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DEAN'S LETTER

This month, hundreds of students and their families will be our guests at the Engineering School’s annual Open House, where we give potential students a glimpse of what living and studying at UCLA is like. Parents and their children meet members of our faculty, tour our labs, explore the campus and talk to current students. It is one of my favorite events and perhaps one of the most important opportunities we have as a School to articulate the many reasons we are one of the top education and research institutions in the country.

The students will hear about the School’s outstanding undergraduate research opportunities. Through the Student Research Program, students in every department are given the opportunity to work alongside faculty members who are leaders in their field, including any of our 15 members of the National Academy of Engineering. A newly created program in electrical engineering, for example, pairs exceptional undergraduates with experienced graduate student mentors to participate in hands-on laboratory and field work. The undergraduates also work directly with their professors testing technologies, building prototypes and conducting experiments.

The students will also learn about the rapid addition of five major interdisciplinary research centers in the Engineering School in the last two years that have fueled a growing concentration of new technology research on the UCLA campus. Collectively, they reflect a campus-wide effort that involves groundbreaking research spanning multiple disciplines. Exciting opportunities exist for students in all of these centers, each of which has an undergraduate research component.

Our visitors to Open House will also learn about significant curriculum reforms taking place in every department. We are undergoing a thorough review to ensure students receive a dynamic, practical and integrated education. Our goal is to train renaissance scholars who can excel no matter what direction the fields of engineering and technology take in the years ahead. To that end, each student will be required to take at least three courses from an area outside his or her declared major.

I am certainly looking forward to sharing these facts and more with the families I meet at Open House on March 28. It promises to be an enjoyable event.

Sincerely,

Vijay K. Dhir
Dean

FEATURE STORIES

Researchers Create Terahertz Magnetism from Non-magnetic Materials
A team of engineers and physicists at UC Los Angeles, UC San Diego and Imperial College in London have successfully created a “metamaterial” that displays strong, tunable magnetic activity at terahertz frequencies. In a paper that appeared in the March 5 issue of the journal Science, the researchers outline how they designed and built a new material with unprecedented properties.
http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/news/stories_2004/magnetism.html

UCLA Designs Prototype that Puts Security at Your Fingertips
Your digital identity, that series of electronic records that determines whether you can buy a car, get a loan or open a bank account, is almost as important as your physical self. Yet our digital selves are surprisingly vulnerable to identity theft. Biometrics may be the answer to this vexing security problem according to researchers at UCLA who have designed a fingerprint authentication system called ThumbPod.
http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/news/stories_2004/thumbpod.html

UCLA Engineering School's Commencement to Feature Keynote Address by Carly Fiorina, Chairman and CEO of HP
Carly Fiorina, chairman and chief executive officer of HP, will be this year's keynote speaker for commencement on Saturday, June 19, 2004. In an announcement made Feb. 25, Vijay K. Dhir, dean of the Engineering School, said “HP has long been an exemplary partner in fulfilling the School's mission of education, research and public service. Ms. Fiorina's participation in our commencement is a wonderful affirmation of this relationship."
http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/news/stories_2004/fiorina.html

Obituary: Rokuro Muki, UCLA Engineering Professor and Authority in the Field of Elasticity
Dr. Rokuro “Rocky” Muki, a UCLA civil engineering professor emeritus and an authority in the field of elasticity, died Feb. 10 at his home in West Los Angeles, following a long battle with cancer. He was 75.
http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/stories/2004/muki.htm

2004 UCLA Engineering Awards Nominations Now Being Accepted
Nominations are now being accepted for the 2004 UCLA Engineering Awards, which recognize the tremendous contributions to the field of engineering by alumni and students in the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. Award winners, as well as all those who are nominated, represent the strong bond that exists between the School, its alumni and the community-at-large. The deadline to nominate someone is April 15.
http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/alumni/awards.html

UCLA Adjunct Professor wins “Academy Award for Engineers” – the Charles Stark Draper Prize
Alan C. Kay, an adjunct professor of computer science at UCLA and a senior fellow at HP labs, was awarded the Charles Stark Draper Prize along with three colleagues for their 1970s work at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center. The team, credited with creating the first practical networked personal computer, included Kay, Robert W. Taylor, Butler W. Lampson and Charles P. Thacker.
http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/32945.html

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor Wins Best Paper Award Two Years in a Row
The International Society of Optical Engineering has awarded the Best Paper award of 2003-4 to mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Ajit Mal. This is the second year in a row that Mal has won this award. He shares this year’s honor with Frank Shih and Sauvik Banerjee from UCLA, co-authors on the paper entitled “Acoustic emission waveforms in composite laminates under low-velocity impact.” The award will be presented at the Society’s international symposium March 16.
Learn more about Mal’s research at http://www.seas.ucla.edu/~ajit/.

MEDIA WATCH: UCLA ENGINEERING IN THE NEWS

UCLA Professor Carlo Montemagno Creates Tiny Biological Machine
UCLA Professor Carlo Montemagno has long been fascinated by the possibilities of mimicking life to create hybrid devices that combine living tissue with inanimate components. Now he has created a silicon microrobot, just half the width of a human hair, which is powered by the pulsing of living heart muscle. It is the first time muscle tissue has been used to propel a micromachine. New Scientist Magazine and Wired News have filed reports, and Montemagno recently sat down for an interview on the BioTech Today radio program.
First Robot Moved by Muscle Power
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994714
From Frankenstein to Frog’s Legs
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,62385,00.html?tw=wn_techhead_1
BioTech Today Radio Interview
http://64.78.53.214/archive.asp?aid=1257

NIMS Robotic Sensors Ready for Their Close-Up
A Discovery Channel film crew joined UCLA researchers in the wilderness of the James West Reserve to observe the first so-called treebot move along the forest canopy, collecting environmental data and telling scientists things about the world that they never knew before. Called Networked Infomechanical Systems (NIMS) by its creators, the suspended robotic sensors that make up the treebot can be used to monitor a mountain stream ecosystem from the ground to the treetops for global change indicators, or observe coastal wetlands and urban rivers for biological pathogens. Watch the video to see NIMS in action!
http://www.exn.ca/dailyplanet/view.asp?date=1/28/2004 (Video clip title: Treebot)

Sorting E-Mail Friends from Foes
About 60 percent of all emails are spam, according to some estimates, but Nature reports on a scheme for combating the dreaded junk mail that has been devised by UCLA researchers P. Oscar Boykin and Professor Vwani Roychowdhury.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/040216/040216-12.html

What CIOs Talk About When They Talk About Wireless
CIOs and CTOs from some of the nation’s most powerful companies, including Northrup Grumman, Boeing, the Walt Disney Company, Qualcomm and Broadcom, attended a conference at UCLA called The CIO Perspective: Servicing Today's Mobile and Global Enterprise. The event, organized by the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Anderson School of Management provided a realistic glimpse at the future of wireless technologies. Read the impressions of one conference attendee.
http://www.darwinmag.com/read/buzz/column.html?ArticleID=1032

Talking to Bacteria
Scientists led by UCLA chemical engineering professor James Liao have genetically engineered bacteria to 'talk' to each other in a new language, bringing them closer to turning cells into tiny robots that we can control, Nature magazine reports on its web site. The research originally appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/040209/040209-7.html

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

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