, in the category Undergraduate Research Projects and Senior Design Projects for their poster presentation titled Vibrating Alert Bracelet. 
• November 2018, Graduated M.S. student, Russell L. Marineau.
  
• November 2018, Graduated Ph.D. student, Milad Ghorbani Moghaddam.
  
• April 2018, Graduated M.S. student, Wenkai Guan.
  
• April 2018, William and Nancy Stemper Award for proposal to prototype an underwater drone for water quality monitoring. OPUS College of Engineering, Marquette University.
  
• December 2017, Graduated M.S. student, Kellen D. Carey.
  
• June 2017, WE-GIRLS Summer Camp, 4th edition, (girls grades 6-8; one week of activities; Arduino boards)
  
• April 2017, Graduated M.S. student, Ian J. Barge.
  
• March 2017, Published paper, which has four undergraduates as co-authors, P. Irgens, C. Bader, T. Lé, and D. Saxena.
  
• July 2016, Graduated M.S. student, Nate Zimmerman.
  
• June 2016, WE-GIRLS Summer Camp, 3rd edition, (girls grades 6-8; one week of activities; Arduino boards).
  
• May 2016, Nate Zimmerman (with collaboration from Kellen Carey): 1st place at 2016 Larry Hause Poster Competition of the IEEE Milwaukee Section, in the category Graduate: Masters Thesis and Ph.D. Dissertation Work. Poster on Quadcopter Hardware/Software Design.
  
• April 2016, Co-PI on Legacy Initiative (LI) Grant to develop algorithms for tracking cohorts of insects. OPUS College of Engineering, Marquette University.
  
• April 2016, Published paper, which has an undergraduate as a co-author, Joe Ebel.
  
• April 2016, Milad Ghorbani Moghaddam: 1st place at 2016 Sigma Xi Poster Competition, Marquette University, ECE Section. Poster on full-system simulation of Network-on-Chip based H.264 video decoders.
  
• November 2015, Awarded teaching grant with title "Working on a start-up: a case for an applied entrepreneurship oriented course for senior undergraduates" by the Student Centered Learning Projects Program in the OPUS College of Engineering, Marquette University.
  
• August 2015, New NSF grant (as PI): Uncertainty modeling and design methods for heterogeneous embedded systems.
  
• June 2015, WE-GIRLS Summer Camp, 2nd edition, (girls grades 6-8; one week of activities; Arduino boards).
  
• May 2015, Nate Zimmerman: 1st place at 2015 Larry Hause Poster Competition of the IEEE Milwaukee Section, in the category "Graduate: Masters Thesis and Ph.D. Dissertation Work". Poster on electronic speed controller for quadcopters.
  
• May 2015, Altera hardware donation: six DE1-SoC boards; will be used in EECE-4740 (Advanced VHDL Design and FPGAs).
  
• April 2015, Became senior member of IEEE.
  
• November 2014, Awarded teaching grant with title "Emulating working in a company: a case for hands-on multiple projects oriented course for senior undergraduates" by the Student Centered Learning Projects Program in the OPUS College of Engineering, Marquette University.
  
• May 2014, Graduated the 1st Ph.D. student, Hamed Sajjadi Kia (co-advised with Sudarshan K. Srinivasan of NDSU).
  
• May 2014, Graduated M.S. student, Alexandre Yasuo Yamamoto (co-advised with Ivan Lima of NDSU).
  
• January 2014, Co-PI on M-WERC award for proposal titled "Energy storage, demand response, and renewable energy interaction at building, campus, and district level".
  
• December 2013, Awarded Summer Faculty Fellowship (SFF) and Regular Research Grant (RRG) from Committee on Research (COR) at Marquette University.
  
• August 2013, Moved from SUNY at Buffalo to Marquette University (thus, solving my two-body problem, finally).
  
• August 2012, Moved from NDSU to State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo.
  
• July 2012, WEE-GIRLS Summer Camp, 1st edition, (girls grades 6-8; one week of activities; Arduino boards).
  
• October 2011, Awarded NDSU Development Foundation grant with title "Graphics processing unit platforms to update NDSU courses".
  
• May 2011, New NSF grant (as PI): Reliability of systems-on-chip: unified modeling and dynamic reliability management.
  
• May 2011, Graduated M.S. student, Kianoosh Karami.
  
• April 2011, Graduated the 1st M.S. student, Syed Shihab Ullah.
  
• June 2010, Co-PI on John Deere Power Electronics Laboratory Award.
  
• December 2009, Published 1st paper written with an undergraduate student, Vitor de Paulo.
  
• February 2009, Hardware donations from Altera and Xilinx.
  
• August 2008, Joined North Dakota State University (NDSU) after having worked four years in Silicon Valley for Magma Design Automation (now part of Synopsys).