2009

December

Scientific American
Vint Cerf: Connecting with an Internet Pioneer, 40 Years Later
The magazine interviewed UCLA Engineering alumnus Vint Cerf, one of the "fathers of the Internet," to talk about why the ARPANET was built and how it grew to become the Internet, not to mention the pros and cons of social networks.

U.S. News & World Report
Nanowires Hold the Key to Future Electronics
A new generation of ultrasmall transistors and more powerful computer chips using tiny structures called semiconducting nanowires are closer to reality after a key discovery by researchers at IBM, Purdue University and the University of California, Los Angeles. 

The Huffington Post
So much is at Stake: The Future of UCLA
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block writes an op-ed for the Huffington Post on the future of UCLA, and encourages stakeholders to become advocates for the university.

November

The 40th Anniversary of the Internet was covered by many news organizations, including: ABC News, BBC News, BBC World Service-Business Daily, CNN, Daily News, Fox News, Guardian UK, KNBC Channel 4-Los Angeles, KPCC 89.3 FM-Southern California Public Radio, National Public Radio-All Things Considered, National public Radio-Morning Edition, National Public Radio-Talk of the Nation, and Science Friday.

CNN
A new way of looking at the world
Nathan Yau, a graduate student with the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, is one of several data visualization innovators featured. Yau's website Your Flowing Data, helps people chart their lives using the microblogging site Twitter.

New York Times
Novelties: Far From a Lab? Turn a Cellphone Into a Microscope
The article focuses on the work of electrical engineering professor Aydogan Ozcan, who is turning cell phones into inexpensive mobile disease detection labs. Ozcan has formed a new start-up, called Microskia, to commercialize the technology. Ozcan's work was also featured in Popular Science, CNET, and Gizmodo.

Associated Press
Gates Foundation grants support unusual research
UCLA Biomedical Engineering Ph.D. student Andrew Fung is one of 76 winners of $100,000 grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that focus on world health. Fung aims to develop chewing gum that can detect malaria biomarkers in saliva. His collaboroters include his advisor, electrical engineering professor Jack Judy, a faculty member in the UCLA Biomedical Engineering Interdepartmental Program; UCLA physician Dr. Theodore Moore, a specialist in pediatric hematology-oncology; and Dr. Michel Bergeron, an infectious disease specialist at Laval University in Quebec.

Technology Review
Lixia Zhang, Researcher played key role in developing Internet architecture
Computer science professor Lixia Zhang is profiled in MIT's magazine for her work in improving protocol designs and security on the Internet.

October

UCLA Magazine
Bruins in Space
UCLA Magazine profiles the eight UCLA alumni who have flown into space.

Los Angeles Times
UC may hike tuition for some undergraduate majors
As part of a plan to plug UC's battered budget, the regents may vote as early as next month on the controversial, tradition-breaking proposal to require engineering undergraduates, along with those studying business, to pay $900 more a year than the rest of the student body. That would be in addition to the $2,514 systemwide fee increase all students are likely to see by next fall.

National Public Radio
Long Recovery In Store For Scorched Calif. Hillsides
The biggest wildfire in Los Angeles County history is under control but still burning. And it's left behind thousands of acres of scorched forestland in an area long regarded as one of the jewels of the Southern California wilderness. Civil and environmental engineering professor Terri Hogue is interviewed.

Pasadena Star-News
Rain may bring trouble to region's water supply following Station Fire devastation
Terri Hogue interviewed on contaminants that may get into water streams because of the burned area.

LiveScience
Engineering Better Disease Detectors, Energy Storage
UCLA Engineering professor Bruce Dunn develops next generation three-dimensional batteries, fuel cells and capacitors, including a battery powered by sugar.

September

Associated Press
As Internet turns 40, barriers threaten its growth
The article examines the future of the Internet as its 40th anniversary approaches. Computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock and UCLA Engineering alumnus Vint Cerf, Google's Chief Internet Evangelist are quoted. The article was carried in newspapers around the country including the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.

The Glick Report interviews Leonard Kleinrock on the 40th anniversary of the Internet.

Computer World
The Internet at 40: 'Net pioneer still surprised by online world
Leonard Kleinrock remembers the day it began and knows what he'd do differently now.

Although some celebrate the net's birthday today (Sept. 2), others say it didn't really have life until October 29 of the same year. On that day, a message was typed by Kleinrock and sent to the second node at Stanford Research Institute. That, Kleinrock has said, "was the first breath of life the Internet ever took."

Aydogan Ozcan, assistant professor of electrical engineering, is named to the magazine's TR35 list of technologists and scientists, all under the age of 35, who are changing the world.

A nanoparticle sandwich could double the efficiency of energy-hogging desalination membranes. Eric Hoek, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering is featured.

A research lab at UCLA aims to improve cities from the grassroots up, with a soon-to-launch platform that will allow citizens to document trends in their built environment using their mobile phones. The Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) is featured.

UC Tackles Water Crisis
Various research initiatives throughout the University of California are zeroing in on the state's three-year drought to help find ways to change the way we use our scarce water supply. Chemical and Biomolecular engineering professor Yoram Cohen is featured.

Environmental centers work together on climate change
From Engineering to Public Affairs, from the School of Law to Arts and Architecture, schools from across the UCLA campus have sprouted centers that examine climate change from every angle, creating a wealth of specialized, in-depth research. But sometimes, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

August

National Geographic
Tracking Invasive Species by Phone (video)
New smart phone applications may enable the public to help scientists monitor invasive species and collect data in a fraction of the time it usually takes. The Center for Embedded Networked Sensing is featured.

California's Glimmer of Hope: Nanotechnology
NanoH2O Inc., for instance, uses nano materials to improve the performance of reverse osmosis membranes in making dirty water clean or in desalination. Two years ago, the company licensed the membrane research of Eric Hoek, a professor of environmental engineering at U.C.L.A. Then it leased lab space in the NanoSystems Institute, which opened in 2007, because being at U.C.L.A. allowed the company to use expensive electron microscopes and other equipment.

UC scientists warn state leaders of consequences of budget cuts
More than 300 leading UC scientists — including nearly three dozen from UCLA — sent a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger warning him that proposed budget cuts to UC would impede scientific and technological progress, irreversibly damage the university and undermine prospects for California’s economic recovery. Copies of the July 6 letter, signed by faculty who are all members of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering or the Institute of Medicine, were also sent to members of the State Legislature and UC leadership.

July

The Los Angeles Times
Northrop Grumman's Ronald Sugar: Quietly in command
The newspaper profiles Ronald Sugar, chairman and chief executive officer of the Northrop Grumman Corporation. Sugar is a three-time UCLA Engineering alumnus and is a previous recipient of the school's Alumnus of the Year Award.

Forbes Magazine
Giving Computers Free Will: The mathematics of cause and effect
Computer science professor Judea Pearl authors a column on the quiet revolution of artificial intelligence, that has transformed the way scientists view the world, and how and how they view their own thoughts and acts.

RFID Journal
Calif. Researchers Tag Cadavers, Body Parts
The University of California's Anatomical Services Department, which receives nearly 1,000 cadavers a year for educational and research purposes, is testing an RFID system developed by the Wireless Internet for Mobile Enterprise Consortium (WINMEC) to improve the tracking process. WINMEC is under the direction of mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Rajit Gadh.

Inside the Air Force (subscription required)
Professor Ann Karagozian, Vice Chair for Industrial Relations for the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department and also Vice Chair of the U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, is quoted in an article in "Inside the Air Force" by Jason Simpson. The article describes the board's three fiscal year '09 studies, completed in June 2009. The studies include examinations of alternative options for Air Force base energy, virtual training technologies, and rapid on-orbit checkout of satellite systems.

RFID for Medical Devices: An exciting future
Imagine an RFID tag travelling through the human body such as in Sci-Fi movie Fantastic Voyage. In biotechnology, bioengineering and healthcare, RFID has a lot of interesting research opportunities. Professor Rajit Gadh is interviewed for the story.

June

Researchers at the UCLA's Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, or CENS, are working to make cell phones a powerful and accessible research tool for everybody.

Civil and environmental engineering professor Jonathan Stewart appeared on the History Channel program "Life After People" describing the effects on the built environment of a "no people" condition. In particular, Stewart's comments were focused on the Library Tower and Disney Hall in downtown Los Angeles.

Can burning excess fat be as easy as exhaling? That's the finding of a provocative new study by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who transplanted a fat-burning pathway used by bacteria and plants into mice. The genetic alterations enabled the animals to convert fat into carbon dioxide and remain lean while eating the equivalent of a fast-food diet.

May

Debut for world's fastest camera
The fastest imaging system ever devised has been demonstrated by UCLA Engineering researchers reporting in the journal Nature. Their camera's "shutter speed" is just a half a billionth of a second, and it can capture over six million images in a second continuously. The news was also carried in Wired Magazine, Discover Magazine and many other publications. Author Keisuke Goda has page with links to press coverage on the camera here.

Stimulus Law Revs Up Research on Energy
Article has a brief profile of UCLA materials science and engineering professor Yang Yang. It also mentions the work of Vasilios Manousiouthakis and of Yoram Cohen, who are both professors in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

Nature News: Personal Technology. Phoning in Data
Far from being just an accessory, mobile phones are starting to be used to collect data in an increasing number of disciplines. Computer science doctoral student Martin Lukac and computer science professor Deborah Estrin, director of the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, are quoted.

Meet the Crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis
The newspaper featured a profile of astronaut Megan McArthur, a UCLA engineering alumna who is one of seven crew members on the Space Shuttle Atlantis mission STS-125, which will attempt to repair the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.

Daily Bruin
UCLA to build Turbine Lab
UCLA is preparing to build a new wind turbine research facility in downtown Los Angeles as part of an ongoing push toward sustainable energy. Richard Wirz, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, is the director of the new lab.

April

CBS News: 60 Minutes
The Internet is Infected (streaming video)
Lesley Stahl reports on computer viruses that propagate on the Internet and infect PCs, which enable their creators -- often called "cyber gangs" -- to learn the information they need to electronically rob bank accounts. Interviewees include Symantec Vice President Stephen Trilling, a member of UCLA Engineering's Dean's Advisory Council and Google Vice President Vint Cerf MS '70, PhD '72.

The New Yorker
The Sporting Scene: What Would Jesus Bet?
The magazine profiles well-known tournament poker player and UCLA Engineering alumnus Chris Ferguson on his playing strategy and business ventures. The feature also includes Ferguson's time at UCLA under his advisor, computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock, who is also quoted in the article.

The Los Angeles Times
Surge of college students pursuing 'clean energy' careers
Climate change is a concern among undergraduates, driving a surge of interest in science and engineering on campuses nationwide. Dean Vijay K. Dhir is quoted.

Chemical & Engineering News
192 Lasers Converge
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF) is gearing up to focus on the inner workings of planets and stars, fusion energy research. The story includes Christoph Niemann, assistant professor of electrical engineering and physics who holds a joint appointment at the national lab, for his research at NIF on astrophysical phenomena and energy research.

For the Record Magazine
Is RFID Technology Too Nosy?
There are a lot of good reasons why healthcare organizations should implement RFID technology, but privacy and security issues raise debate about its worthiness. Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Rajit Gadh is quoted in the article on ways that RFID technology can be useful and prevent errors.

KQED Quest
Tracking Carbon through Your Cell Phone
The television program features a group of high school students in San Francisco are using high-tech GPS cell phones to track their daily carbon footprint - and to gauge their daily environmental risk. The phones are part of a new program from UCLA's Center for Embedded Networked Sensing.

San Francisco Chronicle
Program helps kids find their carbon impact
a new pilot project in San Francisco is incorporating GPS-equipped cell phones and Facebook to help students learn about their impact on the environment. The cell phones act as real-time sensors, sending information every 30 seconds to servers at UCLA's Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, which organizes the information on personal Web maps and charts for students and allows them to publish their individual and collective results to Facebook.

EarthSky Science Podcast
AIDS detection lab on a cell phone
Aydogan Ozcan, assistant professor of electrical engineering, is featured for his research into developing a device to detect infectious diseases in people in the most impoverished parts of the world, using a cellphone.

Daily Bruin
UCLA holds 15th Bridge Building Contest
Students from 28 high schools throughout Los Angeles and California competed in the contest organized by the UCLA branch of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Younger Member Forum, a branch of ASCE.

Mercury News
20 years ago, the World Wide Web was born
The San Jose newspaper features an article on the World Wide Web. Computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock is quoted.

March

Popular Mechanics
20 New Biotech Breakthroughs that Will Change Medicine
From a spit test for cancer to a shot that helps your body re-grow nerves along your spinal cord, these new advances in the world of medicine blur the line between biology and technology--to help restore, improve and extend our lives. A salivary diagnostics test developed by mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Chih-Ming Ho is featured.

Los Angeles Magazine
Feature Shock
On October 29, 1969, in room 3420 at Boelter Hall on the UCLA campus, a team led by Leonard Kleinrock dispatched the first message ever sent over a computer network. It was 10:30 p.m. At that moment, the Internet took its first breath and uttered its first word. Forty years later, Kleinrock, now 74 and a distinguished professor of computer science who is celebrated as one of the fathers of the Internet, recalls the excitement of that event and presents his vision of our future in cyberspace.

The Economist
Model behaviour
The U.K.-based magazine reported on software designed by Demetri Terzopoulos, Chancellor's Professor of Computer Science, that will make the behavior of computer-generated crowds in films and video games appear more realistic. Terzopoulos was quoted.

Daily Bruin
Professors elected into engineering academy
Two UCLA professors, Deborah Estrin and John Kim, were elected into membership with the National Academy of Engineering, earning one of the highest professional distinctions for an engineer in recognition of their contributions to research, practice and education.

Nature Photonics
Research Highlights
Pei-Yu Chiou, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, with co-workers from University of California at Los Angeles and Berkeley have come up with a new way of manipulating liquid droplets — a single, continuous optoelectrowetting (COEW) electrode. The research was originally published in Applied Physics Letters and included in Nature Photonics "Research Highlights" section.

UCLA Today
Student engineers aim to design “super mileage” vehicle of the future
The Super Mileage Vehicle (SMV) Team is a group of mechanical, aerospace, electrical and computer engineering students competing in the annual Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Supermileage Competition. Starting with a competition-provided 3.5-horsepower engine, their goal is to build a car around it efficient enough to wow even the most demanding environmentalists.

February

CNN
Invention turns cell phone into mobile medical lab
Professor Aydogan Ozcan of UCLA has taken a typical Sony Ericsson phone, and by adding a few off-the-shelf parts that cost less than $50, he can get it to produce a remarkable image that shows the thousands of cells in a small fluid sample such as human blood. Called LUCAS, the device could change the way doctors treat patients in rural areas. Ozcan's work has also been profiled on CBS and the Science Channel. Visit his lab's news site for more links. And, an mp3 file of a recent BBC radio segment on LUCAS is located here.

NBC 4
Cheap High-Efficiency Solar Cells on the Horizon
UCLA researchers believe they have taken one step closer to creating high-efficiency solar cells using cheap plastic with a dash of silicon, it was reported Saturday. The research team (led by materials science and engineering professor Yang Yang) says it wants easy-to-use plastic solar energy cells to be sold at local hardware stores, and then hung like posters on the wall.

Nature Photonics
News and Views. Silicon photonics: Silicon's time lens
How can we capture ultrafast optical signals in real time? A time lens is one possibility — able to image the temporal profile of a short optical signal, analogous to a conventional lens. Such a device has now been created on a silicon chip. The article is by electrical engineering professor Bahram Jalali, post-doctoral research Daniel Solli, and graduate student Shalabh Gupta.

January

First there was ethanol. Then there was butanol. Now there's an alcohol biofuel poised to put both to shame. Using new tricks of the trade, scientists at UCLA have synthesized an alcohol molecule that has as many carbon atoms as a molecule of gasoline. It releases as much energy per gallon and can be dropped right into the tank.