USC Engineering News.winter.04

A newsletter published by the University of Southern California
School of Engineering
Spring 2004
Ridge Visits New USC Homeland Security Center of Excellence
T
om Ridge, secretary of the U.S.
Department of Homeland
Security, is getting to know
USC.
He and his senior staff paid their first
visit to the School of Engineering
January 15 to receive an update on the
new Homeland Security Center for Risk
and Economic Analysis of Terrorism
Events, headquartered in Olin Hall.
USC became the first universitybased Homeland Security Center of
Excellence in the nation last November.
Ridge didn’t stay long, but he plans to
return to campus periodically as the
nation’s first Homeland Security Center
of Excellence opens its doors.
Ridge met with Dean C. L. Max
Nikias for about 45 minutes in the engineering dean’s office. Also in attendance
were Provost Lloyd Armstrong; Daniel
Mazmanian, dean of the School of
Policy, Planning and
Development; Randolph
Hall, director of the new
center and senior associate dean for research in
the School of
Engineering; Detlof von
Winterfeldt, deputy dean
of research in the School
of Policy, Planning and
Development and codirector of the new center; and three USC
doctoral students. The
students were Nathan
Pictured, from left: Daniel Mazmanian, dean, USC School of Policy,
Planning, and Development; C.L. Max Nikias, dean, USC School of
Schurr and Jonathan
Engineering; Tom Ridge, secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland
Pearce, who are both
Security; and Lloyd Armstrong Jr., provost, USC.
studying computer science, and Carol
Armstrong, a public policy student.
graduate students brief him on their
Hall briefed Ridge on some center
individual research projects. After the
continued on page 2
research activities, then let the three
DESTINATION: THE FUTURE
School Launches $300 Million Fundraising Initiative
A
t a Nov.
21, 2003
banquet
attended by
alumni, corporate friends,
Alumnus Mark Stevens, left, a general partner at Sequoia
Capital, chats with Dean C. L. Max Nikias, center, and
and USC faculfellow alumnus Daniel J. Epstein, right, a San Diego real
ty and staff,
estate entrepreneur, about the new $300 million fundraisDean C. L.
ing initiative. Epstein, a 1962 graduate of the department
Max Nikias
that bears his name — the Daniel J. Epstein Department
formally
of Industrial and Systems Engineering — will co-direct the
initiative with Stevens, a seasoned venture capitalist with
announced a
many years of experience in fundraising.
seven-year
fundraising initiative with the ambitious goal of raising $300 million for the
School of Engineering.
The initiative’s theme, “Destination: The Future,” shimmered on twin screens flanking both sides of the speaker’s
platform at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey. A laser light
show to celebrate the kickoff dazzled guests.
“This fundraising initiative is the biggest undertaking of
my deanship,” said Nikias, adding that the initiative would
be primarily aimed at increasing the School’s endowment. “I
have a passion for building our endowment! If you care about
the future of a place like this, you realize that endowment is
absolutely critical.”
Nikias explained that dramatically increasing the endowment was a more sound, long-term strategy for benefiting students, faculty and deans into the future than simply raising
cash for immediate needs.
He said that the School needed to raise the resources not
only to reach the highest level of academic excellence, but to
create new paradigms for research and education in the rapidly evolving fields of information communications and biomedical technology.
“Combined with major advances in energy and nanotechnology, these technologies will change our lives and our chilcontinued on page 4
2 / USC Engineering News / Spring 2004
2003—A Record Year For New Research Funding
By Dean C. L. Max Nikias
2
003 is gone but at the USC School of Engineering it will
not be soon forgotten. Last year will be remembered as the
year in which the School opened four new centers and
institutes.
They are the Pratt & Whitney Institute for Collaborative
Engineering (PWICE), the ChevronTexaco Center for
Interactive Smart Oil Field Technology (CISOFT), the
National Science Foundation-funded Biomimetic
MicroElectronic Systems (BMES) Engineering Research
Center, and the Department of Homeland Security’s first
Center of Excellence, known as the Homeland Security Center
for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events. Together
these new academic units represent at least $31 million of new
research funding. I say at least because all of them will continue
to attract funding.
More important, they have
brought together an astonishing
array of researchers from different
USC schools, other universities and
private corporations to engage in
exciting and creative cross-disciplinary projects.
Three of the four start with two
key partners from the School: the
Information Sciences Institute (ISI)
and the Integrated Media Systems
Center (IMSC). ISI and IMSC both
have a long history of working with
other USC units, other academic institutions and corporations.
The Homeland Security Center has researchers from the
USC School of Policy, Planning and Development, as well as
continued on page 3
Ridge Visits New USC Homeland Security Center of Excellence continued from Cover
discussions, Ridge took a short tour of
the new Tutor Hall engineering building, which is about midway through
construction, before leaving for an
address at the downtown Los Angeles
Chamber of Commerce. During his
speech downtown, Ridge said: “DHS
ranked USC first last November, before
any national [football] polls did.”
An award of $12 million over the
next three years from the Department
of Homeland Security will enable an
interdisciplinary team of USC faculty
to conduct risk analysis related to the
economic consequences of terrorist
threats and events.
President Steven B. Sample was
pleased to see the university’s reputation for reliability in national security
research so strongly acknowledged.
“We’re ready to take collaborative and
interdisciplinary research [in homeland
security] to an entirely new level,” he
said. “It’s an exciting opportunity to
make a real contribution to the nation.”
The new Homeland Security Center
for Risk and Economic Analysis of
Terrorism Events was chosen from
among 71 competing proposals. Its focus
will be to “tap the nation’s inventive
spirit, our strengths in science and technology, to cap world terrorism,” said
Charles McQueary, Under Secretary,
Science and Technology division,
Department of Homeland Security.
Researchers will help focus the
nation’s intellectual resources on both
‘‘ ’’
We’re ready to take collaborative
and interdisciplinary research
[in homeland security] to an
entirely new level.
Steven B. Sample
USC President
the means and targets of terrorism,
developing new strategies to safeguard
critical infrastructure systems such as
power, transportation and telecommunications. Nikias emphasized the collaborative nature of the work.
“Some of the center’s special
strengths will come from USC’s School
of Policy, Planning, and Development,
and its rapidly growing research in economic and infrastructure development,
health policy, risk analysis and economics,” Nikias said. “The School of
Engineering’s Integrated Media
Systems Center, the sole National
Science Foundation Engineering
Research Center for multimedia and
Internet research, will also play a crucial
role in the depth and breadth of the
research.”
McQueary said the center will be
the first of a “web” of university-based
homeland security centers dedicated to
preventing terrorist threats and strikes,
and minimizing the consequences of
an attack. Interdisciplinary faculty will
collaborate to develop fresh approaches and new tools for planning responses to a variety of terrorist threats that
could include explosives, chemical,
biological, nuclear and radiological
weapons, and cyber attacks.
“One of the particular emphases of
the center will be attacks on infrastructure, because there’s great potential for
those types of attacks,” Hall said. “An
attack on an electrical system, for
instance, could affect a wide area, as we
have seen in the blackouts in the northeast last summer. We’re starting out
broadly, deliberately, so that we can later
take a more comprehensive look at
security in this nation.”
USC Engineering News / Spring 2004 / 3
The Spider’s Stratagem: ‘A Quantum Leap’ for Construction
A
USC School of Engineering
computer controlled system
to automatically build houses
in hours instead of weeks received a
major boost in January, when
Germany’s Degussa AG, the world’s
largest manufacturer and supplier of
construction materials, announced
its intention to participate in the
project.
Funded by a grant from the
National Science Foundation,
Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis of
the Epstein Department of
Industrial and Systems Engineering
has been developing his automated
house-building process, called “contour crafting,” for a year.
Contour crafting uses crane or
gantry-mounted nozzles, from
which building material — concrete,
in the prototype now operating in
his laboratory — comes out at a constant rate. Moving trowels around
the nozzle mold it into the desired form,
as the nozzle moves over the work.
Khoshnevis demonstrated the idea to
Degussa executives at a meeting in
December at the $11.8 billion sales
firm’s Düsseldorf headquarters, a
Postdoctoral student Dooil Hwang, left, and
Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis, in their contour
crafting workshop.
demonstration called “impressive” by
Dr. Gerhard Albrecht, head of
Divisional Research & Technology
Transfer for one of Degussa’s specialty materials subsidiaries, Admixture.
“It is our belief that your contour
crafting concept will be a quantum
leap in the modern construction
industry,” wrote Dr. Albrecht in a
letter.
“Therefore we are ready to do
research in our own Degussa R&D
departments to develop and provide
construction materials that are serviceable and fitted for the special
building conditions of the contour
crafting technology.
“Degussa not only has already at its
disposal a wide range of construction
chemicals, which will be tested with
regard to their qualification and applicability for special contour crafting
cement formulations, but is ready to
develop special new construction
chemicals in our own R&D labs fitted for the contour crafting process.”
Khoshnevis hopes that Degussa
scientists will be able to help him develop a system in which building materials
applied by the machine can be mixed
continuously at the nozzle, “the way
spider silk is manufactured as a spider
builds its web.”
2003—A Record Year For New Research Funding continued from page 2
New York University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison,
and the University of California at Berkeley. The BMES
Center is mainly a collaboration between the Keck School of
Medicine and the School of Engineering, but includes participation from Caltech and UC Santa Cruz. It already has 20
industrial companies involved. In PWICE, the School is working with Korea’s Inha University and Korean Airlines, as well as
Pratt & Whitney, which is a division of United Technologies.
While we are collaborating with many others, the School of
Engineering has spearheaded every one of these exciting new
ventures. Our faculty’s leadership, and their ability to reach out
and connect with others is gratifying. But more gratifying is the
success of their efforts. They are very good and, increasingly,
they are winning top competitions for research funding.
The National Science Foundation received 79 proposals for
its last round of Engineering Research Centers (ERCs); USC’s
winning proposal to establish the BMES Center not only
ranked number one out of 79, but it was described by NSF as
the best one they had received in recent years. Now USC is
one of only four universities in the country to have two concurrently operating Engineering Research Centers. To top it
off, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security chose USC as
the home for its first Center of Excellence over 70 other proposals.
We are winning these intense competitions because of the
leadership of our faculty, and it is the faculty who deserve all
the credit. But it is really nothing new.
In 2003, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) renewed
funding for our Biomedical Simulations Resource (BMSR).
Now in its 19th year of operation, NIH has supported the
BMSR longer than any other center.
Back in 1995, our proposal for our first ERC, the Integrated
Media Systems Center, ranked first out of the 117 proposals
that were submitted.
While winning is not new, it is happening more frequently
now. Our team, always good, is getting better. We know that it
will continue to get better because in the past two years, we
have recruited 26 new top-notch tenure-track faculty members.
4 / USC Engineering News / Spring 2004
‘SIX WHEELS ON MARS’
Gusev Crater
Trosper explains the main goals of the
Spirit mission in her office at JPL. Behind
her is a TOPEX/Poseidon satellite image of
sea surface heights and temperatures.
D
uring her Trojan days, Jennifer Trosper got hooked on
Mars.
Now the university’s very own alumna is leading the
NASA/JPL mission operations team responsible for sending the
Spirit rover on its daily excursions around Gusev Crater.
Trosper, MSAE ‘99, said she never imagined she’d be driving
rovers on Mars when she was a farm girl growing up in rural
Ohio.
But she was doing just that by the time she got to USC.
During her years of graduate work here in the late 1990s, she
was working on NASA’s Mars Pathfinder mission, an engineering demonstration to test a new way of entering the Martian
atmosphere and landing a spacecraft safely on the surface.
The rover aboard that lander, dubbed Sojourner, weighed only
23 pounds and was about the size of a microwave oven.
Its successor, Spirit, was much more of an engineering challenge. Quite a bit larger and much more robust, Spirit weighs
348 pounds and stands five feet tall. And it moves a lot faster
and farther in a day’s time.
Trosper spent three and one-half years working on the
design of the lander and rover. Now, with the spacecraft on
the ground and a science mission just getting under way, she’s
ready to push Spirit’s pedal to the medal.
“Now, we are the mission that we all envisioned three-anda-half years ago, and that’s tremendously exciting,” she said at
a press conference hours after Spirit rolled off its exit ramp.
Destination: The Future continued from Cover
dren’s lives in ways we can’t yet imagine,” he said.
Citing USC President Steven B.
Sample’s book, “The Contrarian’s
Guide to Leadership,” Nikias said that
while we live in an ‘age of science,’ it is
technology that is important to society
because it makes life better.
In a video shown at the banquet,
Sample called Nikias “the best engineering dean” in the nation, a compliment that he repeated when he
addressed the banquet.
“In order for USC to continue to
enhance its stature as one of the leading
private research universities in the country, we need to continue to advance the
quality and reputation of the USC
School of Engineering,” said Sample.
“You do that by keeping your eyes firmly fixed on the vision of what the USC
School of Engineering can become.”
Near the end of the evening, the
dean thanked the more than 40 members of the Trojan Family who had
made contributions ranging from $25 to
$10,000 in conjunction with the public
announcement of the initiative. He also
announced several new major gifts.
They included:
• $1 million from Daniel and Phyllis
Epstein. Daniel Epstein, a San Diego
real estate entrepreneur and USC
trustee, is co-chair of the fundraising
initiative. The Epsteins previously
made a gift of $10 million.
• $1.1 for the endowment from John
and Bettina Deininger.
• $2 million to endow a chair in the
School from Jay and Lauren Kear. Jay
Kear is chairman of the School of
Engineering Board of Councilors.
• $5 million from ChevronTexaco to
fund the ChevronTexaco Research
Center for Interactive Smart Oilfield
Technologies (CISOFT).
• $15 million for the endowment from
Mark and Mary Stevens. Mark
Stevens, a general partner in Sequoia
Capital, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, is a USC trustee and the
other co-chair of the fundraising
initiative.
“Fundraising initiatives traditionally
The Trojan Marching Band paraded down aisles
at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Marina del Rey during
dinner, playing the fight song and catchy tunes to
celebrate the School of Engineering’s new
fundraising initiative.
have a quiet, exploratory phase, and we
have been in that phase since July of
2001,” Nikias said. “Now that we’ve
raised nearly one-third of our goal, it is
time for us to go into the public phase
and bring the entire Trojan Family on
board.”
For more details on the fundraising
initiative, visit the initiative website at
http://engineering.usc.edu/destination/.
USC Engineering News / Spring 2004 / 5
the desired moving
object.
The system is
robust,
Jung said, and
Embedded
magine a computer-guided, twonot
easily
fooled even
Systems
wheeled mechanical mule that can
by
multiple
objects.
Laboratory.
faithfully follow a hiker, carrying a
Denis
Wolf
is workThe USC
heavy load of supplies. Or deliver cargo
ing
on
ways
for
the
Segway, being
to a waiting companion at a desired
Segway
mule
to
orient
tested and
point on a map, with the machine comitself.
Given
a
map
of
improved, has
puting the fastest or safest route given
its
general
location,
learned a numthe topography and fragility of its load.
the Segway has to
ber of tricks and
The complete toolbox of these tricks
examine its immediate
become a famildoesn’t yet exist, but USC Assistant
surroundings (using a
iar sight wheelProfessor of Computer Science Gaurav
laser probe) and
ing around the
Sukhatme, and a trio of graduate studecide where it is on
campus,
dents, have made impressive progress in
the map.
Sukhatme said.
giving all these skills to the Segway perA trio of graduate students in the Robotic Embedded
To do this, its
Doctoral cansonal transporter.
Systems Laboratory take the Segway urban transport
onboard
computer first
didate Boyoon
“Our Segway mule is not yet ready for
vehicle out for a spin. Left to right: Denis Wolf,
determines
all the posJung has been
the trail,” Sukhatme said, “but it’s gotMarin Kobilarov and Boyoon Jung. The three are
developing
a
toolbox
of
new
tricks
to
help
the
gyrosible
places
on the
developing a
ten very good at getting around USC.”
stabilized transporter track moving objects—like
map
it
might
be and
system that the
Inventor Dean Kamen designed the
people—and traverse uneven terrain.
then,
by
systematic
Segway can use
two-wheeled, gyro-stabilized Segway as
sensor probing of its environment, elimito track (and follow) a moving object.
an urban transport vehicle for people.
nates the wrong possibilities.
His program analyzes the robot’s visual
But a Defense Advanced Research
The same system also can work in
field for points of change, which show
Projects Agency program has distributed
reverse.
If the machine is placed in an
up as a cluster of virtual particles.
a number of specially modified versions
unfamiliar
location, without a map, it can
A sampling algorithm filters out artiof the device to labs around the nation,
explore
and
create a map one that
facts and momentary glitches, isolating
including Sukhatme’s Robotic
becomes more detailed with time.
The third student, Marin Kobilarov,
programs movement strategy—how best
to get it where it’s going. Kobilarov’s program takes into account the ability of the
machine to climb hills - and inability to
climb stairs or other similar barriers. It
calculates estimated speeds on flat versus hilly terrain to gauge whether the
most direct route is the fastest.
The program also calculates the
amount of jerking or swaying that would
be involved in various routes. Such
movements might be ruled out for certain cargo the machine might carry.
While the defense department is
funding the study and the technology
could potentially help soldiers in the
field, “the guidance and navigation tools
we are developing have a wider, general
application,” Sukhatme said, adding that
Segway mules would be extremely useStudents, faculty and creators of some of the world’s most popular computer games gathered
at USC Nov. 20, 2003 for E.D.G.E., the Electronic Digital Gaming Expo. Engineering students
ful in civilian life.
mingled with industry representatives and got a sneak preview of some yet-to-be-released titles,
“They might help rescue workers or
such as “Call of Duty.” Faculty announced plans at USC to open the nation’s first undergraduate
game
wardens,” he said, “as well as ordiminor in computer game design.
nary hikers.”
Have Segway, Will Travel
I
On The Edge
6 / USC Engineering News / Spring 2004
Top Guns
Two T-38A trainer jets will give students some hands-on experience
T
om Cruise, move over.
USC electrical, aerospace
and mechanical engineering
undergraduates are about to redesign
the instrument panels and electronic
guts of two T-38A trainer jets to outperform anything Cruise fought in the
movie “Top Gun.”
The two 1,800-pound cockpits arrived
serendipitously over the holidays, courtesy of Edward Maby, a senior lecturer
in the Department of Electrical
Engineering/Electrophysics. One was
hoisted by crane through the windows
of a third floor AME laboratory in
Biegler Hall, while the other was lowered through the windows of the
Advanced Technology Laboratory on
the second floor of Olin Hall. Equipped
with their original T-38A glass dials,
electronics, radios and flight management systems, the pair of two-seat trainer jets will give students a chance to
escape the confines of computer flight
simulator software and work on the real
thing.
“Working with something real is
At left, Kerega Melville sits in the cockpit while Amanda
Lim, on the far side, and Prof. Spedding, in the foreground, look on. Above, the T-38A trainer jet in Biegler Hall.
much more exciting than looking at
flight simulator software,” said Maby,
who purchased the two cockpits last
September for his department. “We
want to challenge undergraduates and
give them a chance to use their techni-
cal skills in a meaningful way. We hope
they’ll say, ‘by golly, I’ve got a whole airplane here to work with.’”
The sawed-off cockpits were handpicked by Nathan Timpke, electrical
continued on page 7
Open Source Evangelists
Computer providers, developers, users convene for annual Linux Expo
T
“
his machine kills fascists.”
That’s the claim that was stuck to the side of one of
the laptops an exhibitor used to evangelize Open Source
software at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE). USC
students, Linux novices and experts alike, joined other users,
solutions providers, and software developers at the Los
Angeles Convention Center in late November for a day of
presentations and exhibits hosted by the Linux User Groups
of USC, UCLA and Simi Conejo.
Scott Kilroy, president of USCLUG, USC’s Linux Users group,
and a graduate student in computer science, co-chaired the
conference. “It’s a great community to be involved in,” Kilroy
said of Open Source. “We especially strive to turn younger
students onto Linux, showing them what it can do for everyone from hobbyists to academic researchers.”
This year’s conference boasted attendance figures of more
than 750. In its second year, SCALE has already attracted
speakers such as Andrew Morton, a heralded Linux developer, and Dan Frye, founder and director of the IBM Linux
Technology Center and core team member of the U.S.
Government Presidential Information Technology Advisory
Committee on Open Source.
“The conference was a success,” according to Theodore
Faber, Jr., a computer scientist at USC’s Information Sciences
Institute and advisor to USCLUG. “The technical program was
very appropriate to the audience and covered an interesting
range of the various open source efforts out there. I learned
some things.”
“The students did all the hard work here,” Faber added.
“They did all the hard planning, securing the venue and
speakers, and managing finances. I got to work with some
remarkably motivated and skilled students.”
USC Engineering News / Spring 2004 / 7
Top Guns continued from page 6
engineering undergraduate lab manager, from hundreds of
mothballed Air Force military aircraft at Davis Monthan Air
Force Base in Tucson, Arizona. Timpke, who will provide technical support to the students when things go awry, said he and
his colleagues figured out how to purchase the cockpits from
USC alumnus Harry Albaugh III, who received a degree in
computer engineering and computer science in 2003.
“Apart from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, we’re not aware of
any other university in California that has a fuselage for engineering students,” Timpke said. “It sounded like a great way
to give students some hands-on experience with the hardware.”
At unbeatable prices, Timpke and Albaugh, whose father
also earned a USC graduate degree in aerospace engineering,
convinced the Department of Electrical Engineering to purchase the aircraft and have them tailor-cut to fit inside the labs.
Once they had been cut in front of the wings, the aircraft
were transported by truck across the California desert to USC.
The cockpit in Olin Hall spans 26 feet long and will be reconfigured as a mock T-38C jet, according to Maby.
“Instead of glass dials, students will design computer displays with all of the graphical information pilots use in flight,”
he said. “The idea is to improve aircraft-pilot interaction by
making the displays easy to read, so that pilots aren’t spending
time interpreting the data. Students will be looking at new
ways of presenting that flight data.”
Students will turn their attention to full-motion guidance —
the pitch and roll of the jet — with the fuselage in Biegler Hall.
They’ll change the aircraft’s flight dynamics and the manner in
which it responds to controls. Outdated knobs, levers, buttons
and switches will be replaced with digital electronics and the
latest hardware, explained Geoff Spedding, associate professor
of aerospace and mechanical engineering, who will help students redesign the aircraft.
Faculty
Honors
A recent parade of awards for
USC engineering faculty was
highlighted by a special ceremony at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in
San Francisco, held to honor this
year’s Okawa Foundation Award
winners. Melvin A. Breuer, professor of electrical engineering,
was one of just eight individuals
in the country—three of them
from the USC School of
Engineering—earning a USA
Okawa grant this year. Breuer
was recognized for his work
entitled, “Increasing the
Effective Yield of VLSI Chips via
Design and Test,” a pioneering
work that introduces a novel
concept of error tolerance.
Aiichiro Nakano and Milind
Tambe from the Computer
Science department were the
other USC winners. Cauligi
Raghavendra and Gerard
Medioni, the USC Electrical
Engineering and Computer
Science chairs, were in attendance.
The naming of Richard Leahy
and P. Daniel Dapkus as fellows
of their respective professional
societies—the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE) and the
Can You Feel the Noise?
The Papadakis Taverna
On Jan. 17, when head USC Football Coach Pete Carroll was meeting
with recruiting prospects at the Papadakis Taverna in San Pedro, Dean
C. L. Max Nikias invited some School of Engineering friends and
snapped this photo. Starting in the center and moving clockwise
around the table are Al Fohrer, Jean Fohrer, Jim Baum, Judy Baum,
John Deininger, Bettina Deininger, Lauren Kear, Niki Nikias, Pete Carroll,
Jay Kear and Ted Scalise.
“We’re going to upgrade the instruments and change the orientation,” Maby added. “Even though this is a T-38A jet, it
could be modeled to respond like a jumbo jet.”
Armchair pilots and wannabe aircraft mechanics are likely to
be lured away from their flight simulator software as the teardown work gets under way this semester. Already, 12 students
have abandoned their computers and rolled up their sleeves to
begin ripping out instrument dials and wiring.
American Physical Society—
added force to a continuing
trend. Over a third of USC engineering faculty have been
named fellows of their societies.
Leahy has done significant
work in positron emission
tomography, encephalography,
and magnetic resonance imaging; Dapkus is a leader in the
development of metalorganic
chemical vapor deposition and
its application to quantum well
laser devices.
Alan Willner has been elected
president of the IEEE Lasers and
Electro-Optics Society (LEOS),
and named editor-in-chief of the
IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave
Technology (JLT), a publication
sponsored by seven IEEE societies, as well as the Optical
Society of America.
Shou-de Lin and Craig Knoblock
of the Information Sciences
Institute received the best paper
award at the 2003 IEEE/WIC
International Conference on
Web Intelligence for their paper
“Exploiting a Search Engine to
Develop More Flexible Web
Agents.”
And finally, Jerry Zhao and
Ramesh Govindan of Computer
Science won the best paper
award at the first ACM
Conference on Networked
Embedded Systems.
New Faces in External Relations Department
Barbara Myers has joined the External
Relations Department at the School as
the new executive director for major
gifts. She was formerly associate dean
for external affairs, executive director
of development and director of development at the Marshall School of
Business. Myers reports to Christopher
Stoy, chief executive officer of external relations.
Matthew Bates began in December
in the External Relations Department
as director of annual giving and special
gifts. A USC alumnus with an extensive background in managing fundraising programs for local communitybased non-profits, he notes that USC
won three national championships
during his first month on the job.
Bates reports to Myers.
A Gift For Computer Science
Viterbi Lecture
Gerard Medioni, left, chairman of the Computer Science Department,
thanks Steven M. Jacobs of Northrop Grumman for the company’s
contribution to the department. Jacobs, an adjunct faculty member in
USC’s School of Engineering, is part of Northrop’s Mission Systems
Tactical Systems Division.
MIT Professor G. David Forney Jr., left, a leader in the field of “Turbo
codes” and other classes of capacity-approaching codes, delivered the
second “Andrew J. Viterbi Distinguished Lecture in Communication” on
the USC campus Nov. 20, 2003. His talk — “Not Your Father’s Coding
Theory” — focused on a new class of codes that are gaining attention
among practitioners in the world of digital communications. Next to
him is Andrew Viterbi, creator of the Viterbi Algorithm and co-founder
of Qualcomm.
Office of the Dean
School of Engineering
University of Southern California
Olin Hall of Engineering, Suite 200
Los Angeles, CA 90089-1450
213-740-7832
Non-Profit
Organization
US Postage
PAID
University of
Southern
California