Frequent readers of the this blog may have noticed that there has been hardly any blogging activity during last month. Main reason for this is that most of us have been busy with work- and family-related matters. December is a busy time of the year, with Sinterklaas, Santa Claus, the traditional Christmas drink of the Department of Microelectronics, the ELCA Christmas lunch (for which this year PhD and MSc students together prepared dishes from their home country) and … the rehearsals for the ELCA Festival.
Speaking of which, the ELCA Festival has been rescheduled to March 9. On stage will be 3 bands, Ignoramus, Three and the ELCA band and various other acts, performed by members of the Electronics Research Laboratory and a few from other directions at Delft University of Technology. So, make sure that you mark your calendar, if you are around. Entrance is free; good mood obligatory.
Other things that are cooking are, a.o.,
- that 6 papers (!) have been accepted for presentation at ISCAS 2012, the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, the flagship conference of the Circuits and Systems Society, May 20 — 23, Seoul, Korea,
- that Marijn and Wouter are working hard on their second patent to valorize their new neurostimulator circuits better,
- that Cees-Jeroen, Wannaya, Marijn and Fatih are looking into whether current neurostimulators can actually deliver the range of currents that they promise in their user manuals,
- that June and Senad are currently measuring the 3 chips that they designed that comprise circuits for cochlear implants,
- that Yongjia will probably set for a full differential version of his level-crossing ADC and tape out two designs,
- that Yao is about to define a better (i.e., lower NF and/or lower power consumption) interface between the antenna and the LNA for body area networks (BAN) that involve implantable devices,
- that Duan is preparing for measurements on his subsampling receiver IC,
- that Wannaya is generating the layout of a biphasic neurostimulator IC for cochlear implants,
- that Mark soon will have his design review of an RF energy harvester that is more sensitive than any previously reported RF energy harvester,
- that Rachit soon will start his PhD studies at IMEC,
- that Wouter will have an invited talk at Sense of Contact in Soesterberg, April 11, in Soesterberg, the Netherlands,
- that the Biomedical Electronics Foundation has been created with the notary and that all paperwork with the Chamber of Commerce will be completed soon,
- and that next month Vincent will graduate.
So, stay tuned and check us out regularly.
Happy New Year!
Wouter
Last Tuesday, dear Readers, Senad Hiseni, honorary member of the Biomedical Electronics Groups (as he seems to have good contacts with Barak Obama), won the Best Poster Award at the annual ICT.Open in Veldhoven, the Netherlands. The jury decided that the poster contained just the right amount of information, was very informative and nicely laid out, but also well presented by its presenter. 
Today I learnt that the junior author of the manuscript submitted to my journal, of which I reported in the blog below, had sent in the cover letter on the senior co-author’s behalf, without the senior co-author knowing it. If true — the whole situation becomes quite confusing and blurred, I feel — then the senior author is not to blame for the whole situation but his junior co-author. 