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Dean's
Letter • Feature Stories •
Media Watch • Archive
DEAN'S LETTER
On October 15, the School will celebrate the remarkable accomplishments of our
alumni, students and faculty at this year’s UCLA Engineering Awards Dinner. Events like this are a strong reminder of the close ties that exist between the School, its alumni and the community-at-large. It also reminds me of how truly privileged we are to have so many distinguished and accomplished people representing our School!
This year’s awards dinner will be the third I attend as the School’s dean, and it has always represented to me the sense of community our alumni share with UCLA. It is a sense of partnership I want to maintain and strengthen, so I want to take a moment to mention some of the ways that our alumni can communicate with the School and each other.
With our newly designed web site, to be launched later this month, going online will be one of the easiest and most efficient ways to stay informed about the School. Alumni can go to http://www.engineer.ucla.edu to tell us about important milestones in their lives, such as a new job or award, or they can update their contact information. They can also find a secure online gift form, which they can use to provide support for their School, department or favorite student group.
Gifts from alumni and friends allow the School to provide world-class engineering educational programs and support cutting-edge research. They allow the School to offer scholarships and fellowships to outstanding students, attract and retain faculty who are acknowledged leaders in their fields, and upgrade laboratories, teaching and other research facilities.
Alumni can also stay up to date by reading UCLA Engineer magazine, which always has a wide variety of stories about our alumni, faculty and students. The next issue, which comes out this month, will be in full color for the first time, and will be available online.
Finally, I encourage our alumni to visit the campus and attend some of the many events we have planned this fall. They include annual research reviews of our Electrical Engineering Department and the UCLA Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, a forum on radio frequency identification technology, a 35th Anniversary of the Internet celebration and Parents Weekend. Read this issue of the E-Bulletin to learn more about many of these events, and I hope to see you at our campus soon.
Sincerely,
Vijay K. Dhir
Dean
ON THE WEB
The School of Engineering web site is about to
adopt a whole new look, with new content and added features that
will make it even easier to find what you want about our School’s
services, accomplishments and goals. Keep your eyes on http://www.engineer.ucla.edu
to see the changes, coming soon!
SPECIAL FEATURE SECTION: THE INTERNET
TURNS 35
Internet Began 35 Years Ago at UCLA, with First Message Ever Sent Between Two Computers
Thirty-five years ago, UCLA became the first node of what was then known as the ARPANET when, on September 2, 1969 computer scientist Leonard Kleinrock led a team of engineers in establishing the first network connection between his computer and a network switch called an Interface Message Processor (IMP). A month later a second node was added at Stanford Research Institute and on October 29 the first host-to-host message was launched from UCLA, ushering in a new method of global communications that forever changed the course of business, politics, entertainment, education, law and social interaction.
For more, go to http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/stories/2004/Internet35.htm or read the Associated Press story on CNN’s Web site at
http://www2.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/08/29/internet.birthday.ap/
UCLA Celebrates Internet’s 35th Birthday with Day-Long Forum
UCLA will host an exciting, insightful day-long forum on Friday, October 29 to mark the Internet’s birth. Many of the Internet’s early pioneers, as well as some of today’s most thought-provoking and influential industry leaders and rising stars will offer their perspective on how the Internet came to be what it is today, and what it will be like tomorrow.
For information about this event, go to http://internetanniversary.cs.ucla.edu.
Flashback: 1969 Release Reports “UCLA to be First Station in Nationwide Computer Network”
When that first Internet message was sent from a lab at UCLA, computer networks were still in their infancy, and though professor Leonard Kleinrock predicted the spread of “computer utilities” servicing homes and offices across the country, even he was surprised at how pervasive the Internet has become. Read the original press release issued by UCLA in 1969 to see how far the Internet has come since those historic early days.
http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/stories/2004/internet1969.htm
FEATURE
STORIES
Materials Science and Engineering Department Names New Chair
Professor Mark Goorsky, who joined the faculty in 1991 and served as vice chair of undergraduate programs for the department for nine years, replaced the outgoing chair, professor King-Ning Tu, July 1. Goorsky will lead a department that is showing signs of growth: Says Goorsky, “If you look at the people we have, the awards we earn and the collaborative environment we’re creating, you can see we have a strong department. The challenge is to take it further, and we’re poised to do so.”
http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/magazine/goorsky.html
RFID Forum 2004 to Explore Future Trends and Opportunities
Radio frequency identification technology, or RFID, is making dramatic inroads on supply chain management, homeland security, food supply management, the pharmaceutical industry and others sectors of the economy. On October 12, UCLA hosts a one-day event that explores the future opportunities and trends in RFID technology, with timely perspective from industry leaders, academic researchers and technology experts. RFID Forum 2004 is organized by UCLA’s Wireless Internet for the Mobile Enterprise Consortium (WINMEC).
http://www.wireless.ucla.edu/rfid/2004/
Electrical Engineering Department Recruits New Faculty Member
Sudhakar Pamarti has joined the electrical engineering department as an assistant professor. Pamarti, who received his PhD from the University California, San Diego, in 2003, is interested in highly integrated implementations of wireless and wireline communication systems. He focuses on developing and applying techniques from digital signal processing and communication theory to enhance the performance and lower the cost and power consumption of these systems. Pamarti was a senior member of the Memory Interface Division technical staff at Rambus Inc. before joining UCLA. While there, he designed circuits and systems for multi-Gb/s chip-to-chip I/O interfaces, and developed enabling techniques for future I/O demands.
Learn more about the School’s other recent recruits at http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/stories/2004/faculty2004.htm.
Bioengineering Professor Timothy Deming Receives Young Polymer Scientist
Award
Professor Timothy Deming, one of the Engineering School’s newest faculty members, was recognized in July at a biennial meeting of the macromolecular division of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). Deming received the Samsung – IUPAC Macromolecular Division "Young Polymer Scientist Award" at the 40th IUPAC International Symposium on Macromolecules in Paris, one of two awards given for scientific excellence. The award was sponsored by Samsung General Chemicals Company.
Learn more about Deming’s research at http://www.bioeng.ucla.edu/Facultyresearch/deming.html.
Professor Roychowdhury Receives Best Paper Award
Electrical engineering professor Vwani Roychowdhury received the Best Paper Award at the 4th IEEE International Conference on Peer-To-Peer Computing, held August 25-27 in Zurich, Switzerland. The paper, co-authored by UCLA researchers Oscar Boykin and Nima Sarshar, is titled “Percolation Search in Power Law Networks: Making Unstructured Peer-To-Peer Networks Scalable.” It was the only one from among more than 130 submissions selected as best paper.
Read the award-winning paper at http://femto.org/p2p2004/papers/sarshar.pdf.
MEDIA
WATCH: UCLA ENGINEERING IN THE NEWS
A Vast Web of Tiny Sensors
Computer scientist Deborah Estrin, director of the UCLA Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, spoke with BusinessWeek Internet editor Heather Green about the promise of sensors networks, the work that needs to be done and concerns about funding for innovative research.
Read the interview at http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/sep2004/nf2004081_1700
_db_81.htm
The State of RFID: Heading Toward a Wireless Internet of Artifacts
In the latest in a series of commentaries for Computerworld magazine, professor Rajit Gadh offers a crash course on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, and suggests we’re moving quickly toward a wireless Internet of artifacts where every physical thing, including humans, will become part of the Internet. Gadh heads the Wireless Internet for the Mobile Enterprise Consortium, which will host the RFID Forum 2004 at UCLA on October 12.
http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/story/0,10801,
95179,00.html
Success From Scratch: KFI’s Bill Handel Interviews Henry Samueli
Talk radio host Bill Handel interviewed Henry Samueli, a member of the electrical engineering department after whom the School is named, for the KFI 640-Radio program "Success From Scratch," which, according to KFI's web site, is about people who "started out just like you and through an amazing set of circumstances or sheer hard work, achieved the American Dream!" The interview aired Thursday, August 12. Samueli discusses, among other things, his years at UCLA and the excitement of launching Broadcom Corporation, where he is co-founder, chairman and chief technical officer.
http://www.kfi640.com/successfromscratch.html
Training Tomorrow’s Talent
Computer science professor Jason Cong is profiled in the latest issue of FPGA and Programmable Logic Journal. Cong, who is described as a “modern-day luminary” and “master educator,” joined the UCLA faculty in 1990, where he has trained some of the best technical talent in the FPGA design tools industry today.
http://www.fpgajournal.com/articles/20040831_cong.htm
Engineering Disaster Explained
In a History Channel episode of Modern Marvels that aired August 31, civil and environmental engineering professor Jonathan Stewart helped to explain what went wrong when the Baldwin Hills Dam suddenly gave way, wrecking havoc in a quiet Los Angeles neighborhood in 1963. Stewart is a registered P.E. in California whose primary research interests are in geotechnical earthquake engineering.
Learn more about Stewart’s research at http://www.cee.ucla.edu/faculty/stewart.htm.
Chips Measure Electron Spin
Technology Research News reports on experiments conducted at UCLA that have brightened the prospects for quantum computing by making it more likely that a practical means of reading electron-based quantum bits, or qubits, can be developed. A UCLA team including electrical engineering professor Eli Yablonovitch succeeded in flipping a single electron spin upside down in an ordinary commercial transistor chip, and detected that the current changes when the electron flips.
http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2004/081104/Chips_measure_electron_
spin_081104.html
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Read more UCLA Engineering news at http://www.engineer.ucla.edu
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