Willie Harrison graduated from Utah State University in 2007 with his MS in Electrical Engineering and from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2012 with his PhD is Electrical and Computer Engineering. In 2012, he joined the faculty of the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs as an Assistant Professor, and he has been with the BYU Electrical and Computer Engineering Department since 2017.
At UCCS, he served on the proposal, instructor search, graduate fellowship selection, and Internationalization Advisory Committee, and he additionally served as faculty advisor to the IEEE student club. He earned the Teacher of the Year award for the 2015-2016 academic school year for the UCCS College of Applied Science.
He also serves actively in the broader electrical engineering community. Over the past six years, he has participated in fourteen workshops and conferences, many of which covered wireless security. He has served as a reviewer on five NSF proposal review panels, a “remote reviewer” for CHIST-ERA ERA-NET (a European consortium of twenty research funding organizations), and as a scholarly reviewer for multiple IEEE publications.
His experience extends internationally, as he is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and for three years directed an NSF-funded International Research for Students (IRES) program in conjunction with the University of Coimbra, Portugal.
His primary expertise lies in coding theory, physical-layer security, probability and statistics, and digital communications.
Awards and Honors
- MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference 4th Place Paper Award (2017). His work was referenced by the Washington Post.
- Teacher of the Year Award (2015–2016), College of Applied Science, UCCS
- Member of Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society
- Member of IEEE
- Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, Georgia Institute of Technology (2007-2008)
- President’s Fellowship, Georgia Institute of Technology (2007-2011)
- Presidential Scholarship, Utah State University (1999-2005)
Links
PhD - Electrical and Computer Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA (2012)
Dissertation: Physical-layer security: Practical aspects of channel coding and cryptography
MS - Electrical Engineering
Utah State University, Logan, UT (2007)
Dissertation: Mesospheric infrared airglow measurements of molecular twilight transitions by means of satellite-based radiometry
BS - Electrical Engineering
Utah State University, Logan, UT (2007)
- EC EN 380 - Signals and Systems
- EC EN 380 Lab
- EC EN 390 - Junior Team Design Project (Signal Processing Faculty Role)
- EC EN 485 - Introduction to Digital Communication Theory
- EC EN 770 - Information Theory