MARCO and DARPA fund five
December 18, 2006
Professors Alexander Balandin, Jianlin Liu, Cengiz Ozkan, Roger Lake and Mihri Ozkan (pictured left to right) have been awarded individual research funding for three years by the Center on Functional Engineered Nano Architectonics (FENA), which was created with funds from the Microelectronics Advanced Research Corporation (MARCO) and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The Phase Two funding from FENA to UC Riverside researchers has been awarded based on individual proposals submitted by the Bourns College of Engineering Principal Investigators. FENA aims to create and investigate new nano-engineered functional materials, devices, and novel computational architectures for information processing systems beyond the limits of conventional CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) technology. The technologies of the future, which are being developed by the FENA researchers, will provide the basis for the continued expansion of the semiconductor industry and the creation of new applications of nanosystems.
Michalis Faloutsos, Associate Professor of Computer Science & Engineering, has been chosen as a Cisco Fall 2006 University Research Program awardee. Sixteen proposals were selected from an international field of interesting topics in networking sciences, including the investigation of issues in wireless and mobility networks, IP multicasting, middleware, network management, optics, QOS, (Quality of Service) and a novel approach to teaching routing design principles through the use of a programmable platform. The unrestricted gift was provided to support Dr. Faloutsos’ research proposal titled “Automated Traffic Classification: Benchmarks and Novel Tools” in which he intends to develop the first publicly available benchmark. He will also introduce statistical techniques into BLINC, a promising traffic classification technique he has developed. Cisco Systems, Inc. is a worldwide leader in networking for the internet.
Computer Science & Engineering Assistant Professor Vana Kalogeraki is the Principal Investigator on a project awarded a National Science Foundation grant. She will develop novel techniques to provide in-network storage capabilities for sensor network architectures. Dr. Kalogeraki will design storage systems that are efficient and easy to manage. The outcome of her research is expected to have significant impact on disciplines such as environment monitoring, seismic and structural monitoring and industry manufacturing.
Chemical & Environmental Engineering Ph.D. student Mahesh Waje has been selected as the recipient of the best oral presentation in his session at the Electrochemical Society meeting in Cancun, Mexico in November. Waje gave two presentations in his session at the proton exchange membrane fuel cells symposium on his research on carbon nanotube support: one concerned improving durability, and another was on improving performance. Waje and Christopher Lew, both students of Professor Yushan Yan, were recipients of travel awards to attend the conference.
Ashok Mulchandani, Wilfred Chen and Nosang Myung (l. to r.), Chemical & Environmental Engineering professors at Bourns College of Engineering have been awarded a grant by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop rapid and efficient methods to detect and quantify infective viruses in drinking water. Marylynn Yates of UCR’s Department of Environmental Sciences is the fourth member of the research team. Dr. Chen is the Principal Investigator of the project, funded through the EPA’s STAR (Science To Achieve Results) program. The current lack of standardized methods makes assessment of risk of enteric virus infection as a result of exposure to drinking water impossible. Methods developed in this study will enable the collection of occurrence data in drinking water, which can be used to assess potential public health risks from these and other microorganisms. They may also be used to determine virus inactivation by disinfectants, and to monitor virus survival in water. There is national and global interest in this type of research, as these viruses sicken and kill hundreds of thousands of people each year, according to the EPA.
Bourns College of Engineering broke its own record for number of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellows in one year, as seven were elevated to this high honor bestowed upon members by their peers. The College’s new Fellows are Dean Reza Abbaschian, Wilfred Chen, Marc Deshusses, Tao Jiang, Dimitrios Morikis, Victor Rodgers and Charles Wyman. Each was nominated by three existing Fellows, reviewed by a steering committee and presented to the AAAS Council for election. The new Fellows will receive a certificate and blue engineering rosette pin on Feb. 17, 2007 during the Association’s Annual Meeting in San Francisco. The election of seven new Fellows raises the College’s total to 18 faculty that have received this distinction. Pictured are (from top) Reza Abbaschian, DimitriosMorikis, Tao Jiang, Marc Deshusses and Charles Wyman (Victor Rodgers and Wilfred Chen are not in picture).
Mechanical Engineering Professor Kambiz Vafai has been awarded the 2006 Heat Transfer Memorial Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) for outstanding contributions to and leadership in research on convection in porous media, convection in enclosed fluids, and flat-shaped heat pipes. In 2004 Dr. Vafai was identified by ISI as a highly cited researcher, and as such is listed among the very limited number of highly cited scientists – only 230 from all engineering disciplines worldwide have ever received this honor.
Three faculty members have achieved the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Grade of Fellow. They are Professors Ilya Dumer, Jie Chen and Walid Najjar (pictured l. to r.). They join five other professors in the College that have achieved the designation of IEEE Fellow. The Board of Directors of the national engineering organization confers the honor upon persons with extraordinary records of accomplishment in any of the IEEE fields of interest. The total number of Fellows selected in any one year does not exceed one-tenth percent of the total voting Institute membership.
A letter published by Electrical Engineering Professor Alexander Balandin (right) and Postdoctoral Researcher Vladimir Fonoberov (left) in the November issue of Nano Letters on a new method of electron mobility enhancement has been featured on the scientific news site PhysOrg.com editorial “For Better Nanowires, Just Add Diamond.” The research was also spotlighted at another news site NanoWerk.com. Electron mobility is an important parameter, which defines how well electrons can move within a semiconductor in response to the applied electric field. Mobility affects the current drive and speed of electronic devices. The results show that electron mobility in silicon nanowires can be enhanced by surrounding the nanowire with acoustically hard material, such as diamond, which suppresses the electron scattering by lattice vibrations (i.e., phonons). The new “phonon engineering” method of mobility enhancement offers the extra benefit of improved heat removal. Preliminary experimental work carried out in Balandin’s group was reported in a recent Applied Physics Letters.
A partnership between Western Digital and Bourns College of Engineering was created on November 9 when company representative Rose Krupp (l.) presented Dean Reza Abbaschian (r.) with a generous check to fund undergraduate scholarships. The two recipients will be selected by the Dean. Successful candidates must have competed their sophomore year with a minimum 3.0 GPA, major in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering, have outstanding credentials as evidenced through references from at least two faculty members, and submit a one-page essay on their career goals. Ms. Krupp, Managing Director of the Western Digital Foundation, came to campus to present the gift and tour several of the teaching labs in Engineering Building II. Western Digital CEO Arif Shakeel has further strengthened the alliance between his company and BCOE by agreeing to serve on the College’s Council of Advisors.
Chemical & Environmental Engineering Professor Yushan Yan took two of his SUNRISE (Summer Undergraduate Nanoscale Research Institute for Science and Engineering) summer program undergraduate students with him to the AIChE (American Institute of Chemical Engineers) convention in San Francisco to participate in the national undergraduate research poster competitions. There were two poster sessions, and Cory O’Neill and Sean Guthrie each entered a different one. Competition was tough; other schools competing included Stanford, MIT and UT Austin. When the winners were announced, both had won the top prize. Professor Yan said he was confident that they would excel in the competition because he felt they were doing research this summer at a level much higher than the typical undergraduate. UC Riverside was selected as a SUNRISE program site by the National Science Foundation; the ten-week program gave students the opportunity to explore the diverse, interdisciplinary nature of nanotechnology, overseen by faculty with broad experience in multiple disciplines and nationally recognized for their work. Pictured at dinner in San Francisco (clockwise from left front) are Cory, Joseph Steirer, Cory’s wife Sofia, Minwei Sun, Zhongwei Chen, Sean and Professor Yan.
Bioengineering Professor Victor Rodgers and Mechanical Engineering undergraduate Felipe Godinez (from left to right) traveled to Florida in October to represent Bourns College of Engineering at the national Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) conference in Florida. SACNAS has provided strong national leadership in improving and expanding opportunities for minorities in the scientific workforce and academia for more than 30 years. The organization mentors college students in science, mathematics and engineering and supports quality pre-college science education. More than 700 students presented their research in poster or presentation form at the conference. BCOE’s booth was one of 16 from the UC system. Dr. Rodgers brought back more than 30 cards requesting information on studying engineering at UCR. Attendees included undergraduate and graduate students, scientists, exhibitors and pre-college educators who work with students from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in the sciences. The College hopes to attract some of these bright domestic students interested in careers in engineering.
The upgrading of an Electrical Engineering teaching lab has been made possible by a much-appreciated donation from the Northrop Grumman Corporation. Representatives from the company traveled to campus on November 3 to present a check and meet with Bourns College of Engineering administrators. Dean Reza Abbaschian (l.), pictured with Northrop Grumman Missile Engineering Center Division Director Ben Overall and Electrical Engineering Department Chair Roger Lake (r.), announced that he has arranged for matching funds. Dr. Hossny ElSherief, Manager of Northrop Grumman’s Electronics and Software Engineering Center and an adjunct faculty member at BCOE, played a key role in communicating the opportunity for the funds to Electrical Engineering Department administrators. At the ceremony, Professor Lake presented an overview of the Department that included the results of a prior Northrop Grumman gift to support student projects. Afterward the industry representatives took a tour of the new Engineering II building and the Center for Research in Intelligent Systems (CRIS).
Electrical Engineering Professor Jianlin Liu’s graduate student Yan Zhu won the Best in Session Award at SRC (Semiconductor Research Corporation) student Symposium 2006, held in Cary, North Carolina October 9-10. The SRC Student Symposium is a student/industry networking event that features outstanding technical presentations by students, ample opportunities for discussing the research presented, and a lot of interaction between students and industry participants. Yan Zhu won the sole Best in Session Award for her paper entitled "Self-aligned Silicide/Si Hetero-Nanocrystal Floating Gate Nonvolatile Memory”. This research, supported by the MARCO (Microelectronics Advanced Research Corporation) center on FENA (Functional Engineered Nano Architectonics) and the National Science Foundation, demonstrates a novel memory device that can be used to replace flash memory toward CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) ultimate limit. Only SRC/MARCO-supported graduate students who are within one year of their Ph.D. graduation are eligible to participate. More than 130 Ph.D. students presented their research at the Symposium this year. The event was sponsored by eight SRC member companies: AMD, Applied Materials, Freescale, IBM, Intel, Mentor Graphics, Novellus, and Texas Instruments.
Girl Scouts, their families and children of UCR faculty and staff enjoyed an afternoon of fun educational activities during Space, Science and Engineering Day at Bourns College on October 29. The Riverside Astronomical Society participated, bringing several telescopes and showing the guests how to use them. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) sponsored the day, which included talks and demonstrations by women engineers and scientists. UCR student chapters of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) hosted the event, providing member volunteers to staff the activities. These included comet construction, straw rocket contests, decorating cookies to look like planets, Rover races, a search for a habitable planet (pictured), a create-your-own-constellation planetarium, and a model Mars Rover that navigated over face-down, giggling students. Colorful NASA displays provided information on current and upcoming Solar System explorations. Additional funding for the event was provided by Xerox and ASME.
Electrical Engineering Professor Alexander Balandin is a Co-Principal Investigator for a university-industry team that has won NASA funding for the development of high-efficiency radiation-hard nanostructure solar cells. The interdisciplinary team, which also includes researchers and engineers from the CFD Research Corporation, Rochester Institute of Technology and International Photonics, will develop the software tools for the modeling-based optimization of the next generation of solar cells as well as prototype devices. Future NASA deep-space exploration missions will require improvements in photovoltaic efficiency and radiation hardness. Work to be performed in Professor Balandin’s Nano-Device Laboratory (NDL) includes modeling of light absorption and electron transport in nanostructured semiconductors as well as experimental study of the solar cell performance. Software tools to be developed under this project will utilize the theoretical results previously obtained in Balandin’s group for the regimented quantum dot superlattices. The subcontract for NDL follows initial NASA seed funding, which helped to demonstrate the concept. Professor Balandin (yellow shirt) is pictured with graduate students who are participating in the project (left to right): Suchismita Ghosh, Irene Calizo, Qinghui Shao and Yang-An Tan.
Cengiz Ozkan from the Mechanical Engineering faculty and Yang Yang from UCLA and their co-workers have recently reported in the journal Nature Nanotechnology that Tobacco Mosaic Viruses (TMV) with platinum nanoparticles attached to their outer surfaces could be used as nanoscale memory devices that can be switched on and off electronically. They have embedded the virus-nanoparticle hybrid in a conductive polymer, and sandwiched it between two metallic electrodes. By applying an electrical potential between the two electrodes, they observed an increase in the current when the voltage reached about 3 volts. In this ‘on’ state, electrons were able to tunnel through a seemingly impenetrable barrier because of their quantum nature. The ‘on’ state remained stable unless the voltage went below –2.4 volts, which switched the device off, behavior that could allow the structure to be used as a memory device. Their research could pave the way for employing self-assembled bio-nano systems as building blocks in nanoelectronics and memory applications for the future.
A paper entitled “Measuring and Modeling Emissions from Extremely Low Emitting Vehicles” has won this year's Pyke Johnson Award from the Transportation Research Board (TRB), a division of the National Research Council. This honor may be awarded annually, but is only awarded in years when there is a significantly excellent paper. Co-authors were CE-CERT researchers George Scora, John Collins, Nicole Davis, Joe Norbeck and Center Director Matthew Barth. (Barth, Collins and Scora are pictured, right to left.) The award is for the outstanding paper published in the field of transportation systems research in planning and environment issues. The authors will be honored at an awards ceremony on January 22 in Washington, D.C. during the TRB Annual Meeting. The TRB is a division of the National Research Council, which serves as an independent adviser to the federal government and others on scientific and technical questions of national importance. The National Research Council is jointly administered by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.
New engineering students were welcomed with music, prize drawings, food, games and information about the activities of the College’s student organizations on October 11 in the patio of the engineering complex. The event was hosted by the College of Engineering Leadership Council, comprised of officers from all of the College’s student organizations, and open to BCOE students, faculty and staff. Representatives from each organization were at booths displaying the club’s activities, eager to answer questions about the benefits of joining their group. Projects displayed included the Society of Automotive Engineers’ Mini Baja vehicle, robots created by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, a biodiesel filtration system from the Air & Waste Management Association and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Human-Powered Vehicle. Pictured are students learning about the activities of the Biomedical Engineering Society.
Co-Principal Investigators Neal Young and Michalis Faloutsos and Principal Investigator Srikanth Krishnamurthy, Computer Science & Engineering faculty members pictured left to right, have won a National Science Foundation grant to develop a smart wireless network that can reconfigure itself with each connection. They will determine how to design a network that constantly reconfigures itself to maximize the quality of signals between neighboring transmitters and receivers. The technologies they develop will be the foundation of the next generation ad hoc networks, promising high bandwidth and reliable communications even in harsh environments. They will also create a wireless teaching laboratory at UCR where graduate and undergraduate students may perform experiments and understand practical implementations.
Computer Science & Engineering Professor Gianfranco Ciardo was General Chair of the International Conference on Quantitative Evaluation of SysTems (QEST) held September 11-14 at UC Riverside. QEST is the leading forum on evaluation and verification of computer systems and networks, through stochastic models and measurements, possibly incorporating non-deterministic behavior, and aims to create a sound methodological basis for assessing and designing trustworthy computing systems and networks. There were more than 70 attendees from both academia and industry. In addition to participants from the U.S., others came from France, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, U.K., Spain, Sweden, Hungary, Denmark, Switzerland, Mexico, Canada, Chile, Argentina, and Korea. Invited talks were by J. Halpern (Cornell University), P. L'Ecuyer (IRISA-INRIA and Université de Montréal), and A. Merchant (Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto). UC Discovery contributed an Opportunity Award in the amount of $9,000. Gianfranco Ciardo was selected to receive the award. Three authors, M. Kwiatkowska, G. Norman, D. Parker from University of Birmingham, U.K., won the Best Paper Award. In the photo, Parker (l.) and Norman are receiving the award from Dr. Ciardo (r.). All papers accepted to be presented were selected, from many that were submitted, by a thorough review process involving at least three Program Committee members for each paper. The best paper was selected from the accepted papers by a committee of peers. The conference was sponsored by the Department of Computer Science & Engineering and by the Bourns College of Engineering.
Computer Science & Engineering Professors Vassilis Tsotras (right) and Dimitrios Gunopulos (left) have received an award from the National Science Foundation to develop efficient techniques for querying objects with functional attributes (speed, traffic flow, etc.) in geographical information systems (GIS). Emerging GIS applications such as transportation networks, traffic management, sensor-based surveillance involve objects that have time and/or space attributes. The processing of such objects is typically computationally intensive and makes the storing and retrieving of such objects inefficient. The project seeks to develop special indices that incrementally compute the results of user-issued questions. The researchers also aim to create a prototype that will serve as a toolbox of efficient techniques for processing the information. This toolbox will be available for researchers and students via the project Web site.
Chemical and Environmental Engineering Professor Jianzhong Wu was awarded a multi-year grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) for his research in the field of crystal formation and growth. The objective of this research is to apply and extend molecular models developed by Professor Wu and his coworkers for quantitative description of the microscopic details on how crystals are formed and how the process can be engineered by changing solution conditions. Results of this work are expected to have impacts in both fundamental research and technological applications; for example, they could further understanding of nanoparticle formation, and a variety of biological processes including arthritis, gallstone formation and bone growth.
The Department of Computer Science & Engineering hosted members of their Board of Advisors on Tuesday, September 19 to gain industry insight on programs and plans for the new academic year. Associate Dean Chinya Ravishankar welcomed the advisors and made a presentation on the state of the College. Department Chair Thomas Payne spoke of accomplishments, changes and challenges since the advisors’ last meeting. Undergraduate and graduate programs and research efforts were also on the agenda. In the afternoon advisors collaborated to share their impressions and recommendations with College administrators (see photo). Their industry perspective is most valuable for the design of coursework that will prepare engineering students for successful careers after graduation.
Chemical & Environmental Engineering Professors Ashok Mulchandani (right) and Wilfred Chen (left) are members of a team that has received a $1 million award from the National Science Foundation to develop a highly sensitive, rapid, precise, miniature, rugged and low-cost sensor for explosive trinitrotoluene and the herbicide atrazine. Professor Mulchandani is the team's Principal Investigator; Co-Principal Investigators are Professor Chen, Physics Professor Umar Mohideen and Cell Biology & Neuroscience Professor Vladimir Parpura. The novel sensors they develop will also have applications in such fields as health care, homeland security, and food quality and safety.
Electrical Engineering Professor Sheldon Tan has received a grant from the National Science Foundation for his collaborative research work with China’s Tsinghua University. The funds will support three years of collaborative research work and educational activities between UC Riverside’s Mixed-Signal Nanometer VLSI Research Lab (directed by Professor Tan) and the Design Automation Lab at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. U.S. students will work with researchers at Tsinghua University to jointly attack the grand challenges of designing and verifying silicon-based nanometer VLSI (Very Large-Scale Integration) systems. The proposed collaborative educational and research activities will provide unique training, mentoring, networking and intellectual development opportunities for students at UCR.
The College of Engineering – Center for Environmental Research & Technology (CE-CERT) held a press conference on Sept. 14 to announce that Viresco Energy LLC of Riverside will fund a $15 million demonstration plant where waste materials will be processed into clean liquid fuels that cost less than half the price of oil. Viresco Energy’s President Jim Guthrie and Dr. Joseph Norbeck, Director of the Environmental Research Institute and Yeager Families Professor of Engineering, described the breakthrough process that can produce clean, sulfur-free diesel fuel for around $1 per gallon. The information generated from the pilot facilities will accelerate the successful commercialization of the technology, developed by Norbeck and CE-CERT research engineers Chan Seung Park and the late Colin Hackett. A technical consortium to begin the commercialization will be chaired by Dr. Neal Richter, a Chevron Texaco Fellow and Viresco’s chief scientist. The first step will be to design and build the 10-ton-per-day pilot plant in Riverside; it is expected to be operating by early 2008. Guthrie (middle) and Norbeck (right) are pictured being interviewed by Channel 7 News.
Amit Roy-Chowdhury (pictured) is the Principal Investigator and Bir Bhanu the Co-Principal Investigator for a new National Science Foundation award titled “Cyber System: Collaborative Research: An Intelligent Network of Wireless Videos for Dynamic Scene Analysis”. Both professors are faculty in the Department of Electrical Engineering. UC Riverside is leading this collaborative research project with University of Pennsylvania. The project will develop an intelligent network of video cameras connected over a wireless communication channel for applications in understanding the activity of objects and people captured on the videos. This network will have the benefit of being more mobile than existing systems, and will have applications ranging from security such as monitoring nuclear installations and borders to commercial interests like video communications and multimedia entertainment. The investigators will also use this opportunity to develop interdisciplinary courses on wireless video networks that can be taught at UCR and UPenn.
Chemical & Environmental Engineering Professor Yushan Yan's manuscript on low-k technology has been evaluated as a VIP (Very Important Paper) by Angewandte Chemie, a high-impact journal published by the German Chemical Society. Less than 5 percent of manuscripts receive such a citation. This is a collaborative work; the team includes Professors Junlan Wang of Mechanical Engineering at UCR, Michael Deem of Rice University, Mark Davis of Caltech, Dr. Todd Ryan and Dr. Jeremy Martin of Advanced Micro Devices and Dr. Wolfgang Maichen of Teradyne. The paper is titled "Mechanical and Dielectric Properties of Pure-Silica-Zeolite Low-k Materials". Every year computer chips are being made faster and cheaper, but in order to accomplish this, their wires are becoming thinner and closer together, and a better insulator for these wires has to be developed. The successful development of a suitable insulator has been considered as one of the several grand challenges facing the semiconductor industry. A number of materials, including polymers and porous amorphous silicas, have been tried as insulators for these wires without much success. Dr. Yan's paper talks of experimental and theoretical findings suggesting that crystalline PSZs (pure-silica-zeolites) have the necessary properties for this use. The article can be viewed at www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/112770137/PDFSTART.
Mihri Ozkan, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, has been chosen to receive an Army Research Office’s Young Investigator Program Award for her research into techniques for developing higher-efficiency photovoltaic cells. She and a postdoctoral researcher will work to improve the charge collection efficiency at the polymer/ITO electrode interface by the addition of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowires, and also improve the absorbtion efficiency and carrier mobility with the addition of single-walled nanotubes as a blend. The Army would apply the research for use in less expensive and more efficient solar cells to power portable electronic equipment. This research could also be transferred to industry for the manufacturing of renewable and clean solar cell devices.
Electrical Engineering Professor Alexander Balandin has received a grant from the Army Research Office for experimental research in the field of semiconductor nanostructures and their spintronic and optoelectronic applications. The equipment funds provided by this one-year award will be spent on acquisition of the advanced time-resolved spectrometer with the single photon counting capability. This instrument will be used to investigate the charge carrier recombination and light emission from the nanostructures based on wide-band gap semiconductors such as zinc oxide (ZnO) and gallium nitride (GaN). Research will be carried out in Professor Balandin’s Nano-Device Laboratory (NDL) and will help in optimizing such nanostructures for the proposed spintronic and optoelectronic device applications. He and NDL group members have previously made important contributions to the study of phonon states in ZnO and GaN nanostructures. New experimental capabilities provided by this award will strongly enhance research and education activities in this field.
Jianlin Liu, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering, has won a National Science Foundation Small Grant for Exploratory Research to do research in scalability of hetero-nanocrystal memory. The investigation will enrich state-of-the-art knowledge on nanostructures and help to discover more principles of the bottom-up nanofabrication technique of self-assembly. The results could also be used by the electronic memory industry to produce better devices than present commercialized ones embedded in products such as digital cameras and cell phones. Dr. Liu plans to disseminate successful research results to K-12 students through ongoing summer programs in nanotechnology, and to allow group visits of his laboratory from local school districts.
Electrical Engineering Associate Professor Zhengyuan (Daniel) Xu has received an Army Research Office (ARO) grant for his three-year project on wireless optical communications. Recent advances in miniaturized solid-state laser sources and photon detectors have made wireless optical communication technology a very competitive solution to short-range low-power data communication applications and wireless sensor networks. While the Army is interested in attaining secure and jamming-resistant communications, the research also has commercially attractive applications. This ARO grant, combined with a recent Department of Defense (DOD) grant funded by the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP), will allow Professor Xu to initiate a state-of-the-art non-line of sight wireless optical communications study, including test-bed setup, field measurements, system characterization in various indoor and outdoor communication environments, and system design tradeoffs. He expects that effective solutions to mitigate channel adverse effects will facilitate promising deployment of this technology in the near future.
Computer Science & Engineering Professor Laxmi Bhuyan has secured a Major Research Instrumentation grant from the National Science Foundation to purchase an SGI Altix 4700 supercomputer system with 64 Intel Itanium high-performance processors with a tightly coupled low latency interconnect. Dr. Bhuyan’s co-Principal Investigators are Gianfranco Ciardo and Walid Najjar, colleagues in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering. They plan to install the machine during winter break. Six projects are already waiting for its arrival, but it will be available to all the researchers at UCR for parallel computing research on a case by case basis. Dr. Bhuyan says that the cluster will also be used in various graduate courses, and he expects that availability of this high-performance machine will encourage new research and more funding in the parallel/distributed computing area at UCR.
Electrical Engineering Professor Alexander Balandin has co-edited (with Kang L. Wang, UCLA) and co-authored a major five-volume handbook on the field of nanotechnology. The Handbook of Semiconductor Nanostructures and Nanodevices (ASP, Los Angeles, 2006) which has just appeared in print, is a single-reference source that provides the fundamentals and the most recent advances in the interdisciplinary field of semiconductor nanostructures and devices. The five comprehensive volumes of the handbook cover all important aspects of the field: quantum dots, nanowires and nano-assemblies; nanofabrication and nanoscale characterization; spintronics and nanoelectronics; nanophotonics and optoelectronics; and nanodevices and circuits. Professor Balandin, who wrote an introduction to all of the volumes, assembled an international team of more than 200 recognized experts from more than 20 countries to bring the handbook to life. UC Riverside’s leading position in the field is evidenced by the fact that the handbook features four invited review chapters from BCOE Electrical Engineering researchers on the subjects of electron device modeling (Roger Lake); nanostructures made of wide band-gap semiconductors (Alexander Balandin); self-assembly of quantum dots (Jianlin Liu); and nanoscale magnetic memory devices (Sakhrat Khizroev). For further information about the handbook, please see http://aspbs.com/jno/
Sandia National Laboratories is funding a study on the impact of evaporating droplets on solid surfaces, the research of Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor Guillermo Aguilar and his student assistant, Jie Liu. When liquid cryogen fuels are released from highly pressurized containers, purposefully or accidentally, ¬sudden flash evaporation and subsequent impact of liquid droplets onto solid surfaces occurs. The purpose of Aguilar’s study is to understand the physical mechanisms involved during the impact and spreading of evaporating liquid droplets onto solid surfaces. They will use an instrumented pressurized chamber and high speed imagining. A surrogate for cryogen fuels, R134a, will be used to generate the liquid droplets, while isothermal, smooth, flat and concave surfaces will be used as the impact surfaces. These studies have a wide variety of applications, from aeronautics (the knowledge and control of the dispersion of liquid fuels during rocket launches and rocket and missile explosions) to medical applications (the impact and evaporation of cryogen droplets and heat extraction from human tissues). Liu and Aguilar (at right) are pictured with a chamber that will be used in the study.
Mechanical Engineering Professor Cengiz Ozkan has been asked to attend the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative (NAKFI) Smart Prosthetics Conference to be presented Nov. 9-11 in Irvine. Invitations have been extended to approximately 100 researchers as well as representatives of public and private funding organizations, university and government leadership, and science journals with the objective of stimulating conversations about interdisciplinary research in engineering, science and medicine, and funding for such work. Invited participants will be assigned to one of eleven interdisciplinary task groups that will each develop possible solutions to challenges in the field of prosthetics. Systems using man-made materials and devices, alone or in combination with biologic substances, have been proposed as prosthetic substitutes or prosthetic interfaces to the body. Developments in biology, medicine, engineering, and machine learning will result in “smart” devices that function more like the tissue or organ that they are intended to replace. Summaries of the discussions will be posted online after the conference for public dissemination. The National Academies bring together experts in all areas of scientific and technological endeavor to address critical national issues and give advice to the federal government and the public. NAKFI conferences are funded through a generous grant by the W.M. Keck Foundation.
Dr. Sharon Walker, Assistant Professor of Chemical & Environmental Engineering at UC Riverside, and Dr. Heather Smith, Assistant Professor of Life Sciences at Riverside Community College (RCC), are the program directors of a new USDA funded three-year project that will provide RCC students from underrepresented backgrounds an experiential learning opportunity in cutting-edge water quality research and exposure to a four-year college environment. The intention is that this experience will motivate students to pursue careers in science and engineering after graduating from a two year institution (RCC) and transferring to a four year university (UCR). In combination with the research project and regular interaction with the faculty, the RCC students will have informal research and career mentoring from a full-time USDA researcher at the USDA Salinity Lab in Riverside, and from members of the UCR chapter of Society of Hispanic and Professional Engineers (SHPE) and the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE). Additional outreach efforts will include RCC and UCR participants’ involvement in the annual Riverside Unified School District Science Fair including the establishment of a special award, and the development of a seminar series in the area of Environmental Science and Engineering hosted at RCC to demonstrate research going on at UCR and to encourage students to seek out other similar educational programs suited to their goals and interests. Two RCC students will participate in each of the three years. Pictured (l. to r.) at UCR are Dr. Walker, Dr. Smith, and this year’s participants D.J. Cummings and Jose Avila.
Mechanical Engineering professors Marko Princevac (left) and Akula Venkatram (right) are part of a team traveling to Pune, India to help colleagues develop an air quality management system. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is sponsoring the effort, part of a larger project between the US and India that began five years ago. Pune, India’s seventh largest city with a population of 4 million and an estimated 1 million vehicles, has air quality problems typical of other Indian cities where rapid urban growth, emissions from vehicles and industrial smoke have raised pollution levels far beyond legal limits. Venkatram and Princevac, along with three EPA scientists, will demonstrate an EPA-developed air quality modeling system known as AERMOD; Dr. Venkatram was a major player in the system’s development. Although India has strong air quality management regulations, they have been hard to enforce because of inadequate modeling and measuring tools. Dr. Princevac will train Indian researchers to use state-of-the-art measurement instruments that generate data for the AERMOD evaluations.
Mihri Ozkan, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering, has received a one-year seed grant from the University of California’s Cancer Research Coordinating Committee (CRCC). Dr. Ozkan has explored nanoscale assembly of inorganic carbon nanotubes and quantum dots (QDs) with icosahedral Cow Pea Mosaic Virus (CPMV) to produce an array of hybrid structures. The CRCC funds will allow her to extend this study to provide a potent delivery system capable of receptor targeting and simultaneous detection, with reduced drug toxicity by minimizing dosage requirements in cancer therapy. Dr. Ozkan has a highly interdisciplinary background including materials science, bioengineering and electrical engineering. The CRCC grant funding is derived entirely from the annual income generated by some 35-40 accounts established as endowments by private donors to the University of California for the purpose of supporting cancer research.
Professor Joseph Norbeck’s proposal for studies and research in atmospheric chemistry has been chosen to receive $1.5 million funding from the W.M. Keck Foundation. The research will be carried out at the College of Engineering – Center for Environmental Research and Technology (CE-CERT) environmental chamber. Funds will be used for special instrumentation and project costs for research in a field for which UC Riverside has been a world leader for more than thirty years. Chemical & Environmental Engineering Associate Professor David Cocker, a member of the project’s steering committee, will be the Principal Investigator for aerosol-phase chemistry studies. Other key personnel are Janet Arey, Roger Atkinson, William Carter, Jingsong Zhang and Paul Ziemann, professors and full-time researchers at CE-CERT and the University’s Air Pollution Research Center. The grant is the largest the Keck Foundation has ever given to UC Riverside. Pictured (l. to r.) are Dr. Norbeck and Dr. Cocker.
Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor Marko Princevac’s Laboratory for Environmental Flow Modeling has received funding from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (Department of Homeland Security) to perform a water channel modeling and high resolution velocity measurements around mock multi-building arrays. To date, little high resolution velocity data exists for building clusters of multiple heights. Even simple arrangements of buildings, when they have varying heights, can result in complex wind flows at street level. These spatially-varying winds strongly influence the spatial patterns of chemical and biological agent transport and dispersion. This project will result in an experimental database that can be used for evaluating the new generation of urban dispersion models (QUIC – Quick Urban & Industrial Complex) that compute three-dimensional wind fields and dispersion patterns. Dr. Princevac is pictured (center) in his lab with his engineering student assistants Seung-Bu Park and Jason Grubbs at left, and PapaMagatte Diagne and Sander Li at right.
Undergraduate students arrived on campus June 19 to inaugurate UC Riverside’s new Summer Undergraduate Nanoscale Research Institute for Science and Engineering (SUNRISE) program. Electrical Engineering Professor Alexander Balandin and his co-PI Neuroscience Professor Vladimir Parpura submitted the successful bid to the National Science Foundation (NSF) who is providing funding for three years for this site of their Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. Christian Foster, Director of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities at Bourns College of Engineering, is the managing director of the ten-week program that gives undergraduate students the opportunity to explore the diverse, interdisciplinary nature of nanotechnology. Students are overseen by faculty with broad experience in multiple disciplines and nationally recognized for their work in nanotechnology. Engineering faculty members collaborating with the students are Alex Balandin, Robert Haddon, Mihri Ozkan, Yushan Yan, Jianlin Liu, Roger Lake, Cengiz Ozkan, Nosang Myung, Wilfred Chen and Ashok Mulchandani. This year’s undergraduate participants come mostly from Southern California four-year and community colleges, but also from as far away as UC Berkeley. The students are pictured with Chris Foster at an evening reception in the Botanic Gardens after their first day.
Electrical Engineering Professor Alexander Korotkov’s letter published in the May 24 Physical Review Letters on measuring single qubits is reported at the scientific web site PhysOrg.com under “breaking news”. The research, authored by Korotkov and two colleagues at Penn State, pertains to testing quantum systems, important in developing the next-generation computer technology: creating quantum computers. His system could be a more practical way of distinguishing between a system that exhibits classical behaviors and quantum behaviors. Korotkov says that while the paper isn’t a breakthough, it is a step toward correctly understanding quantum mechanics. The full article can be read at http://physorg.com/news70027151.html.
Electrical Engineering Ph.D. candidate Bi Song received a best student paper award at the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), held last month in Toulouse, France. She is the first author of the paper "Towards a Multi-Terminal Video Compression Algorithm Using Epipolar Geometry", co-authored by Ozgun Bursalioglu, also an EE graduate student, and EE faculty members Amit Roy Chowdhury and Ertem Tuncel. Song is a student of Prof. Roy-Chowdhury and works in his lab doing research on efficient transmission of videos from networked cameras. According to the IEEE site, ICASSP is the largest and most comprehensive signal processing conference in the world. More than 1,000 papers from numerous countries were presented there this year. Pictured with two of the cameras are (left to right) Professors Tuncel and Roy-Chowdhury and Bi Song.
Engineering students participated in a Commencement ceremony on Saturday evening, June 17, at the UCR Track Stadium. It was one of four ceremonies held to accommodate a record total of 35,000 participants and their guests. Bachelor’s degree candidates from the Bourns College of Engineering and the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences filed across the stage as their name was called to shake hands with their Dean and accept a certificate from Chancellor France Córdova. The keynote speech was delivered by Edwin R. Alexander (’90), MD, a graduate of UCR in private practice in Orange County who devotes his time to several social and environmental issues and has copyrights and patents pending on medical software and electronic devices. At the conclusion of the ceremony, students turned their tassels from right to left to symbolize the realization of bachelor’s degrees.
Maxwell Kum, a Chemical & Environmental Engineering Ph.D. student, has been awarded a UC Toxic Substances Research and Teaching Program fellowship. The program was created to support research and graduate education in toxics-related fields, and to develop new concepts and scientific talent essential to solving the growing problems of toxic chemicals in our environment. Kum’s goal is to develop a technique to fabricate an array of nanowires that will rapidly and inexpensively detect multiple heavy metal ions in drinking water. Fellowship applicants must be currently enrolled in a graduate program on any UC campus; four of the ten awarded went to UC Riverside students. The fellowship provides up to $25,000 per year for two years; Kum will use his award for tuition, research supplies and use fees for lab facilities as he performs his doctoral research during the next two years.
Some of this year’s Senior Design presentations broke new ground, integrating with music and dance. UCR’s Electrical Engineering Department and Music Department presented “Engineering Art” on June 7 and 8. The projects spotlighted in the performance were musical instruments, including a theramin, a 3-D music visualizer, two interactive instruments and a jacket that programs music via physiological responses. These projects were also presented in the traditional way for Electrical Engineering professors and advisors on June 8 and 9. On June 6 seniors in the Mechanical Engineering Department made their project presentations for faculty and sponsors (pictured). An example of one of the ME projects can be viewed at: www.engr.ucr.edu/~rder/seniordesign_team3/seniordesign.
A tour of the College of Engineering-Center for Environmental Research and Technology (CE-CERT) facility and a discussion session with engineering students (pictured) were two highlights of the annual meeting of the BCOE Council of Advisors. The senior executives traveled to campus on June 7 for a full day of interaction with the College’s administrators and faculty. The group met privately in the late afternoon to formulate recommendations for the future direction of the College, which they then shared with Dean Abbaschian. The feedback from these business leaders is of great importance, as it provides an industry perspective on all activities of the College.
A formal dinner dance capped the end of the academic year for Bourns College of Engineering students on Friday, June 2, at the Student Recreation Center. Organized and hosted by the COE Leadership Council and UCR student clubs IEEE, SWE, ASME and the Mechanical Engineering Graduate Student Association, the event included organization and individual awards, recaps of the past year’s club activities, installation of next year’s Leadership Council officers and entertainment in the form of juggling and ballroom dance exhibitions. IEEE won the Outstanding Large Organization Award and AIChE won the Outstanding Small Organization Award. SAE won the Most Improved Organization Award, SWE got the Most Outstanding Event Award, and IEEE was named the Most Competitive Organization. Martin Gawecki was installed as the new Leadership Council President by Outgoing President Megan Nix. Dean Reza Abbaschian and Chancellor France Córdova were in attendance to celebrate the year’s accomplishments with the students.
Bourns College of Engineering students were called to the stage to receive accolades at UCR’s 2006 Honors Convocation on May 15 at the University Theatre. Michael Sheppy, a Mechanical Engineering undergraduate, was selected by the College’s Deans to receive the BCOE Outstanding Achievement Award. This recognition is for exemplary achievement in academics and research activity, breadth of involvement in the College and commitment to service and citizenship. Marie Donnelly and Martin Gawecki were chosen to receive the Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering Award that recognizes the academic excellence of two graduating seniors. Donnelly is an Environmental Engineering major and Gawecki is majoring in Electrical Engineering. Seven students were selected by the faculty of each undergraduate program to receive Academic Excellence Awards: Ryan Ross for Chemical Engineering, Josef Spjut for Computer Engineering, Shashwati Kasetty for Computer Science, Luis Ochoa for Electrical Engineering, Hanhphuc Nguyen for Environmental Engineering, Benjamin Sanders for Information Systems and Ryan Geary for Mechanical Engineering. Seventeen BCOE students received Academic Scholarship Recognition for maintaining a cumulative GPA of 3.9 or above: Derek Beckman, Alexander Cheung, Jeremy Conner, Srikanth Darbha, Martin Gawecki, Brenda Heinitz, Adam Jaffe, Han Li, James Mackie, Pui Mak, Megan Nix, William Pena, Miroslav Penchev, Christine Riley, Deep Shah, Michael Sheppy and Lindsay Yee.
Brian Bender, B.S. in Computer Science ’89, received the Bourns College of Engineering 2006 Honored Alumni Award at the annual Alumni Association Banquet on May 6. The award recognizes alumni whose personal or professional achievements have brought or honor and distinction to the College. Bender and fellow alumnus John Stebbins founded PropHead, a company specializing in information technology and software services that was bought by AOL in 2000. In 2003 they and Ben Payne, another alum, founded JetHead, a company specializing in software for consumer electronics products. Bender continues to be involved with the College, and has hired many of its graduates. He is pictured at the awards ceremony with UCR Alumni President Ronald Stovitz (left), Chancellor France Córdova and Alumni Association Executive Director Kyle Hoffman (right). Photos are by Michael Elderman.
Three BCOE faculty members, Cengiz Ozkan from Mechanical Engineering, and Matt Barth and Jianlin Liu from Electrical Engineering (pictured l. to r.), have received funding from the University of California Energy Institute (UCEI), a multi-campus research unit that receives its base budget and program direction from the Office of the President of the University. UCEI was created in 1980 to foster research and educate students and policy makers on energy issues that are crucial to the future of California, the nation, and the world. Professors Ozkan and Liu are being funded through the Energy Science and Technology Program, which focuses on the technical side of energy systems, and Professor Barth through the California Energy Studies Program that stresses energy strategy.
Business executives shared their expertise and opinions as members of advisory boards for three of the College’s departments recently. The Department of Electrical Engineering held their meeting on May 12, and the Departments of Chemical & Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering hosted their advisors on the same day, May 18. Each group of advisors provided valuable feedback on current programs and future plans for each department, and industry perspective on what potential employers will expect of the College’s engineering graduates. These meetings are held annually to keep advisors apprised of the department’s current research and new initiatives. They also allow the visitors to interact with both faculty members and students, as in the Electrical Engineering poster session pictured showing students answering the advisors’ questions about their research projects.
Wei Li, a Chemical & Environmental Engineering graduate student researcher, was awarded the top prize in the Ultrafine Particle Graduate Research Competition sponsored by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD). Li’s award was announced May 2 at a conference on Ultrafine particles held at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in Los Angeles. Li works at CE-CERT (College of Engineering–Center for Environmental Research and Technology) in the Vehicle Emissions Research Laboratory. He is pictured (right) with his advisor Professor Joe Norbeck, founding director of CE-CERT and current Director of the Environmental Research Institute. Li’s award-winning project characterized particulate emissions from low-emitting gasoline-powered vehicles; he will use his award money to fund the next stage of his research, involving a larger number and variety of vehicles. Ultrafine particulate matter is a growing health concern because its small size allows it to easily penetrate lungs. SCAQMD, an air pollution control agency responsible for all of Orange County and the urban portions of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, has recently announced a policy initiative to address the issue.
Twelve members of the Bourns College of Engineering faculty were recognized for receiving significant awards on the afternoon of May 4 at the Chancellor’s Residence. Yushan Yan is a University Scholar, a designation that includes funding for three years to toward his research. Mihri Ozkan was honored for being chosen the Distinguished Educator of the Year by the National Engineers Council. Cengiz Ozkan was cited for his Research Recognition award from the Taiwanese-American Aeronautics and Space Association. David Cocker, Kenneth Kauffman, Eamonn Keogh, Cengiz Ozkan, Marko Princevac, Ertem Tuncel, V. Sundararajan, Sharon Walker and Zhengyuan Xu were recognized for earning Regent’s Faculty Fellowships and Faculty Development Awards. Pictured at the ceremony are Yushan Yan, Cengiz Ozkan, Dean Reza Abbaschian, Mihri Ozkan, Sharon Walker and Marko Princevac with Chancellor France Cordova (in black suit).
Megan Nix has been selected to receive a cash award for her senior year of study from Tau Beta Pi, the national engineering honor society. A double major in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering, she is one of 123 Tau Beta Pi Scholars chosen from universities across the U.S. The scholarships are awarded on the competitive criteria of high scholarship, campus leadership and service, and promise of future contributions to the engineering profession. Megan has received numerous awards for her exemplary grades, and spends summers as an intern at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She belongs to four engineering student clubs and serves as Chair of the Bourns College of Engineering Leadership Council. In her spare time she enjoys participating in dance competitions.
Sharon Walker, an Assistant Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, has received a United States Department of Agriculture National Research Initiative grant.
A team of Mechanical Engineering students from UCR's student chapter of ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) placed 7th out of 23 competitors in the endurance event at the Western Regional HPV Competition sponsored by the national ASME organization. The team had spent several months building a Human Powered Vehicle (HPV), an aerodynamic, highly engineered vehicle somewhat similar to a bicycle enclosed by a shell. At the end of April they traveled to San Luis Obispo to compete in the regional contest. In the previous two years, a team from UCR has not been enetered. During the three-day event the vehicles are judged on design, safety and performance through design reports, a time competition and an endurance run. ASME sponsors hope the competition will eventually generate practical designs for use in everyday activities. Pictured (l. to r.) at the competition are Joshua Hockel, Nick Hansen, Brandon Catuara, Ben McElfresh, Oren Bordo, Nichole Dack, Alex Chaney and Shim Syiem, and Michael Sheppy in the HPV Pegasus.
Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor Guillermo Aguilar has received a grant from the National Science Foundation to further his work on the use of long (millisecond) all the way to ultrashort (femtosecond) laser pulses to remove subsurface tissue targets such as vascular lesions below the skin surface. In particular, he and his collaborators in Mexico at CICESE (Centro de Investigacion Cientifica y Educacion Superior de Ensenada) will study the use of low-energy, high-power ultrashort laser pulses (USLP) to allow more precise removal of subsurface tissue structures with less damage to surrounding tissues. The study will allow researchers to correlate the extent of tissue damage with the magnitude, pulse duration and repetition rates of long and ultrashort laser pulses. Furthermore, the work will result in a thermo-mechanical mathematical model that will lead to innovative alternatives to current laser therapy, and provide a better understanding of the interactions of USLP with various tissue targets.
A team led by Professor Victor Rodgers has received a GAANN (Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need) Fellowship Grant from the Department of Education to support graduate students in Chemical & Environmental Engineering and Bioengineering. Dr. Rodgers is Principal Investigator for the grant; other members of the team are Chemical & Environmental Engineering faculty members Sharon Walker, Jerome Schultz and Marc Deshusses. The GAANN program provides assistance to graduate students with excellent records who demonstrate financial need and are pursuing Ph. D. degrees. Dr. Rodgers’ grant will support four graduate student Fellows for five years, providing each with a $30,000 per year stipend, fees, and additional support expenses. They will work with the College’s faculty on projects in these crucial areas that are supported by agencies including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, US Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Defense.
Electrical Engineering graduate student Manu Shamsa has won the Best Poster Award at the Spring Meeting of the Materials Research Society (MRS), an international not-for-profit association of scientists, researchers and engineers engaged in interdisciplinary basic research on materials of technological importance. The MRS Spring Meeting, held every year in San Francisco, is the world’s largest forum for scientists and engineers who work in materials and nanotechnology related fields. The award was presented at the Symposium on Materials and Technology of Dielectrics and Interconnects. Shamsa, a graduate research assistant in Professor Alexander Balandin's Nano-Device Laboratory (NDL), presented a poster entitled “Modeling of the Thermal Conduction Mechanisms in Amorphous Inter-Layer Dielectrics”. His presented research was initiated during a summer internship at Intel’s laboratory in Hillsboro, Oregon, and was a collaborative effort between UCR and Intel researchers. The focus of research performed at Intel and NDL is optimization of heat removal from a new generation of computer chips. Shamsa is pictured measuring thermal conductivity of thin amorphous films in Prof. Balandin’s laboratory at UCR.
A night of dining, dancing, and recognition of the accomplishments of Bourns College of Engineering students and student organizations is planned to finish the year with festivity and celebration. The BCOE End of Year Banquet and Ball will take place on Friday, June 2 from 6 pm until midnight in the UCR Student Recreation Center. The event will be hosted by the College of Engineering Leadership Council, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the Society of Women Engineers. All faculty, staff, and students are invited to attend. The program will include a welcome from Dean Abbaschian, presentations from the co-hosting organizations, a presentation by the Leadership Council on student and organization accomplishments from this past year, and prizes awarded to the College’s outstanding organizations and individuals. The College of Engineering Leadership Council (pictured), comprised of officers from student chapters of professional engineering societies, is organizing the event. For reservations or ticket prices, email coelc@engr.ucr.edu.
The Mechanical Engineering Graduate Student Association (M.E.GSA) planned and presented their first annual symposium on Friday, April 21 for an audience of businessmen, faculty and students. The event was designed to provide an overview of current research and activities of graduate students in the College’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, and to encourage interaction between students, faculty and industry. Dean Reza Abbaschian welcomed attendees and introduced the first speaker, UCR Chancellor France Córdova. The daylong seminar included invited presentations from Professor Xiaodong Li from University of South Carolina, Dr. Dale Connor from the local American Society of Mechanical Engineers organization, and Michael Scorzelli and Patricia Moorman from Bourns, Inc., and oral presentations and poster sessions by ME graduate students. Guests voted for the best presentations and top three posters, announced at the conclusion of the day. The winners are included in the Event Photos below.
Members of the BCOE student chapter of the Society of Automotive Engineers are readying their vehicle for this year’s Mini Baja West competition on May 11 in Portland, Oregon, one of three regional competitions that simulate real-world engineering design projects and challenges. The UCR Mini Baja team is designing and constructing an off-road vehicle that can complete rock crawl and endurance races over rough terrain. Each year, the team must also prove the design of their vehicle is feasible and appealing to the general public. This year, the Mini Baja team has completed an overhaul of previous years' designs to. A significant change this year was the redesign of the rear suspension, based on the advice of Randy Anderson of Walker Evans Racing in Riverside, to make a lighter and more agile vehicle. Although the team competes with much larger institutions with many more years of experience, they expect to make a good showing at this year’s event.
Prism magazine has ranked UC Riverside’s Computer Science program ninth in the top 20 largest computer science programs within engineering colleges by bachelor’s degrees awarded. Prism is the flagship publication of the American Society for Engineering Education, a nonprofit association of more than 12,000 engineering faculty members, U.S. colleges of engineering and engineering technology, corporations, and other organizations dedicated to promoting excellence in engineering and engineering technology education. The magazine reports that bachelor’s degrees in engineering grew by more than 13 percent from 2000 to 2004. Computer science experienced a 66 percent growth during that period, which can be attributed to three factors: increased number of graduates; newly accredited programs; and pre-existing computer science programs moving into engineering.
Jie Chen, Electrical Engineering Professor and Department Chair, has accepted an invitation from Hindawi Publishing Corporation to launch a new, open-access journal devoted to the field of systems and control. As the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Professor Chen has named the publication "Journal of Control Science and Engineering" and has assembled a distinguished Editorial Board consisting of leading authorities worldwide in the field. The journal, to be launched this month, is believed to be the first open-access journal in the field of systems and control. It aims at speedy, online publication of high quality, peer-reviewed papers in all established and newly emerging areas of control theory and applications. Open access publications, increasingly the trend in academic publishing, differ from traditional subscription-based journals in that their entire contents are made freely available online. Since readers are able to access, download and print an article with no subscription or registration barriers, open-access journals increase readership and distribution of published papers. More information can be found at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jcse/edboard.html.
The IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center has selected two Electrical Engineering Ph.D. candidates, Khairul Alam and Manu Shamsa, (pictured l. and r.) for summer internships in its main laboratory in Yorktown Heights, NY. Alam, who works in Professor Roger Lake’s Laboratory for Terascale and Terahertz Electronics (LATTE), carries out theoretical research on electronic transport in nanostructures. Shamsa, who works in Professor Alexander Balandin’s Nano-Device Laboratory (NDL), performs experimental research focused on thermal transport in semiconductor nanostructures and amorphous materials. T.J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for the IBM Research Division, the largest industrial research organization in the world with eight laboratories worldwide. Research in this premier industrial laboratory focuses information technology hardware, ranging from exploratory work in the physical sciences to semiconductors and systems technology.
Mihri Ozkan, Electrical Engineering faculty member, is part of a team that has been awarded a $75,000 grant from the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative. The three other team members are at Duke University. The project, titled “Creating an Inexpensive Diagnostic for Malaria using Combined Nanotechnology and Genomic Approaches”, will develop a low-cost field diagnostic to detect active malaria infection in remote field settings where electricity or medical assistance may be in short supply. The tool will use microfluidics, nanotechnology and genomics in diagnosing the type and resistance of malaria parasites in humans. The Keck Futures Initiative, which awarded $1 million to 14 research projects in the amount of $50,000 to $75,000, is a 15-year effort to enhance communication among researchers, funding agencies, universities and the general public with the objective of stimulating interdisciplinary research. Dr. Ozkan was one of about 100 researchers invited by the National Academies to take part in the Futures Initiative conference held last November in Anaheim. 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.
Electrical Engineering graduate student Yu Lu is the winner of the Institute of Navigation Southern California Section’s 2006 Scholarship. The Institute of Navigation is a non-profit professional society dedicated to the advancement of the art and science of navigation, serving a diverse community including those interested in air, space, marine, land navigation, and position determination. Lu’s research interests include GPS (Global Positioning Systems) and navigation control. In the control lab he maintains a high-precision highway vehicle navigation system which utilizes carrier phase differential GPS and INS(Inertial Navigation System) to get centimeter-level accuracy for the vehicle control, which is sponsored by CalTrans. His Ph.D. research is software radio implementation of multi-frequency GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) receivers.
Bioengineering Professor Victor Rodgers has accepted the invitation of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to serve as a member of the Bioengineering, Technology and Surgical Sciences Study Section, Center for Scientific Review. Study sections review and make recommendations on grant applications submitted to NIH and survey the status of research in their fields of science. Members are selected on the basis of demonstrated competence and achievement in their discipline as evidenced by the quality of research accomplishments, publications in scientific journals and other significant scientific activities, achievements and honors. Dr. Rodgers’ tenure will begin July 1 and run through June 30, 2010.
IEEE-UCR swept two student competitions at the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Southern Area meeting on Saturday, April 1. Bourns College of Engineering IEEE chapter members turned out in force, nearly all wearing their t-shirts, and were commended by the section and the region for being such an active and enthusiastic student branch. In the Micromouse competition, both UCR teams placed in the top three. Team "F1 Mouse," consisting of Henry Chen, Matthew Peterson and Anh Vu, placed first with a time of 1:29 seconds to solve the maze, the only mouse to successfully complete the course. UCR's other micromouse team, Min-Yen Eric Tsai and Stephen Sin, placed third, navigating over 50 squares on the maze. In the paper contest, Megan Nix placed first for her presentation about her metal oxide sensor research for the ENose project at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) last summer. The winners will progress to the regional competitions in the fall, and will represent the Southern Area (Southern California from San Luis Obispo down to Orange County). Megan Nix, in red jacket, is pictured with members of the Micromouse team.
Computer Science & Engineering Assistant Professor Stefano Lonardi is part of a team of researchers that have been awarded a $5 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop high-yield, high-quality and disease resistant barley. Dr. Lonardi and Timothy Close of Botany and Plant Sciences are the UC Riverside representatives in the consortium. The program, known as barley CAP (Coordinated Agricultural Project), is headed by Gary Muehlbauer of the University of Minnesota. Closely related to wheat, barley is used as animal feed and for brewing beer, and is being investigated as a bio-fuel source in climates that are too cold to grow maize or rice. The UCR team’s success follows their work on a National Science Foundation-funded plant genome project. The goal of the USDA project is to develop a detailed genetic “road map” of barley and identify genes linked to important traits with molecular markers in ten breeding programs across the country.
The Mechanical Engineering Graduate Student Association (MEGSA) will present the 1st Annual Mechanical Engineering Graduate Student Symposium on Friday, April 21. Industry leaders from the Southern California region are invited to attend the event, which will feature oral and poster presentations by mechanical engineering graduate students. For more information, contact symposium organizer Mark Johnson at mjohnson@engr.ucr.edu. Johnson recently presented an award from the Department at the Corona-Norco Unified School District Science and Engineering Fair to the project which most demonstrated an aptitude for engineering. The winner of the award was Risha Bera of Centennial High School for her project entitled, "Examining Effects of Organic Chemicals in Vehicle Exhaust on Wound Healing". She completed part of her work at the College of Engineering – Center for Environmental Research & Technology (CE-CERT). Risha is pictured with Johnson (left) at the ceremony.
Two Bourns College of Engineering faculty members, Junlan Wang (left) and Zhengyuan (Daniel) Xu (right), have received funding from the Department of Defense’s Defense University Research Instrumentation Program that allows researchers to purchase state-of-the-art equipment costing $50,000 and up, often difficult to obtain with most research contracts and grants. Junlan Wang will buy a magnetron sputtering system which she will use to develop thin films for applications of interest to the Department of Defense. Undergraduate students assisting Dr. Wang with the research will learn how to manufacture high-quality thin films and expand their knowledge of materials science. The vendor of the equipment has agreed to offer a special enrichment program for high school pre-engineering students. Daniel Xu will use his award to develop a test bed for use in a wireless optical communications system for the Army Research Laboratory that is expected to use less power and be more resistant to interference and jamming. Winning proposals were in areas of importance to the Department of Defense such as information technology, remote sensing, advanced materials and ocean science and engineering.
Undergraduate students who would like a chance to collaborate with faculty in a research laboratory for a summer of fun and learning must submit applications by April 3 to SUNRISE (Summer Undergraduate Nanoscale Research Institute for Science & Engineering). The 2006 REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) program in Nanomaterials and Devices offers unique summer research opportunities that explore the diverse, interdisciplinary nature of nanotechnology. Projects will provide an opportunity to see how biomedical, physical and engineering knowledge is applied to produce significant and tangible results. Each is overseen by a UCR faculty member, nationally recognized for contributions and publications in the fields of nanotechnology. Project choices involve fields such as nanotube fabrication, spintronics and nanostructured fuel cells. Students who participate will receive a stipend of $4,000 for the ten week program, which will be offered from June 19 to August 25. For further information, call Christian Foster, Director of Undergraduate Research, at (951) 827-2708.
Computer Science & Engineering Assistant Professor Jun Yang’s team has received a grant from the National Science Foundation for a proposal addressing the fundamental challenges in today's on-chip thermal sensing and control problems. Modern processors' performance has been hindered by their power consumption, and excessive heat that creates reliability problems and reduces the processor's service life. Dr. Yang (pictured) says that the thermal sensing technique in even the most recent processors predominantly relies on thermal diodes or sensors; both suffer from the fixed-location problem as on-chip hot spots migrate at run time. She and co-Principal Investigators Sheldon Tan and Jie Chen from the Electrical Engineering faculty aim to develop novel techniques for spectrum and high precision temperature sensing to mitigate this problem. The proposed solutions can lead to more efficient and effective on-line thermal management which can result in higher performance and better reliability for microprocessors. The grant will provide $275,000 over three years.
Electrical Engineering Professor Bir Bhanu (pictured) is heading a team that has won a National Science Foundation grant to equip a new laboratory for researching massive video sensor networks. Also on the team are Computer Science & Engineering Professors Chinya Ravishankar and Electrical Engineering Assistant Professor Amit Roy-Chowdhury. The collaborative project will conduct research in video understanding in a wireless network environment for applications such as surveillance for homeland security, scene analysis of disaster zones for the coordination of rescue efforts, and wildlife monitoring. The proposed facility will consist of 80 pan-tilt-zoom video cameras that can be accesses over the network using an IP address. It will be the first of its kind in the nation and is expected to bring together researchers from a variety of engineering disciplines and provide the College’s students with valuable expertise for future careers.
Postdoctoral researcher Rajeev R. Pandey and graduate students Nicolas Bruque and Khairul Alamin, members of EE professor Roger Lake's LATTE (LAboratory for Terascale and Terahertz Electronics) group, authored the cover article of the February 2006 issue of "Physica Status Solidi a", an applications and materials science journal. The article presents a novel idea to build a resonant tunnel diode (RTD) using two carbon nanotubes (CNTs) assembled together by a molecule. Pictured left to right are Alamin, Pandey, Professor Lake and Bruque.
Ertem Tuncel, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering (pictured), is the Principal Investigator for a winning proposal chosen for funding by the National Science Foundation. The project will instrument a laboratory with a range of sensory devices to enable research on urban disaster management by collecting, integrating and analyzing data from video and other sensors. The integration of these sensors will lead to a more holistic approach to understanding the disaster environment, and provide better decision support systems for emergency personnel. Co-Principal Investigators are BCOE faculty members Srikanth Krishnamurthy, Sundararajan Venkatadriagram, Amit Roy-Chowdhury and Vana Kalogeraki.
Bourns College of Engineering faculty are involved in two summer research projects chosen for funding by the National Science Foundation. The programs allow undergraduates from across the nation participating in the REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) program to perform research in either nanomaterials and devices or bioanalytical sciences. Electrical Engineering Professor Alex Balandin, pictured (in blue shirt) with students, is the principal investigator for the Nanomaterials and Devices REU site, where twelve students will investigate structures and devices 100,000 times smaller than a human hair. Bourns College of Engineering faculty members Ashok Mulchandani, Wilfred Chen, Nosang Myung, Cengiz Ozkan and Mihri Ozkan will be involved with the second REU site in Bioanalytical Sciences, which will host eight students working to develop new measurement approaches in biology. Chemistry Professor Cynthia Larive is the principal investigator at that site. Christian Foster, BCOE Director of Undergraduate Research, points out that the two new sites will demonstrate to students from all over the nation the excellent research base in science and engineering at UC Riverside.
Chemical & Environmental Engineering Professor Yushan Yan has been appointed a University Scholar by Chancellor France Córdova; the designation is designed to assist rising young stars in the UC Riverside academic community in achieving their potential. Yan is one of five professors selected for the inaugural year of the program, which provides research support of $25,000 a year for three years. Candidates were identified by a committee of senior professors of high distinction, who act as advisors to the Chancellor on the final selection. Yan has had a distinguished career at UC Riverside. His research involves design, synthesis, and novel applications of zeolite thin films and coatings for aerospace and semiconductor applications, nanostructured materials, and the use of carbon nanotubes in fuel cells.
Student engineering clubs held several well-attended activities open to all on campus during the week of February 21-24 in celebration of National Engineers Week, often referred to as E-Week. On Tuesday the American Institute of Chemical Engineers chapter prepared ice cream using liquid nitrogen, the National Society of Black Engineers chapter gathered for basketball at the Recreation Center, and Dean Abbaschian presented a reception organized by the College of Engineering Leadership Council. High school students in the MESA (Mathematics, Science, Engineering Achievement) program joined in the festivities on Wednesday, mentored by the society of Hispanic Professional Engineers chapter. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Society of Automotive Engineers displayed their Mini Baja dune buggy and Human Powered Vehicles. In the evening the Society of Women Engineers chapter hosted a panel featuring professional women in science and engineering. Thursday was the Trivial Pursuit tournament organized by the Tau Beta Pi honor society and a demonstration by the Linux Users Group. The week concluded on Friday with a robot demonstration by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers chapter, a Kamikaze Egg Drop competition arranged by the Air and Waste Management Association chapter, and a LAN party hosted by the Association for Computing Machinery chapter. E-Week activities are designed to encourage interaction and communication among students, faculty and staff, and to raise public awareness and appreciation for the engineering profession.
Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor Thomas Stahovich has received a $40,000 grant from Microsoft Research for his proposal titled “A Pen-based Circuit Analysis Tutor”. His proposal was one of only 11 chosen from 165 submissions by international researchers from 18 countries. Funding is provided by Microsoft’s Tablet PC Technology initiative, designed to make teaching and learning more engaging and effective through the use of this new technology, where a slate-type computer that can be operated with a stylus rather than a keyboard or mouse. Stahovich has developed technology that allows the Tablet PC to interpret hand-drawn circuit schematics. He is now adapting it to create an intelligent tutoring system that can provide feedback and guidance to students in Electrical Engineering circuit analysis courses.
Electrical Engineering graduate student Manu Shamsa, who works in the Nano-Device Laboratory (NDL) of Professor Alexander A. Balandin, won an IBM PhD Fellowship Award. The prestigious program honors exceptional Ph.D. students who carry out cutting-edge research in an array of focus areas of interest to IBM and fundamental to innovation. According to the notification letter signed by Dr. Mary O. Rigali, Program Director of the IBM Corporate University Relations, the award is highly competitive and recognizes a student as well as the quality of the academic institution. IBM Ph.D. Fellows are awarded tuition, fees, and a stipend and are encouraged to intern at an IBM research or development laboratory. The final goal of Shamsa’s research project is improvement of heat removal from the next generation of electronic devices and circuits used in computer chips.
Seventy-five Bourns College of Engineering faculty members attended a successful retreat at the end of January, dedicating an intensive weekend to discussing ways to achieve excellence both this year and for the next ten years. Key topics included research, graduate and undergraduate education, faculty and staff, and industry and alumni relations. The retreat also provided the College’s four newest faculty members with an in-depth view of the state of the College and its vision for the future.
More than 200 Bourns College of Engineering students attended an Engineering Career Connections Fair on the evening of February 9. The co-sponsors were the campus Career Center and the College, with funding from the Eastern Municipal Water District and Control Components, Inc. This was the first year that a career fair exclusively for engineering jobs has been held on campus. The evening drew 28 companies whose representatives accepted students’ resumes and discussed career opportunities and company information. The College’s Career Development and Placement Officer Aaron Bushong reports that every employer and student he talked to declared the evening a complete success, beneficial for all concerned. Among the firms participating were Conoco Phillips, ESRI, Goodrich, Schlumburger, URS Corporation, NAVSEA and Union Pacific.
Bourns College of Engineering professors and graduate students will participate in “faculty internships” with California companies to exchange knowledge, get an inside view on industry needs and build relationships that can lead to new collaborations. UC Riverside is part of a team, led by the California Space Authority (CSA), which won one of thirteen WIRED (Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development) federal grants from the US Department of Labor. Stanford and USC are among the other academic institutions involved. UCR will receive $150,000 per year for three years. According to CSA officials, the initiative responds to the changing demands of the global marketplace, and the project is expected to be instrumental in restructuring workforce development and education to produce world class 21st century technical workers.
Mihri Ozkan, a professor in the Electrical Engineering Department, has received the Distinguished Engineering Educator Award given by the San Fernando Valley Engineers' Council. According to the Council, the award is made to individuals who are outstanding in professional qualities and have a top reputation for engineering education and leadership. Nominees are expected to have significantly contributed to students’ extracurricular engineering activities, and/or to scientific achievements with respect to industry applications. The award will be presented at a National Engineers Week Honors & Awards Banquet in Studio City on February 25.
The Bourns College of Engineering Leadership Council would like to congratulate the following UCR engineering student organizations for winning Fall 2005 Club Awards: The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) and Tau Beta Pi (TBP), the national engineering honor society. The awards signify that these clubs displayed an exemplary amount of activity, organization, responsibility, and communication with the College of Engineering Leadership Council during Fall Quarter, according to Megan Nix, the Chair of the Council. Pictured is the Freshman Fall Welcome, presented by the College’s clubs.
Research on carbon nanotubes being performed independently at UCR’s Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering, Stanford University and University of Texas at Dallas has been designated number 8 in Discover Magazine’s 100 most important science stories of 2005. The story reports on research developed by Center Director Robert Haddon’s team that has the potential for speeding up the healing of broken bones. CNSE researchers demonstrated how the bone-forming mineral hydroxyapatite will grow around a carbon nanotube scaffold serving as a replacement for collagen fibrils. Nanotubes are light in weight and nine times stronger than steel. Haddon explained that bone needs to be strong but a little bit flexible. “Since bone is a composite mixture of organic and inorganic material, the nanotubes make an excellent replacement for the organic part,” he added. The new technique, first published in the American Chemical Society’s journal Chemistry of Materials, received national and international attention from the media. Pictured is a clump of bone-forming mineral seeded by carbon nanotubes.
Engineering alumni gathered in the new Engineering II Building on January 21 to celebrate Homecoming with an informal lunch and presentations by business leaders and faculty members. In the morning a number of College faculty joined the alumni to hear a panel of three entrepreneur executives. Rajan Kasetty from Infotech Software, Carl Peterson from K2 Information Systems and Robert Zuk from ForteBio discussed their experiences with technology, commercialization and starting their own companies in the United States, Canada, India and Puerto Rico. After a buffet lunch, faculty speakers Victor Zordan, Junlan Wang, Jerome Schultz, Tom Stahovich and researcher Wayne Miller from CE-CERT spoke of recent developments in their fields. As part of a separate campus Homecoming event, Chemical & Environmental Engineering Distinguished Professor Robert Haddon spoke on nanotechnology and what it means for the Inland Empire. After the presentations ended, a group of alumni went together to attend the Homecoming basketball game against Long Beach State.
Professor Alexander Balandin’s research group student members Manu Shamsa, Khan Alim, Weili Liu, Irene Calizo and Suchismita Ghosh won 4th place in a national poster competition sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC). The award was announced on January 17th during the Functional Engineered Nano Architectonics (FENA) annual review in Los Angeles. The competition featured 50 posters presented by the research groups from top US engineering schools such as UCLA, MIT, UC Santa Barbara, Stanford, Caltech, USC and North Carolina State University. Five winning posters were selected with the help of industry representatives from Intel, Texas Instruments, IBM, Motorola and AMD. The award included a Certificate of Accomplishment for the presenting author Manu Shamsa, a PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering, as well as a cash prize. Pictured at the conference are (l. to r.) Ph.D. Candidates Khan Alim and Manu Shamsa, Professor Alexander Balandin and Postdoctoral Researcher Weili Liu.
Bourns College of Engineering is pleased to announce that Dr. Charles Wyman, Dr. Jiayu Liao, Dr. Victor Rodgers and Dr. Valentine Vullev are joining the faculty of the Department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering. Dr. Wyman (top at left) will be working in the area of fuel research, and Drs. Liao (top right), Rodgers (bottom left) and Vullev (bottom right) will be part of the faculty for the College’s new Bioengineering major. Professor Wyman received a Ph.D. degree in chemical engineering from Princeton University. His prior position was Distinguished Professor in Environmental Engineering Design at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College where he continues as an adjunct professor. His research targets biological conversion of cellulosic biomass to commodity products including ethanol for use as a transportation fuel. Assistant Professor Liao earned his Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from UCLA. He joins us from the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation. His research includes studies on signal transduction pathways, small ubiquitin-like modifier ligase, G protein-coupled receptors, and lipid receptors. Professor Rodgers received his D.Sc. at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He has been with the Chemical & Biochemical Engineering Department faculty at the University of Iowa. His research focuses on solving biomedical engineering and bioseparations problems with an emphasis on transport phenomena, thermodynamics, and kinetic-based problems. Assistant Professor Vullev earned a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Boston University. He was a Senior Chemist for PhotoSecure, Boston University before joining our faculty. His research interests include force modulated kinetics of macromolecular and supramolecular biological systems, microfluidic application for development of bioanalytical techniques and devices, and charge transfer in biological and biomimetic systems.