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DEAN'S LETTER
As another academic year comes to a close, July is a good time to review the many things we have accomplished together over the past twelve months, and to look with fresh excitement at the upcoming year.

This past year the School established a Water Technology Center that will seek to develop technologies to turn brackish or seawater into fresh water. As the birthplace of the first viable reverse-osmosis membrane in the 1960s, it is entirely fitting that we should continue to take this important research to the next level and beyond.

We also have successfully recruited four outstanding new faculty members. They join an already exceptional group of faculty whose list of honors and awards received this year is too lengthy to recount in full. As just a few examples, civil and environmental engineering professor Jennifer Jay was recently chosen as one of only 20 young National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported scientists and engineers to receive the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Jason Speyer was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and professor Ann Karagozian was appointed by the Chief of Staff of the US Air Force, Gen. John Jumper, to serve as the Vice Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board. In addition to these individual honors, our Microelectromechanical Systems group, or MEMS, was ranked this year as number two in total publication cites by ISI Essential Science Indicators.

We have gained two new chair holders - electrical engineering professor Eli Yablonovitch has been selected as the Northrop Grumman Opto-Electronics Chair in Electrical Engineering and computer science professor Deborah Estrin has been named as the Jonathan B. Postel Chair in Computer Networking.

The undergraduate curriculum across the School has been strengthened and we have expanded the number of research opportunities for students. Indeed, our current students continue to amaze us with their talent and motivation. For example, an after-school program coordinated by the School of Engineering chapter of Engineers Without Borders is helping underprivileged students at LA’s Dorsey High School learn how to build their own computers from donated and spare parts. The students can then keep and use these computers to do their homework. And, in an effort to make connecting with fellow classmates and teaching assistants easier, a group of enterprising engineering students from UCLA's chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery has worked with school staff to develop CourseChat, an instant messaging service to be incorporated in the School of Engineering’s CourseWeb system in fall quarter 2005.

With such talented and motivated students, accomplished faculty and a strong focus on research and education, it is fitting that we have risen to nine among public universities in the US News and World Report ranking of engineering programs.

The achievements I’ve mentioned, among the many other accomplishments we have realized this year, reflect our School’s continued commitment to excellence in research, education and community service. We expect that the upcoming year will offer opportunities for us all to build on our successes, and together, to reach new heights of distinction. I look forward to the months ahead.

Sincerely,

Vijay K. Dhir
Dean

FEATURE STORIES
UCLA Forms Water Technology Research Center
UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has formed a new Water Technology Research Center that will develop technologies to turn brackish or seawater into fresh water. The UCLA Water Technology Research Center, dubbed the WaTeR Center, will be led by chemical engineering professor and desalination expert Yoram Cohen, and will be the first such center on the West Coast. The WaTeR Center will focus on specific water technology issues, enlisting multidisciplinary project teams involving researchers from a number of academic institutions. For more information, click here.

Engineering Professor Jennifer Jay Named Recipient of Presidential Early Career Award
Civil and Environmental professor Jennifer Jay has been chosen as one of only 20 young National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported scientists and engineers to receive the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Bestowed by President George W. Bush, PECASE is the highest national honor for investigators in the early stages of promising scientific careers. Recipients are chosen based on research accomplishments and the integration of that research with significant educational contributions. To read more, click here.

New Encryption Methods Could Mean More Secure Communications
Doctors may someday use your fingerprints to lock your medical records or computer technicians may use it to secure transactions between servers, ensuring that you’re the only person able to view the encrypted data. Earlier this year, UCLA computer science faculty members Rafail Ostrovsky and Amit Sahai presented papers at Eurocrypt 2005 outlining research that may make this vision a reality. To read more, click here.

Institute for Digital Research and Education to Link Interdisciplinary Research Efforts
UCLA has announced the formation of the Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE), a high-end computation, system simulation, and visualization center that will bring together faculty expertise campus-wide. The Institute will focus on being able to deliver large-scale simulations of all kinds to a wide spectrum of faculty involved in cutting-edge research. Engineering Dean Vijay K. Dhir will serve on the institute's council of Deans that will oversee activities. To read more, click here.

Bush Science Adviser Tells Grads - “Engineering… has a broad and noble significance.”
Nearly 6,500 guests and students from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science gathered at Pauley Pavilion in Westwood Saturday to hear John H. Marburger III, science adviser to President George W. Bush, deliver the 2005 commencement address. Marburger, who also holds the post of director of the nation’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, began his speech by asking the crowd, “Is there anyone who doesn’t think engineers are different from other people?” Despite humorous references throughout his speech to comic strip engineer Dilbert, slide rules and pocket protectors, all of which received hoots of laughter from the crowd, Marburger insisted that engineers may be viewed as eccentric, but they have far more to give to society than that image alone. To read more, click here.

OTHER NEWS
New Department Chairs Named for Electrical Engineering and Computers Science
Dean Vijay K. Dhir has announced that professor Ali Sayed has been named the new department chair for electrical engineering and professor Jason Cong has been appointed as the new chair of computer science. For more information on Sayed, click here. To visit Cong’s webpage, click here.

UCLA Team Qualifies for Autonomous Vehicle Challenge
Forty self-navigating vehicles were chosen Monday by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to compete in an October 8 sequel to last year's first-ever autonomous on and off road vehicle challenge across the Mojave Desert. UCLA’s team, which includes UCLA faculty and graduates from computer science, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering, successfully passed the second qualification stage. To read more, click here.

Engineering Faculty Win Honors, Awards
Electrical engineering professor Ali Sayed has received the 2005 Frederick Emmons Terman Award. The Terman Award is bestowed annually upon an outstanding young electrical engineering educator in recognition of the educator’s contributions to the profession. The award is sponsored by the Hewlett-Packard Company and includes a $5,000 honorarium.

Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Neil Morley has been elected to the executive committee of the American Nuclear Society Fusion Energy Division for a three-year term beginning this month.

Chemical engineering professor Jane Chang has been named the recipient of the 2005 American Vacuum Society (AVS) Peter Mark Award, which recognizes outstanding theoretical or experimental work by a young scientist or engineer. She will be honored “for pioneering work in the synthesis, processing and characterization of novel materials for applications in microelectronics and optoelectronics.” In addition to a $6,500 cash award, Chang will receive an honorary lectureship at the 2005 AVS meeting in Boston in October.

Professor Oddvar Bendiksen, mechanical and aerospace engineering, will receive the Thomas Hawksley Gold Medal from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers for his paper “Modern Developments in Computational Aeroelasticity.” It is the organization’s premier award, given for the best original paper published during the preceding year. Earlier this year, Bendiksen received the Kenneth Harris James Prize from the Aerospace Industries Divisional Board of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers for the same paper.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Board of Directors has named electrical engineering professor Frank Chang the recipient of the 2006 David Sarnoff Award. The Sarnoff Award is given for outstanding contributions in electronics.

Computer science professor Jason Cong’s research group garnered the 2005 Best Paper Award of the ACM Transactions for the Design Automation of Electronic Systems. The group paper presents a novel FPGA architecture based on k/m-macrocells, with in-depth quantitative architecture design and evaluation.

MEDIA WATCH: UCLA ENGINEERING IN THE NEWS
UCLA Today
Innovative Teachers
Electrical engineering professor William Kaiser is one of three faculty members chosen by the Faculty Committee on Educational Technology to receive the 2005 Copenhaver Award for Innovation in Teaching with Technology. Kaiser has developed a software tool, called Individualized, Interactive Instruction (3I), which allows students to interact anonymously with their professors in real time during class.

Futurist Update
Water Technology Research Center
A new center to explore technologies for increasing and improving the water supply has been formed at the University of California, Los Angeles, Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. Researchers will study ways to turn brackish or seawater into fresh water, as well as develop methods to integrate desalination efforts with innovative energy-generation technologies that reduce costs.

The Washington Post
Viruses, Security Issues Undermine Internet
Leonard Kleinrock, 71, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles who is credited with sending the first message -- "lo," for "log on" -- from one computer to another in 1969, began to see the Internet's dark side. "Right now the Internet is running amok and we are in a very difficult period," Kleinrock said.

KPCC FM Radio
UCLA Engineering Program Hits Milestone
National Public Radio affiliate KPCC FM profiles UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science as it turns 60.

UCLA Alumni Net
Science Adviser to President George W. Bush to Deliver 2005 Commencement Address at UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science

White House Press Photo
PECASE Winners
Civil and Environmental Engineering professor Jennifer Jay named recipient of Presidential Early Career Awards at the White House. Photo op, Jay is pictured in the bottom row, third from the left.

Los Angeles Business Journal
Scientists Tackling Devices to Prevent DVD Bootlegging
Researchers at UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science are trying to find a way to individualize DVDs in order to prevent them from being shared, swapped or pirated. The project is being led by engineering professor Rajit Gadh, part of a consortium at the school working on various applications using radio frequency identification, or RFID.

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