E-Bulletin

May 9, 2012

We are very excited that our Creativity Center, a new 5,000 square foot structure built into the second floor of Boelter Hall, has been completed and will open this summer.

The Creativity Center has two purposes. During the academic year, it will serve as a technology sandbox, providing a much-needed home and work space for several of our engineering student chapters of various societies. These groups allow our exceptional students to translate their knowledge and skills into projects that challenge them to solve real-world problems.

And starting this summer, we will debut our new Tech Camp, two four-week-long camps where rising high school sophomores and juniors, through a robotics program, will exercise their imagination and use engineering principles to design, build, and test. We are already in the process of selecting our first set of students for these camps, with one starting in June and the second starting in July. I want to emphasize that this is in addition to our ongoing successful Summer Research Program, a program where high school students are given the opportunity to learn about the research process and conduct their own experiments, all under the supervision of faculty and graduate students. Furthermore, the program culminates in a poster presentation to invited guests. If you’d like to find out more about these programs, please visit: http://esc.seas.ucla.edu.

Offering these kinds of programs to high school students is an integral part of our mission of teaching, research and service. It is critical for the United States to raise the number of students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). To do this, we must inspire bright and talented students, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, to major in STEM fields. We believe a memorable experience that really shares the joy of engineering at one of the world’s best research universities will surely influence them to engage in STEM fields.

Lastly, we recently heard some terrific news, the school is currently ranked in the top 10 in several areas by H-Index over the past 10 years, including a no. 1 ranking for electrical engineering (URL). This dynamic worldwide ranking by Microsoft Academic Research also places aerospace engineering at no. 8 (URL), computer science at no. 9 (URL), and the school overall at no. 4 (URL), over the same time period. This really is another testament to the excellent productivity and major impact our faculty make worldwide.

Sincerely,

dhirsig_whitebackground

Vijay K. Dhir
Dean

	Game on! UCLA Researchers use Online Crowd-Sourcing to Diagnose Malaria A team of UCLA researchers have created “BioGames,” a crowd-sourcing online game to combat malaria. The game, which can be accessed on cell phones/PCs, can be played by anyone around the world and could potentially help overcome limitations in the diagnosis of malaria, which affects some 210 million people annually worldwide.
	UCLA Engineers put the Squeeze on Cells to Diagnose Disease UCLA bioengineering researchers have taken advantage of cells' physical properties to develop a new instrument that slams cells against a wall of fluid and quickly analyzes the physical response, allowing for the identification of cancer and other cell states without expensive chemical tags.
	UCLA Researchers combat Global Disease with a Cell Phone, Google Maps and a lot of Ingenuity UCLA researchers have developed a compact and cost-effective Rapid Diagnostic Test-reading device that works in tandem with standard cell phones. Together, the universal RDT reader and the mapping feature, which have been implemented on both iPhones and Android-based smart-phones, could significantly increase the ability to track emerging epidemics worldwide and aid in epidemic preparedness.

	White House Names James Liao a “Champion of Change” in Renewable Energy James Liao, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, was one of nine individuals honored at the White House recently as Champions of Change for advancing new ideas that are leading the way to a clean energy future and an economy that’s built to last.
	Dean receives Lifetime Achievement Award at International Conference Dean Vijay K. Dhir received a Lifetime Achievement Award this month from the International Conference on Computational & Experimental Engineering and Sciences. The award recognizes sustained and significant contributions in the form of research, teaching, and service to the community, in any area germane to the ICCES series of conferences. Dhir who has made seminal contributions in the field of heat transfer, was recognized for both his research and his engineering education leadership.
	Kleinrock named to Internet Hall of Fame Inaugural Class Computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock was named to the inaugural 33 member class for the Internet Hall of Fame. The announcement was on the occasion of the Internet Society's 20th Anniversary. Kleinrock was recognized in the pioneers section for his work on mathematical theory of packet networks. Three distinguished UCLA alumni were also named in the inaugural class, Vint Cerf, Paul Baran and Jon Postel. (Baran and Postel were inducted posthumously).
	Two UCLA Engineering Professors Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences Computer science professor Judea Pearl and mathematics professor Russell Caflisch, who holds a joint appointment in materials science, were among 220 distinguished scholars, scientists, authors, artists, and business and philanthropic leaders elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in recognition of their outstanding accomplishments.
	Five Graduate Students Receive Prestigious NSF Fellowships Five UCLA Engineering graduate students received 2012 National Science Foundation Fellowships, the federal agency announced recently. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. institutions.
	UCLA Seismic Design Team takes First Place in National Competition A team of UCLA students from the school’s American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) chapter took first place over 26 other schools in a national seismic safety competition.
	Smart Grid Energy Research Center uses campus as a testbed in power Infrastructure/Reliability (video) With major funding from the U.S. Department of Energy and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Rajit Gadh, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and his colleagues from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science are leading the charge to build and test innovative smart-grid technologies that could lead to major breakthroughs for power infrastructure and reliability.
	New Study Provides Atomic-Scale Insights into Thermal Stability of Ultra-High Temperature Ceramics A research team led by UCLA material scientists used scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) at high temperatures to investigate the thermal stability of ultra high temperature ceramic (UHTC) material. These studies are expected to improve the understanding of the surface stability of ceramics such as SiC and SiC composites. For example, for commercial vehicles, such as automobiles and airplanes, these new materials could enable efficient operation at higher temperatures, meaning faster transport and lower fuel consumption.
	Electrical Engineering Professor Tatsuo Itoh receives Distinguished Service award from Alma Mater Professor Tatsuo Itoh received the College of Engineering Alumni Award for Distinguished Service from the University of Illinois, Urabana-Champaign. He was recognized for "Seminal Contributions in Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Technology and Electrical Engineering Education."
	Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department's Research Review Highlights Innovation UCLA's MAE Department held a successful Research and Technology Review recently with 130 in attendance. The plenary speakers was Heidi Shyu, Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, and a UCLA Engineering alumna.
	Electrical Engineering Assistant Professor Received Army Young Investigator Award Rob Candler received a Young Investigator Award from the Army Research Office. The award funds research that will explore the fundamental mechanisms in which energy is dissipated in nanoscale vibrating structures. Nanoscale resonators have the potential to impact frequency references and filters used in communications, as well as other applications.
	Asking an Expert about Biofuels: PortTech LA’s Q&A with Professor Laurent Pilon PortTechLA, a public/private non-profit technology center and business incubator operated by a coalition consisting of the City of Los Angeles, Port of Los Angeles and the San Pedro and Wilmington Chambers of Commerce, recently talked to Laurent Pilon, UCLA professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, about the significance of biofuels.
	Scholarship Brunch and Graduate Fellowship Luncheon UCLA Engineering recently held two events to honor undergraduate scholarship and graduate fellowship recipients and the generous donors who made those possible. Selected photos from the events are posted on the UCLA Engineering Facebook page.
	UCLA Engineering Research Ranked Top 10 in Several Areas The UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science is currently ranked in the top 10 in several research areas by Microsoft Academic Search. This includes a no. 1 ranking for electrical engineering by H-index over 10 years. This dynamic worldwide ranking also places aerospace engineering at no. 8, and computer science at no. 9, and the school at no. 4 overall, throughout the same time period by H-index. H-index measures both the productivity and impact of published work.

media watch

PC World
Internet Hall of Fame Opens... On the Web
Thirty-plus Internet pioneers, innovators and "global connectors" -- yes, even including Al Gore -- have been inducted into the first class of the Internet Hall of Fame. UCLA-affiliated inductees included computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock and distinguished alumni Vint Cerf, Paul Baran and Jon Postel (both Baran and Postel were inducted posthumously).

Wired
Vint Cerf: We Knew What We Were Unleashing on the World
Cerf talked with Wired about how the military brought the TCP/IP protocol into being, how he and his co-conspirators knew — almost 40 years ago — what they were unleashing on the world, the threats to the net today, and what he’d like to see next: a vision that includes Internet packets raining down from the
sky.

Future of the Book
Back to the Future
The Future of the Book blog writes on ideas in 1982, of a wirelessly-accessible encyclopedia. The team that came up with the idea included computer science adjunct professor Alan Kay, a pioneer in object-oriented programming and graphical user interfaces

Contra Costa Times
Hundreds of Millions Spent to Protect Delta Levees. Is It Enough?
Civil and environmental engineering professor and vice-chair Jonathan Stewart is quoted in the article on the safety of levees in California's Delta.

The Atlantic
A Video Game Where Players Help Real Doctors Diagnose Malaria
Video game players may soon become the latest line of defense against malaria. UCLA researchers have developed a free, Internet-based pattern recognition game based on images of real life blood cells. Researchers hope the online tool will cut down the amount of time it now takes to distinguish infected red blood cells from healthy ones.
Also carried in Computer World, PC Advisor (U.K.), and AllAfrica.

Medgadget
High Speed Deformability Cytometer Feels Through Thousands of Cells a Second
UCLA bioengineering researchers have created an instrument that slams thousands of human cells per second against a wall of fluid and uses the resulting deformations in these cells to diagnose cancer and other conditions.

Washington Post
Op-Ed: Regulating Domestic Drones on a Deadline
Electrical engineering professor John Villasenor, also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, argues in a co-authored Op-Ed that the Federal Aviation Administration would be in a difficult spot if it were left in charge of privacy concerns following the opening of U.S. airspace to unmanned aerial vehicles.
Villasenor was also a guest on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation program as an expert on this topic.
And he authored an article in Scientific American describing in detail what drones are.

Fast Company
5 Ways To Leverage Trade Secrets
Villasenor continues his series in Fast Company on examining 2011's sweeping patent reform legislation, the America Invents Act. This article is on "5 Ways To Leverage Trade Secrets."

National Post (Canada)
Goodspeed Analysis: The Arab Spring May Have Helped Usher in a New Era of Government Surveillance
Villasenor writes in the National Post on the possible size and scope of surveillance by the government. "The plummeting cost of data storage, combined with new techniques for intercepting electronic communications that contain parts of our individual personal histories, makes total surveillance of entire countries possible."
Villasenor also wrote on "Why the Government Can’t Remain the Cybersecurity Czar" in Slate.
He was also quoted on the topic in PC Advisor (U.K.).

Daily Bruin
Professor Judea Pearl Receives Alan Turing Award for Work on Artificial Intelligence
Computer science professor Judea Pearl will receive the Alan Turing award from the Association for Computing Machinery. The award is considered equivalent to the Nobel Prize for the field of computer science.

CNET
Tracking Diseases using Google Maps and Cell Phones
Researchers at UCLA have taken the human out of the equation as much as possible and developed a digital "universal" reader for all rapid diagnostic tests, or RDTs, that requires no translation of results.
Also carried in the Daily Bruin.

LA Weekly
Startups: A UCLA Professor Who's Turning Cellphones Into Microscopes to Prevent Disease
Nearly 6 billion people in the world use cellphones -- and about 70 percent of those users live in developing countries. Those statistics gave UCLA electrical engineering professor Aydogon Ozcan an idea. "The cellphone is the ultimate Swiss Army knife tool -- rarely used to talk but doing many other functions."

LA Weekly
High School Students Create Environmental Billboards with Cell Phone Pictures
Four billboards featuring images high school students snapped with cellphones will go up at the north side of Los Angeles State Historic Park. As part of an eco-internship, 20 local students worked with UCLA's Center for Research in Engineering, Media and Performance (REMAP) to take pictures of the
park and transform them using software.

Daily Bruin
UCLA Racing Baja Team Seeks Off-Road Victory at Society of Automotive Engineers Competition
A group of students in gray shirts file out of a cramped classroom onto the road behind Engineering Building IV. Shining flashlights to see through the darkness, they huddle around the frame of a short, black car. One yanks on the pull start. The engine roars to life, and the car takes off down the road, ready for competition.

Daily Bruin
Built to Battle: UCLA Students Gear Up their BattleBots for Annual RoboGames Competition
This year’s projects include many strategically designed bots, from the defense-oriented wedge bots, to the mechanically complex shell spinner, which combines armor and weaponry into one constantly revolving steel tube with teeth.

Daily Bruin (video)
UCLA Triathlete Yu Hsiao in Training
Fourth-year mechanical engineering student and UCLA triathlon team member Yu Hsiao shares his story on the ups and downs of training for three sports.

Daily Bruin
Geometry-based game 'Flatland ARG!!!' Shapes up for Game Art Festival Debut
Over the past few years, UCLA’s Game Lab has been developing its independent game project “Flatland ARG!!!,” an augmented reality game that takes its name and concept from the 1884 satirical novella “Flatland” by Edwin Abbott.

Daily Bruin
Computer Science Giant Gerald Estrin Remembered
“He was the very model of what I thought a professor would be,” said a former student of late computer science professor Gerald Estrin.

Capitol Correspondent
Producing Fuel from CO2 and Sunlight
Voice of Russia’s Capitol Correspondent blogs on Prof James Liao’s work to create fuel from CO2 and sunlight

Chemical & Engineering News
Toward a Predictive Model For Nanoparticle Toxicity
A team of UCLA researchers including chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Yoram Cohen, report the first model to predict nanoparticle toxicity based on the materials’ water solubility and electronic properties

Mother Nature Network
UCLA Greens its Campus
As home to the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability (IoES),UCLA is paving the way in setting a green example and pioneering eco-practices and programs on its West L.A. campus, which has the population equivalent of a city of 70,000. The Smart Grid Research Center is playing a role in testing electric vehicles.

Mercury News
East Bay Rowers Shooting for Olympic Berth at European Regattas
Oakland rowers Julie Nichols and Kristin Hedstrom are on the cusp of qualifying for the London Games starting Thursday at the World Cup opener in Belgrade, Serbia. Nichols is a UCLA Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. student.

LA Weekly
6 Things We Bet You Didn't Know About the Boba Truck
Boba Truck founder Liwei Liao, a UCLA Engineering alumnus, designed a mobile tea bar especially for brewing tea.

Variety
Media Mentor of the Year
Variety honors UCLA Theater Film Television Dean Teri Schwartz, who mentions the REMAP partnership with UCLA Engineering

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