Dr. Heng Zhang, a former Ph.D. student of Professor Edgar Sánchez-Sinencio in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, received the Prestigious 2010 Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad.

This award was established to encourage research excellence and to recognize the achievement among Chinese students abroad. It is granted across all fields of study and was presented to only 506 out of 440,000 Chinese oversea students all over the world. The final winners were selected by a review committee organized by China's Ministry of Education. The award was presented to the 25 awardees in the southern United States by the Consulate General of the People's Republic of China in Houston March 26.

Zhang received her B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Peking University, Beijing (China) in 2004, her business management certificate in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University in 2008, and her Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M in 2010.

During the summer and fall of 2006, she was an analog IC design engineer (co-op) with Texas Instruments in Dallas where she designed a low power ADC for hard disk applications. In the summer of 2007, Zhang was with the RF and Analog Technologies Departmen at United Microelectronics Corporation in Sunnyvale, Calif., where she researched digital calibration techniques for ADCs.

Since August 2010, she has been with the Analog and Mixed Signal Group at Broadcom Corporation in Irvine, Calif., working on multi-Gbps transceivers for optical and backplane/cable applications. Her research interests include data converters and high-speed/RF circuits.