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DEAN'S LETTER

As many of you may know, we are planning on hiring 40 new faculty members over the next several years. It is a lengthy process, but we are making progress. Within the last calendar year, 14 new faculty members have received appointments.

Even though we are fortunate to have faculty members who have made enormous contributions to their respective fields, we must constantly recruit new minds, with fresh ideas if we are to remain a vibrant and relevant school. We also face a 40 percent increase in students UC-wide over the next decade and we must work aggressively to design ways of accommodating this dynamic increase, while preserving the quality of our instructional and research programs.

Although the quality of new faculty members is of paramount importance, our strategy in recruiting them is to focus on those individuals involved in emerging areas of research. We do not want to replicate research interests unless there is sound justification. Our attempt will be to recruit junior faculty. This, of course, does not rule out hiring exceptional candidates at a senior level.

With that in mind, I want to introduce four outstanding new faculty members, Steven Margulis, Jennifer "Jenny" Jay, Vidvuds Ozolins and Lei He. Margulis and Jay will be joining civil and environmental engineering, Ozolins joins materials science and engineering and He will become a member of the electrical engineering department, all as assistant professors.

Margulis will focus his efforts on hydrometeorology remote sensing and data assimilation, while Jay's expertise is in biogeochemical cycling of contaminants in the environment. Both Margulis and Jay received their PhD degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ozolins received his PhD from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. Ozolins' research interests include ultrathin film, liquid and bulk alloys and nanoscale self-assembly in thin films. He, who received his PhD in computer science at UCLA, will concentrate on computer-aided design of VLSI circuits and systems, and power-efficient computer architectures and systems. Margulis, Jay, Ozolins and He will be valuable additions to our School.

Other new faculty members who have received appointments within the past year include: Jiun-Shyan Chen, associate professor, civil and environmental engineering; Junghoo Cho, assistant professor, computer science; Carlo D. Montemagno, professor, mechanical and aerospace engineering (and chair, biomedical engineering program); Glenn D. Reinman, assistant professor, computer science; David A. Smallberg, lecturer, computer science; Ertugrul Taciroglu, assistant professor, civil and environmental engineering; Petros Faloutsos, assistant professor, computer science; and Michael P. Fitz, professor, electrical engineering.

Two other new faculty members will not start until after this year. They are Yi Tang, assistant professor, chemical engineering and Adam Meyerson, assistant professor in computer science.

I want to welcome these new faculty members. They represent our commitment to seeking diverse, talented people who add depth and dynamism to the School.

Sincerely,

Vijay K. Dhir
Interim Dean

FEATURE STORIES

COOLING OFF: Borrowing from a method often used to cool down on a hot summer day, researchers at the UCLA engineering school are coaxing more efficiency out of hot silicon chips by spraying them with water.
"UCLA Researchers Cool Hot Silicon Chips by Spraying Them With Water"
http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/stories/2002/spray.htm

A PAGE FROM UCLA ENGINEERING HISTORY

AIR POLLUTION: Since the 1950s UCLA's Engineering School has been examining the difficult issue of air pollution and its effects on the residents of Southern California. Take a look back at some of the School's early research into a problem that continues to pose health risks today.
http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/history/pollution.html

ON THE WEB
UCLA Engineer, the School's official news and research magazine, is in print and online, with the latest information for alumni, faculty and students. Look for it in your mailbox or if you can't wait, go to http://www.seasalum.ucla.edu/magazine.asp.

AWARDS AND HONORS

Richard Wesel, electrical engineering, will participate in the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Frontiers of Engineering program. The event involves engineers age 30 to 45 who are performing leading-edge engineering research and technical work. Established in 1964, the NAE is an independent, nonprofit institution whose members consist of the nation's premier engineers. Wesel's research interests are in communication theory and signal processing for communications systems. He earned his PhD in 1996 and already holds four patents. Learn more about the Frontiers of Engineering event at http://www.nae.edu/nae/naehome.nsf/weblinks/CGOZ-5BNPPM?OpenDocument.
Read about Wesel's research at http://www.ee.ucla.edu/faculty/Wesel.html.

Jiun-Shyan Chen, civil and environmental engineering, was elected as the At Large member of the US Association for Computational Mechanics. He also sat on the Scientific Committee of the 7th US National Congress on Computational Mechanics. To learn more about the USACM visit http://www.usacm.org/home.htm.

King-Ning Tu, chair of materials science and engineering, was elected as a member of the Academia Sinica, the highest academic institution in the Republic of China, with only 225 members. The organization has two basic missions: to conduct scientific research at its own institutes and to provide guidance, channels of communication and encouragement to raise academic standards in the country. Learn more about the Academia Sinica at http://www.sinica.edu.tw/as/index.html.

A.V. Balakrishnan, electrical engineering, has recently received the Technical Achievement Award for his outstanding contributions to, and his exemplary leadership role in, nonlinear mathematical analysis in science and engineering. The award was presented at the Fourth International Conference on Nonlinear Problems in Aviation and Aerospace in May. Learn more about Balakrishnan's research at http://www.ee.ucla.edu/faculty/Balakrishnan.html.

Panagiotis D. Christofides, chemical engineering, was recently elected to the position of Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC) for 2003. IEEE TAC is a premier journal in the field of Automatic Control. Christofides was chosen based on the level of his technical accomplishments and the professional reputation he has attained in the control community. Read IEEE TAC at http://www.ieee.org/organizations/pubs/transactions/tac.htm.

Yahya Rahmat-Samii, chair of electrical engineering, received the 2002 JPL/NASA Award of Exceptional Technical Excellence for significant achievement in the development of advanced specialized rain radar technologies to identify precipitation events within a hurricane. Learn more about Rahmat-Samii's research at http://www.ee.ucla.edu/faculty/Rahmat-Samii.html.

NEW FACULTY

Four exceptional people have joined our School's faculty and will begin their appointments this fall. Find out more about them at http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/bulletin/8-14/newfac.htm.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY NEWS FLASH

Staying cool in the hot summer weather with a little air conditioning? The man you should be thanking is mechanical engineer Willis Carrier, who invented air conditioning 100 years ago. If that seems like a small thing, just imagine life without it.
"Happy Birthday AC: 100 Years of Playing it Cool"
http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-lv-airconditioning16jul16.story

MEDIA WATCH: UCLA ENGINEERING IN THE NEWS

TECH SLUMP: John Villasenor, UCLA electrical engineering professor, was quoted in USA Today about the impact of the recession on the high-technology industry last year.
"Report: Tech Industry Slumped in 2001"
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/invest/2002/06/26/tech-slump.htm

SCIENCE MATTERS: Science Magazine reports on the National Science Foundation's 15-year-old program of collaborative academic-based research centers, including one of its latest additions, UCLA's Center for Embedded Networked Sensors, and examines what it takes for such research centers to succeed. CENS Director Deborah Estrin is quoted.
"Science With an Agenda: NSF Expands Centers Program"
http://www.sciencemag.org

For more media coverage about CENS read "Networked Computer Sensors Infiltrate Everything" - http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/18088.html

ROBOT CHATTER: Engineering professor Mario Gerla leads a team of researchers who have designed a wireless network -- an Internet in the Sky -- that can allow thousands of unmanned vehicles to communicate during combat missions.
"A War of Robots, All Chattering on the Western Front"
http://query.nytimes.com/search/abstract?res=F30C1FFB3E540C728DDDAE0894DA404482 (purchase required)

HEAVYWEIGHT: Laptops, palmtops and digital cameras may get even smaller and lighter, thanks to a new invention from UCLA Professor Yang Yang.
"Non-volatile Memory -- and it's Organic"
http://www.chemweb.com/alchem/articles/1024577050123.html

FROM CELL TO SPACE: The UCLA Daily Bruin reported on a new NASA-funded research center at the Engineering School where insights into cells may lead to breakthroughs in space exploration technology.
"UCLA researchers receive grant for cell, space study" http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/db/archivedarticles.asp?ID=20391&date=7/22/2002

GIFT OF SIGHT: UCLA researchers are involved in the development of a "vision chip" that can help some blind patients see again.
"Visions for the Future"
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/db/archivedarticles.asp?ID=20386&date=7/22/2002

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