Spring - Cornell Engineering

Transcription

ENGINEERING
CORNELL
SPRING 2003
Rocket Rides for Space Travelers
Micro Machines to Fight Disease
Long-distance Design Teams
Building for the Future
Make an investment in their future
. . . and yours
with your gift to the Cornell Fund for Engineering
Y
our gift to the Cornell Fund
for Engineering supports
programs such as the Academic
Excellence Workshops, collaborative
learning sessions for students enrolled
in large, required first- and second-year
courses, such as calculus, chemistry,
and computer science. The small
workshops help ensure success for
enrolled freshmen and sophomores
and for the upperclass students who
teach them.
Your investment in our students’ futures
will help send them out into the world
better prepared to make a difference.
“AEWs have improved my self
confidence in front of a class room and
have influenced me to consider teaching
as a career.”
Facilitator Sara Parker MSE ’04 and recent
winner of a Goldwater Scholarship
“AEWs have definitely helped me
succeed in math as a freshman.”
Aaron Kimball ’06
To make a Cornell Fund for Engineering gift, contact:
Marsha Pickens, Assistant Dean
253 Carpenter Hall,Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
607/255-6094 • mp26@cornell.edu
SPRING 2003
FEATURES
Large Building, Small Science, Big
Dreams/6
BY LISA CAMERON-NORFLEET
Duffield Hall,the country’s foremost facility for nanotechnology research, is a new kind of space, the likes of
which Cornell has never really seen before.
Micro-tools for Medicine/12
BY JAY WROLSTAD
It was Nobel physicist Richard Feynman—not Walt
Disney—who first envisioned a small, small world with
plenty of room at the bottom. Edwin Kan is taking us
there.
Space Tourists/16
BY KENNETH AARON
At 62 miles off the ground, the sky gets black, the earth
curves, and bottoms lift off seats as gravity melts into
weightlessness. That’s XCOR’s idea of adventure travel!
Within Working Distance/22
BY BETH SAULNIER
A new take on teams: Using space-shuttle design as a
catalyst, engineering students explore the problems
and opportunities of long-distance collaborations.
Departments
News/2
In the news: CU’s new president, nanotechnology, biotechnology, chip technology, mass spectrometry, BOOM!
Opinion/26
Steven Strogatz,
author of Sync,
explains how scientists and engineers
have learned to
harness nonlinear
systems since
Enrico Fermi’s “little
discovery.”
People/28
By the people, for the people: Research
funding, endowed professorship, career
award, foundation fellowship, museum
honor, student scholarship, chief scientist
post.
Hometown Hero/32
In a matter of minutes, Hugh Chou can
give people a 40-year picture of the consequences of their choices. And he does it
for free.
Left: Nanoreactors used for time-resolved
studies of single enzyme activity.
Courtesy of Craighead Research Group,
Webb Research Group. See News for an
update on Craighead’s research in the School
of Applied and Engineering Physics.
Coming Home
Cornell selects alumnus Jeffrey Lehman as 11th president.
2 Spring 2003
J
effrey S. Lehman,
dean of the University of Michigan Law
School and national
leader in higher education, was
appointed Cornell University’s
11th president by the board of
trustees at a special meeting
held on campus in December.
He will assume the presidency
on July 1, 2003. He succeeds
Hunter Rawlings, currently the
chair of both the Association
of American Universities and
the Council of Ivy League Presidents, who has been president
of Cornell since 1995.
Lehman, 46, will be the
first Cornell alumnus to serve
as president of the university.
He received an undergraduate
degree in mathematics from
Cornell in 1977. He also holds
advanced degrees in law and in
public policy from the University of Michigan.
“The Search Committee
enthusiastically and unanimously recommended Dean
Lehman’s nomination,” said
Edwin H. Morgens, Cornell
trustee and chair of the search
committee. “Jeff established
an extraordinary record of
of the United States. He was an
associate in the Washington,
D.C., law firm of Caplin & Drysdale before he joined the Michigan faculty in 1987. Lehman has
taught at the Yale Law School
and at the University of Paris.
He now serves as the president
of the American Law Deans
Association and as a trustee of
the Skadden Fellowship Foundation. In 1995 The National
Law Journal named him one of
40 “Rising Stars in the Law.”
—Cornell News Service
DESIGNER
CHIPS
T
wo teams of Cornell University graduate students
in the School of Electrical and
Computer Engineering have
finished in third and fourth place
in phase one of a nationwide
integrated circuit-design contest
sponsored by the Semiconductor
Research Corp. (SRC).
Both teams will move on
to a second phase of the contest, in which the chips they
designed will be fabricated
by IBM and returned to the
students for testing and evaluation. The challenge then will
be to demonstrate that the
chips work as predicted. The
winners of the contest will be
announced in July.
The two Cornell teams,
both guided by Kevin Kornegay,
associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, were among 15 selected
for phase two, out of 59. The
goal of the contest is to create
innovative circuit designs using
silicon-germanium technology,
which allows integrated circuit
chips to operate at very high
ROBERT BARKER/UP
Lehman, third from left,
joins, from left, presidents emeriti Frank
H.T. Rhodes and Dale
Corson and President
Hunter Rawlings.
achievement
during his
nine years
as dean of
one of our
nation’s
outstanding
law schools.
He is a distinguished
scholar,
whose
research
addresses a
wide range
of issues at
the intersection of law
and public
policy — from higher education
finance to corporate taxation to
welfare reform.
“His record as an academic
leader is even more outstanding. During his deanship,
Michigan attracted widespread
acclaim for its innovations in
public service, internationalism,
and the teaching of legal writing. His colleagues at Michigan
speak glowingly of his service
on a range of campus-wide matters, including some of the most
sensitive challenges the university has faced this past decade.
On the national stage, Jeff’s
remarkable skills have been recognized by his fellow law school
deans and by some of the finest
leaders in higher education.”
Lehman is a native New
Yorker. He was born in Bronxville and grew up in White
Plains and Bethesda, Maryland.
After completing his formal
education, Lehman served as
law clerk to Chief Judge Frank
M. Coffin of the United States
Court of Appeals for the First
Circuit, and then as law clerk
to Associate Justice John Paul
Stevens of the Supreme Court
which attracted an audience
of researchers from Cornell
and across the United States,
was hosted by the National
Nanofabrication Users Network (NNUN), whose director is Sandip Tiwari, the L.B.
Knight Director of the Cornell
Nanoscale Science and Technology Facility (CNF; formerly Cornell Nanofabrication Facility).
CNF is one of the five members
of NNUN and a national user
center funded by the NSF.
“Hopefully, we can do this
Cornell graduate student Dan Kucharski, center, accepts congratulations
on his team’s third-place honors in the Semiconductor Research Corpofor five years and exchange
ration’s SiGe Design Challenge competition from Aurangzeb Khan, left,
information,” said Hiroshi
of Cadence Design Systems, one of the contest’s sponsors. Looking on
Tokumoto of Hokkaido Univerat right is Kevin Kornegay, Cornell associate professor of electrical and
sity, who worked with Tiwari
computer engineering and the team’s faculty adviser. The presentation,
which included a $3,000 cash award, was made at the 2003 International in organizing the symposium.
Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, Feb. 10.
“You can always see publications, but our feeling was that
frequencies for applications in
if scientists and engineers who
NANO
wireless communication and
work in labs could meet face
DIPLOMACY
fiber-optic systems.
to face there would be a good
Graduate students Drew
anipulating materials and exchange of information.”
Guckenberger, Daniel Kuchardevices at the ultrasmall
Among the NSF’s supski, and Jing-Hong Conan Zhan level was the focus for three
port areas, nanotechnology
placed third with an optical
days at Cornell in January when undergraduate education is a
fiber transceiver designed to
20 leading Japanese researchnew theme this year, said Esin
ers, 20 U.S. researchers, and five Gulari, the agency’s acting
operate at frequencies up to
top officials from the National
10 gigabytes per second. The
assistant director for engineering. “We are finding that the
device combines on a single
Science Foundation (NSF) held
the first in a series of sympochip the jobs currently done by
nanoscale is fascinating for
three chips in converting elecsia on nanotechnology. The
young people learning science
trical signals to and from optimeetings will, among other
and technology. They are learncal pulses in fiber-optic transthings, discuss priority areas of ing science in its entirety, not
mission. The team will receive a research and attempt to develop just physics, biology, or chemis$3,000 cash award.
technological standards to be
try, but science,” she said.
In fourth place, not winning adopted for the field.
a prize but earning a chance
Called the Japan–U.S. Sym—David Brand
to compete in phase two, were
posium: Tools and Metrology
Cornell News Service
David M. Fried, Ian A. Rippke,
for Nanotechnology, the meetand Guckenberger. Their project ings will be held twice
will allow a wireless device, such a year alternately in
as a cell phone, to adjust the
the United States and
amount of power it draws, using Japan. The symposia
less power when the device is
are sponsored by the
closer to a base station, resultNSF and the Japanese
ing in longer battery life.
Ministry of EducaTeams from the University
tion, Culture, Sports,
of Washington and the Univer- Science and Techsity of Minnesota took first and nology. During the
second place, respectively.
symposium, U.S. and
SRC is a consortium of
Japanese researchers
American manufacturers
presented papers on
formed to encourage advanced
standards, methodolresearch under a $35 million
ogy, and research in
program principally at North
nanotechnology in the
American universities.
two countries.
The January
—Bill Steele meeting at the Statler
Cornell News Service Hotel on campus,
TOP: KIYONG CHOI/UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON; BOTTOM: FRANK DIMEO/UP
M
Taking part in a
session during the
Japan–U.S. symposium
on nanotechnology
in the Statler Hotel
Jan. 22 are, from
left, Professor John
Silcox, Cornell vice
provost for physical
sciences and engineering science; Tsuyoshi
Maruyama, deputy
director-general of the
Office for Materials
Research and Development for the Japanese
Ministry of Education,
Culture, Sports, Science and Technology;
and ministry official
Naoko Okamura.
Cornell Engineering Magazine 3
Read more on
Kelvin Lee’s work
in proteomics in
the Fall 2002 issue
of CEM, online at
www.engr.cornell.
edu/engrMagazine
4 Spring 2003
SPIDERS AND
SWITCHES
S
urrounded by intrigued
onlookers, Becky Chu, a
master’s student in computer
science, is holding forth on the
topic of “spider porn.”
No, it’s not anime night
in the basement of Goldwin
Smith. It’s the seventh annual
BOOM (Bits On Our Minds),
the annual expo of student
projects hosted on March 5 by
Computing and Information
Science. Fifty displays, including such items as pocket-sized
robots and stock market simulators, took over three floors of
Upson Hall.
Chu’s unlikely sounding
project is part of a unique collaboration between computer
programmers and animal
behaviorists. Eileen Hebets, a
postdoctoral fellow in neurobiology and behavior, wondered
just what it is about the male
wolf spider’s elaborate courtship dance that females find
intriguing. She found that
female spiders react with interest to video clips of male spiders
performing mating dances.
Hebets wanted to be able
to edit the video clips—for
instance, to systematically
change the speed of the dance
or the size or color of the male’s
forelegs—in order to track
which characteristics were most
important. To help her do that,
Chu wrote a piece of software
that allows a researcher to
construct a virtual male wolf
Kelvin Lee
The New York State Proteomics Symposium, covering
promising new technologies and
challenging applications, was
organized by Cornell; UNYCOR,
the Upstate New York Coalition
for Biomedical Research; the
Business Council of New York
State; and Upstate Medical University, where the daylong meeting was held, with additional
support coming from NYSTAR,
the state’s office of science, technology, and academic research.
The symposium was convened by Kelvin H. Lee, Cornell
assistant professor of chemical
and biomolecular engineering.
When the symposium’s
first speaker, U.S. Rep. James
T. Walsh (R-NY), admitted he
wasn’t sure what “proteomics”
meant, the plenary speaker
supplied two definitions: “Proteomics is the revenge of protein
—Lissa Harris chemists on molecular bioloCornell News Service gists,” said Scott D. Patterson,
chief scientific officer at Farmal
Biomedicines in Pasadena, Calif.
Speaking on “Proteomics:
PROTEOMICS
Too Much of a Good Thing?”
PROS
Patterson also defined the new
roteomics, a science so new science as involving the “analysis
of (genes’) expression of protein
that practitioners are still
debating its definition, attracted products.”
Jack Henion, professor of
more than 200 academic and
corporate researchers, students, diagnostic science in Cornell’s
and business representatives to College of Veterinary Medicine,
a statewide symposium in Syra- announced a new product from
Advion BioSciences, the Ithacacuse in March.
P
CHARLES HARRINGTON/UP
Becky Chu, a master’s
student in computer
science, explains her
collaborative project,
which employs simulations of wolf spiders’
courtship dances, to
Ron Elber, Cornell
professor of computer
science, during the
BOOM event in Upson
Hall, March 5.
spider, whose behavior and
appearance can be manipulated
interactively.
“I think of it as kind of like
a dating service,” Chu joked.
Whether the female spiders will
be fooled remains to be seen.
Although most presenters
hailed from computer science
or engineering, students from
traditionally less byte-crunching parts of campus also were
represented. Rural sociology
major Katrina Becker ’03 demonstrated a couple of “on/off
switches,” part of a project she
calls “reflective design,” on the
relationship between people
and technology.
The “switches”—one made
of wood and the other covered
in plush velvet—don’t have
any particular function. Their
purpose, said Becker, is to study
how people react to objects
that are obviously technological
in nature and how design and
appearance influence people’s
experience of technology.
By gauging how people
respond to their objects, Becker
and her collaborators hope to
come up with ways to improve
the way technology is designed
and developed. “The idea is that
you get people incorporated
into design, to meet real needs
rather than just feeding consumption,” she said.
Each project in BOOM ’03
had an accompanying display
online, which can be accessed
through the event website:
www.cs.cornell.edu/boom.
BOOM ’03 was supported in
part by grants from Microsoft
and Credit Suisse First Boston.
based company he heads. Henion’s new system was described
as a chip-based array of microscopic electrospray nozzles
that mates to 96-well plates of
prepared samples for automated,
unattended operation with mass
spectrometry analysis.
One secret to his nozzles,
the Advion executive said, was
their cylindrical shape, allowing
them to spray for as long as 40
hours without clogging. SUNY
Buffalo chemist Troy D. Wood,
who spoke on the topic, “Miniaturization of Electrospray — A
Driving Force in the Era of Proteomics,” said special coating on
his taper-shaped nozzles allows
them to spray up to seven hours
without clogging.
Among other Cornell-based
speakers in the symposium
were Klaas van Wijk, assistant
professor of plant biology; Fred
McLafferty, professor emeritus
of chemistry and chemical biology; and Dave Schneider of the
U.S. Department of Agriculture’s
Agricultural Research Service
laboratory in Ithaca.
Walsh, who chairs the
House of Representatives subcommittee that controls about
$122 billion in appropriations
to the National Science Foundation and other research-funding
agencies, praised the recently
established UNYCOR, saying
that “it comes at the right
time to share equipment and
potential successes, as well as
occasional setbacks,” among
affiliated institutions in upstate
New York.
—Roger Segelken
BLAINE FRIEDLANDER/CORNELL NEWS SERVICE
LIFE SCIENCES
ROAD SHOW
T
o gain understanding of the
impact of Cornell’s New Life
Sciences Initiative, about 500
university alumni and friends
gathered in March at the American Museum of Natural History
in New York City at a special
forum, “The Power and Promise
of Life Sciences.”
The university’s goal was to
explain the promise of life-sciences research, which addresses
some of the world’s toughest
problems in health, medicine,
agriculture, food safety, the
environment, and other fields. A
second forum was held in Washington, D.C., in April and a third
is scheduled for Boston in May.
Welcoming alumni to the
New York City forum, President
Hunter Rawlings said the revolution in the life sciences is not
work: www.engr.cornell.edu/
engrMagazine.)
Bartel, in a presentation titled
“Attacking Arthritis,” outlined the
nature of debilitating musculoskeletal disease and how Cornell
research is helping modern medicine resolve these problems. He
researches the latest in materials
and designs for knee- and elbowjoint implants.
Soloway, Cornell associate
professor of nutritional sci-
CORNELL ENGINEERING MAGAZINE
ISSN 1081-3977
Volume 9, Number 1
Spring 2003
Cornell Engineering
Magazine is published
three times a year by the
Cornell University
College of Engineering
W. Kent Fuchs
Joseph Silbert
Dean of Engineering
PUBLISHER
Cathy Long
Assistant Dean
for Administration
EDITOR
Barbara L. Cain
ART DIRECTOR
Marie Tischler
PRINTER
Midstate Litho
Endicott, NY
EDITORIAL AND
BUSINESS OFFICES
Cornell faculty members (from left) Paul Soloway, Donald Bartel, and
Antje Baeumner discuss their research at “The Power and Promise of
Life Sciences” forum in New York City, March 19.
a passing fad but an intellectual
revolution of major proportions,
with far-reaching implications.
Next, a panel of Cornell
researchers participated in
a session, “Revolutionizing
Research: Where Human
Health, Engineering and Bioterrorism Meet.” Panelists included
Antje J. Baeumner, assistant
professor of biological and environmental engineering; Donald
L. Bartel, the Willis H. Carrier
Professor in mechanical and
aerospace engineering; and Paul
D. Soloway ’79, associate professor of nutritional science.
Baeumner explained that
her research uses biological
methods of pathogen detection. “We are making systems
that would quickly give you
an answer” about whether
an environment is safe, she
said. Her research group, she
said, has developed a test
that can detect the presence
of heavy metals, chemicals, or pathogens. (See the
Spring 2002 issue of CEM
for more on Baeumner’s
ences, described the importance
of using mice in life-sciences
research because they share 99
percent of their 35,000 genes
with humans. From them science can learn to resolve some
of humanity’s toughest diseases, such as cystic fibrosis and
other lung diseases, he added.
A second panel featuring
alumni L. John Wilkerson and
David R. Fischell was moderated by alumnus George Scangos, president and CEO of Exelixis Inc. Wilkerson is general
partner of Galen Associates, a
venture capital group. Fischell
’75 EP, Ph.D. ’80 AP, is president
of NeuroPace, a company that is
developing a neuro-pacemaker
for the brain to prevent epileptic seizures.
The forum concluded with a
keynote address by Nobel laureate Harold Varmus, president
and chief executive officer of
the Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Center.
—Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.
258 Carpenter Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853-2201
phone 607 255-6095
fax 607 255-9606
e-mail <cornell_engr
_mag@cornell.edu>
COVER
Duffield Hall
Photo by
Charles Harrington/UP
Story, p. 6
BACK COVER
XCOR fires the XR-4K5
LOX-Kerosene engine for the
first time on March 24, 2003 at
the Mojave Civilian Flight Test
Center.
Photo by
Mike Massee/XCOR Aerospace
Story, p. 16
Visit Cornell Engineering
Magazine on line at
www.engineering.cornell.edu/
engrMagazine
© 2003 Cornell Engineering Magazine
Printed on recycled paper.
Duffield Hall, taking shape on the En
country’s foremost facility for collabo
By Lisa Cameron-Norfleet
6 Spring 2003
gineering Quad, will be the
rative research in nanoscience.
Large building,
small science,
big dreams
Photos by Charles Harrington/UP
O
nce nondescript in the company of such architectural
statements as the turrets
of Sage Hall and the stately
columns of Goldwin Smith,
Cornell’s Joseph N. Pew Engineering
Quad is now the site of a construction project that will not only change
the face of the campus but will also
change the nature
of research and
academic collaboration forever.
Duffield Hall, the
new home for
nanotechnology at
Cornell, is nearing
completion.
In elegant
counterpoint to
its size, this large
building—150,000
square feet of
stone, glass, and
steel—will facilitate the small science of nanotechnology: research
Conference Room
and engineering
at the molecular
level. (“Nano” refers to a nanometer,
which is one-billionth of a meter. To
gain a little perspective on that scale: a
human hair is approximately 100,000
nanometers wide.)
Nanotechnology research allows scientists to arrange individual atoms and
molecules to create custom materials
with specific properties—for improving
the world as we know it and for designing a future we have only imagined.
Nanotechnology has the potential to
affect almost every aspect of daily life.
Perhaps the most dramatic advances
are those anticipated in health care and
medicine. Scientists are collaborating
at the interface of engineering, physical
sciences, and biology to create devices,
materials, and systems to diagnose,
cure, and prevent disease; repair injured
tissue and organs; and protect against
chemical and biological weapons.
In 1995—five years before the
White House announced the National
Nanotechnology Initiative—John Hopcroft, then the dean of engineering,
sat down with fellow members of the
Research Futures Task Force formed by
Cornell’s President Hunter Rawlings to
determine which research areas would
become influential in the next thirty
years. It became quickly apparent that
nanotechnology was in the forefront.
8 Spring 2003
And clearly Cornell—at the cutting edge
of the field since the 1970s, when the
National Science Foundation selected
the Ithaca campus as the site of the first
national microfabrication facility (forerunner to CNF, the Cornell Nanoscale
Science and Technology Facility)—was
perfectly positioned for a strategic focus
in nanotechnology. An examination of
the Engineering Quad, however, made
it equally clear that some serious work
was needed. “The increasing demands
in nanotechnology research required
sophisticated laboratory space—ultra
clean, vibration-free, shielded from
electromagnetic fields—for which our
existing buildings were not suited,”
Hopcroft explains. “To remain a leader
in nanotechnology science and engineering, we needed a facility that would
let researchers continue to work at the
cutting edge.”
It sounds simple enough: Engineering needs a new building; let’s build
one. But the process of getting ground
broken for Duffield Hall was arduous, at
best. First, Hopcroft did a lot of homework. He called the CEOs of a number
of Fortune 500 companies, asked for
the loan of their strategic planners,
then hosted a brainstorming session
that resulted in a conceptual plan for
the building. This was taken to other
academic institutions such as Berkeley and Stanford for another round of
review. Hopcroft distilled the results
into a document that he brought before
President Rawlings and the Cornell
board of trustees for approval. He was
given the go-ahead—provided that
Engineering could fund the building.
The first gift to the then-unnamed
facility came from an alumnus, the late
Dwight C. “Bill” Baum ’36 EE. Baum, in
his eighties at the time, gave $1 million
to fund an instructional lab. “Bill really
understood the vision of nanotechnology from the start—even before it
was a buzzword,” says Marsha Pickens,
assistant dean for alumni affairs and
development. “It was very important
to him that the
undergrads have
access to this wonderful new space.”
After that,
fellow alum and
founder of PeopleSoft Inc. David
Duffield ’62 EE
gave the project
the first of multiple gifts—this
one totaling $20
million—and the
project was on its
way. Ultimately,
construction was
funded entirely
($62.5 million)
by about thirty
alumni and friends
who embraced the vision of Cornell’s
continued leadership in the nanosciences.
Meanwhile, Hopcroft and Professor
Clifford Pollock, Charles and Ilda Lee
Professor and director of the School of
Electrical and Computer Engineering
and academic program leader on the
Duffield Hall project, began to think
about siting the building, which also
proved to be laborious. Many locations
were considered: the baseball field, the
gorge-side space currently occupied
by Ward Lab, off-campus sites in the
Cornell Orchards and the Technology
Park near the Ithaca airport. Hopcroft
and Pollock visited other universities
with similar buildings and came to the
conclusion that the ultimate success of
Duffield came down to one thing: location, location, location. Both tell stories
of gorgeous facilities that looked like
ghost towns because of their lack of
proximity to the hub of campus activity.
Both felt the trade-off of some green
space on the existing quad was necessary to ensure that Duffield was used to
its highest potential. And the Cornell
trustees agreed.
The building is not simply “new
space”; it’s a new kind of space, the likes
of which Cornell has never really seen
before. On a recent tour of the site,
Robert P. Stundtner, Duffield project
South side, fourth floor
director, described the high-tech features of the facility. It includes 18,000
square feet of state-of-the-art clean
rooms that will accommodate both the
Cornell Nanoscale Science and Technology Facility (CNF, formerly called the
Cornell Nanofabrication Facility) and
the Nanobiotechnology Center (NBTC)
in adjacent yet isolated spaces to avoid
contamination. The nanocharacterization suite, designed to minimize vibration and electromagnetic fields, will
house three of Cornell’s most powerful
electron microscopes. Two floors of flexible research laboratories will support
the most demanding research in lasers,
microelectromechanical systems, polymer chemistry, and advanced materials.
Extensive environmental and health
risk analysis was undertaken to assure
that building systems will keep the
Duffield population and the community
safe when researchers work with gases
and chemicals, Stundtner said. But
beyond all of the technological aspects
of the building lies a new approach to
research and academia in general: collaborative, managed space.
The west side of both the second
and third floors of Duffield is reserved
for graduate student offices, but there
isn’t a door or cubicle in sight. Instead,
the open space with views of west
campus and Cayuga Lake will be outfitted with a series of moveable desks,
chairs, and tables enabling students
to position themselves in groups that
make sense for the project they’re working on. Not only will this allow for easy
reorganization at the completion of
projects, but also it opens up the potential for collaboration with other students not directly related to the project
at hand. In fact, the project architects,
the Los Angeles branch of Portland,
Oregon–based Zimmer Gunsul Frasca
Partnership, liked the idea of the open
offices and impromptu collaboration so
much that they decided to implement it
in their own office.
In addition to this shared office
space, Duffield is also equipped with
ten study alcoves in the atrium, collaboration space at the north end of the
top two floors and on bridges connecting Duffield to Phillips and Phillips to
Upson at the second and third floors,
and a lounge above the atrium at the
third-floor level—all of which are wired
for Internet access and were built with
a sense of openness to encourage what
the Duffield project team calls “intellectual collisions.” We are really trying for
the effect of having only one coffee pot
in the building,” says Pollock. “One of
the greatest benefits to the college will
be the clustering of good people—you
always get good things when that happens.” Pollock is very confident that
having places where faculty and students can bump into one another outside of the direct work environment will
bring a host of diverse conversations
and points of view that can only expand
academic and research possibilities.
In keeping with the interdisciplinary focus, the labs in Duffield will not
be assigned to one faculty member on
a permanent basis. Instead, researchers
who have need of the facilities will have
the opportunity to use a lab for the
duration of a given project; the intent
being that they will clear the space
upon completion. Engineering Dean
Kent Fuchs explains that Duffield Hall
facilities director William Bader will be
responsible for the hands-on administration of both the building and the
people in it. In addition to managing
facility operations and administering
safety and security programs, Bader will
be working with a faculty committee
to handle the space allocation aspect as
well. Fuchs is keenly aware of the fact
that Duffield is an experiment in this
regard, but he believes it will be successful. “It’s a challenge,” he says. “But it’s a
good one.”
The first task the committee faces is
2nd Floor Mock Up Lab
Clean Room Lab Equipment
Clean Room
10 Spring 2003
coming up with a process for allocating
labs. Faculty members seeking space
in Duffield Hall will likely be asked to
provide a plan of their proposed use
of the lab, detailing such things as the
amounts and types of chemicals and
equipment they will need and estimating the time it will take to complete the
research. Pollock, who is a member of
the space allocation committee, says
that any allocation process drafted at
this stage may need to be revised as
unforeseen needs arise. “The real challenge,” he says, “is that Duffield doesn’t
belong to any one department. All of
the rules and experiences we’ve had in
space management are moot.” In addition to handling the changing expectations of the engineering college, Pollock
hopes that the facility will be open to
anyone on campus who has need of
the type of laboratory space available
in Duffield. Ideally, he’d love to see the
building housing grad students in a
one-to-one ratio of engineering to other
disciplines. Hopcroft concurs. “One of
the principles of Duffield is that we said
we would make space available to anybody—independent of their unit.”
But what about the undergrads?
How do the bulk of Cornell’s engineers
stand to benefit from this facility?
There’s obvious undergraduate student
interest in the field. The college already
teaches two freshman-level classes in
nanotechnology— Engineering 111,
“Nanotechnology” and Engineering
130, “Introduction to Nanoscience
and Nanotechnology”—both of which
were full in the fall of 2002. “Out of
720 freshmen, nearly 200 of them took
the nano classes,” says Fuchs. “Duffield
will provide appropriate facilities—a
unique set of tools and labs—for these
courses.” Hopcroft says from the beginning the vision was that undergrads
would use a state-of-the-art teaching
lab in the clean room, where they will
be able to suit up and actually fabricate
things as a training ground for graduate level work. “It’s very important to
expose undergrads, even freshmen, to
this kind of technology,” he says.
Duffield Hall is scheduled to
get its first occupant—the Cornell
Nanoscale Facility—in the fall of
2003. The move from CNF’s existing space in the Lester B. Knight
Laboratory is estimated to take three
months. A national user facility, CNF
will make the delicate transition with
almost no interruption of services
to its clients. Speaking at the facility’s
annual meeting last fall, CNF director
Sandip Tiwari said, “Our aim is not to
have any capability down for any significant amount of time.”
The old and new locations will
be functioning simultaneously, and
during the move, most capabilities will
be available in one space or the other
or both. When the complex move is
completed—including the transfer
of the Knight Lab name to the new
space—CNF’s former quarters will be
demolished to make room for the final
section of three connected atria that
will stretch from Campus Road south to
Upson Hall.
The atria, already an impressive
vaulted space at less than half-completion, will be home to a coffee shop and
varying kinds of study and social space
and will connect Phillips, Duffield, and
Upson Halls, making it possible to move
between buildings without stepping
outside.
Going outdoors, however, will have
fresh appeal: This summer, local firm
Cayuga Landscape Inc. will re-grade
the Engineering Quad to provide a
level surface for outdoor activities and
put in trees and shrubs, plus a series
of benches, bridges, terraces, lighting,
sidewalks, and bike racks, making the
space far more pleasant and usable
than in the past. The thirty-foot change
in elevation across the quad will be
pushed up against Duffield, sprinkled
with Llenroc boulders, and planted with
native species, creating a landscape
inspired by nearby Cascadilla Gorge.
And, of course, the sundial, removed
from the quad in 2001 and stored in
Upson Hall for the duration of quad
construction, will be restored to its
rightful, prominent place in the hub of
all things engineering.
Dean Fuchs, who came to Cornell
from Purdue in July 2002, cites Duffield as high on his list of reasons for
choosing the Big Red. “The fact that
Cornell was two to three years ahead of
other universities in the country was
one of the motivating factors for me to
accept the position. My vision for the
facility is that it will secure us in a top
leadership position in nanofabrication
and nanoengineering.”
Lisa Cameron-Norfleet is a freelance writer
working in Ithaca.
Taking the Challenge
Constructing a state-of-the-art nanotechnology
facility like Duffield Hall, where the “science of the
small” will take center stage, is a big job. David Duffield ’62, MBA ’64, for whom the building is named,
also knows that “you don’t just build a building; you
also have to keep it attractive and aesthetic.” For that
reason, he has established a $15 million gift to support
future maintenance and operations of Duffield Hall.
The gift comes in the form of a 1-to-1 challenge to
be met by February 2005. Any donor making a gift will
see that gift matched at the same level; larger gifts will
be recognized with a named space in the building.
This is one of the largest gifts in Cornell’s history
designated specifically for a building endowment.
The endowment will support landscaping, furniture
replacement, and other general maintenance and
upkeep, as well as related staff positions such as facility
manager and building coordinator—all of which will
keep the building functional in the years ahead. “I
believe it is vital to keep a facility modern, especially
its external image to visitors, students, and faculty,”
Duffield says.
Six years ago, Duffield, founder and former chief
executive officer of PeopleSoft, provided a major boost
for the new building by making a gift of $20 million to
fund construction of the facility. He takes great pride in
this project, not just because it will benefit the College
of Engineering, where he earned his undergraduate
degree in 1963, but also because the building and its
naming serve as a “dedication to my parents, it’s for my
mom and dad…. My dad loved Cornell. I was a junior
at Cornell when he passed away. We didn’t have much
then so my mother had to go back to work to help put
me through college, and her pride prevented her from
asking for financial aid.” Duffield says he owes a lot to
his parents, and supporting Duffield Hall is a way for
him to recognize the impact they have had on his life.
Further inspiration came from John Hopcroft, the
former Joseph Silbert Dean of the College of Engineering, whose “vision, energy, and passion” helped
convince Duffield of the critical need for a new, cutting-edge nanotechnology building. “John stressed the
importance of nanoscience and the need to have more
first-class facilities to advance this important field.
He’s an amazing man.” But if Hopcroft had been at
Michigan State or some other university, Duffield says
he wouldn’t have been interested. “I did it for Cornell.
Cornell was very good to me, academically and
emotionally.”
Duffield adds, “We want to keep Cornell at the
forefront of science, and the new facilities can be seen
as one of the cornerstones [of the new life sciences
initiative]. Duffield Hall is a spectacular place and it’s
my hope to keep the building itself looking great for
decades.”
—Joe Zappala
To learn more about Duffield Hall or
take a virtual tour, visit the project online at http://www.duffield.cornell.edu.
For more information, contact Marsha Pickens, assistant dean, at 607 255-6094 or mp26@cornell.edu.
Micro-tools for Medicine
12 Spring 2003
ILLUSTRATION: SUSAN ZEHNDER
E
dwin Kan thinks small—really, really
small—but he never loses sight of
the big picture. In his case that means
concentrating on nanoscale microchips
that open up a world of possibilities such
as sensor/actuator devices that could one
day find their way into the human body
as cutting-edge medical tools.
By integrating electronic circuits with
microscopic mechanical devices that
can process and store information, Kan,
an associate professor of electrical and
computer engineering, is developing
“autonomous” chips that are mobile, can
sense and react to their environment,
and can communicate with similar micromachines.
The ultimate goal, he says, is to create
a device that, when sufficiently scaled
down, could be implanted in the human
body. But there is a long way to go before
a viable machine can conduct search and
destroy missions against diseases while
cruising through the bloodstream.
“We are helping the electronics
industry advance to the next level,
Edwin Kan’s
research is
a first step
toward
biomedical
implants
that take
a physical
approach
to sensing
and curing
disease.
By Jay Wrolstad
where the computer can be much more
human-like, or smarter,” Kan says of
the work being done by his research
teams. “Presently computer applications are limited only by the amount of
memory and the processing speed. The
next step is to push those limits so that
we can create better computing and
interface devices.”
All chemical processes are
The practical uses and long-term
value of this research vary, depending
essentially electronic in
upon the level of success. “If we can
fully understand and replicate antigen
nature, involving bonds
structures, this is a possible panacea
in the long run,” says Kan. “With the
among positive and negative proper programming ability, the device
can sense and understand its attack and
ions. What we can do today then interact with the molecules. I can
then create an artificial immunization
Kan explains that because research
into new chip designs and uses for the
with silicon technology is
system.”
technology has become increasingly
Even if the success level is low
expensive, the work is concurrently
to create these positive and and the microelectronic devices being
driven by industry’s need to open up
fashioned in the lab can’t be prompted
new markets. The existing market for
negative charges on a chip
to take action, by binding with the
PCs, mobile phones, and other semicontarget and then twisting its structure
ductor-reliant devices cannot sustain
in the exact location and
or changing the molecular weight, they
further development, so companies
could serve as sensors. Detection is the
are hoping to find new, innovative, and amount desired.
first step, Kan says, with the end goal
lucrative products using the same techof actuation, so that not only can the
nology—new “killer apps.”
even an antibody. “Antibodies—or Agchip sense the existence of an attack to
“I think we are at the right moment Ab pairs—work exactly like this; they
the biomedical systems, but it can also
have polarity and a specific molecular
when that can happen,” he says. “We
detect selectively and respond to the
specific molecular structure of a virus or
currently have around 10-nanometer
structure,” he says.
control, so as a semiconductor designer
One section of the chip has a chemi- other antigen.
I can draw a map, and that map can
cal composition, with ion densities, and
“In an implant situation, it would
be reduced to this very small size in a
the other has a programmed, charged
greatly increase the accuracy of the
controllable, reproducible, and rather
density in silicon. “It will happen as a
diagnosis process because it operates on
inexpensive manner.”
chemical reaction should happen. The
a molecular level, in the bloodstream,”
Which leads to the intriguing posprinciple is there. A larger scale—10
he says.
He hopes for that silver bullet—a
sibility of biomedical applications. The
to 20 nanometers—can be currently
cure for cancer—by creating a microelecchallenge is that these types of embeddemonstrated.” But, he adds, reducing
tronic immunization system that recded devices must have features scaled
the chip design to the point where an
ognizes the difference between a cancer
down to about .5 to 1 nanometer, or
interaction with molecules can occur
cell and a normal cell and “digests”
some ten to a hundred times smaller
remains a tall order.
the cancer cell, either by increasing or
than current science has achieved.
“I’m trying to emulate what is done
decreasing the molecular weight.
“When we get to that point, we can
in biochemical applications,” says Kan.
make something that’s really, really
“I write the map I want, demonstrat“We know it is possible to do, and
interesting,” says Kan. “A lot of my
ing how the surface charge density will
there are different degrees of freedom
research involves closing this gap
change over time, and how it will inter- to create and control in silicon systems
and determining how we can create a
act with the molecules. That is the biothan in chemical systems, because biobiomedical interface from a semiconmedical interface with inorganic silicon logical systems have to reproduce, as
ductor technology.”
devices in my plan.”
well as survive,” says Kan “I’m not playOne approach taken by Kan is to
Bradley Minch, an associate profes- ing with Ebola. Learning to manipulate
develop a silicon “tongue,” or antibody, sor of electrical and computer engineer- the molecules is safer because we have
that can conduct chemical sensing tasks ing who has collaborated with Kan,
full control of the process.”
and is as sensitive as the human tongue. says that the research shows promise in
Designing a biomedical sensor is
Once this is successfully demonstrated, building metal nanocrystals for strucone thing, but to create a truly autonotures that can identify specific biologihe says, such a sensing device could
mous system, which can communicate
evolve into even more detailed and
cal molecules based on an electronic
and take direction to perform its tasks
specific chemical sensors that would
charge. He also cites work on a “floating without a wire, presents an even greater
perform more complex chemical actions gate transistor,” used to build flash
design challenge. “You have to get
such as digestion.
memory in standard computing devices, power wirelessly, to transmit informaKan points out that all chemical
that can turn the microelectronic device tion over some type of network. How do
processes are essentially electrodynamic into a molecular sensor.
you sustain the power and transmit the
“These could be manufactured easily; information?” says Kan.
in nature, involving bonds among posithey are low-cost and low-power devices
tive and negative ions. “What we can
There are implanted sensors curthat could be deployed over a large area
do today with silicon technology is
rently in use, Kan notes, citing a retina
as an early warning system,” he explains. chip employed in artificial eye research
to create these positive and negative
Kan acknowledges that in addition to
charges on a chip in the exact location
and the pill camera, a diagnostic tool
biomedical implants, his research could
and amount desired,” he says. Thus,
the size of a jelly bean that is swallowed
scientists should be able to emulate the lead to the creation of environmental
and uses a camera and radio frequency
sensors to monitor air or water quality.
body’s olfactory bulbs, or eventually
technology to transmit images as it
14 Spring 2003
NICOLA KOUNTOUPES/UP
travels through the
digestive system.
Kan contends he
hopes to leap beyond
these technological advances with the
“silicon flea,” a device
that is the same size and
has many of the same
characteristics of the
insect, including mobility. “Using semiconductor
technology we can create
an autonomous system
that can generate its own
power and interact with
other similar systems,
just like a biological flea,”
he says. “It’s a design
problem, not a physics
problem.”
Another advantage
of chip technology is
that production costs
are drastically reduced. A
pill camera, for example,
costs about $10,000 to
manufacture, compared
to about 20 dollars apiece
for computer chips that,
in theory, would have the
same sensing technolEdwin Kan
ogy as the larger medical
device. The cost can be
further driven down significantly with
mass production.
So how small can we get with silicon
technology and autonomous systems?
Kan says he is pushing the envelope
with chemical sensors, adding components, like micro generator power
sources and pulse-based communications instead of radio frequency technology, as well as imaging capabilities.
“We are in a preliminary stage. I
have some prototypes that prove that
the principle is right. These chips can
do some sensing, have power generation through body movement vibration,
and can do some information transmission,” he says. “What I’m doing now is
optimization and scaling; I need to scale
it further down.”
When he achieves a workable
solution, the final integration of this
ground-breaking technology most likely
will not be done on campus, says Kan.
His students can develop a process on
the order of 9 to 16 masks (the number
of steps required), with a yield of 10
to 20 percent, which means that one
or two out of 10 components work
properly. And as more components are
circuits, is being done
by his research groups
at the Cornell Nanoscale
Facility, the Cornell
Center for Materials
Research, and the Nanobiotechnology Center.
And he has earned
some rave reviews,
including a Presidential
Early Career Award for
Science and Engineering
in 2000 from the Clinton administration. Earlier, Kan was a member
of a semiconductor
materials research team
at Cornell that received
a $1.7 million grant
from the National
Science Foundation.
“He has a remarkable ability to think
creatively and come up
with ideas that have
practical applications,”
Minch says of Kan. He
added that his colleague
is exploring a broad array
of disciplines, ranging
from fundamental physics to micromechanical
systems.
Venkat Narayanan, a
added to the chip, the yield rate rapidly Ph.D. student in electrical engineering
who works with Kan, echoed Minch’s
declines.
comments. “The research is a unique
By comparison, among industrial
blend of a lot of different fields, and
manufacturers, he notes, a 30-mask
process typically results in a device yield the applications have the same type of
diversity,” he said. “It involves engineerof 99.9999 percent. To make a true
silicon flea, which can sense and act and ing and design, materials science, and
think, would be such a 30-step process, chemistry.”
Kan says.
Narayanan’s project is developThe biomedical implant producing modeling tools for the proposed
tion lines won’t get into high gear any
devices, grappling with the task of cretime soon. Kan suggests that the first
ating accurate models for devices that
products are at least five years away. But being reduced to their smallest scale.
there are companies interested in build“I have been working on this
ing a less complicated sensor, he says,
research for about six years,” says Kan,
while work on a more complex, multia native of Taiwan who has worked two
tasking chip continues.
summers as faculty partner in the lab
“Some researchers are talking about for IBM. “I was a very theoretical person
nano-robots, but I think we should
before I came to Cornell. But when I
first learn how to make a flea—that is
got here I had to do my own research
within our range—and take it one step
and I saw an opportunity. This is the
at a time,” he says. “Effective power
very reason I came to Cornell electrical
management for nanoscale electronic
engineering. I hope we can cure cancer
devices remains a challenge; there are
or other diseases, not from a chemical
still a lot of things to learn.”
method but from a physical method. I
Kan’s work, essentially engraving
asked myself, ‘Is there another way?’
complicated designs on microchips and And I believe that there is.”
incorporating microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) into integrated
Jay Wrolstad is a freelance writer in Ithaca.
XCOR’s sub-orbital rocket could be the
T
Space To
he people who say they’re responsible for space travel
tomorrow look like this: 11 middle-agers gathered
around a tiny white airplane. They’re captured in a
group photo on XCOR Aerospace’s web site, and looking at
them, you’d swear they were just a bunch of tourists on a field
trip to an airfield somewhere. Dan DeLong, a Cornell alum
who co-founded the company in 1999, is wearing a snappy tan
fedora and a big pair of field binoculars around his neck. Most
everybody is wearing jeans or khakis, except for the yahoo in a
flight suit squatting next to the plane’s nosecone.
Of course, that yahoo is Dick Rutan, sometimes called the
“world’s best test pilot.”
And that airplane they’re standing in front of, a Long-EZ
that was once DeLong’s private ride, has been modified so a
big tank of isopropyl alcohol is attached to its belly. The tank
feeds two rocket engines capable of putting out 800 pounds of
thrust. That’s enough to get you going. Fast.
As small as technology has made the world, outer space
still seems far, far away. But XCOR is trying to become the
first private enterprise—or at least one of the first—to send a
human into space. They haven’t made the vehicle yet, but that
pair of rocket engines Rutan has strapped himself in front of
16 Spring 2003
e ultimate thrill in adventure travel.
ourists
By Kenneth Aaron
Photos by Mike Massee/XCORDan
Aerospace
DeLong
Mojave Airport
more than a dozen times are the
models for what will get the job done.
In November, DeLong, the company’s
chief engineer, was recognized by
Esquire magazine as one of the nation’s
“Best and Brightest.” (“43 people
who will revolutionize the world,” the
men’s magazine crowed.) Popular Science named the plane-based rocket,
dubbed the EZ Rocket, one of the 100
best inventions of 2002. And Scientific
American counted XCOR among the
nation’s top 50 innovators last year.
Unlike the dot-coms that spent lavishly to create an aura of significance
then disappeared overnight, XCOR
isn’t burnishing its image with frills.
Given that XCOR’s four founders
worked at a space-flight company that
burned through $33 million in three
years before flaming out itself, perhaps
they’ve learned their lesson. The company is small enough that when you call
its Mojave Airport headquarters and
ask for DeLong, who earned a materials
science degree from Cornell in 1974,
the person who answers the telephone
is likely to just put down the handset
and say, “There’s a Ken Aaron for you
on line one.”
It’s small enough that DeLong, a dry
49-year-old who speaks in a guarded
cadence, says that “our best mechanic is
18 Spring 2003
a guy we hired at the local truck stop.”
But how can DeLong’s aspirations be
for real if his company is so small? Isn’t
this, after all, rocket science?
DeLong would not forgive you if,
having watched the U.S. government
send up six Mercury missions, 10
Gemini flights, 11 Apollo voyages (12,
including the test mission to dock with
a Soviet Soyuz module), three Skylab
jaunts, and 113 Space Shuttle launches,
you assumed that space flight was the
province of the federal government.
Because DeLong and XCOR’s 10
other workers have made it their mission to challenge the government’s sole
control of the stratosphere and above.
Can a company with a handful of
engineers possibly build rockets better
than the ones built by the government
and the giant companies that supply it?
DeLong, and scores of others in the private spaceflight industry, say “why not.”
Better, cheaper, safer, and more versatile. Longer lasting, environmentally
friendlier, and reusable, too—so multiple flights of the same vehicle can be
made on the same day.
“I don’t think space flight is inherently difficult or expensive,” DeLong
says. “And there’s a whole underground
of people out there who think that.”
Space travel tomorrow: Like a field
trip to an airfield somewhere.
After the shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas in February, maybe
it would seem logical to conclude that
space travel is tricky stuff and better
left to armies of scientists in white
coats. But for a committed corps of
inventors and starry-eyed entrepreneurs, the disaster served to reinforce
their conviction that this nation was
built by bootstrap-yanking dreamers
and that space should be filled with
them, too.
“Look how we operate in America,”
says Rick Tumlinson, founder of the
Space Frontier Foundation, an Islip,
N.Y.-based group dedicated to the
human settlement of space. “We don’t
take government cars, government
trucks, and government buses to and
from work.”
When it comes to space, Tumlinson
and others argue that competition
would enhance innovation. “What we
have to do is let 1,000 flowers bloom,”
Tumlinson says. “Let companies like
XCOR get a shot at it.”
DeLong has spent his entire career
defeating the notion that bigger companies know best. Aerospace wasn’t his
initial interest. He preferred submarines at first. In high school, DeLong
built his own fiberglass and steel
The latest iteration of the 400 lb-thrust regeneratively cooled engine, the engine that
powers the EZ Rocket.
The XCOR piston pump designed by Dan
DeLong.
Mike Laughlin, XCOR shop mechanic
submarine. “Because I wanted to,” he
said, when asked why. In college, when
he should have been studying, he was
inventing his own curriculum. “My
homework didn’t get done,” he says,
“but I learned things.” Straight out of
Cornell, he went to work for Westinghouse, doing work on the Trieste and
other U.S. Navy vessels.
Then he saw “The Spy who Loved
Me,” the James Bond movie featuring a
very cool amphibious Lotus Esprit. Six
months later, he left big-time corporate
America for Perry Submarine, the Florida company that made the sea-going
sports car.
While at Westinghouse, DeLong
worked on the Deep Submergence
Rescue Vehicle, a crew-rescue sub that
cost $100 million. When he got to
Perry, the British Royal Navy turned
up looking for the same type of craft,
but without nearly as much money to
spend.
Eventually, Perry built a DSRV for
the Brits for $750,000. Which is when
DeLong realized that small companies
that were nimble, flexible, and innovative could compete in larger arenas. “It
is not the hardware,” he says. “It is the
organization that did it.”
DeLong made the switch from subs
to space flight by taking a job at Boeing,
which once gave him a certificate for
helping shave $62 million off the cost
of the International Space Station.
“That’s nice,” he said of the recognition,
“but they didn’t incorporate any of the
ideas.”
Those involved with private space
flight are convinced that they can be
competitive in a focused market. XCOR
and its competitors want to leave
the really far-out, citius-altius-fortius
stuff— like sending astronauts to Mars
and beyond—to NASA, while they deal
with the mundane business of throwing
things into the skies around Earth.
For XCOR’s next trick, DeLong
wants to send tourists into sub-orbital
flight. At 62 miles off the ground, that’s
high enough for passengers to get the
rush of space flight—the sky gets black,
the earth curves and, perhaps most
important, bottoms lift off seats as
gravity melts into weightlessness. The
20 Spring 2003
Dick Rutan
company has named the rocket—it’s
the Xerus—but so far, XCOR can only
offer a drawing of what a sub-orbital
rocket will look like. It’s not much different from a commuter jet and probably wouldn’t draw much attention at all
without the big “SPACE” logo slathered
across its back half.
So far, XCOR has raised $1.5 million
over the past three years. That’s been
enough to send the EZ Rocket on more
than a dozen flights. The Xerus will cost
another $10 million, and three years to
develop once that money gets raised.
DeLong, and everybody else rushing to populate the private space flight
industry, is convinced the passengers
are ready to line up. They point to the
$20 million that Dennis Tito paid to
fly to Mir, the Russian space station,
as proof. Then they point to the 150
people every year who drop $15,000 to
take a ride in a MiG 29.
“There’s probably a big
market there,” DeLong says.
“But nobody knows. We’re
already teamed with an adventure-travel company that’s selling tickets.”
Should one suggest that
sending rich tourists into space
seems, well, frivolous, get
ready for a jetwash of criticism.
“Frivolous like a better TV set?”
asks Tumlinson. “Frivolous like
climbing the Himalayas?”
“There are entire countries
that have based their economy
on tourism,” he says. “Why
not the space transportation
industry? What
you have to do
is come up with
what the computer guys call
the killer app.
Flying paying
passengers to
float around
space may seem
frivolous on the
individual case,
but what you’re
going to do is
create an
industry.”
Besides,
DeLong says,
giving people
exciting rides
isn’t the end of
the company’s
aspirations.
XCOR wants the Xerus to convert into
a flying laboratory, giving scientists a
chance to experiment in zero-g. And
eventually, the company wants to
develop rockets that launch commercial
satellites into orbit.
DeLong promises that XCOR can
do it cheaply by avoiding one-timeuse rockets. That drives up the cost
immensely, many say. “The ticket for
going to Los Angeles to Chicago could
be cheaper if you don’t throw away the
747 when you get to Chicago,” says
DeLong.
To develop those rockets,
XCOR is accepting contracts. The
Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) has signed on for a
$90,000 contract that will help XCOR
develop the engines that will send Xerus
into orbit. If that deal works, another
$500,000 might be around the bend.
Other agencies, including the Navy, have
DeLong in the cockpit
also picked XCOR to do some work.
And the agencies are signing on at
least partly because DeLong and XCOR
have shown they have the right stuff. So
far, their rocket-powered plane hasn’t
suffered an in-flight accident.
For Rutan, a Vietnam veteran who
made history in 1986 flying a plane
called Voyager around the world without
stopping or refueling, signing on to pilot
the EZ Rocket was a no-brainer. “It took
me about 3 or 4 milliseconds to decide
what to do,” says the laconic Rutan.
DeLong, he adds, is “pretty clever.”
“Some engineers are really smart,
but they couldn’t screw a gas cap on
a gas can,” he says. Those who know
DeLong, though, say one of his greatest
talents is his skill around the machine
shop. “He not only can design it,” Rutan
says, “he can go out in the shop and
build it.”
For Aleta Jackson, an XCOR cofounder who says that she told her
father as a child in the 1950s that she
wanted to go to space, XCOR gives her
a chance to build her own ride to get
there. And DeLong, “one of the finest
engineers I ever worked with,” is ready
to hit the shop floor and build it himself if necessary.
“We needed to develop an igniter
for our rocket engine,” she says. “We
sat around scratching our heads for a
couple of hours. And Dan came up with
an idea that incorporated a Weed-Eater
sparkplug for the ignition. He took it
into the shop and built the igniter out
of brass.”
At XCOR, where everything is do-ityourself or don’t do it at all, that seems
only fitting.
“After the Wright Brothers first
flew, it took them a couple of years
before the message got out that hey,
people can fly,” DeLong says. “Within
five years, there were literally hundreds of people and organizations
building airplanes. And there were
lots of things tried and lots of things
failed. The result was a healthy industry that was only achieved by trying
lots of things.”
Ken Aaron writes for the Albany Times
Union and is a frequent contributor to CEM.
XCOR Hangar
By Beth Saulnier
I
like to tell people I’m a rocket
scientist,” senior civil engineering
major Josh Guerard says with a
laugh. The other occupants of the
Hollister Hall conference room crack
up along with him; they’re pretty fond
of the “rocket scientist” thing too. “It’s
really cool,” says mechanical engineer
Allyson Jimenez. “Everyone loves NASA
engineers.”
Guerard,
Jimenez, and
their comrades
aren’t exactly
working for
NASA—not
yet, anyway.
They’re students in a yearlong, eightcredit course
funded by the
space agency,
with an ambitious premise:
in cooperation
with their
counterparts
at Syracuse
University,
they’re designing systems for
the next generation space shuttle. And
although the students may never see
their creations leave Earth orbit, they’re
gaining valuable experience; not only
are they pondering real-world problems,
they’re using the latest communications
22 Spring 2003
technology to collaborate with teammates on another campus. The students
may or may not answer important
design questions relating to reusable
launch vehicles—but they’ll be willing
guinea pigs in a cutting-edge distancelearning experiment. “Can teams of
Syracuse and Cornell students who are,
90 percent of the time, sixty miles away
from each other really do something
which traditionally is face-to-face?”
asks civil and environmental engineering professor Tony Ingraffea, who coteaches the class with four colleagues.
“Can we bring together different dis-
ciplines—civil engineers, mechanical
engineers, aerospace engineers, and
engineering physicists—and overcome
the usual communications barriers?”
Those questions and more are hoped
to be answered over the course of the
three-year, $3.3 million effort, known
as the Advanced Interactive Discovery
Environment (AIDE) for Engineering
Education
project. (The
project’s principal investigator is Barry
Davidson, an
aerospace and
manufacturing engineering professor
at Syracuse;
Ingraffea is a
co-principal
with Elizabeth
Liddy, director
of S.U.’s Center
for Natural
Language Processing.) The
class, an elective that satisfies the senior
capstone
design requirement—in which students
demonstrate that they can integrate
what they’ve learned over the past four
years to create an original design—is
unique within the college: In addition
to a technical education, students get a
ROBERT BARKER/UP
Within
Working
Distance
grounding in everything from writing
reports to working with engineers from
other disciplines. “It’s a very substantial demand on them,” Ingraffea says.
“Only the best and brightest, who have
already completed virtually everything
they had to, would have the time and
energy and interest to take a course like
this in their senior year. This is not a joy
ride. It’s a joy, but not a joyride.”
At its halfway point—a glacial
Thursday in mid-January—the fifteen
Cornell seniors and their professors
gather in Hollister for a lunchtime
debriefing session on the ups and
downs of fall semester. Over cold-cut
sandwiches, chips, and pasta salad,
they debate everything from the value
of their electronic tools to the logistics
of the course’s evaluation system, in
which students assess both themselves
and their peers. Their $1,600 “tablet
computers,” for instance, offer wireless
by sending in a transcript and personal
statement—and attracted people from
a variety of majors. “They said, ‘This
is an elective for you?’” civil engineer
Jeremy Freyer of Red Lion, Pa., says,
to his classmate’s amusement. “They
all thought it was nuts to take it if you
didn’t have to.”
Freyer and his classmates are part of
the second year of this foray into longdistance collaboration. The first thirty
students—half from Cornell, half from
S.U.—took the course during the 2001–
02 academic year, splitting into two
dual-institution teams to design onesquare-meter portions of the exterior
structure of a reusable launch vehicle.
For the fall of ’02, a new crop of seniors
was divided into three groups, concentrating on structural analysis, thermal
analysis, or mechanics and materials.
Then two people from each track (one
from Cornell, one from Syracuse) were
its professors. As Zehnder puts it: “The
big difference isn’t the distance. It’s
collaborating with other faculty.” Civil
engineering postdoc Scott Jones agrees,
noting that they’ve found that holding
meetings via videoconferencing can be
a challenge, because it’s harder to read
colleagues’ vocal inflections and body
language than it is in person. “It’s a lot
of work,” says the newly minted Texas
A&M Ph.D., who rounds out the course’s
trio of Cornell instructors. “There’ll be
some pretty major differences that we
have to work out. The five of us will just
sit in a room and iron out a plan.”
The course is also serving as a
laboratory for a researcher from the
other side of campus: communication
grad student Michael Stefanone, who’s
observing how the students and faculty
adapt to the distance-learning facilities as part of his study of technology
acceptance. And according to Ingraffea,
C o r n e l l t e am explores ways
t o c o l l a b o r a te with colleagues
a t S y r a c u s e U—without the
6 0 - m i le commute.
modems, touch-screen recognition, and
built-in cameras and microphones—
Ingraffea jokes that “Dick Tracy was
wearing one of these on his wrist in
1930”—but the students don’t seem
particularly enamored of them; for
one thing, they say, the screens are too
small. Someone even calls it “an overgrown PDA.” “The video is nice,” says
mechanical engineer Bryan Rivard of
Ashburnham, Mass., “but I don’t think
we ever conveyed any vital information
through it.”
The students go on to debate the
foibles of collaborating with people
from another campus, one with a
smaller engineering college and a different institutional culture. (“I didn’t
realize how difficult it would be to
communicate with people in another
place,” says Jen Duthie, a civil engineer
from Philadelphia.) They note that at
Syracuse the class was required, and
all the students who participated were
aerospace engineers, whereas at Cornell
it was optional—students had to apply
brought together to form six-person
design teams. “No one person had all
the knowledge that they needed,” says
Alan Zehnder, associate professor of
theoretical and applied mechanics
and one of the course’s three Cornell
instructors, “so they had to collaborate.”
That collaboration was fostered
through a variety of team-building exercises at the beginning of the semester,
including a visit to the Cornell ropes
course. The actual nitty-gritty design
work was accomplished through a few
face-to-face meetings, and about 200
real-time teleconferences via a highspeed Internet connection between the
two campuses. That experience, says
Zehnder, will serve them well in the
working world. “Some of these students
will go to organizations, and the boss
will look at them and say, ‘You’ve used
distance learning stuff—teach us.’ Or,
‘We need to work with Cincinnati—
figure it out.’”
And administering the course has
also been something of an education for
teaching AIDE has also informed his
own work on issues affecting spacecraft.
“Alan and Scott and I are all working
on actual research projects for NASA
related to those objectives, so we’re
able to spin off what we’re getting from
our research into this course, and viceversa,” he says. “So far, we’ve learned
more from this course about our
research than our research has taught
us about the course.”
AIDE (officially, CEE 479 and MAE
491) meets for 150 minutes a week in
the Meyburg Distance Learning Classroom in Hollister, a sleek space where
every seat has its own desktop microphone and plugs for power and Internet
connections. At the front of the room
is a podium flanked by two projection
screens; if the class is being taught from
Syracuse, one screen shows the professor, while the other highlights his or
her presentation. The professors wear
wireless mikes and can see the students
on the other campus via video, so when
someone raises a hand, the teacher can
call on them. “In general, every lecture
is simulcast,” says Ingraffea, the Baum
Professor of Engineering. “It’s a substitution of the screen image for reality,
but it’s real time. It’s live. It’s synchronous. It’s the best available web-based
technology, very high quality and very
high resolution.” The high-tech podium,
too, looks a bit like Mission Control; its
hardware even lets professors scribble
live notes on their PowerPoint presentations, which are recorded and made
available on the course’s website. Says
Zehnder: “It gives you back a little of
the spontaneity you lose by not having
the blackboard.”
The genesis of the AIDE project goes
back three years, when NASA’s chief
scientist spoke to faculty at Cornell,
S.U., and other schools about the space
agency’s desire to play a bigger role in
engineering education. “He made a very
compelling statement,” says Ingraffea,
“which was that whereas other government agencies fund improvements in
education, they don’t hire engineers at
the rate NASA does. So NASA knows
what it takes to be a good NASA engineer.” The agency—which also has a
vested interest in improving distancedesign techniques because its labs are
scattered around the U.S.—invited
upstate New York universities to propose educational projects; AIDE was the
winner. “NASA said, ‘We don’t really
care what the content of your course
is,’” Ingraffea recalls. “We get no pressure on a daily basis, or on a tool-bytool basis.”
In offering $2.5 million in funding—the other $.8 million came from
24 Spring 2003
the state (.5) and from AT&T (.3)—the
agency wasn’t just looking to up the
quality of its future engineers, but the
quantity as well. According to immediate past NASA administrator Daniel
Goldin, who calls AIDE the agency’s
In general, every lecture is simulcast. It’s
a substitution of the
screen image for reality, but it’s real time.
It’s live. It’s synchronous. It’s the best
available web-based
technology, very high
quality and very high
resolution.
“pet project,” the need for scientists
and engineers is expected to rise by
50 percent over the next decade. But
over that period, 2 million will graduate—and the same number will retire.
“This is not about a social program,” he
says of AIDE. “It’s not about an educational program. It’s about the future of
our country and our economy and our
vitality.”
What the course isn’t really about,
Zehnder says, is creating actual plans
for a future spacecraft. The design
Cornell faculty Alan Zehnder, Scott Jones, and Tony Ingraffea
process is an exercise, one that each
crop of seniors begins anew in the fall.
“None of the student designs will go
directly into the next generation space
shuttle,” Zehnder says. “But we do have
a student from last year who’s at NASA
Langley now, working on thermal protection systems for next generation
space shuttles. So it’s getting some of
these people in the pipeline.”
Still, in choosing the new breed of
shuttle as the focus of student research,
the professors are addressing another
pressing issue facing the space program:
the need for a leaner, better spacecraft.
“The mantra that NASA attaches to the
next generation shuttle is that it has to
be able to put something in orbit at a
much lower cost and with much higher
reliability,” Ingraffea says. “The numbers we gave the students from day one
are that with the current space shuttle,
it costs more than $10,000 to put one
pound into low Earth orbit. In the next
generation, that’s supposed to come
down to between $100 and $1,000 a
pound. So the vehicle has to be lighter
to be able to carry an equal payload at
lower cost.” Ingraffea goes on to joke
that cheaper payloads will mean that,
eventually, even the average college
professor will be able to afford a loop
around the planet. “Right now they’re
charging rock stars $20 million, which
is $100,000 a pound times the weight
of a rock star,” he says. “So you can get
rock stars—or even people like us—into
orbit for just a few thousand dollars. We
can either buy a ticket for Washington,
D.C., or take an orbit around the Earth.
It’ll be about the same cost.”
But money isn’t the only issue
concerning NASA; safety is even more
pressing. Although very few astronauts
have died in the line of duty, the fact
remains that there are very few astronauts, period, and it remains a risky
line of work. “With the current space
shuttle, every time those poor astronauts get in it, their chance of dying
is about one in 300,” Ingraffea says.
“NASA wants to improve the odds to
one in 10,000 to 100,000. That means
that the vehicle has to have a smaller
number of parts, each part has to be
more reliable, and the system itself has
to be more reliable.”
In the wake of the February 1 tragedy that took the lives of the seven
astronauts on the space shuttle Columbia, Ingraffea notes that the one-in-300
statistic has, unfortunately, proven
deadly accurate. “It’s the right order
Zehnder with civil engineering students Jen Duthie and Jeremy Freyer
of magnitude: 113 flights, 2 fatal accidents,” he says. “In contrast, your risk
of dying on a commercial aircraft flight
is on the order of one in 1,000,000.”
But Ingraffea, who was interviewed
by the LA Times and Nature magazine
following the disaster, says he hopes
that the loss of the Columbia will
heighten awareness of the fact that the
current shuttle is based mostly on 30year-old technology. “Even though some
systems have been updated, by NASA’s
current replacement plans we are stuck
with the three remaining orbiters until
about 2015,” he says. “Maybe now there
will be increased popular and political
pressure to accelerate this schedule.”
And if it is accelerated, Ingraffea says,
that will create even more of a need for
courses like AIDE, to prepare the next
generation of NASA engineers and academic researchers. “We focus on exactly
the technical issues now in the news,”
he says, “thermal protection system
design and capability, accurate simulation, and realistic fault-tree analysis.”
Although the students know there’s
little chance their classroom designs
will be incorporated in a real-life shuttle, they can’t help but be excited at the
prospect; even Governor George Pataki,
in announcing the state’s contribution
in 2001, noted that until AIDE, the last
major collaboration between New York
and NASA was on the lunar excursion
model that Grumman made for the
moon landing in 1969. “I expect, not
too long from now,” Pataki told reporters, “to be looking on television and
watching the new generation of space
shuttle and being able to say with tremendous pride, ‘This was designed by
students of Syracuse and Cornell.’”
Ingraffea notes that while the students don’t have day-to-day contact
with NASA, the space agency gives
them a live seminar every semester; last
fall’s was on lessons learned from R&D
failures regarding reusable launch vehicles. And the students’ end-of-semester
presentations—intended to simulate
the Critical Design Reviews used by
the agency’s own engineers when they
work at a distance—are broadcast to
NASA. “This is one of the few courses
that actually works toward something
real,” says mechanical engineer Rivard.
“There’s a sense of pride that NASA is
investing in future engineers.”
The course, students say, gives them
a taste of what their lives might be like
after graduation—everything from
coping with communications snafus
to establishing project deadlines to
interacting with colleagues. “As a civil
engineer, I find myself with the same
people every day,” says Melissa Pomales.
“In the real world, you won’t have
that.” Mechanical engineer Jimenez, a
fellow Puerto Rican who’s sitting next
to Pomales at the lunch-time debriefing session, notes that one of the most
gratifying things about the course has
been discovering that professional
rocket scientists, like the students, have
stumbled over such issues as evaluating
manufacturing processes for composite
materials. “It’s cool that we got to the
same roadblocks the NASA engineers
did,” she says. “It’s such recent technology,
you don’t know if the research is right.”
For the spring ’03 semester, the professors decided to take the course in a
slightly different direction: for the first
half, the students would focus on the
technical aspects of numerical simulation—but without collaborating with
their Syracuse counterparts. They’d
then come back together for the semester’s second half and compare the different designs. It would make for a hefty
workload, at a time when many students are basking in the glow of senior
spring. “If you want to have a fun, relaxing senior year, you probably shouldn’t
take the course,” says civil engineer
Jeremy Freyer. “But if you really want to
cap it off with something you couldn’t
do somewhere else, you should take it.
It’s a one-of-a-kind course at a one-of-akind university.”
Beth Saulnier is the author of the Alex Bernier mysteries, published by Warner Books/
Mysterious Press.
Ingraffea and Jones (standing) with Lisa Scoles, ME; Justin Colson, EP; and
Robert Cannon, ME.
The Real Scientific Hero of 1953
Over the past 50 years, the “computer experiment” has helped scientists to see the invisible and imagine the inconceivable.
I
26 Spring 2003
Steven Strogatz
test problem involved a deliberately simplified model of a
vibrating atomic lattice, consisting of 64 identical particles (representing atoms) linked end to
end by springs (representing the
chemical bonds between them).
This structure was akin to
a guitar string, but with an
unfamiliar feature: normally, a
guitar string behaves “linearly”—pull it to the side and it
pulls back, pull it twice as far
and it pulls back twice as hard.
Force and response are proportional. In the 300 years since
Isaac Newton invented calculus,
mathematicians and physicists
had mastered the analysis of
systems like that, where causes
are strictly proportional to
effects, and the whole is exactly
equal to the sum of the parts.
But that’s not how the
bonds between real atoms
behave. Twice the stretch does
not produce exactly twice the
force. Fermi suspected that this
nonlinear character of chemical
bonds might be the key to the
inevitable increase of entropy.
Unfortunately, it also made the
mathematics impenetrable.
A nonlinear system like this
DEDE HATCH
The string played
an eerie tune,
almost like music
from an alien civilization. Starting
from a pure tone,
it progressively
added a series
of overtones,
replacing one with
another, gradually changing the
timbre.
n February, newspapers
and magazines devoted
tens of thousands of
words to the 50th anniversary of the discovery of
the chemical structure of
DNA. While James D. Watson
and Francis Crick certainly
deserved a good party, there
was no mention of another
scientific feat that also turned
50 this year—one whose ramifications may ultimately turn
out to be as profound as those
of the double helix.
In 1953, Enrico Fermi and
two of his colleagues at Los
Alamos Scientific Laboratory,
John Pasta and Stanislaw
Ulam, invented the concept of
a “computer experiment.” Suddenly the computer became a
telescope for the mind, a way
of exploring inaccessible processes like the collision of black
holes or the frenzied dance
of subatomic particles—phenomena that are too large or
too fast to be visualized by
traditional experiments, and
too complex to be handled by
pencil-and-paper mathematics. The computer experiment
offered a third way of doing
science. Over the past 50 years,
it has helped scientists to see
the invisible and imagine the
inconceivable.
Fermi and his colleagues
introduced this revolutionary
approach to better understand
entropy, the tendency of all systems to decay to states of ever
greater disorder. To observe the
predicted descent into chaos
in unprecedented detail, Fermi
and his team created a virtual
world, a simulation taking
place inside the circuits of an
electronic behemoth known
as Maniac, the most powerful
supercomputer of its era. Their
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO/COURTESY OF AIP EMILIO SEGRE VISUAL ARCHIVES
couldn’t be analyzed by breaking it into pieces. Indeed, that’s
the hallmark of a nonlinear
system: the parts don’t add up
to the whole. Understanding a
system like this defied all known
methods. It was a mathematical
monster.
Undaunted, Fermi and his
collaborators plucked their
virtual string and let Maniac
grind away, calculating hundreds of simultaneous interactions, updating all the forces
and positions, marching the
virtual string forward in time
in a series of slow-motion
snapshots. They expected to
see its shape degenerate into a
random vibration, the musical
counterpart of which would be
a meaningless hiss, like static
on the radio.
What the computer revealed
was astonishing. Instead of
a hiss, the string played an
eerie tune, almost like music
from an alien civilization.
Starting from a pure tone, it
progressively added a series of
overtones, replacing one with
another, gradually changing
the timbre. Then it suddenly
reversed direction, deleting
overtones in the opposite
sequence, before finally
returning almost precisely
to the original tone. Even
creepier, it repeated this
strange melody again
and again, indefinitely,
but always with
subtle variations on
the theme.
Fermi loved
this result—he
referred to it
affectionately as a
“little discovery.” He had never
guessed that nonlinear systems
could harbor such a penchant
for order.
In the 50 years since this
pioneering study, scientists
and engineers have learned
to harness nonlinear systems,
making use of their capacity for
self-organization. Lasers, now
used everywhere from eye surgery to checkout scanners, rely
on trillions of atoms emitting
light waves in unison. Superconductors transmit electrical
current without resistance, the
byproduct of billions of pairs of
electrons marching in lock step.
The resulting technology has
spawned the world’s most sensitive detectors, used by doctors
to pinpoint diseased tissues in
the brains of epileptics without
the need for invasive surgery,
and by geologists to locate oil
buried deep underground.
But perhaps the most
important lesson of Fermi’s
study is how feeble even the
best minds are at grasping the
dynamics of large, nonlinear
systems. Faced with a thicket
of interlocking feedback loops,
where everything affects everything else, our familiar ways
of thinking fall apart. To solve
the most important problems
of our time, we’re going to
have to change the way we do
science.
For example, cancer will not
be cured by biologists working
alone. Its solution will require a
melding of both great discoveries of 1953.
Many can-
cers,
perhaps
most
of them,
involve the
derangement of
biochemical
networks that
c h o r e o g r a p h the activity
of thousands of genes and
proteins. As Fermi and his
colleagues taught us, a complex system like this can’t be
understood merely by cataloging its parts and the rules
governing their interactions.
The nonlinear logic of cancer
will be fathomed only through
the collaborative efforts of
molecular biologists—the
heirs to Dr. Watson and Dr.
Crick—and mathematicians
Enrico Fermi
who specialize in complex
systems—the heirs to Fermi,
Pasta, and Ulam.
Can such an alliance take
place? Well, it can if scientists
embrace the example set by an
unstoppable 86-year-old who,
following his co-discovery of the
double helix, became increasingly interested in computer
simulations of complex systems
in the brain.
Happy anniversary, Dr.
Crick. And a toast to the
memory of Enrico Fermi.
—Steven Strogatz
Steven Strogatz, professor of
applied mathematics in the
Department of Theoretical and
Applied Mechanics at Cornell, is
author of “Sync: The Emerging
Science of Spontaneous Order”
(Hyperion, 2003). The book
explores nature’s uncanny ability
to organize itself—the subject of
Fermi’s “little discovery”—and
explains why the study of self-organizing systems could revolutionize
our understanding of everything
from the origin of life to certain
types of human behavior. This
article was originally published in
the New York Times.
New York State of Mind
NYSTAR awards focus on drug delivery and biological sensors.
28 Spring 2003
Craighead’s
research under
the NYSTAR
grant will concentrate on
nanotechnology
for chip-based
chemical and biochemical analysis
systems. His
research group
has been involved
in developing
highly selective
biological sensors
for the detection
Harold Craighead
of small quantities of biological
microorganisms or biochemicals.
THE LUCE
A new class of planned
devices will use microfluidic sysLEGACY
tems incorporating engineered
nanostructures for high-speed
lyssa B. Apsel has been
analysis of chemical mixtures.
appointed the Clare Boothe
The microfluidic approaches use Luce Assistant Professor of Elecmethods similar to those that
trical and Computer Engineerhave been used to create elecing for a five-year term.
tronic integrated circuits. UltiThe chair is named for the
mately these devices could be
playwright, journalist, U.S.
used for rapid medical diagnosis ambassador to Italy, and the
or environmental monitoring.
first woman elected to Congress from Connecticut. Luce,
— David Brand who died in 1987, established
Cornell News Service the chair through a bequest,
A
Alyssa Apsel
LEFT AND BOTTOM: CHARLES HARRINGTON/UP; RIGHT: FRANK DIMEO/UP
T
wo recent
awards
from the
New York
State Office of
Science, Technology and Academic
Research (NYSTAR)
Faculty Development Program will
support research
and teaching in
bioengineering at
Cornell.
Michael Shuler,
the Samuel B. Eckert
Professor of Chemical Engineering and
director of the Biomedical Engineering
(BME) Program at
Cornell, has been
Michael Shuler
awarded $999,000.
The funding will be used to
support development of BME
and to establish a laboratory and
courses for a program in drug
delivery. Drug delivery includes
the production of pharmaceuticals, evaluation of their efficacy
and safety, tissue engineering,
the production of edible vaccines, and viral and non-viral
techniques for targeted delivery
of pharmaceuticals or genes to
specific tissues.
Shuler said that the funding
also is being used to establish
an “industrial partners” program at Cornell to develop
specialized training programs
to support biotechnology and
the pharmaceutical industry in
New York state.
Harold Craighead, the C.W.
Lake Jr. Professor of Engineering in the School of Applied and
Engineering Physics, has been
awarded $750,000 to develop a
chip-based analytical system for
rapid analysis of chemical and
biological compounds.
for new faculty members, recognizing and supporting teacherscholars who are considered most
likely to become the academic
leaders of the 21st century.
Papoulia received a civil
engineering diploma from the
National Technical University
of Athens, Greece, in 1979; an
M.Sc. in structural engineering
from the University of Southampton, England, in 1982; and
an M.A. in mathematics and a
Ph.D. in engineering, both in
1992, from the University of
California, Berkeley.
She joined the Cornell
faculty in August 1999 from the
Institute of Engineering Seismology and Earthquake Engineering, Thessaloniki, Greece,
where she had worked as an
assistant research scientist from
1996 to 1999. Previously she
was senior development engineer at MacNeal-Schwendler
Corp. and held contract research
appointments at Lawrence
Berkeley and Argonne national
laboratories.
Her research concentrates
on computational mechanics
and its application to structural
problems. One focus area is the
study of large, time-dependent
deformations of elastomeric
materials under long-term and
cyclic loads. Her original interest
in these materials arose from
their applicability to vibration
isolators, which can be used to
protect structures from seismic
damage. Recently she began
research into the use of fiber— David Brand reinforced elastomers in biologiCornell News Service cal applications, such as artificial
arteries.
Papoulia will use her NSF
EARLY
Early Career grant for a research
and teaching program on rateACHIEVER
dependent damage and fracture
aterina Papoulia, assisin glass and glassy composite
tant professor of civil and
materials. The research will
environmental engineering, has attempt to understand and
been awarded a Faculty Early
model toughening mechanisms
Career Development Program
in glass-polymeric materials.
grant from the National SciApplications include the develence Foundation (NSF). She
opment of safety window glazwill receive five-year funding
ings to protect against blast and
of $408,890 to support her
impact loads.
research.
Early career awards are the
— David Brand
NSF’s most prestigious honor
administered by the Henry
Luce Foundation, “to encourage
women to enter, study, graduate and teach” in the sciences
(including mathematics) and
engineering. Henry Luce was
the founder of Time, Life, and
Fortune magazines.
Apsel is an expert on highspeed, silicon-on-sapphire CMOS
(complementary metal-oxide
semiconductor) circuits for
optoelectronics. Her research
focuses on merging these
circuits with micro-optics to
build high-performance electronics. Interconnect problems
currently are a bottleneck
in the advancement of highspeed and high-performance
CMOS microelectronics. She
approaches this problem by
using optical interfaces to connect electronic subsystems. This
fusion of optics and electronics
on a sapphire substrate avoids
difficulties of conventional
high-speed electronic interfaces.
This work includes the design of
electronic interface circuitry and
the hybridization of electronic
and optical elements.
She completed her Ph.D. in
electrical and computer engineering at Johns Hopkins University in 2002 and joined the
Cornell faculty last summer. She
earned her B.S. degree in engineering at Swarthmore College
in 1995 and her M.S. in electrical and computer engineering
at the California Institute of
Technology in 1996.
COURTESY OF KATERINA PAPOULIA
K
Katerina Papoulia
FLIGHT
SIMULATOR
A
$625,000 Packard Foundation Fellowship in Science
and Engineering to Z. Jane
Wang will help the Cornell assistant professor of theoretical and
applied mechanics develop better
computer models for the complex
fluid dynamics of insect flight.
Wang hopes her research
will develop what she calls “the
virtual insect,” a three-dimensional, computer-based model
of the interactions between
wing surfaces of an animal that
travels by flapping flight and the
air through which it maneuvers.
She envisions a generic insect,
“something like a puppet of a
dragonfly, immersed in fluid (the
air), which will fly according to
the law of aerodynamics as the
strings (muscles) are pulled.”
Along with her postdoctoral
and graduate student collaborators, the physicist is setting up a
lab to film insects and perform
related fluid dynamics experiments. “We might even learn
more about how the insects
came about by creating our own
and by studying the real thing,”
she said.
The five-year fellowship is
one of only 20 awarded nationwide this year by the Packard
Foundation.
Previous honors to Wang,
who joined the College of Engi-
Read more on
Wang’s work in
the Summer 2002
issue of CEM,
online at
www.engr.cornell.
edu/engrMagazine
Y
Yolanda Tseng
30 Spring 2003
MUSEUM
QUALITY
T
o those who know him, it
came as no surprise that
Kevin Kornegay, associate professor of electrical and computer
engineering since 1998, was
selected by the Chicago Museum
of Science and Industry to be
featured in an exhibit showcasing contributions made by black
Americans in the field of information technology.
As part of the museum’s
annual Black Creativity Program, the exhibit included a
biography of the multitalented
Kornegay. The exhibit, which
was on display from Jan. 17
through March 1, highlighted
Kornegay’s research efforts in
such fields as “smart” power
electronics, high-performance
clocking, heterogeneous systems integration and, perhaps
Kornegay’s largest undertaking, his founding of the Cornell
Broadband Communications
Research Laboratory (CBCRL)
in 2000. The exhibit also
explained the pivotal role he
has played as adviser for the
past four years to the Cornell
student team for the annual
International Autonomous
Underwater Vehicle (AUV)
Competition. The Cornell team
finished a close second in this
year’s competition.
“The majority of the schools
involved are those with oceanography programs,” noted
Kornegay. “We don’t have such a
program at Cornell. What we do
have are exceptional engineers.”
Exceptional, indeed. CBCRL
was the result of Kornegay’s
vision to develop a world-class
research laboratory to “attract
the best graduate students to
use the latest technologies.” The
research effort addresses issues
related to the design of highperformance circuits for wireless
and wired-data communications.
Recently Kornegay led two
groups of graduate students
in the CBCRL program in a
nationwide integrated-circuit
design contest sponsored by the
Semiconductor Research Corp.
TOP: CHARLES HARRINGTON/UP; BOTTOM: MATTHEW FONDEUR/UP
Jane Wang
to be a wonderful cultural experience, as well as an academic one.”
At Cornell, Tseng has
majored in biological and
environmental engineering. She
conducted research under Dan
Luo, Cornell assistant professor of biological engineering,
involving the use of the atomic
force microscope (AFM) to
observe DNA molecules. She
assisted in Luo’s research, which
involves creating new DNA
structures not found in nature.
Last summer she worked at
Harvard Medical School studying protein-protein interactions
using fluorescence resonance
energy transfer. At Cambridge
University she plans to conneering faculty in 1999, include
tinue work with the AFM with
a National Science Foundation
Dr. Robert Henderson, senior
early career award and a young
investigator award by the Office lecturer in the Department of
Pharmacology.
of Naval Research.
“I am totally not surprised at
At Cornell, she teaches an
all that she received this scholundergraduate-level course
arship,” Luo said. “She is selfin differential equations, and
motivated; I don’t need to push
next semester she will teach
her at all. She is juggling many
Biofluid Dynamics, a course
things at the same time and
for graduate students and
doing them almost perfectly.”
advanced undergraduates.
Tseng received a prestigious
—Cornell News Service Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship in 2002. In addition to her
academic work, she has been a
HER FINEST
co-leader for the Expanding Your
Horizons Workshop, a one-day
HOUR
science conference for seventholanda Tseng, a senior in the and eighth-grade girls. This year
she is serving as president of the
College of Engineering, has
Cornell Chapter of Tau Beta Pi, a
been awarded a 2003 Winston
national engineering honor sociChurchill Scholarship for a year
ety. She also is an avid runner
of graduate study at Cambridge
and co-chair of the 5K charity
University in England.
run and intramural team for the
The scholarships, funded by
Society of Women Engineers.
the Winston Churchill Foundation of the United States, provide After completing her year at
Cambridge, she plans to confor a year of graduate study in
tinue graduate study and attend
engineering, mathematics, or
medical school, aiming for both
the sciences for students with
M.D. and Ph.D. degrees.
exceptional academic records
Eighteen Cornell students
and research proposals that can
have been named Churchill
be carried out at Cambridge.
scholars since 1974, eight of
Only 11 of the scholarships are
awarded each year; and this year’s these since 1992. Selection for
competition included candidates the scholarship is based on academic record, potential for sucfrom more than 50 institutions.
cess in the field, an innovative
“It’s been a personal dream
research proposal, and letters of
of mine to go to England, and I
recommendation.
didn’t get a chance to go during
my undergraduate years,” said
Tseng. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime
—Bill Steele
opportunity. I imagine it’s going
LEFT: ROBERT BARKER/UP; RIGHT: CHARLES HARRINGTON/UP
CYBERSECURITY
CHIEF
ing in Griffiss
Technology
Park, formerly
Griffiss Air
red B. Schneider, professor
Force Base, in
of computer science, has
Rome, N.Y.
been named chief scientist at
The new
the newly created Griffiss Instiinstitute is
tute for Information Assurance. positioned to
In addition, Robert Consta- apply for supble, Cornell’s dean for computport from the
ing and information science, has federal governbeen named to the institute’s
ment under the
board of directors.
Cyber Security
The institute, launched last
Research and
fall with $4.5 million in New
Development
York state funding, is a collaboAct, introduced
ration of private-sector compaby House Scinies, local economic developence Committee
ment groups,
Chairman Sherand colleges,
wood Boehlert
universities, and (R-N.Y.). The
Fred Schneider
research institu- act authorizes
tions aimed at
$903 million
ensuring the
over five years
security of infor- to ensure that the United States
mation systems. is better prepared to prevent
The institute’s
and combat terrorist attacks on
aim is to develop private and government computa workforce of
ers. Under the legislation, the
informationNational Science Foundation
security profeswill create new cybersecurity
sionals and create research centers, undergradua locale for infor- ate program grants, community
mation-assurcollege grants and fellowships,
ance services and and the National Institute of
products.
Standards and Technology will
Among
establish new programs for
other resources,
partnerships between academia
it will draw on
and industry.
the InformaA native New Yorker,
tion Assurance
Schneider earned a bachelor’s
Kevin Kornegay
Institute (IAI)
degree from Cornell in 1975. He
at Cornell, a
earned doctorate in 1978 from
motivation, more important,
joint research effort of Cornell
the State University of New
Kornegay noted, the contest
computer scientists and U.S. Air York at Stony Brook and joined
helps put CBCRL on the map
Force researchers, which
the Cornell faculty the same
as “one of the premier circuit
Schneider directs.
year. From 1998 to 2000 he
design research programs in the
“The focus of the IAI is
chaired the National Academy
country.”
on research,” Schneider said.
of Sciences study committee on
“The new Griffiss Institute will
It’s just this determination
information systems trustworprovide practical support to New thiness, leading to the publicaand drive to be the best that
York state businesses and insti- tion of the book “Trust in Cyberearned Kornegay recognition
tutions to improve computer
at the Chicago museum. But he
space,” which he edited. He was
security.”
prefers to turn the attention to
elected professor-at-large at the
Schneider was appointed by
University of Tromsoe, Norway,
his students, noting, “I’ve been
the Griffiss Institute board of
in 1996, and now spends one
blessed with an extraordinarily
directors at its first meeting last week each year lecturing about
gifted group of graduate stucomputing at the world’s northdents. I will put them up against fall. The first employee of the
ernmost university.
any group any day of the week.” institute, Schneider will split
his time between the institute
—Bill Steele
—Briana Collins ’03 and Cornell. The institute will
Cornell News Service be housed in a renovated buildFifty-nine different groups competed in phase one, and only
15 were selected to move on to
phase two. Both of Kornegay’s
teams made the cut, placing
third, for the concept of a 10
gigabytes per second integrated
optical transceiver, and fourth,
for the idea of a fully integrated,
high-efficiency power amplifier
for wireless communication (see
story, p. 2).
Phase two of the competition will begin in May,
when the groups can actually
create their chips, test them,
write their reports and send
them to the judges. While the
$25,000 reward is definitely a
F
Calculated Kindness
Hundreds of people rely on the compassion of a stranger to answer their most important financial questions.
32 Spring 2003
increased over the years, he thinks, for two reasons. One is
people see this self-described “neutral guy sitting in St. Louis
in front of a computer screen giving my best ideas without
trying to take their money” as a calm, impartial voice in a sea
of competing commercial interests. And they like the humorous commentary and thought-provoking links he’s added to
his web pages—like the link to Habitat for Humanity that
Chou offers at the end of his affordable house calculator.
“Buying more isn’t always better,” Chou explains. “Every
once in awhile you need to put these things in perspective.”
Putting things into perspective is a phrase he uses often
since his years at Cornell. Chou recalls the mid-80s as a time
when students were gearing up for a high tech bonanza to
come, when huge job offerings were the most important
thing. At the same time it was a uniquely open environment
where finding “every religious idea known to mankind” compelled him to think hard about his future.
“That’s what college should be: more than just getting a
4.0, it should be a time for deciding what you want to do with
your life,” says Chou, who concluded that sharing his talents
joyfully was the way to go. Kindness plays a central role, too.
For that reason he ends his website with this quote from
Theodore Isaac Rubin, M.D.: “Kindness is more important
than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of
wisdom.”
“Working as I have in academic and research settings
most of my career, it’s easy to begin to think that wisdom is
the most important thing,” says Chou. “But it’s not just about
knowing; it’s how you acquire and use your knowledge that
counts.”
—Metta Winter
RORY ROBERTS/ WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
S
aturday mornings while David and Mary
Chou watch much-loved cartoons, their
dad is poised in front of a different kind
of screen. In his case it’s the Nokia multimedia monitor for his no-name PC clone. Like
his five- and eleven-year-old offspring, Chou can
hardly wait to see what comes next.
But Hugh Chou ’85 EE, programmer extraordinaire, isn’t playing video games. He’s answering
e-mails. From strangers. Twenty to thirty anxious
folk, much like you and me, whose messages often
open with: “I know I have nothing to lose by sending you an e-mail.” Then they end up posing problems they’ve no idea how to solve. Hugh does.
“Unless you take accounting courses, there’s
no place in school where people are taught the
calculations necessary to answer their personal
finance questions,” says Chou, who has written
more than 50 online calculators to subdue sleepdepriving financial dilemmas (How much house
can I afford? What do I have to sock away to retire?) and satisfy whimsical musings (What could I save by packing a $1.00
lunch instead of buying a $6.00 one?) alike.
Some solutions require no more than a minor tinkering with calculators he devised long ago. Chou’s been giving
them away on the Internet for eight years. (He requests that
people who download his calculators donate to his favorite
charities.) Others—such as helping a young man decide
whether he’d be better off in the long run using granny’s
inheritance to pay off the mortgage rather than investing
it—require writing an entirely new one. You can find the lot
on www.hughchou.org/calc/. (For highly individualized questions, Chou knocks out a quick made-to-measure program in
a matter of minutes when he can.)
All of his calculators aim to capture the bigger picture.
Most people, he’s found, don’t look beyond the monthly
amount they’d save if, say, they refinanced their house. Yet
long term iteration is one of the things computer programs
can do best.
“I can write a program that can quickly chug through 50
different options a month for over 40 years,” says Chou. “So
in a matter of minutes I give people a 40-year picture of the
consequences of their choices.”
And thereby save them a bundle. Thirty thousand dollars
in mortgage interest isn’t uncommon. Offering a service with
such quantifiable, real-life consequences is an ideal balance
to Chou’s day job. As a systems administrator, he helps the
many faculty, staff, and students in the Earth and Planetary
Sciences Department at Washington University conduct
research and teach classes in such topics as geochemistry,
seismology, and planetary geophysics, areas that most people
do not find relevant in their daily lives. Chou’s following has
Congratulations,
Class of 2003!
Good Luck, grads, and remember
—you’re only a click away!
When you leave the Hill, you’re still only one click away
from news, views, and current events on the Engineering
Quad at www.engineering.cornell.edu. Read the latest in
engineering news and research, check out the view from
the Duffield web cam, look up an address for a faculty
member, or visit the home page for a look at the current
web feature. Connect with staff members or browse
issues of Cornell Engineering Magazine. It’s all there on
your desktop. You can visit online anytime—whatever the
weather!
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