ECE alums, faculty, staff honored at Oct. 26, 2001 ENGINEERS' DAY

COE Distinguished Service Awards

James R. Jaeschke (Large image)

As the owner and manager of the Pewaukee, Wisconsin, based Electronic Systems Consultants, James R. Jaeschke is building on more than 35 years of experience in the power electronics field.

He earned both his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from UW-Madison, then worked at Bendix Research Labs before serving two years in the U.S. Army, including one year in Vietnam. He joined the Louis Allis Corporation in 1970 where he learned the industrial control and power conversion trade by applying eddy current, DC, AC 6 step, and AC PWM drive systems. He moved to the Eaton Corporation in Milwaukee in 1975. For more than a quarter century, Jaeschke advanced in the company, serving as an electrical design group supervisor, the manager of corporate research and development in both the electrical and the power conversion groups and served five years as the U.S. delegate to an IEC group establishing drive standards.

The Eaton Corporation assisted in forming the Wisconsin Electric Machines and Power Electronics Consortium (WEMPEC). Jaeschke helped the company become a contributor to the consortium.

In March of 1999, Jaeschke retired from Eaton and formed his own consulting company to help customers develop power electronic systems for fuel cells and power circuit designs, and study power line harmonic issues.

Jaeschke's contributions to the industry are best illustrated in his collection of patents, which include motor drive circuitry, a general purpose AC switch and special fiber optic- and radiant energy-activated solid-state switches.

He and his wife, Judy, have four children and two grandchildren.

Kenneth P. Phillips (Large image)

Kenneth P. Phillips has become a key leader in power electronics, influencing the industry's advanced research directions, particularly in electric drive technology. Early on, he applied his knowledge of electromechanical concepts to solid-state power conversion techniques in the textile, machine-tool, test-stand, Navy-control, elevator and crane industries. Throughout his career, he developed many advances in alternating current power conversion.

Today he is manager of Rockwell Automation's Advanced Development Group in Mequon, Wisconsin. As a member of Rockwell Automation's Technical Council, he helps set engineering technical direction for the corporation and is responsible for setting the direction of its advanced research projects.

Prior to that position, Phillps worked in several capacities at Eaton Corp./Cutler Hammer, Litton/Louis Allis, and Control Technology Corporation, Milwaukee. He began his career at General Dynamics Electronics in Rochester, New York.

He received his bachelor's degree from UW-Madison in electrical engineering in 1960, and 30 years later, earned a master of business administration degree from Keller Graduate School of Management. He is a founding member of the Wisconsin Electric Machines & Power Electronics Consortium, one of the largest technology transfer organizations of its kind, and is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). In addition to committee work, Phillips also has lectured about engineering graduate needs at UW-Madison.

The Racine native has been married since 1992 to his wife, Ann, and has four sons and three grandchildren. Phillips is a long-time jazz enthusiast. He and Ann enjoy gardening, grandparenting and spending time year-round at their home in Wisconsin's Door County.

Byron Bird Award

James E. Smith (Large image)

This year's Byron Bird Award for Excellence in a Research Publication was presented to James E. Smith. Smith's fundamental contributions of research publications and a patent in development of high-speed, high-performance microprocessors garners him this award.

Twenty years ago, a microprocessor with 100,000 transistors could execute the instructions of a program one at a time, taking tens of clock cycles. Today, microprocessors hold tens of millions of transistors and execute multiple instructions in a single clock cycle. Smith's work contributed innovations in computer architecture that made possible this improvement to instruction processing rates.

Smith's 1981 paper "A Study of Branch Prediction Strategies" and related patent were the first publications targeted specifically at techniques for overcoming the performance limitations of branch instructions. Today, almost every microprocessor makes use of techniques built on the methods described by Smith.

Another strategy used to improve processing rate is out-of-order instruction processing. Instructions are processed in the order their input operands are available. This improves the processing rate but creates problems for software and debugging. Smith's article "Implementation of Precise Interrupts in Pipelined Processors" was the first publication to describe techniques that would give the appearance of sequential execution even though the actual instruction execution order was very different. One of these techniques, the Reorder Buffer, is now the standard used by modern microprocessors.

Smith earned his BS, MS and PhD in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois in 1972, '74 and '76 respectively. He joined the ECE faculty in 1976 and took leaves of absence to work in industry between 1979-'81 and 1984-'89.

Bollinger Academic Staff Award

Donna M. Lewis (Large image)

Donna M. Lewis is this year's recipient of the Bollinger Academic Staff Distinguished Achievement Award. Lewis has made outstanding contributions to the college, ECE and Teaching Improvement Program and has served on numerous committees throughout the university. She exemplifies excellence in leadership by consistently performing at a high level, setting superior standards of excellence for staff and teaching assistants, and interacting positively and effectively with faculty, staff and students.

Lewis joined ECE in 1989 after 17 years of service to the university in other departments. She brought to ECE a degree of stability, reliability, efficiency and quality that allows department chairs to be active teachers, researchers, fund-raisers and academic leaders.

Lewis earned a BS in education from UW-Madison in 1972. The department benefits from her experience in education every day. She selects, trains and assigns the department's 50-60 teaching assistants (TAs) each semester and is highly respected by them. She has developed and instituted policies and programs that improve the quality of instruction by improving the teaching performance of TAs.

Through committee participation, her work transcends the boundaries of the department to the entire university. Many successful teaching improvement programs for new and continuing TAs and instructors resulted from her involvement in the college TA and staff development program since 1989. She addresses training issues and spreads knowledge about the college training programs at national TA and education conferences.

Her colleagues say Lewis not only has the ability to connect with all kinds of people but can also convince them to participate and accomplish goals.