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DEAN'S LETTER

February 14 was a great day for the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, when we learned that three of our faculty members had received one of the highest professional distinctions engineers can be given -- they were elected to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering.

Tatsuo Itoh, Henry Samueli and Eli Yablonovich are all from the School's electrical engineering department. They join a select group of professionals who have demonstrated a pioneering spirit in the field of engineering, and I am extremely proud that they have been recognized. It is a testament to their extraordinary individual accomplishments and their important contributions to research and education at our School.

Tatsuo Itoh joined UCLA's faculty in 1991 and currently holds the TRW Endowed Chair in Microwave and Millimeter Wave Electronics. Eli Yablonovich joined our faculty in 1992. He heads UCLA's portion of the Center for Nanoscience Innovation for Defense, a $20 million, multi-campus project sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency and Defense MicroElectronics Activity.

Henry Samueli received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering at UCLA. After working in the private sector, he returned to UCLA in 1985 as a faculty member and became a full professor in 1994. He has been on a leave of absence from the UCLA faculty since 1995. He and his wife, Susan, contributed $30 million in 1999 to our School, which now bears his name.

Now 15 faculty members at this School have received the honor of election to the National Academy of Engineering. I encourage you to read more about the accomplishments of three of the Academy's newest members in the article that appears below.

Sincerely,

Vijay K. Dhir
Dean

FEATURE STORIES

Three Elected to National Academy of Engineering
Three faculty members from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering. Tatsuo Itoh, Henry Samueli and Eli Yablonovich were named members in an announcement released February 14. http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/stories/2003/three.htm

Dhir Named Permanent Dean
Vijay K. Dhir, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, has been named dean of UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. The appointment became effective March 1, 2003. Dhir, who joined the faculty in 1974, has served as the interim dean since February 2002. http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/stories/2003/dhir.htm

Reconfigurable Fabric: Clothing That Could Save Your Life?
UCLA computer scientist Majid Sarrafzadeh is designing a vest you won't find at The Gap. Embedded within the fabric of the vest are circuits, sensors and actuators that can monitor a patient's vital signs and deliver a customized dose of medication whenever a patient shows signs of distress. Sarrafzadeh hopes that people who suffer from high-blood pressure, angina and a host of other ailments will one day wear the vest as part of their medical care.
http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/stories/2003/recofig.htm

Looking Back: Reconfigurable Computer Origins
The earliest work on reconfigurable computer architecture began when UCLA computer scientist Gerald Estrin proposed the idea of a "fixed plus variable structure computer." The world was not yet ready for such technology but in recent years Estrin's idea has experienced what some could call a renaissance. Estrin explains his early work in this article.
http://www.engineeringalum.ucla.edu/pdf/annals_paper.pdf
© 2002 IEEE. Reprinted, with permission, from IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, October-December 2002, Volume 24, Number 4, pp.3-9. FOR INTERNAL TRAINING PURPOSES ONLY.

Professor Chih-Ming Ho: A Profile
Like most young boys growing up in Taiwan about a decade into the space age, Chih-Ming Ho was fascinated with the idea of space travel and flying. Today he is a trailblazer in the emerging field of cell mimetics and director of the NASA-funded UCLA Institute for Cell Mimetic Space Exploration.
http://www.ucla.edu/spotlight/archive/html_2002_2003/fac0203_ho.html

Alumnus Myles Baker wins AIAA Sperry Award
Myles Baker, who earned his BS (1991), MS (1992) and PhD (1996) degrees in the mechanical and aerospace engineering department at UCLA, recently received the 2003 AIAA Lawrence Sperry Award for his contributions in the fields of aeroelasticity, structural analysis and optimization. Since he graduated, Baker has worked at Boeing and Jacobs-Sverdrup, taught several UCLA courses on dynamics and vibrations, served on the department's Industrial Advisory Board, and he has even founded his own engineering consulting company. Not bad for someone who has yet to reach his mid-thirties. Read more about what keeps Baker busy since graduation.
http://support.mae.ucla.edu/news/index.htm#baker_sperry_award

MEDIA WATCH: UCLA ENGINEERING IN THE NEWS

Wi-Fi Generates Opportunities, Threatens Status Quo
Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Rajit Gadh outlines the benefits and potential pitfalls for Wi-Fi applications in his first column for Computerworld's Mobile/Wireless Knowledge Center.
http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/story/0,10801,78624,00.html

Tiny Battery May Power Next-Gen Gadgets
Materials science and engineering professor Bruce Dunn is working on a radical new design for a lightweight, rechargeable battery -- a design based on three-dimensional geometry -- that may one day provide power to the emerging realm of micro-scale devices. Technology web site Newsfactor reports.
http://sci.newsfactor.com/perl/story/20819.html

UCLA Keeps SMARTS While Other Programs End
An article in the UCLA Daily Bruin explains how UCLA's SMARTS program, designed to give additional math and science training to underrepresented students pursuing engineering, will not be affected by recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding affirmative action because enrollment is not based on ethnicity.
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?ID=22985

Placement Tools Criticized for Hampering IC Designs
Current IC placement algorithms leave so much excess wire that chip designs are essentially several technology generations behind where they could be, according to a recent paper co-authored by Jason Cong, UCLA professor of computer science. Industry news source EETimes reports.
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20030205S0014

A Chemical Route to Carbon Nanoscrolls
UCLA chemists report in the Feb. 28 issue of Science a room-temperature chemical method for producing a new form of carbon called carbon nanoscrolls. Nanoscrolls are closely related to the much touted carbon nanotubes -- which may have numerous industrial applications -- but have significant advantages over them. H. Thomas Hahn, UCLA's Raytheon Professor of Manufacturing Engineering, and chair of the mechanical and aerospace engineering department, is collaborating with lead authors of the Science article, Lisa Viculis and Julia Mack, graduate students in the laboratory of Richard B. Kaner, UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/299/5611/1361

Read more UCLA Engineering news at http://www.engineer.ucla.edu

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