Stanford Engineering student wins international competition for efforts to miniaturize ultrasound device

PhD candidate in electrical engineering says encouragement from his advisor helped propel him toward $10,000 cash prize.

A Stanford Engineering student won the $10,000 first place prize at the third annual Broadcom Foundation University Research Competition.

Jonathon Spaulding, a Stanford PhD student in electrical engineering, hopes to build smaller, cheaper, and more efficient handheld ultrasound systems.

“Imagine having these devices in every doctor’s office, or taking ultrasound scanners into the field where imaging technology is limited,” Spaulding said, adding that he is continuing work in the hope of developing a hardware prototype the size of a common flash drive.

Left to right: Broadcom Co-Founder, Chairman of the Board and Chief Technical Officer Henry Samueli with First Place Winner Stanford Graduate Student Jonathon Spaulding

He entered the international competition at the urging of his advisor, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering Boris Murmann.

“I have not in my PhD career entered any kind of research competition before,” Spaulding said.

He credited Yonina Eldar, a professor of electrical engineering at Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, for laying the mathematical foundations for the approach he used in his research. Spaulding said his research seeks to provide a “hardware proof of concept for her work.”

The graduate-level engineering competition, held at the beginning of Broadcom’s annual Technical Conference, invited a dozen students to present their research to a panel of judges.

Spaulding won after a round of three-minute presentations and poster sessions judged by engineers from Broadcom, a U.S. semiconductor company.  The judges rated the competitors on their presentation skills, the quality and level of the science involved and the applicability of the projects in the real world. Second and third place prizes were awarded to students from Israel and Belgium, respectively.

Last modified Fri, 15 Aug, 2014 at 16:28