E-BULLETIN
UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science
May 10, 2006

DEAN'S LETTER
We recently held the School’s 2006 Research Review, during which we hosted nearly 500 participants – a good number of them alumni. The successful day-long event focused on “Multidisciplinary Engineering for the 21st Century: Convergence of Bio-Nano-Info Technologies,” and presented some of the most visionary research from across the School. The review also was attended by our industrial affiliates and government representatives. A large number of alumni and friends also were able to join us for the student projects reception the same week. I am delighted that so many of you were able to join us.

Coming up this month, the School will host a faculty lecture by civil and environmental engineering professor Jennifer Jay on a new study showing Southern California’s beaches have high levels of unhealthy bacteria in the sand. This event is open to the public, and you can find out more by checking out our events section, below.

In addition to the variety of ongoing event opportunities we offer on campus, I feel it is just as important that we visit our alumni in their hometowns to open a dialogue about their concerns and expectations for the future of the School. I hope these visits also remind our alumni just how much we truly value their active participation. Whether our former engineering students reside in Los Angeles or on the other side of the world, they will always be Bruins.

I recently traveled to Pittsburgh, Seattle, and San Diego, where I had the wonderful experience of meeting with engineering alumni living in those areas. I enjoyed having the opportunity to learn more about the diverse lives and careers our former students have built since earning their degrees. In the coming months, I also intend to meet with alumni in the San Jose area, and in the fall, I am making plans to travel to Asia to meet with engineering alumni and corporate leaders who reside there.

If you would like to become more involved, please be sure to visit our website for more information. The strong relationships we continue to build together are critical to our future as one of the very best engineering schools in the country.

Sincerely,

Vijay K. Dhir
Dean


FEATURE STORIES
UCLA Engineering Holds Research Review on “Multidisciplinary Engineering for the 21st Century”
Marking another milestone year of growth, the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science held its 2006 Research Review on Friday, May 5. Focusing on “Multidisciplinary Engineering for the 21st Century: Convergence of Bio-Nano-Info Technologies,” the review presented research news from faculty across the School’s seven departments, and included key speakers from industry and government.

Engineers Announce Breakthrough in Semiconductor Spin-Wave Research
Engineers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have announced a critical new breakthrough in semiconductor spin-wave research. UCLA Engineering adjunct professor Mary Mehrnoosh Eshaghian-Wilner, researcher Alexander Khitun and professor Kang Wang have created three novel nanoscale computational architectures using a technology they pioneered called “spin-wave buses” as the mechanism for interconnection. The three nanoscale architectures are not only power efficient, but also possess a high degree of interconnectivity. To read more, click here.

New Biotech Training Program in Engineering and Life Sciences Offered
As researchers try to unlock the many mysteries of the human cell, collaborations between the life sciences and engineering are increasingly garnering the spotlight with important new discoveries. Beginning this year, students interested in pursuing research that straddles both areas of study - engineering and the life sciences - have been offered a new training program developed at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science by chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Harold Monbouquette. The two-year pre-doctoral training program, dubbed “Biotechnology Training in Biomedical Sciences and Engineering,” specifically seeks to educate and train the next generation of skilled scientists and engineers who will assume leadership roles in multidisciplinary biotechnology research. To read more, click here.

OTHER NEWS
Building for the Future: Construction in the UCLA Engineering Complex
UCLA Engineering is growing! Slated for completion near the end of 2006, the School’s new building will hold nearly 40 state-of-the-art research laboratories, and provide much-needed space for faculty and graduate students. The new Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) facility will house CENS’ educational staff and provide 55 workstations for affiliated graduate students. To read more, click here.

Engineering Faculty Win Awards and Honors
Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Ann Karagozian recently finished chairing an Air Force Scientific Advisory Board study on “Persistence at Near Space Altitudes,” presented as a briefing to the Secretary and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, as well as leadership in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, DARPA, and the National Reconnaissance Office. Karagozian also is in the process of completing her chairmanship of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board study on “Technology Options for Improved Air Vehicle Fuel Efficiency,” presented to the Undersecretary of the Air Force and the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Science and Technology. She gave an invited talk at an NSF Workshop on “Research Frontiers for Combustion in the Hydrogen Economy” in Washington, D. C., in March.

Microsoft Research has named five new members of its highly prestigious Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship Program, among them assistant professor of computer science Eddie Kohler. Kohler hopes to make computer systems easier to program. His work aims to create a more understandable, robust and secure foundation for systems programming. Five winners were chosen from a pool of more than 100 individuals representing universities in North America. Each fellow will each receive a $200,000 (U.S.) cash award over a two-year period to assist in his research. The recipients are also given the opportunity to collaborate with some of the top researchers working in their area of interest at Microsoft Research.

Jia-Ming Liu, professor of electrical engineering, has been chosen to receive a prestigious 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship, among the most coveted honors accorded to scholars, artists and writers. The Fellowship, awarded by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, is conferred for “unusually distinguished achievement and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.” Liu will use his Guggenheim Fellowship to conduct research on three-dimensional intracellular laser nanoscopy – using lasers to see structures inside a cell with a resolution on the scale of only nanometers. To read more, click here.

Under the direction of computer science faculty Joseph Shinnerl and Jason Cong, and mathematics professor Tony Chan, UCLA graduate students Kenton Sze and Min Xie produced the best wirelength result under congestion control and received second place for their mPL6 tool at the 2006 International Symposium on Physical Design placement contest. Nine teams from major research universities worldwide participated. Placement tools were tested on eight designs released by IBM, ranging from 300,000 to over 2,500,000 placement objects. mPL6 was able to place the design with over 2,500,000 objects in less than eight hours. The mPL6 tool is available for download at http://cadlab.cs.ucla.edu/cpmo/.

MEDIA WATCH: UCLA ENGINEERING IN THE NEWS
IndUS Business Journal
Something ‘Bruin’; As Dean, Dhir Leads UCLA Engineering Into Top 10, Gets Highest Industry Honor
Since March 2003, when Vijay K. Dhir was appointed dean, much of his energy has been directed at improving his school's standing as well as leaving his stamp on the engineering program. So far, on both counts, Dhir is accomplishing his goal.

Photonics.com.
Researchers Named Guggenheim Fellows
Eight professors and scientists conducting research in photonics-related areas have been named fellows of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, among them UCLA Engineering professor Jia-Ming Liu. Liu will receive a grant averaging $38,000 to support his work.

Los Angeles Times
State Called Unready for Big Quake
Scientists marking 1906 disaster say future toll could be worse because of surging population and development and lack of retrofitting. CENS researcher Monica Kohler’s work is mentioned.

Electronic Engineering Times
Startup rolls soft PHY core for Wi-Fi
A startup spun out of UCLA is developing soft cores for next-generation wireless systems ranging from Wi-Fi to software-defined and cognitive radios. The first commercial product from Silvus Communication Systems Inc. (Los Angeles) aims to give a leg up to developers of next-generation Wi-Fi chip sets and systems. Silvus’ founder is associate professor of electrical engineering Babak Daneshrad.

Electronic Engineering Times
Hope Seen For Taming IC Process Variability At Next Design Node
In presenting the ISPD "best paper" on extraction of spatial correlation, UCLA electrical engineering PhD student Jinjun Xiong said process variations in nanometer manufacturing can have a huge impact on design optimization and signoff. He cited previous work showing that process variations can affect timing yield by 20 percent and leakage power yield by 25 percent; they can account for a 20 percent difference in area and 17 percent difference in power in circuit tuning.

The Daily Bruin
From Mind to Matter
Stefano Soatto, a professor of computer science, began work on a system for designing and selecting eyeglass frames 10 years ago. And Yang Yang, a professor of material sciences and engineering, has found a way to make computer memory more reliable. These are two of 34 UCLA professors and researchers who received patents for their inventions in 2005.

The Daily Bruin
Engineering Week Makes Science Fun
As part of Engineers Week, hosted by the Engineering Society of UCLA, various engineering groups on campus came together to show students the practical applications of engineering.

UCLA Today
Hydrogen Fuel Car — King of the Roads on Campus
In a jaded town where expensive, exotic cars don't necessarily rate stares from the locals, UCLA’s engineering school has two with enough cachet to make heads turn on campus. Just park one of the school's $750,000 Mercedes Benz A-Class compact cars — the ones boldly emblazoned with “F-Cell” (for fuel cell) — anywhere on campus, and the curious will gather around it, begging for a peek under the hood.

The Daily Bruin
Civil Engineering Students Subject Dormitory Models To Simulated Earthquake Test
Wood splintered, screws flew and columns sheared off from their bases when a series of earthquakes shook the UCLA campus last week. Scale models of college dormitories were put to the seismic test in an earthquake simulator when seven teams from California universities competed in the seismic-design challenge Friday during the 2006 Pacific Southwest Regional Conference of the American Society of Civil Engineers, hosted by the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.

CNN Headline News (National News)
Students Designs Put to Earthquake Test [Link unavailable]
Seismic Design Challenge on Friday, March 31, highlight of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) student conference hosted by UCLA Engineering, featured. The piece aired on April 1, hourly from 3-10pm.

Ivanhoe Broadcast News (National News)
Discoveries and Breakthroughs Inside Science
Buried deep within some of our nation's most pristine wilderness is some of the most innovative technology electrical engineers have ever developed. William Kaiser, Ph.D., an electrical engineer at UCLA Engineering in Los Angeles, says, “It is important to use this technology really for both understanding how humans impact the environment and, of course, how the environment can impact public health.” That technology is a fleet of robotic sensors like these that monitor environmental changes.

UCLA Magazine
The Hydrogen Highway
Even a short jaunt around campus at 25 miles per hour is a hip trip if you're at the wheel of what might just be the next-generation alternative-fuel vehicle. For one thing, there's an exclusivity factor: No one else on campus is allowed to drive the F-cars except for the team taking care of them at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, led by Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Chair and Professor Vasilios Manousiouthakis. The team studies the production of hydrogen power.

Optimize Magazine
Computing's New Spin
With Moore’s Law widely expected to be obsolete by 2020, scientists aren't waiting around to find ever-faster ways of computing. Four California universities are jointly studying a pioneering technology called “spintronics,” which uses the spin action of electrons to reduce power consumption for next-generation electronics. “Simply put, today's devices can't get much smaller and still function properly and effectively,” says Kang Wang, UCLA engineering professor and director of the newly announced Western Institute of Nanoelectronics.