Wireless Expert Connects State

Elshabini helps build new technology research center at UA

Aicha Elshabini hopes to help Arkansas share in the wealth — dollars, education and otherwise — of the exploding wireless technology sector.

Wireless, of course, is one hot sector that’s driven the stock market to ever-increasing highs and has given the world, among other things, the now-ubiquitious cell phone.

If her name is still unfamiliar in these parts (the pronunciation is less formidable than might be expected: el-sha-been-e), well, she’s an uncommon lady.

An Egyptian by birth, Elshabini is an electrical engineer by education and training. She spent 20 years at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg — more familiarly known as engineering powerhouse Virginia Tech — until, last July, when she became a member of the University of Arkansas College of Engineering faculty. She now heads the college’s electrical engineering department.

Elshabini wasted no time learning her way around campus. Research dollars in her department have already tripled to $7.5 million and a research lab that Elshabini and a colleague from Virginia Tech worked in at Blacksburg is being reassembled in Fayetteville. Additionally, at least four Virginia Tech students followed her to Arkansas to continue their studies. Three of those students are pursuing doctorates; the fourth is a master’s candidate.

And Elshabini, who’s recognized nationally and internationally in her field of wireless or mobile communication, is helping introduce the university to her contacts in the wireless sector.

She has a grand vision for a center of wireless research within the College of Engineering. It is to be a program for graduate electrical engineering students and would incorporate features from the UA’s Sam M. Walton College of Business Administration as well as from the engineering college.

It would be no small feat.

To create the center, Elshabini hopes to persuade industry to invest in it. With some major research funds provided by outside companies — and Elshabini acknowledges, “We’re talking about a major commitment.” — graduate students would research new products and applications to fuel the donors’ research and development efforts.

The companies benefit as a result of the research. The students gain knowledge and the state may even gain new industry, as the university’s reputation and expertise — and the number of its graduates — in wireless technology are enhanced.

The concept is fairly simple at its most basic level.

Elshabini says the university has been in talking with at least four potential donors, none of which she wants to identify at this point, for obvious reasons.

She had hoped to secure adequate funding by Christmas and seems disappointed that goal wasn’t reached.

But then again, Elshabini won’t accept corporate money with some of the usual strings attached.

For example, she’s unwilling to take money from a corporation that insists on a laboratory being named for the company and that only that company’s equipment be used in the lab.

To do so, she says, is unfair because denying students access to anything limits education.

“Our major goal is the dissemination of knowledge,” she says. Elshabini, who talks with real enthusiasm about students and says they should be exposed to the broadest spectrum possible, including all kinds of equipment.

She does believe the research money will come and that it will happen soon.

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UA support

Neil Schmitt is a university professor in electrical engineering and former dean of the college. He says his new colleague, Elshabini, is “doing an outstanding job of providing leadership in our department, particularly in the telecommunications and electronics packaging areas.”

Her idea of a wireless research center “has tremendous potential,” Schmitt says.

“We have a core group of people here with some unique abilities and already we have some components of that center in place. … No other university in the country has the capabilities that this center has.”

He continues, “I think what sets her apart from so many that try is that she can easily tie together the basic research and the practical needs of research. … For a center of this type, you have to have strong industry support.

“Particularly in the telecommunications industry, they’re interested in results next week, not next year,” Schmitt says.

“It’s such a competitive industry, if they don’t do it soon, someone else will.”

That need for immediate results is not always easily recognized by universities, where the tendency is more often to think in terms of semesters or years, Schmitt says.

Building a reputation for wireless technology research and knowledge, Schmitt says, will help enhance the state’s economic potential.

“We already have several companies in Arkansas that are integrally involved in wireless: Southwestern Bell, Lucent Technologies and Alltel, even Wal-Mart, Tyson and J.B. Hunt could not exist today without telecommunications.”

As for engineering graduates in the wireless field, Schmitt says it’s been estimated that there are 200 jobs for every engineering graduate in the wireless field.

There’s been new university support for the department, too. Schmitt says, “Chancellor [John] White has been very supportive of this effort. We have five new faculty positions he has given the department to help Dr. Elshabini in implementing [her vision].”

Recruiting students

With about 360 electrical engineering students, about 224 of whom are undergraduates, there is room for more students. Elshabini is actively trying to recruit the best students from the state’s high schools and community colleges.

But while high schoolers are generally aware of the demand for computer majors, they’re less familiar with the needs for wireless experts. That’s an education process in itself and one that must include high school counselors, Elshabini says.

As a young girl, Elshabini didn’t dream of entering electrical engineering because she didn’t know what it was. She does recall, however, tackling the repair of her mother’s iron. Elshabini was just in middle school at the time.

Her father urged caution and feared the appliance might blow up. Smiling as she reminisces, Elshabini says she told her father that was fine. So what if a fuse blew? It could be easily replaced. The challenge of the project was to see whether she could successfully repair the iron. She did.

Elshabini says her father had hoped she would go to medical school. But again, Elshabini was drawn to something different, electrical engineering, because of the challenge. It’s something she still obviously relishes.

A graduate of Cairo University in Egypt with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, Elshabini also has a master’s degree in microelectronics from the University of Toledo in Ohio and a doctorate in semiconductor devices and microelectronics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

At Virginia Tech, Elshabini was chairman of the electronic/circuits area at the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering for 12 years.

When the UA came calling, Elshabini was deliberate in making her decision. She visited the campus four times over the course of more than a year.

Elshabini says she finally accepted the offer because “I thought I could make a difference.”

Pressed by a visitor about what one factor influenced her decision, Elshabini says without hesitating, “HiDEC.”

That would be the High-Density Electronics Center, where the UA is doing groundbreaking work in electronics packaging, making those tiny circuits even tinier.

HiDEC operates under the direction of Len Schaper, who says she’s known Elshabini for several years.

“I’ve known her six or seven years at least,” Schaper says. “I’ve known for a long time that she is an absolute bundle of energy. She’s just a dynamo.”

He adds, “She doesn’t wave her arms around and shout like we may be used to [but] she gets the work done. She’s very good with people and it’s just a delight to have her here.”