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DEAN'S LETTER

This month, I am looking forward to a very special Engineering Alumni Association (EAA) governing board meeting, where dozens of exceptional, talented students will showcase the latest projects they have been working on throughout the year.

When I meet with students to learn about their projects, I always feel a sense of great optimism about the incredible potential these students possess. They represent the next generation of distinguished engineers, technologists and scientists.

Participation in student societies is a vital part of the university experience, one that helps prepare young scholars to be better communicators, leaders and problem-solvers. That is why it is important to support their efforts however we can.

Student groups receive important financial assistance from engineering alumni and the EAA through the Alumni Fund for Student Projects. This academic year, the EAA Alumni-Student Networking Committee provided funds to support almost 30 projects and organizations. Student groups use the funds to purchase materials and building supplies, use shop services and to support promotional efforts.

In addition to the EAA, individual alumni who have an abiding interest in education personally support student efforts. They provide funds, mentor the students, help with proposal writing, offer presentation advice, consult and even give technical assistance.

I thank all of the alumni and friends of the School who participate in the EAA or support our students’ endeavors in other ways. Their efforts help provide our students with many more opportunities to develop technical skills, forge lasting friendships and foster a deeper level of involvement with the School.

On another note, if you read the School’s magazine, UCLA Engineer, we would like to know what you think of it. Please complete a brief, online survey at http://www.engineeringalum.ucla.edu/magazine/survey.htm.

Sincerely,

Vijay K. Dhir
Dean

SPECIAL FEATURE

Speak Out: What do you think of UCLA Engineer magazine?
Do you read the School’s magazine, UCLA Engineer? We’d like to hear from you! We invite you to complete a brief, anonymous survey online. http://www.engineeringalum.ucla.edu/magazine/survey.htm.

FEATURE STORIES

Better Reverse Osmosis Membrane Technology is Key to Cost-effective Desalination, Say Researchers
Southern California consumes more than 250 million gallons of water per day for irrigation, laundry, drinking, bathing and other uses. Water is one of the largest industries in the nation, but this natural resource has its limits. Chemical engineering professor Yoram Cohen believes water reclamation is both an urgent issue for Californians and a prime opportunity for UCLA to make a positive impact.
http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/news/stories_2004/desalination.html

UCLA Launches Biomedical Informatics Center
When a doctor gathers information on a new disease or treatment, relying primarily on individual visits with patients, the knowledge she gains has the potential to benefit the whole medical community -- unless no one else hears about it. Researchers at the new UCLA Biomedical Informatics Center (UBIC) plan to apply scientific methods to the collection of medical data in an effort to fundamentally transform how information is acquired and managed, leading to a better understanding of diseases and treatments.
http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/magazine/ubic.html

Outside the Lab, UCLA Students Win Over Industry Experts
When UCLA graduate student Sevan Megerian mentioned that his research in transverse jet control could be applied to NASA’s ultra-high-speed scramjet aircraft, the judges seated before him leaned forward with great concentration, some nodding their heads. It was the first sign that Megerian would capture first-place honors at a recent student conference, part of a clean sweep by UCLA engineering students.
http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/news/stories_2004/sevan.html

Cars, Crystals, Planes and Bridges: Design Competitions Draw Hundreds
Over 400 students from Los Angeles area high schools arrived at UCLA May 1 to compete in math, science, engineering and technology competitions. Some arrived with balsawood gliders tucked under their arms; others were holding jars containing tiny crystals painstakingly grown in home-made labs. Between competitions, students dipped balloons in liquid nitrogen, explored a real-time three-dimensional computer model of Los Angeles and talked to Boeing engineers about the future of flight.
http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/news/stories_2004/mesa_day2004.html

UCLA Professor of Electrical Engineering Henry Samueli Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Henry Samueli, co-founder and chairman of Broadcom Corporation, has been named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Samueli is widely known for his pioneering contributions to academic research and technology entrepreneurship in the broadband communications system-on-a-chip industry. He has been a professor in UCLA’s Electrical Engineering Department since 1985, and in 1999 the UCLA engineering school was renamed the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.
http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/news/stories_2004/samueli.html

Alan C. Kay, Personal Computing Pioneer and UCLA Computer Scientist, to Receive Turing Award
Alan C. Kay, an adjunct professor of computer science at UCLA and a senior fellow at HP labs, has been named winner of the 2003 Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Kay is widely known for his breakthrough concepts on personal computing and for leading the team that invented Smalltalk, the first complete dynamic object-oriented programming language. The Turing Award, considered the "Nobel Prize of Computing," carries a $100,000 prize, with funding provided by Intel Corporation.
http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/news/stories_2004/turing.html

Professor Steven Margulis Wins NASA Award to Study Snowpacks
NASA has awarded a New Investigator in Earth Science Award to civil and environmental engineering professor Steven Margulis, who plans to monitor cold land processes and the significant role they play in the climate system. Margulis is developing a framework that merges remote sensing data from satellites with snow process models to obtain a better understanding of snowpack characteristics. By obtaining better estimates of climate processes, Margulis hopes to ultimately improve management of water resources and mitigate the effects of environmental disasters like floods and droughts. Margulis will test his framework in the Eastern Sierra Nevada and in Colorado later this year.
Learn more about Margulis’ work at http://www.cee.ucla.edu/faculty/margulis.htm.

UCLA Chemical Engineering Professors and Students to Receive 2004 O. Hugo Schuck Best (Application) Paper Award
Chemical engineering professors Panagiotis D. Christofides and Jane P. Chang, along with their students, have been selected to receive the 2004 O. Hugo Schuck Best (Application) Paper Award, one of the most prestigious and competitive Best Paper awards in the field of automatic control. Each year, the O. Hugo Schuck Award, given by the American Automatic Control Council, recognizes the best theoretical paper and the best application paper published in the proceedings and presented in last year's American Control Conference. The UCLA paper presented work that experimentally demonstrated, for the first time, the impact of automatic control in the direct regulation of composition of high-k thin films in a highly complex plasma-enhanced CVD process, using a novel estimation/control method.
Learn more about research in UCLA's chemical engineering department at http://www.chemeng.ucla.edu/.

NASA Recognizes Professor Yahya Rahmat-Samii for Scientific Contribution
Electrical engineering chair and professor Yahya Rahmat-Samii has received the prestigious NASA Certificate of Recognition Award for his work on “Design and Near-Field Measurement Performance Evaluation of the SeaWinds Dual-Beam Reflector.” The citation reads, "For the creative development of a scientific contribution which has been determined to be of significant value in the advancement of the aerospace technology program of NASA."
Learn more about Professor Rahmat-Samii’s work at http://www.ee.ucla.edu/faculty/bios/yrs.htm.

UCLA Chemical Engineering Professor Sheldon Friedlander Honored in Zurich
Sheldon Friedlander, Parsons Professor of Chemical Engineering, has received the ETH Stodola Medal from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Friedlander was selected by the Institute’s Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering to receive the award for his work in the field of aerosol engineering, or the science and technology of fine particles in gases, with applications to air pollution and advanced materials. As winner of the medal, Friedlander traveled to Zurich to give the annual Stodola Lecture May 11.
Learn more about Friedlander’s research at http://www.chemeng.ucla.edu/SFriedlander/index.html.

MEDIA WATCH: UCLA ENGINEERING IN THE NEWS

UC Professors Honored for Groundbreaking Work
As reported in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the Association for Computing Machinery will recognize UCLA computer scientist Judea Pearl and UC Santa Cruz professor David Haussler by awarding both with the 2003 Allen Newell Award. Pearl, director of UCLA’s Cognitive Systems Laboratory, made seminal contributions to the field of artificial intelligence. Haussler, director of UCSC’s Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering, is a pioneer in the field of computational biology.
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2004/May/01/local/stories/07local.htm

New Security Device a Handy Way to Stop Credit Card Fraud
A team of UCLA engineering graduate students is working to eliminate a variety of security and privacy problems by creating a portable device that would identify users by their thumbprints. Instead of relying on passwords or signatures to verify identity, users of the device meant to hang on one's keychain – appropriately called ThumbPod – would use thumbprints to approve financial transactions. The UCLA Daily Bruin reports the story.
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?ID=28251

A Glaring Problem
Electrical engineering professor Eli Yablonovitch recently spoke to a local journalist to explain how the reduced transmittance of light through illegally tinted windows can affect automobile drivers and police officers on patrol. Portions of his interview appeared in a KCAL-9 news report aired May 3.
http://kcal.dayport.com/viewer/content/special.php?Art_ID=1631&Format_ID=2&
BitRate_ID=8&Contract_ID=2 or http://kcal.dayport.com/launcher/1631/

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

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