Professor invited to National Academies conference
December 19, 2005
Mihri Ozkan, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering, was invited by the National Academies to attend the Keck Futures Initiative interdisciplinary research conference held in November in Anaheim. She was one of about 100 U.S. researchers from academic, industrial and government laboratories representing the disciplines of science, social science, engineering and medicine who were asked to take part in the conference. Its theme was “The Genomic Revolution: Implications for Treatment and Control of Infectious Disease”. A highlight was breakout sessions where researchers from different fields collaborated on plans to address challenges relating to the field of genomics and to discover interdisciplinary connections between important areas of current research. A select group of representatives from private and public funding organizations, university and government leadership, and science journals were also included in the program to stimulate conversations about supporting interdisciplinary research. The National Academies is comprised of four organizations: the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council.
Undergraduate students from the Department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering have won a federal grant of $10,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for their project on rainwater harvesting to supplement local water supplies. The team consists of Andrew Chin, Roland Cusick, Steven Gebelin, Greg Guillen and Temi Ogunyoku. Their advisors are Lecturer Kawai Tam and Professor Mark Matsumoto. The EPA made awards to 41 student teams in the national People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) competition; other California winning teams were from Stanford and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. This is the second year of the competition, designed to support student design projects that maintain economic growth while preserving natural resources. Several designs from the first year of competition have been successfully implemented into business practices.
The UCR chapter of Tau Beta Pi, the national engineering honor society, initiated eleven new members on the afternoon of December 3 at Bourns Hall. To be eligible for membership, students must rank in the top 1/8 of the Junior class or the top 1/5 of the Senior class. Potential members must also be of good character and exhibit a desire to reach beyond academics to become the best in their field. New members, pictured left to right, are: (back row) Timothy Garcia, Lena Downar-Herron, Chris Hsiung, Montasir Ishag, Karel Jansen, Javed Khan, (front row) David Keith, Nichola Kinsinger, Edward Levie, Andy Papa and Adam Woss.
Bourns College of Engineering’s student chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) has been chosen to receive a Diversity Action Grant from the club’s national organization for their participation in the College’s Space Science & Engineering Day. Held on October 30, the event was designed to encourage Girl Scouts and other elementary school aged children to get excited about careers in engineering and science through fun learning activities such as making craters, punching out constellations in a large plastic sheeting planetarium, and having a Mars Rover model crawl over them. In the picture, engineering student volunteers assist the young visitors in making comets to take home as souvenirs.
Bourns College of Engineering students scored points at the Southern California Regional ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Programming Contest on November 13, held at Riverside Community College. A precursor to the worldwide finals, the competition was sponsored by IBM and Google. Titus Winters, the UCR team coach, says that the Southern California contest is one of the toughest regionals, since the competition includes teams from UCSD, CalTech, UCLA, and Harvey Mudd. A total of 66 teams from 25 colleges and universities participated. BCOE students Ed Levie, Tim Garcia, and Jonathan Basseri placed in the top 20, beating teams from CalTech, and Harvey Mudd. Michael Rivera, Shashwati Kasetty, and Geoff Hichborn placed in the middle range. Ben Sanders also participated in the competition despite the absence of the rest of his team. Players were given five hours to try to solve eight problems, with ranking determined by the number of problems solved and the total time spent finding the solutions. Several of the Bourns College team will graduate this year, but at least three from this year’s competition will return next year.
Four business leaders participated in a panel discussion as part of “Engineering Career Connections with Local CEOs” on the evening of November 17 in the new Engineering II building. Co-sponsored by the Bourns College of Engineering and UC Riverside’s Career Center, the evening program gave engineering students an opportunity to learn more about potential internships and careers. In the picture, the Career Center’s Felice Pope is introducing panelists Brian Hawley from Luminex, Helen Chen from Ambryx, Amro Albanna from QMotions and Sundip Doshi from Surado Solutions (from l. to r.). In addition to providing information on internships and careers with their respective companies, the panelists spoke of their educational and professional backgrounds and shared advice for becoming a successful entrepreneur. Also in attendance were representatives from several other companies who brought materials and answered students’ questions about career opportunities with their firms. The event was part of Career Week 2005 which included a variety of seminars and workshops on topics such as job searches, resume and cover letter preparation, and effective interviewing.
Biotechnology executive Tina Nova was the keynote speaker at the 13th Annual Southern California Conference on Undergraduate Research (SCCUR) on Nov. 19, hosted this year by UC Riverside. Nova is an alumna of UCR and the CEO of Genoptix, Inc. She spoke to more than 600 students and their faculty mentors. The conference was organized by Chris Foster, Director of Undergraduate Research at the Bourns College of Engineering. It featured more than 525 research presentations ranging from art history to zoology, submitted by students at colleges and universities across the nation. Students made oral presentations and displayed their work at a poster session on the Engineering precinct’s patios (see photo). The conference was supported by UCR’s Office of Research, Office of Undergraduate Academic Programs, Graduate Division and the campus academic colleges. A $25,000 grant from the National Science Foundation helped to make the conference possible.
Joseph Steirer, a Ph.D. student working with Chemical & Environmental Engineering Professor Yushan Yan, is one of seventeen graduate students in the nation to receive a fellowship jointly funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR). Steirer attended an initial leadership symposium in West Bethesda, Maryland October 25-27 with other winners from universities including Berkeley, Purdue and MIT. The program provides support including a stipend during the academic year, travel money and a summer internship. In return, students agree to work for two years as a civilian researcher for the Navy after graduation. Steirer (left in photo) and Yan (right) are doing fuel cell research for undersea applications.
Scholarships of $2,500 each were awarded to sixteen incoming freshmen, four transfer students and twenty-seven continuing sophomores in the fields of engineering and mathematics at a ceremony on November 10 in the new Engineering II building. The CSEMS Scholars Program (Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics Scholarships) was designed for academically talented, low-income undergraduate students majoring in these subjects. Funded by the National Science Foundation and supported by the Bourns College of Engineering and the Department of Mathematics at UCR, the program encourages students to maintain enrollment in these disciplines and provides them with a comprehensive plan of scholarship, academic, and professional support throughout their undergraduate years. Scholarship funds are awarded in installments of $1,000 for each of the fall and winter quarters and $500 for spring quarter, provided the student maintains eligibility. The freshmen winners are pictured with Dean Abbaschian (at right). Click on Events Photos for pictures of other winners. For results and photos from the previous three years of the Program, please go to the Program web page at 
Last weekend at the national conference of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) in Anaheim the Bourns College of Engineering SWE student chapter was honored twice. The chapter received the “2005 Outstanding Student Activities Certificate” for increasing its active membership last year by 154 percent. Also, Chapter officer Megan Nix won the top prize in the National Technical Presentation competition. She was one of ten regional finalists who traveled to the convention to compete for first, second and third places. Her first-place award includes a check for $1,500. The club was well-represented – seven officers, two other members and Professor Sharon Walker, the club’s advisor, attended the conference. From left in the picture are the club’s immediate past President Cynthia Carter, Secretary Jennifer Jones, Advisor Dr. Sharon Walker and Vice President Marie Donnelly.
Representatives from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) teamed with the Bourns College of Engineering chapter of the Society of Women Engineers and the Riverside Astronomical Society to offer an afternoon of fun hands-on learning activities and presentations ranging from JPL space missions to rewarding careers in engineering. Astronomical Society members provided telescopes for the visitors' use (pictured). Dean Reza Abbaschian and UCR Chancellor France Córdova attended the event, and shared their enthusiasm for science and engineering with a large crowd of elementary and middle school girls and boys. Attendance was estimated at close to 1,000. Although the majority were Girl Scouts, many in their colorful uniforms, children of UCR faculty and staff were also invited to participate. The day was made possible through funding provided by Xerox Corporation.
Engineering professors and students were on hand to meet potential UCR students at the annual campus Preview Day. Each of the College’s four departments had displays pertaining to their areas of focus. The Chemical & Environmental Engineering Department’s ice cream making demonstration proved to be one of the most popular. Engineering students stood by posters of their research projects to answer visitors’ questions. Associate Dean Chinya Ravishankar gave a well-attended presentation on innovative research taking place at the College and the benefits of studying engineering (pictured). The College of Engineering Center for Environmental Research and Technology (CE-CERT) held its third annual Guthrie Undergraduate Research Symposium concurrently with the event, inviting the visitors to observe. Seven engineering undergraduate students made presentations on their research projects. Riverside businessman and symposium sponsor Jim Guthrie was in attendance and served as one of the judges that chose Megan Nix as the first-place winner and declared the second place a tie between Marie Donnelly and Christopher Salaam.
The new Engineering II building was the site of the 7th annual Industry Day and Research Review on Wednesday, October 19th. The event showcases current research and future plans at Bourns College of Engineering. Dean Reza Abbaschian welcomed the guests and spoke of his vision for the College to gain national recognition as a leader in engineering research and education. Six faculty members gave state-of-the-field presentations on significant research programs. Dr. Thomas Godfrey, a physician and principal director with Kaiser Permanente, gave a thought-provoking keynote address concerning the difference engineers make in the lives of others. Sixty graduate and undergraduate students participated in a poster session and were on hand to answer the visitors’ questions about their research. In the afternoon five top executives presented a panel discussion concerning pressing issues and how engineers can help resolve them. An awards banquet concluded the day; see links below for businesses honored and winners of the poster contests.
Student engineering club members presented a Fall Welcome on the patio of the new Engineering II building on Wednesday, October 12th from 4-6pm. The annual event is designed to bring together engineering students for some fun and food, and a chance to talk to the representatives of the College’s engineering clubs. Chancellor France Córdova and Dean Abbaschian mingled with the crowd, talking to students and professors in attendance. Each club had a table with literature and photos of club activities, with officers and members on-hand to answer questions and encourage participation. Music and free hamburgers, chicken, hot dogs and pizza attracted around 250 people. New freshmen participated in drawings for prizes including an iPod Shuffle and a USB flash drive, and other drawings for prizes such as UCR sweatshirts and stuffed logos were open to all.
Two professors at Bourns College of Engineering are co-investigators on a team that is developing microscopic “bullets” that will target cancerous tumors without affecting healthy surrounding tissue. Electrical Engineering Professor Mihri Ozkan and Mechanical Engineering Professor Cengiz Ozkan are part of a consortium of researchers from UC San Diego, UC Riverside, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine, the Burnham Institute in La Jolla and six corporate partners. The consortium has been chosen to receive $20 million over the next five years from the National Cancer Institute, a unit of the National Institutes of Health. The money will be used to establish a national research center, one of seven in the nation called Centers of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence. All seven centers will share information so that each is aware of what the others are doing, and to accelerate the research. The Ozkans will be part of the Center of Nanotechnology for Treatment, Understanding and Monitoring of Cancer, known as NANO-TUMOR; it will be based at UC San Diego. Cengiz (l.) and Mihri Ozkan (r.) are pictured in front of the Biltmore Estate in Ashville, NC, where they recently attended a nanotechnology conference.
Reza Abbaschian, Dean of Bourns College of Engineering, was installed as President of ASM International, the nation's largest materials association, on September 26 in Pittsburgh, PA. ASM International has 40,000 members in nearly 100 countries. Formerly known as the American Society of Metals, the organization changed its name in the 1980s to reflect its inclusion of engineered materials beyond metals, such as composites, plastics, ceramics and electronic materials, and its geographic expansion into countries outside the US. Abbaschian has been a Fellow of ASM International since 1992. He began his tenure as Dean of the College on September 12, 2005; formerly he headed one of the larges materials departments in the nation at University of Florida.
Eamonn Keogh, faculty member of the Computer Science & Engineering Department, has developed a tool for visualizing a new finding that the genetic code of chimpanzees is 96 percent identical to that of humans. A video demonstration of the findings are posted on Keogh’s website (see link below); it can be understood by the average non-scientist. Keogh, an expert in data mining, teamed with fellow faculty members Stefano Lonardi and Victor Zordan and evolutionary anthropologist Sang-Hee Lee to develop three-dimensional charts of the human and chimpanzee genomes. The genomes of another primate, the gibbon, and African and Indian elephant genomes are included for comparison.
Chemical & Environmental Engineering Assistant Professor Sharon Walker traveled to China September 3-11 as part of an international delegation (pictured – she is 6th from the left) attending the International Conference on Novel Technology and Management for Drinking Water Safety. The group was sponsored by the National Water Research Institute. She gave a well-received keynote address concerning bacteria in groundwater, and expects to return to collaborate with colleagues at universities in China. She met PhD students from Harbin Institute of Technology and visited the campuses of Nankai University and Tianjin University. Besides participating in the conference, she had the opportunity to see the Great Wall of China and other places of interest.
The research laboratory of Marko Princevac, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, was visited on September 21 by a crew filming for the History Channel. Princevac’s lab in Bourns Hall contains a 1300-gallon tank that is used for environmental flow modeling. The crew is preparing a program on high-speed underwater objects detected by submarines, and spoke with Princevac about what they might be and if it is possible for a submerged vehicle to travel at supersonic speed. Princevac (red shirt in picture) told the crew that although bullets have been made to travel underwater at such speed, no manned vehicle has that ability yet; at the current level of technology we are still far away from high-speed travel underwater. Experiments in the tank were filmed to demonstrate how different shapes create different flow fields, and how the shape of an object affects its speed. Princevac’s research interests concern fundamental and applied fluid mechanics.
Electrical Engineering Associate Professor Roger Lake has received a grant of $240,000 from the National Science Foundation for his project “High-Throughput Ab Inito Modeling of Charge and Spin Transport for Bio-Molecular-Electronics and Spintronics”. Lake is the Principal Investigator, and a colleague at Brigham Young University, James Lewis, is Co-Principal Investigator. The project is in response to intense interest in bio-assembled nanosystems that bring together disparate materials such as metals, semiconductor nanocrystals, DNA, proteins, peptides and carbon nanotubes. Knowledge and software developed as a result of the grant will be used in three graduate courses at UCR and will be made available to the international research community.
Bethany Warren, a Chemical & Environmental Engineering graduate student, has been selected for the Environmental Protection Agency’s STAR (Science to Achieve Results) program, one of only 131 such awards given nationally this year chosen from 1,700 applications. The fellowship pays tuition during graduate studies, an annual stipend of around $30,000, and stipends for research equipment and conference travel. Warren studies how environmental factors such as temperature, humidity and salts affect the formation of particulate matter, using the College of Engineering-Center for Environmental Research & Technology (CE-CERT) environmental chamber facility, one of the largest in the world.
Reza Abbaschian began his tenure as the new Dean of Bourns College of Engineering today, September 12. His former position was at the University of Florida, where he was Vladimir A. Grodsky Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and served as Department Chair for 16 years. Under his leadership, the department grew to among the largest in the country in graduate and undergraduate enrollment and research. His research concentration is in materials processing, including high temperature-high pressure growth of diamond crystals. He has more than 230 scientific publications, four patents, eight patent disclosures and eight books. This month he will become President of ASM International, the largest materials society in the United States.
Graduates of Bourns College of Engineering and their families enjoyed good weather, a picnic buffet and reconnecting with friends at the Young Alumni Picnic on Saturday, September 10. The event was held on the lawn across from Bourns Hall, and included frisbee golf, prizes, a clown for children, and tours of the new Engineering II building. Dean Reza Abbaschian, sporting his new Highlanders cap, was on hand to welcome the guests. Associate Dean Mark Matsumoto and Assistant Dean Dennis Rice also attended, as did several faculty members.
Twenty students participated July 29 to August 26 in the Summer Fridays program, designed to familiarize incoming engineering freshmen with the programs and resources offered at Bourns College of Engineering. Professors Frank Vahid, Amit Roy-Chowdhury, Javier Garay, Matt Barth and lecturer Kawai Tam made presentations to the students and spoke about each of the majors offered. Director of Undergraduate Research Chris Foster (pictured speaking to the students) discussed opportunities for internships and paid summer research. Participants toured the new clean room and the College of Engineering - Center for Environmental Research, took part in team-building activities, heard informational panels and participated in hands-on activities. Freshman Advisor Tara Brown led the program, which was sponsored by the College’s Office of Special Programs.
Congressmen Ken Calvert and Jerry Lewis joined UC Riverside officials and supporters on August 18 to assist in the opening of a nanofabrication cleanroom in Bourns Hall. Both held the scissors at a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by Robert Haddon, Director of the Center for Nanoscale Science & Engineering, Chancellor France Córdova, BCOE Council of Advisors member Bill Johnson, Vice Chancellor Bill Boldt and cleanroom facility manager Mark Heiden. The ribbon cutting was closed to the public since participants had to don coveralls, booties and headgear to enter the room. However, the ceremony was taped and shown immediately afterward at a gathering of townspeople, supporters and University staff and students in a lecture hall adjacent to the facility. The Congressmen both spoke to the attendees, as did Chancellor Córdova, Dr. Haddon, Dean Steven Angle from the College of Natural & Agricultural Sciences (Dr. Haddon and Dr. Angle are pictured; Dr. Haddon is at left). Incoming Dean Reza Abbaschian attended the celebration and a luncheon afterward. The $3 million cleanroom was made possible by grants from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Defense Microelectronics Activity in the Department of Defense and the Office of Naval Research. UCR’s nanotechnology researchers from many disciplines will now be able to use the cleanroom; previously they needed to travel to a distant facility.
Furniture and equipment began moving into the new Engineering II building last week. The Department of Computer Science & Engineering has vacated its temporary home in the Surge Building, with offices open for business although stacked with unpacked boxes. The Electrical Engineering Department plans to have most of its belongings moved from Bourns Hall by the end of this week. Also relocating are professors, graduate students, the Center for Intelligent Systems (pictured in its new suite), teaching labs, student club rooms, an electronics shop and both departments’ technical operations. The four-story building, which also includes classrooms, conference rooms and informal gathering areas with white boards, has been designed to encourage faculty and student interaction.
Electrical Engineering Professor Yingbo Hua has received a National Science Foundation Award of $218,593 over three years for his project “Collaborative Research: Signal Processing in Wireless Ad Hoc Networking”. Networking of distributed mobile wireless devices in locales such as in mountains, deserts and oceans without a pre-established infrastructure of base stations has fascinated and challenged researchers and practitioners in recent years. In this project, Professor Hua and his students and collaborators will develop efficient networking methods to conquer the impact of such problems as mobility, fading, interference, shadowing and hidden nodes.
Raytheon Vision Systems has donated $20,000 to support experimental research work in Professor Alexander Balandin’s Nano-Device Laboratory (NDL). The gift from the Raytheon Vision System located in Goleta, California came as a result of on-going cooperation between Professor Balandin’s research group and Raytheon engineers in the field of material characterization. In this project the NDL researchers are developing new Raman spectroscopy-based approaches for assessment of the material quality. Professor Balandin’s lab features state-of-the-art micro-Raman spectroscopic equipment with an Office of Naval Research grant (visible in photo of Dr. Balandin). The equipment will be used by Raytheon engineers and NDL researchers for assessment of the quality of novel materials and heterostructures. “I am very happy that Raytheon engineers have chosen my group for cooperation although UCSB is next door to their Goleta facility,” said Balandin.
Thirty Girl Scouts in grades 6-9 are participating from August 1-12 in an engineering summer day camp at Bourns College of Engineering called “Minds for Design”. The program, funded by the Department of Education, was created to encourage girls to pursue careers in engineering and science; it is estimated that only 10 percent of today’s engineers are women. The two-week camp is a collaborative effort between Bourns College’s Office of Special Programs and the Girl Scout Council of San Gorgonio who are providing the staff and volunteers. Chemical & Environmental faculty member Sharon Walker, College alumni and members of the UCR student chapter of the Society of Women Engineers are acting as mentors, including joining the participants at lunch to share their career stories. The girls are pictured designing “better paper clips”.
A group of student and faculty researchers toured the Coachella Valley Water District facility and surrounding region on July 19 at the invitation of Mark Beuhler, the assistant general manager of the facility and a Bourns College of Engineering Advisory Board member. They were able to observe a considerable amount of the region’s infrastructure for water management and treatment. Interim Dean and Professor Mark Matsumoto and Assistant Professor Sharon Walker accompanied six undergraduate and Ph.D. students working in Dr. Walker’s lab this summer. The student researchers, who study bacterial adhesion in groundwater, were able to view water being treated for re-use such as in the irrigation of golf courses as well as water locales in the area including the Salton Sea. The group is pictured touring the treatment plant.
Two researchers from Bourns College of Engineering, Tao Jiang (left) and Jerome Schultz (right) are among the co-principal investigators on a proposal that was successful in winning an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) $2.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The principal investigator for the project is Julia Bailey-Serres of the Botany and Plant Sciences Department at UCR. NSF funds only 20 IGERT programs each year. The project is titled “IGERT in Chemical Genomics: Forging Complementation at the Interface of Chemistry, Engineering, Computational Sciences and Cell Biology”. The grant will fund an interdisciplinary graduate student training program and initiate a new field of graduate research in Chemical Genomics.
Reza Abbaschian, a University of Florida professor of materials science and engineering, has accepted an appointment as the new Dean of Bourns College of Engineering. He will begin his tenure in September of this year. Currently he is Vladimir A. Grodsky Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. He served as Chair of University of Florida’s Department of Materials Science & Engineering for 16 years, from 1986 to 2002. During his tenure the Department moved to the US News and World Report top ten ranking for both undergraduate and graduate education. Dr. Abbaschian’s research concentration is in solidification and materials processing. He is Vice President of ASM International, the largest materials society in the U.S. He received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from UC Berkeley in 1971.
Arun Subramani, a Ph.D. candidate in Chemical & Environmental Engineering, won first place in the student paper award contest at the North American Membrane Society Annual Meeting in June in Providence, RI. The paper was titled “Application of Direct Observation of Biofouling in (DOB) Technique to Quantify Initial Adhesion of Microorganisms on NF/RO Membranes”. The paper concerns work he is doing this summer at UCLA with Principal Investigator Eric Hoek. Prof. Hoek recently moved from UCR to UCLA, and continues as Subramani’s major advisor. UCR Professors Mark Matsumoto Marc Deshusses are Co-Principal Investigators on the project. The work is funded through the Desalination Research Innovation Partnership (DRIP) US Environmental Protection Agency Program.
Electrical Engineering faculty member Mihri Ozkan was honored by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) at a ceremony in Washington D.C. on Monday, June 27. Four other UCR faculty members were present: her husband Cengiz Ozkan from Mechanical Engineering, Interim Dean Mark Matsumoto, Dr. Manuela Martins-Green from Neuroscience and Dr. Harry Green from Earth Sciences. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright, pictured (left) with Mihri and Cengiz Ozkan, received the AAUW Achievement Award at the same ceremony. The Emerging Scholar Award, selected yearly from all untenured female scholars in the United States, recognizes exceptional early professional achievement and promise of future distinction. Dr. Ozkan has been instrumental in building an interdisciplinary research program at UCR that examines new technologies for nanotechnology and its application in engineering and biology.
Electrical Engineering Professor Alexander Balandin received a new $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) administered through its Nanoscale Exploratory Research (NER) program. The one-year single-Principal Investigator project, entitled “Nanophononics: a new approach to the electron transport enhancement in nanoscale devices”, is sponsored jointly by NSF and the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC). Heat in semiconductor materials (which make up computer chips) is mostly carried by the crystal lattice vibrations, i.e. flow of acoustic phonons. Information, on the other hand, is encoded by electrical currents, i.e. flow of electrons. Information processing always results in heat dissipation. The objective of Professor Balandin’s research is to investigate a possibility of changing the way in which the flow of electrons interact with the flow of acoustic phonons. If successful, re-engineering of the electron-phonon interaction in specially designed nanostructure-based devices may result in the higher speeds and integration densities for the computer chips.
Sharon Walker, Assistant Professor of Chemical & Environmental Engineering, has received funding from the National Water Research Institute for her investigation of the role that polymers on the surface of bacteria play in cell adhesion and fate in groundwater environments. Specifically, she will study the surfaces of coliforms, indicators of fecal contamination in water. It is estimated that pathogenic microorganisms in groundwater cause 750,000 to 5 million illnesses per year in the U.S. This issue is a key concern for inland southern California, where such pollution is a problem due to agriculture, dense dairy farming and urban runoff. Dr. Walker’s award will provide summer support for a graduate student, supplies and travel funds, and is renewable for a second year.
The work of Assistant Professor Jun Yang and Ph.D. candidate Lan Gao of the Computer Science & Engineering Department is featured in the July issue of MIT Technology Review magazine. Her mentor is Dr. Yang, who works on improving the speed of secure data transmission with Dr. Youtao Zhang, a colleague at the University of Texas at Dallas. The team has developed a procedure that begins the decryption at the same time data is retrieved, greatly speeding up the computation time. Previous approaches guaranteed security, but slowed down the process dramatically. This work was published in IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. 54; Gao is listed as the principal author. Jun Yang (left) and Lan Gao (right) are pictured.
Linda O’Neill, Director of the Office of Special Programs at Bourns College of Engineering, was chosen as the Advisor of the Year at the 2005 Student Affairs Awards Ceremony on June 1. This is the first year that the award has been given. She was nominated by the UCR chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), the club she has advised since its beginnings. At the same event, SWE President Cynthia Carter received an individual award from the office of the Dean of Students, the Bayless Award for leadership and academic excellence, and SWE tied for second place for the Outstanding Club of the Year. In 2004 SWE was chosen by BCOE as the College’s Club of the Year, and this year they won the College’s Outstanding Outreach Event award for their space-themed Girl Scout Day that was attended by more than 200 children. Linda O’Neill (left) and Cynthia Carter are pictured.
The Engineering Class of 2005 participated in a Commencement ceremony on Sunday, June 12 at 6 in the evening (see photo). On Friday, June 10, graduate engineering degrees were awarded in a separate ceremony. Keynote speakers were UC Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. M.R.C. Greenwood at the Friday ceremony, and on Sunday afternoon Thomas F. Godfrey, M.D., Medical Director of Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center. The ceremonies took place on the lawn next to the carillon tower, with a live feed to the Commons cafeteria for guests wishing to observe from indoors. More than 30,000 students and guests participated in five ceremonies over the weekend.
UC Riverside honored top graduates at the 2005 Commencement Awards Ceremony on Friday, June 10 in the Arts Building. Perla Ayala, B.S. in Chemical Engineering and Scott Sirowy, B.S. in Computer Engineering, received the Marlan and Rosemary Bourns awards for being chosen as the College’s outstanding female and male graduating seniors. Perla Ayala has worked for two years in the lab of Prof. Nosang Myung, and spent last summer at an internship at Cornell. She is an officer in UCR student chapters of Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society, the American Institute for Chemical Engineers and the Society of Women Engineers. This summer she will do an internship at MIT, and plans to pursue a doctoral degree in the area of biomedical engineering. Scott Sirowy has been on the Dean’s Honor List every quarter, and has an overall GPA of 3.92. He has been working with Prof. Frank Vahid, and will begin doctoral studies in Computer Science at UCR after an internship with FreeScale, a division of Motorola in Austin, TX. Ayala and Sirowy are pictured being introduced by Dean Mark Matsumoto.
Assistant Professor Junlan Wang is the Principal Investigator (PI) and Associate Professor Guanshui (Alex) Xu is the co-PI on a new three-year grant from the Army Research Office. The project, titled "Determination of interfacial properties of tungsten heavy alloys using laser-induced dynamic spallation of thin film interfaces", will investigate the high rate deformation and fracture of heavy tungsten alloys under high-speed impact conditions. This research will enable researchers and manufacturers to further optimize the synthesis and design of tungsten heavy alloys to achieve high-performance Army penetrators. Dr. Wang (left) and Dr. Xu are pictured.
Chemical & Environmental Engineering Assistant Professor Kenneth Kauffman (pictured) has received funding from the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) for an undergraduate research project titled “Algae pond treatment of agricultural runoff”. Dr. Kauffman will act as faculty advisor to a group of three Chemical Engineering seniors exploring the use of algae for the bioremediation of agricultural runoff; Johnathan Manion, Ashish Pandya and Maxwell Kum. The award is for $10,000. The students’ immediate goal will be to prove that the concept of an algal pond treatment facility for this use is technically and economically feasible.
Alice Agogino, Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Vice Chair of the Academic Senate at UC Berkeley, traveled to UC Riverside on May 18 to speak as part of the Mechanical Engineering Department’s Distinguished Seminar Series. Her talk was titled “The Engineer of 2020: Global Visions of Engineering in the New Century”. She outlined how engineering practice is expected to change in the next twenty years, and what the implications will be to engineering education, citing a recent report with the same name for the US. National Academy of Engineering that she co-authored. She also discussed the implications of cutting edge technologies that promise to transform mechanical engineering and new product design in the new century. Pictured (l. to r.) are ME faculty members Tom Stahovich, Junlan Wang, Shankar Mahalingam and Dr. Agogino.
Electrical Engineering Associate Professor Alexander Balandin (left) has received a $30,000 grant from the US Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF) for cooperative research with Prof. Evgenii Pokatilov (right), a visiting professor of theoretical physics and director of the Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Structures at Moldova State University. The project is entitled “Phonon Transport Optimization for Improved Heat Removal from Nanoscale Electronic Circuits.” Theoretical and experimental research work will be conducted in Dr. Balandin’s Nano-Device Laboratory (NDL). The project aims at understanding heat propagation in semiconductor nanostructures and nanodevices. The current grant is the fourth one (totaling $175K) given by CRDF to Prof. Balandin and his colleagues from Moldova to carry out joint research related to semiconductors and nanotechnology. CRDF seeks to promote scientific cooperation between US researchers and researchers from the republics of the former Soviet Union (Russia, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Armenia, etc.).
Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor Javier Garay has received a Young Investigator Program award from the Army Research Office. The $150,000 award will fund a three-year project entitled “Net shape bulk nanocrystalline ceramics by electric current activated sintering”. The improved nanostructured materials will have significantly improved properties for use in a wide range of optical applications, such as the manufacture of windows that will withstand the extreme temperature and pressure situations encountered by vehicles and aircraft. Dr. Garay received his Ph.D. from UC Davis in 2004, with a major in Materials Science and Engineering and a minor in Solid State Physics and Chemistry of Materials. During his doctoral research, he collaborated with scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Seven Bourns College of Engineering faculty members were recognized for their achievements at a reception at the Chancellor’s Residence on May 23. David Cocker, Stefano Lonardi and Sheldon Tan received National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER awards for teacher/scholars most likely to become the academic leaders of the future . Cengiz Ozkan serves as Principal Editor for the Journal of Materials Research. Jerome Schultz (pictured receiving award) was selected as a Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society. Mihri Ozkan has been chosen to receive the 2005 Emerging Scholar Award from the American Association of University Women. Yushan Yan was recognized for his $1.2 million grant from NSF as Principal Investigator for a four-year zeolite nanocrystal project with Caltech, Rice University and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Three engineering student clubs received top awards at the Bourns College of Engineering end of the year barbecue on May 22. IEEE (Institue of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) was chosen as the Outstanding Club of the Year, won by exceeding their goals, increasing membership by 35%, winning professional paper and micromouse robot competitions and holding outreach events for local schools. The Most Improved Club Award went to Tau Beta Pi, accepted this year as a collegiate chapter of the national engineering honor society. The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) won the Outstanding Outreach Event Award for the Space Science and Engineering Day last October they organized for more than 1,000 Girl Scouts and children of UCR faculty and staff.
A cardboard boat competition was a highlight of the MESA College Exploration, Science and Engineering Scholarship Competition on May 21. The event allowed MESA (Math Engineering Science Achievement) middle and high school students further enrichment and extended the program’s learning activities through the end of the year. Competitions are designed to introduce students to the engineering design process; students work with their teachers during winter and spring to prepare for the event. Also included were a parent workshop and college exploration activities for the students. The awarding of scholarships are an additional incentive to continue with the MESA program through the end of the year. The engineering student club NSBE (National Society of Black Engineers) secured or raised funds for the event and assisted with planning and implementing it. The statewide MESA program works with thousands of educationally disadvantaged students so they excel in math and science and graduate with math-based degrees.
The UCR chapter of Tau Beta Pi, the national engineering honor society, initiated eleven new members in an afternoon ceremony on May 21 at Bourns Hall. The new members are pictured. In the front row left to right are Luis Ochoa, Jonathan Basseri, Hanhphuc Nguyen, Man Lin Loo and Megan Nix. At back left to right are Eugene Ladyzhenskiy, Caleb Leak, Cindy Sue, Travis Feenstra, Nick Easthold and Thomas Quan. The new members were honored at a banquet for friends and family following the ceremony (see second photo with President Chris Mayhew welcoming the guests). Assistant Dean Dennis Rice, the society’s chief advisor, said that was the first initiation planned and carried out by the student members. The honor society was installed as the California Alpha Beta chapter of the national organization last February.
Electrical Engineering Assistant Professor Sheldon Tan (left) and Computer Science & Engineering Professor Frank Vahid (right) will receive $20,000 from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) to fund their pilot program to improve engineering student retention. Primary sponsors are IBM, LSI Logic, National Semiconductor and Xilinx Corporation. Tan and Vahid’s program was one of five winners, selected from a field of 43 proposals. SIA developed the effort to counter a high drop-out rate among engineering students, especially among minority students, that could lead to a serious shortage of qualified engineers within a few years. Tan and Vahid will focus on improving the social interactions of the students with each other and the non-course-related interactions between students and faculty, as such interaction has been shown, through studies, and through their own experiences to be a critical factor. Particular efforts will be spent on engaging women and other underrepresented students in the Computer Engineering program.
Engineering undergraduates were recognized for outstanding academic achievement at the 19th annual Undergraduate Honors Convocation at UCR on May 16. Sixteen engineering students achieved a grade point average of 3.9 or above, and were called to the stage to receive awards. Seven of these students were selected by their professors as the top student from each engineering major and received Departmental Academic Excellence Awards. They are Perla Ayala from Chemical Engineering, Dandan Deng from Information Systems, Travis Feenstra from Mechanical Engineering, Steve Gebelin from Environmental Engineering, Adriano Macchietto from Computer Science, Megan Nix from Electrical Engineering and Scott Sirowy from Computer Engineering. Megan Nix also received Bourns College of Engineering’s top honor, the Outstanding Achievement Award. She is pictured with Dean Mark Matsumoto (left) and Associate Dean Chinya Ravishankar (right).
Armistead Russell, Distinguished Professor of Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, presented a lecture on May 13 at Bourns Hall. In a speech titled “Who’s Doing What to Whom: Methods for Source Apportionment of Air Pollutants”, he discussed studies that identified how much air pollution originated from the area being observed and how much originated from adjacent areas, underlining the need for statewide and regional approaches to air quality management. Dr. Russell is nationally known for his work in air pollution modeling. He recently participated in a four year investigation of the factors and forces contributing to poor air quality in the Augusta, Macon, and Columbus, Georgia metropolitan areas, and an analysis of options for improving air quality in these regions. In the photo he is being introduced by Professor David Cocker (left).
The annual meeting of the Mechanical Engineering Board of Advisors took place at Bourns Hall on May 5. Department Chair Shankar Mahalingam welcomed the executives to the campus (see picture) and Interim Dean Mark Matsumoto outlined the College’s five-year plan. Faculty members Guanshui Xu, Qing Jiang and Tom Stahovich provided overviews of undergraduate and graduate programs and faculty recruitment. The Department’s newest faculty members, Marko Princevak, V. Sundararajan and Javier Garay, made presentations on their research. Career placement officers discussed the College’s Career Path Milestones and student internship programs. Professor Akula Venkatram went over the ABET accreditation process. After lunch the advisors discussed the Department’s challenges, developed goals and presented their suggestions to the faculty. At the end of the day the visitors had a chance to meet several Mechanical Engineering students and view their Senior Design projects.
The Electrical Engineering Board of Advisors came to the UCR campus on April 26 for a full day of review, discussion and feedback on the Department’s plans and curriculum. Department Chair Jie Chen facilitated the day’s activities. Electrical Engineering faculty members and College administrators gave overviews of research and initiatives and answered the advisors’ questions. Comments and suggestions were then made by the visitors, providing an industry perspective on the Department’s plans and programs. The guests then toured the new Engineering II building, now in final stages of construction, and had the opportunity to speak with students during a poster session and at dinner.
Two top executives from Bourns, Inc., sponsor of the annual Bourns Science & Engineering Day, traveled to campus to welcome high school student attendees. Gordon Bourns, Chairman and CEO of Bourns, Inc. and Charles Macbeth, Vice President, Corporate Administration, encouraged the students to ask questions during the day’s presentations and to consider careers in science and engineering. Chemical & Environmental Engineering Professor Sharon Walker gave the keynote address, concerning the effects of bacteria in our area’s water. Bourns College of Engineering Interim Dean Mark Matsumoto and College of Natural & Agricultural Sciences Dean Steven Angle also gave welcoming remarks. During the day, students toured the campus, attended presentations and worked in teams to create a catapult out of household supplies (pictured). This was the 17th presentation of the event, designed for high school students interested in becoming engineers and scientists.
Top executives gathered for the annual meeting of the Bourns College of Engineering Council of Advisors on Friday, April 22. The Council is a group of senior executives with backgrounds related to the areas of emphasis in the College. Members provide valuable industry perspective, identify issues important to the future of the College, and provide guidance, counsel, and recommendations on all its activities including curriculum and research. During the day the Advisors heard overviews from Chancellor France Córdova and Interim Dean Mark Matsumoto, viewed presentations by faculty members Christian Shelton, Thomas Stahovich and Sharon Walker, and listened to a lunchtime presentation by Dr. Charles Louis, Vice Chancellor for Research at UCR. The afternoon was devoted to interaction and feedback sessions, followed by a tour of the nearly-completed Engineering II building. At dinner, the Advisors had a chance to talk to several top engineering students and faculty members. The feedback and suggestions gained from this meeting will prove especially useful to the College’s administrators as they prepare to update the College’s five-year plan.
Electrical Engineering Assistant Professor Mihri Ozkan has been chosen by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) as their national Emerging Scholar. The annual award recognizes the early professional achievements of an untenured woman scholar who has a record of exceptional early accomplishments and shows promise of future distinction. Dr. Ozkan will be presented with her award at the AAUW convention banquet in Washington, DC on June 27. She will receive an honorarium of $5000 and travel expenses to the convention. Founded in 1881, AAUW has more than 100,000 members, 1,300 branches and 550 college/university institution partners nationwide. The organization promotes equity for all women and girls, lifelong education and positive social change. 
During their spring break, 21 Bourns College of Engineering students spent a day touring the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) facilities in Pasadena, managed by California Institute of Technology for NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). The students were members of the UCR chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and volunteers from outreach events that the club has organized. The tour was led by Art Hammon of the JPL Education Office, who served as liaison for last fall's UCR Space Science and Engineering Day. The group viewed the JPL museum, Space Flight Operations Facility, Team X Project Design Center, Robotics laboratory, Micro Devices laboratory, and In Situ Instruments Laboratory. They also had special sessions with young women engineers who are members of Team X, a group that specializes in designing and planning proposed space missions, and watched a demonstration of robots that may be used to construct habitats on the moon.
Bourns College of Engineering’s ranking in US News & World Report’s Best Graduate Schools has jumped 13 places. This accomplishment is especially impressive since the College was only founded in 1990 and was unranked four years ago. The College is ranked 68th, up from 81st last year. This continuing improvement is in line with our strategic intent to create a college that has a profile of Top-25 engineering schools in the country. Being ranked in the Top-25 depends not only on quality but also on the achievements of faculty and graduates. Although attaining such a profile is ambitious for a young school, we have placed ourselves in an excellent position to achieve our goal.
Megan Nix, a junior at Bourns College of Engineering, received the Rosemary S. J. Schraer award on March 31. A double major in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering, she maintains a 4.0 grade point average, and has accepted the offer of a summer internship at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The Rosemary S. J. Schraer award was named after the seventh chief executive of UC Riverside, and the first woman Chancellor in the UC system. Dr. Schraer was a distinguished scientist with a remarkable record of academic, administrative and public service. Megan is pictured, holding her award, with UCR’s current Chancellor France A. Córdova.
Chemical & Environmental Engineering faculty member Nosang Myung has received a grant from Bourns, Inc., an international manufacturer of electronic components headquartered in Riverside, to investigate the use of carbon nanotubes/nickel nanocomposite in fuel delivery systems. Professor Myung’s research interests are focused on the synthesis of nanoengineered materials, and applying these materials in a variety of advanced devices. Bourns, Inc. manufactures over 4,000 products, which are designed into virtually every type of electronic system.
Representatives from Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), the Korean equivalent of MIT, traveled to Bourns College of Engineering on March 18 for a joint seminar with the College’s Department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering and the Environmental Sciences at the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences. GIST professors were accompanied by several graduate students from the Institute, who displayed their research on posters, as did several of UCR’s engineering students. During the afternoon professors from both institutions presented talks on their current work. The international collaboration program involves the exchange of students and faculty members and other academic activities.
Bourns College of Engineering faculty members David Cocker from Chemical & Environmental Engineering, Stefano Lonardi from Computer Science & Engineering and Sheldon Tan from Electrical Engineering have received National Science Foundation CAREER awards. The prestigious awards support the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who are most likely to become the academic leaders of the future. Awardees are selected on the basis of creative proposals that effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization. “These awards recognize the talent and dedication of three promising young faculty members, and in a larger sense demonstrate that the faculty of Bourns College of Engineering are competitive with top schools in the fast-moving world of technological research,” said Interim Dean Mark Matsumoto. Cocker, Lonardi and Tan are pictured left to right.
Roberta Nichols, a National Academy of Engineering member and a founding member of the advisory board for the College of Engineering–Center for Environmental Research & Technology (CE-CERT), was honored at a ceremony on March 17 at Bourns Hall. Awards, honors and memorabilia from her career of more than 30 years were on display. Dr. Nichols has donated these for a permanent exhibit at CE-CERT; she was instrumental in establishing the research center and has been a valuable contributor to the overall engineering program at UCR. In an address to the guests, which included many members of the College chapter of the Society of Women Engineers, she reminisced about her distinguished career. She began at Douglas Aircraft doing telemetry for missile programs, and was involved in Air Force space programs before being hired by Ford Motor Company to develop alternative fuel vehicles. The ceremony concluded with the presentation of a perpetual plaque that will be inscribed with the names of the winners of a scholarship she has established to encourage women to pursue careers in Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Nichols (with plaque) is pictured with CE-CERT Interim Director Matt Barth (left) and Mechanical Engineering Chair Shankar Mahalingam (center).
Nature Publishing Group, the scientific publishing arm of Macmillan Publishers Ltd., has cited the work of Chemical & Environmental Engineering Professors Wilfred Chen, Ashok Mulchandani and Nosang Myung under the heading “groundbreaking research”. The team presented a new method to manufacture biomolecular functionalized nanowires and show their usefulness as bioaffinity sensors in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The sensor has biomedical applications for detecting tumor and cardiac biomarkers, and also chemical sensing and biowarfare applications. The image is a nanosensor array with integrated fluidics.
Judges from the four departments at Bourns College of Engineering chose winning projects at the Riverside Unified School District Science Fair hosted by UCR last week. Chinya Ravishankar presented the awards at a ceremony on March 10. Kevin Giffen’s project was selected by both the Computer Science & Engineering and the Electrical Engineering Departments; Jamie Bagtang’s was chosen by the Chemical & Environmental Engineering Department, and the project of Jeffrey Guo was picked by the Mechanical Engineering Department. Faculty judges were Nosang Myung, Guillermo Aguilar, Christian Shelton and Amit Roy-Chowdhury, assisted by graduate students Jakob Eriksson and Titus Winters. The College’s Director of Undergraduate Research Chris Foster supervised the school district judges for the Science Fair. He is pictured viewing entries at the high school level.
Vijay K. Dhir, Dean of the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science at UCLA gave a lecture at Bourns College of Engineering on February 23. Presented as part of the Department of Mechanical Engineering’s distinguished speaker series, the talk was entitled “From Nano to Micro to Macro-scale in Boiling”. Dean Dhir is also a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Prior to joining the UCLA faculty, he worked in industry as an engineer, and has been a consultant for 30 years for organizations including GE Corp., Rockwell International, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Los Alamos and Brookhaven National Labs. Since 1999 he has led a team of researchers taking part in a NASA program to examine the effects of boiling, an efficient process of heat removal, in space. Dean Dhir is pictured second from the left with ME faculty members.
Computer science and computer engineering majors demonstrated their design projects for a standing-room-only crowd of professors and peers at a competition on March 3 in the Surge building. Professor Frank Vahid’s embedded system design students teamed up to create video games combined with music as part of a course designed to foster teamwork and presentation skills. The projects competed before a panel that included guest judge Dr. Kees Vissers from Xilinx Research Labs. Projects had to be a music-oriented video game with no operating system. Students built everything from scratch, including a video graphics array driver, interface to a handheld controller and the game logic, implementing all as circuits on an FPGA (field programmable gate array) chip. In addition to the technical competition, attendees got a chance to vote for their favorite projects in a "People's Choice" award competition. The three winners were Scott Sirowy in first place, Zoe Adams in second place and Qui Le in third place. All three received a professional FPGA development board and design software compliments of Xilinx that have a commercial value of $600 each.
Bourns College of Engineering celebrated National Engineers Week, Feb. 22-25, with a series of events that showcased the discipline of engineering for others on the UCR campus. Student engineering clubs presented activities open to all, ranging from an egg drop competition to free ice cream made on the spot with liquid nitrogen (pictured). The College’s Office of Special Programs assisted engineering student club members in planning and presenting the activities. Other highlights were a Dean’s Recognition Reception for student volunteers, a demonstration of “smart” robots, a Trivial Pursuit contest and a panel discussion by women scientists and engineers that included UCR’s Chancellor France Córdova. Other panelists were Professor Sharon Walker, lecturers Peilin Fu and Kawai Tam, and Tammy Qutami from Parker Aerospace. On Wednesday, approximately 100 students from local high schools participated in Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement (MESA) High School Day, an outreach program for students traditionally underrepresented in engineering. The weeklong celebration concluded with a LAN (Local Area Network) party with food and prizes.
Five Bourns College of Engineering alums shared their post-UCR experiences as part of a panel at Engineering Career Connections on Thursday, February 10. The panel, pictured at left, was moderated by alumnus David Cocker (’96), now a member of the Chemical & Environmental Engineering faculty. Panelists were Sylvie Lee (’97) from the Inland Empire Utility Agency, Chris Couch (’04) from Bourns Inc., Nawid Yakuby (’03) from the Boeing Company, Chet Hall (’83) from Qualcomm and Taylor Cole (’03) from the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Corona Division. The panel gave students job-hunting and career tips as well as noting the practical value of particular engineering courses and programs to their present roles. Preceeding the panel, Josie Campbell, representing Verizon, presented a check for $6,000 to be used for engineering student scholarships. The event concluded with a networking session where company representatives discussed career options with the students. In addition to the companies previously mentioned, representatives from Unisys, ESRI, the US Air Force and IMI plc attended.
Fifty-six student and alumni members of the Bourns College of Engineering honor society formerly known as Epsilon Eta Sigma were initiated as members of the national honor society Tau Beta Pi on February 12 at an afternoon ceremony in Bourns Hall. Three years ago members of Epsilon Eta Sigma began the effort to become a chapter of Tau Beta Pi, submitting petitions to and receiving site visits from the national officers. Members are required to be in the top 1/8 of their Junior class or the top 1/5 of their Senior class, and must exhibit a desire to reach beyond academics to become the best in their field. In the picture, Executive Director of Tau Beta Pi James Froula addresses the newly initiated members at a banquet after the ceremony.
Tau Beta Pi Executive Director James Froula of Knoxville, Tennessee and Executive Councillor Russell Pierce from Washington State traveled to Riverside to participate in the initiation of UC Riverside members into the organization and the installation of the California Alpha Beta chapter at UC Riverside on February 12. Last October the campus honor society Epsilon Eta Sigma (EHS) was unanimously approved to become a chapter of Tau Beta Pi at the organization’s 99th annual national convention. EHS President Christopher Mayhew and Chief Advisor and Assistant Dean Dennis Rice attended the convention to further the effort to join the national organization, where they received the news that the petition was unanimously accepted. Tau Beta Pi is the only engineering honor society representing the entire engineering profession. It is the nation’s second-oldest society, founded at Lehigh University in 1885 to recognize students of distinguished scholarship and exemplary character. It is the engineering equivalent of Phi Beta Kappa. Mayhew is pictured receiving the chapter’s charter from Tau Beta Pi national Executive Councillor Pierce (left) and Executive Director Froula (right).
Interim Dean Mark Matsumoto was initiated as an Eminent Engineer of Tau Beta Pi on February 12 at UCR. When he was a student, there was not a chapter of Tau Beta Pi at the university he attended. Tau Beta Pi bylaws state that a Chapter may elect to membership any alumnus of a recognized engineering college who graduated more than 10 years ago and who has achieved distinction for eminent attainments in engineering. Dean Matsumoto’s accomplishments are many, including election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2001. He is pictured (left) receiving a certificate from California Alpha Beta chapter’s President Chris Mayhew.
Mechanical Engineering faculty member Cengiz Ozkan has been chosen as the lead organizer for a symposium titled “Assembly at the Nanoscale – Toward Functional Nanostructured Materials” at the fall 2005 meeting of the Materials Research Society in Boston, Massachusetts. The meeting will bring together approximately 250 researchers in fields such as chemistry, physics, biology, surface science and materials science to advance the progress in the engineering of nanoscale assemblies. Invited speakers include prominent names in the field from institutions such as Harvard, MIT and Northwestern University, as well as from other countries including Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom. Dr Ozkan received his Ph.D. in Materials Science from Stanford University; his research interests are in the areas of wafer fab processing, thin film mechanics and nanotechnology.
Bourns College of Engineering alumni celebrated Homecoming ’05 on Saturday, January 29 with tours of the new Engineering II building, golf-themed activities and a dinner to recognize six graduation classes. A simulated golf tournament, compliments of QMotions, Inc. allowed alumni to compete for prizes. Student engineering clubs and the Alumni Association set up displays of their activities and were on hand to talk to the guests. Hard-hat tours of the inside of Engineering II were led by Interim Dean Matsumoto and Assistant Dean Dennis Rice, providing an inside view of the newest addition to the engineering precinct. A late afternoon reception with a martini bar allowed alums to catch up on their careers after graduation. Chancellor France Córdova welcomed the guests to dinner, where the graduation classes of 2000, 1995, 1990, 1985, 1980 and 1975 were recognized. The evening concluded with the awarding of prizes for the simulated golf tournament and a drawing for a raffle whose proceeds are earmarked for BCOE student scholarships.
Electrical Engineering Associate Professor Alexander Balandin has been invited to chair the International Symposium on Fluctuations and Noise, sponsored by the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) to be presented in Austin, Texas from May 23-26. The conference is considered one of the highest ranked scientific meetings in the field. Both experimental and theoretical aspects of electronic noise and fluctuations, measurement techniques, noise modeling and computer simulation issues will be examined at the conference. The invitation to act as chair the SPIE International Conference came in recognition of Balandin’s contribution to the study of low-frequency noise in GaN-based high-power transistors. More information about the conference is available at www.spie.org.
A group of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers from Professor Balandin’s Nano-Device Laboratory (NDL) received the 3rd Place Award in a poster competition at UCLA on January 18. The award was presented during a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Semiconductor Research Corporation review workshop for the MARCO (Microelectronics Advanced Research) Center on Functional Engineered Nano Architectonics (FENA) at UCLA. The NDL group, which included postdoctoral researchers Weili Liu and Vladimir Fonoberov as well as graduate students Khan Alim, Manu Shamsa, Yun Bao, and Mayank Varshney, presented a poster entitled “New Approaches for Heat Removal from the Beyond-CMOS Nanoelectronic Circuits.” The poster was selected from more than 50 submissions from research groups representing the nation’s best engineering schools, including UCLA, UCSB, MIT, Caltech, and USC. The first author of the poster, Weili Liu, received a Certificate of Accomplishment and a cash prize. Pictured left to right are Khan Alim, Weili Liu and Manu Shamsa.
Prof. Anthony G. Evans, an internationally renowned researcher from UC Santa Barbara, presented a talk titled “Design and Demonstration of High Authority Shape Morphing Structures" on Jan. 19 as part of a Mechanical Engineering Distinguished Speaker Seminar Series. Professor Evans’ research has embraced a range of fundamental and engineering issues related to the fabrication and performance of materials for advanced thermo-structural systems. He had extensive experience in industry in addition to a very successful impact in academia, and he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1997. During his visit to the Mechanical Engineering department, Prof. Evans said that he was very happy and impressed to see so many promising young faculty members here, which reminded him of the early days of materials department at UCSB. In the photo, Dr. Evans (blue shirt) speaks with ME faculty members prior to his presentation.
The research of Cengiz Ozkan, a member of the Mechanical Engineering faculty, is featured on the nanotechweb.org Web site. His team is the first to use quantum dots for labeling specific proteins in plant cells.
Electrical Engineering Professor and Center for Research in Intelligent Systems (CRIS) Director Bir Bhanu has a new book out, and a second book will be published in two months. Professor Bhanu was editor and wrote the opening chapter of “Computer Vision Beyond the Visible Spectrum”, which presents new and pioneering research across the electromagnetic spectrum in the military, commercial and medical domains. His first chapter describes a theoretical framework for predicting the performance of object (target) recognition methods. Dr. Bhanu is one of three authors of “Evolutionary Synthesis of Pattern Recognition Systems”, which also concerns object detection and recognition. These subjects are among those studied at CRIS and its Visualization and Intelligent Systems Laboratory (VISLab), a research unit of the College of Engineering. Faculty and graduate students engage in basic and applied research required in the development of intelligent systems for autonomous navigation, automatic object recognition, image/video databases, remote sensing, manufacturing, and various industrial and medical applications.
Bourns College of Engineering’s Homecoming ’05 celebration on January 29 will feature tours, dinner and activities including a simulated golf tournament, compliments of Amro Albanna, President and CEO of QMotions, Inc. The day will also include recognition and gifts for the graduating classes of 2000, 1995, 1990, 1985, 1980 and 1975. A reception and martini bar, engineering club and alumni association booths, and raffles to support scholarships for BCOE students are also on the schedule. The celebration will conclude in time for alumni to attend the UCR basketball game at the Student Recreation Center. The picture, from last year’s event, shows a tour that included Chancellor Córdova and William Saito, President and CEO of I/O Software, Inc., third and fourth from the left.