Convergence Issue 18

1SUMMER 2014 | UCSBConverg

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Powerful imaging sheds light on the subtle but debilitating neuron damage accompanying traumatic brain injury

A DelicateMystery

2 Convergence

Briefs

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Drought AdaptationsEcological resilience when the global dry and hot trend hits home

Live Feed into the BodyGame-changing device monitors a patient’s drug metabolism in real time

In Cryptography We TrustScientists explore the future of bitcoin and computer security

ConvergenceThe Magazine of Engineering and the Sciences at UC Santa BarbaraIssue Eighteen, Summer 2014convergence.ucsb.edu

Editor-in-Chief: Melissa Van De WerfhorstCreative Director: Peter AllenDesign & Layout: Ian BarinWriters: Julie Cohen, K.M. Kelchner, Sonia Fernandez, Shelly Leachman, Rachelle OldmixonArtwork & Photography: Peter Allen, Ian Barin, Spencer Bruttig, Sonia Fernandez, Melissa Van De Werfhorst

Editorial Board: Rod Alferness, Dean, College of Engineering; Pierre Wiltzius, Dean, Division of Mathematical, Life and Physical Sciences, College of Letters and Science; Frank Doyle, Associate Dean of Research, College of Engineering

Special Thanks: Allena Baker, George Foulsham, UCSB Office of Public Affairs

Cellular Cascade of ColorSquid cells use a dance of water and proteins to control color change

The Birds and the BeesPhysicists demonstrate the science of flocking and swarming

Convergence

3SUMMER 2014 | UCSB

Features

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Q & A: Luke TheogarajanConvergence interviews electrical engineering professor Luke Theogarajan about bionic eyeballs and stealthy drug delivery

Goodbye to DroopSolid-state lighting researchers elucidate the cause of LED efficiency droop, opening doors to the LED lighting revolution

The Free Electron MovementPlasmonics researchers are using nanostructures to harness ultraviolet and infrared light to power new technology

The Delicate Mystery of Brain TraumaPowerful imaging sheds light on the subtle but debilitating neuron damage that leads to traumatic brain injury

Cover ImageArtwork by Peter AllenConcept illustration of research by psychological and brain sciences doctoral student Matt Cieslak, who reconstructs white matter connections in the brain using diffusion spectrum MRI. Page 30

Living Story of Social GraphsGeometry could be the key to visualize and mine massive amounts of real time data from social media networks

An Entrepreneurial EducationUCSB’s Technology Management Program prepares students for the business of technology through education and good old-fashioned competition

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4 Convergence

On the following page of this issue of Convergence magazine,

there is a quote by one of our research leaders on campus, Professor

Craig Hawker. When asked in a discussion, “Why do you think

UC Santa Barbara’s research partners renew their investments

year after year?” he replied: “Sometimes it is the question that’s

the most important aspect of a research project.”

We asked him to elaborate. “Having that question defined is

absolutely critical and worth its weight in gold. To frame the prob-

lem in the best possible way and, in a way, working backward from

the product while engaging our research partners,” said Hawker.

“That’s where we at UCSB excel as researchers.”

In the past year, engineering and the sciences has celebrated

the renewal of several successful interdisciplinary partnerships,

and the results speak for themselves. Renewing their $6 million

investment for an additional four years, the Mitsubishi Chemical

Center for Advanced Materials at UCSB has produced more than

100 patent applications, with an average patent cost that is two-

thirds that of a technology company. The relationship is both

effective and beneficial for the students, post-docs and faculty

engaged in groundbreaking materials research.

At the start of 2014, an announcement was made by President

Obama and the US Department of Energy that UCSB research-

ers, including professor Umesh Mishra, are partners in the Next

Generation Power Electronics Manufacturing Innovation Institute,

a $140 million investment in 25 partners with the goal of boosting

research in wide bandgap semiconductor-based power electronics.

This past winter, the US Army Research Office renewed their

$48 million investment with the UCSB Institute for Collaborative

Biotechnologies, extending a decade of highly successful, unclas-

sified basic research. Deemed “20 years ahead of their time,” ICB

researchers examine complex biological systems and engineer

synthetic materials inspired by natural models. The partnership

has produced more than 500 publications and supported hundreds

of graduate students.

What does it mean for a university dedicated to both research

and academics? We think it means opportunity – for all our stu-

dents, faculty, and researchers alike. Science and engineering

breatkthroughs at UCSB are made possible by our investors and

partners. Great things are happening the lab, the field, and the

classroom every day by the people who have chosen to study at

UCSB because of our dedication to opportunity.

Letter from the Top

◀ ROD ALFERNESSDean of the College of Engineering

◀ PIERRE WILTZIUSDean of Science, College of Letters & Science

5SUMMER 2014 | UCSB

6 Convergence

Briefs

Live Feed into the Bodyby Sonia Fernandez

Doctors and pharmaceutical companies can

generally determine reasonable drug doses

for most patients through testing and trials.

However, the efficacy of a treatment relies on

maintaining therapeutic levels of the drug in

the body, a feat not easily accomplished.

“Current dosing regimens are really quite

primitive,” said Plaxco, professor of chemistry

and of biomolecular science and engineering

at UC Santa Barbara. They rely on a patient’s

age or weight and are unable to account for

specific responses over time. Drug levels may

be influenced by patients’ metabolisms, foods

they eat or other drugs. When coupled with the

primitive state of current dosing algorithms,

this variability can become dangerous for drugs

with narrow therapeutic ranges.

However, a device developed by UCSB

researchers Tom Soh and Scott Ferguson from

the Department of Chemical Engineering;

Plaxco; and Tod Kippin from the Department

of Psychological & Brain Sciences, could take

the guesswork out of drug dosing and allow

physicians to individually tailor prescriptions.

Called MEDIC (Microfluidic Electrochemical

Detector for In vivo Continuous monitoring),

the palm-top instrument can determine — con-

tinuously and in real time — concentrations

of specific molecules in tiny amounts of whole

blood.

MEDIC is a microfluidic chamber lined

with gold electrodes from which artificial DNA

strands called aptamers — extend. When target

molecule comes in contact with a drug-recog-

nizing aptamer, the strand wraps around it,

delivering electrons from its tip to the electrode

at the aptamer’s base. The tiny jolt of current

signals the presence of the molecule.

“The device worked incredibly well,” said

Kippin, whose lab tested MEDIC. The test

results were “remarkable,” he said, considering

the complexity of the samples tested. “The mea-

surements were highly sensitive to doses that are

clinically relevant and could be maintained for

several hours,” Kippin continued. “Further, we

demonstrated exquisite selectivity and flexibility

in that the device is only sensitive to the target

even when administered a cocktail of drugs.”

“For the first time, we can see how the body

processes specific molecules,” said Ferguson.

MEDIC is still in early clinical stages. But it

is opening doors of opportunity that Soh can

already see. In the short term, the device can

not only provide the kind of data necessary for

critical advances in drug therapy, he said, but

also help new drugs clear rigorous clinical trials,

thanks to data that will enable individual dosage

adjustments. More sophisticated diagnostics are

possible with sensors that can target disease

indicating molecules. Several types of sensors

can be stacked for multiple target monitoring.

The continuous feedback loop would prove

invaluable for diseases that could use contin-

uous, automatic infusions of drugs, such as

diabetes or cancer.

“In the long term, we could use this feedback

to control broken biological systems,” Soh said.

Concept illustration of MEDIC’s microfluidic chamber. ▶

7SUMMER 2014 | UCSB

Drought Adaptations by Shelly Leachman

California being in the clutches of drought is

nothing new. There were droughts in prehistoric

times, so-called “megadroughts” that strangled

the state some 1,000 years ago, and more recent

extreme dry periods in the late ’70s and early ’90s.

This time around, however, California has

more than 38 million residents and is grappling

with a troubling trend that’s in play around the

world: global warming.

“It’s not just that there is low precipitation

but low precipitation in a warming climate,” said

Frank Davis, director of the UC Santa Barbara-

based National Center for Ecological Analysis

and Synthesis. “The combination of warm and

dry has a lot of ecological impactions. It puts

greater physiological stress on, for example,

forest trees. Also, when it’s dry and warm, we

start to see really strong impacts on fresh-water

systems, like those that spawn salmon. Being

really dry plus warm is a one-two punch.”

And it’s not just California, or the western

U.S. In fact, it’s not just North America. Parts of

South America, South Africa and Australia are

all in the midst of droughts of their own, seeing

essential crops decimated, pastures drying up

and livestock dying.

“The issue has been raised: Could this be

linked to global warming?” said Leila Carvalho,

an associate professor of geography and co-prin-

cipal investigator of UCSB’s Climate Variations

and Change research group. “You can’t say one

event is related to global warming; that doesn’t

make sense. What does make sense is to say that

because the planet is warming, we are seeing

more conditions for this type of event to occur.

And these events may become more frequent.”

As stores of water in the West are reduced

— whether by usage in drought, evapotranspi-

ration in heat or both — warming temperatures

also see the snowpack on the wane. The two

phenomena together could put extreme strain

on water supplies, which holds implications for

ecosystems, industries and people alike.

Even at their most severe, the droughts of

decades and centuries past did not occur in

tandem with today’s degree of temperature

change or have to contend with the demands

of a population that in California alone now

numbers above 38 million residents. As needs

for water grow ever greater, so too do the poten-

tial threats to its supply.

“This is something that we just have to con-

front increasingly,” said Davis, who is also a

professor of ecology and conservation plan-

ning at UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental

Science & Management. “I’m not ready to say it’s

the new normal, but I am ready to say we really

need to be thinking about risk management

— and we need to do so in an aggressive and

systematic way in order to build more resilience

into all these systems.”

8 Convergence

The Birds and the Beesby Julie Cohen

Birds flock. Bees swarm. These are just two of the

many remarkable examples of collective behav-

ior found in nature. Both were explored at UC

Santa Barbara’s Kavli Institute for Theoretical

Physics (KITP) in “The Physics of Flocking:

From Cells to Crowds,” a one-

day workshop for high school

science educators.

Physicists have been able to

capture flocking behavior by

modeling birds as tiny flying

magnetic spins that align with

their neighbors according to

simple rules. Thanks to these

successes, flocking has become

a paradigm for the behavior of

living and non-living systems

where a large number of indi-

vidually driven units exhibit

coherent organization at larger

scales.

Such systems include sus-

pensions of swimming bacteria,

layers of migrating cells, long

biopolymers driven by proteins

in the cell cytoskeleton and collections of syn-

thetic microswimmers. Physicists, biologists

and mathematicians are using statistical physics

to model the complex behavior of these varied

systems and to identify unifying principles.

The KITP workshop introduced teachers to

the rapidly developing field of active matter.

Speakers used examples of dynamic organiza-

tion at various scales — from the coordinated

patterns of behavior of groups of animals to the

complex hierarchical structures found inside

cells.

“Instead of thinking of atoms and molecules,

think about units that are able to generate their

own motion, such as bacteria,” said conference

coordinator Cristina Marchetti, the William

R. Kenan Professor of Physics at Syracuse

University. “If you have a very dense suspension

of bacteria swimming in fluid, they can exhibit

all kinds of collective behavior.”

Andrew Bernoff, mathematics department

chair at Harvey Mudd College, talked about

the collective behavior of insects such as aphids

and locusts. He also led a hands-on demonstra-

tion of collective animal movement, getting two

audience groups to emulate a milling pattern

used by both fish and ants.

Jeffrey Guasto, assistant professor of mechan-

ical engineering at Tufts University, revealed

how marine bacteria with single tails are able

to change the direction of their

movement by buckling the hook

that attaches the tail to the body.

He also demonstrated how the

shapes of waves moving along

sperm tails allow those cells to

turn while swimming.

Xavier Trepat, a group

leader at the Institute for

Bioengineering of Catalonia in

Barcelona, Spain, demonstrated

how his work is beginning to

inform scientists’ understanding

of important biological func-

tions, such as wound healing,

morphogenesis and collective

cell invasion in cancer.

“We want to expose physics

or science teachers to physicists

on the cutting edge of research,”

says Greg Huber, deputy director of KITP and

a professor in UCSB’s Department of Physics.

“We want to give them an opportunity to learn

from top physics researchers in an intense envi-

ronment, and that’s what we provide in this

one-day workshop.”

Briefs

9SUMMER 2014 | UCSB

Cellular Cascade of Colorby Julie Cohen

Two years ago, an interdisciplinary team from UC Santa Barbara discovered the mechanism by which a neurotransmitter dramatically changes color in the common market squid (Doryteuthis opalescens). That neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, sets in motion a cascade of events that culminate in the addition of phosphate groups to a family of unique proteins called reflectins. This process allows the proteins to condense, driving the animal’s color-changing process.

Now the researchers have delved deeper to

uncover the mechanism responsible for the

dramatic changes in color used by such crea-

tures as squids and octopuses. The latest

research shows that specialized cells

in the squid skin called iridocytes

contain deep pleats or invaginations of the cell

membrane extending deep into the body of the

cell. This creates layers or lamellae that operate

as a tunable Bragg reflector. Bragg reflectors are

named after the British father and son team

who more than a century ago discovered how

periodic structures reflect light in a very regular

and predicable manner.

The researchers created antibodies to bind

specifically to the reflectin proteins, which

revealed that the reflectins are located exclu-

sively inside the lamellae formed by the folds

in the cell membrane. They showed that the

cascade of events culminating in the condensa-

tion of the reflectins causes the osmotic pressure

inside the lamellae to change drastically due

to the expulsion of water, which shrinks and

dehydrates the lamellae and reduces their thick-

ness and spacing. The movement of water was

demonstrated directly using deuterium-labeled

heavy water.

When the acetylcholine neurotransmitter

is washed away and the cell can recover, the

lamellae imbibe water, rehydrating and allowing

them to swell to their original thickness. This

reversible dehydration and rehydration, shrink-

ing and swelling, changes the thickness and

spacing, which, in turn, changes the wavelength

of the light that is reflected, thus “tuning” the

color change over the entire visible spectrum.

“Initially, before the proteins are consoli-

dated, the refractive index — you can think of it

as the density — inside the lamellae and outside,

which is really the outside water environment,

is the same,” said Daniel E. Morse, a professor

in UCSB’s Department of Molecular, Cellular

and Developmental Biology and director of the

campus’s Marine Biotechnology

Center/Marine Science

“There’s no optical difference so there’s no

reflection. But when the proteins consoli-

date, this increases the refractive index so the

contrast between the inside and outside sud-

denly increases, causing the stack of lamellae

to become reflective, while at the same time

they dehydrate and shrink, which causes color

changes. The animal can control the extent to

which this happens — it can pick the color —

and it’s also reversible. The precision of this

tuning by regulating the nanoscale dimensions

of the lamellae is amazing.”

Institute.

10 Convergence

Briefs

In Cryptography We Trustby Shelly Leachman

With implications for computer security, busi-

ness, the economy and our culture, predicting

the future of bitcoin, the so-called “crypto-cur-

rency,” is practically a cottage industry all its

own. Pervasive media coverage and public

debates about its worth (both literally and fig-

uratively) have become de rigueur for today’s

prevailing digital tender, which is alternately

characterized as a revolutionary innovation on

par with the Internet or a flash in the pan that

can’t possibly survive.

“You can find other algorithms, different

versions that work on the same mathemat-

ical principles as bitcoin,” said Ben Zhao, an

associate professor of computer science at

UCSB. “Bitcoin is unique in that it was the first

to prove it could be done. It’s likely going to be

the first to be regulated and widely accepted

— and it will probably dominate the market.

“Bitcoin has a lot of technological benefits

that fundamentally change how people use

money, and that’s what’s interesting to me,”

Zhao added. “It is a potentially world-changing

disruptive technology.

Based and built on cryptography, bitcoin is

as troubling as it is intriguing. Can it survive

long-term in the face of cyberattacks and rap-

idly changing technology?

Only time will tell, assert cryptographers

Huijia “Rachel” Lin and Stefano Tessaro,

assistant professors of computer science and

founding faculty of the UCSB’s inaugural cryp-

tography research group.

“Bitcoin is a very intriguing idea in the sense

that cryptography is trying to replace trust,” said

Lin. “It is using mathematics to replace trust,

which is kind of a radical idea, but it makes

sense from a high level. A bank is not a magic

fortress. It also uses databases, has doors, is

connected with the Internet.”

“If there were a metric to compare it to the

banking system, I think bitcoin would win,”

added Tessaro. “I suspect it’s probably easier to

break into the local bank. The general problem

with electronic cash is making sure that you

don’t spend the same money twice. And the

Bitcoin network is designed to prevent that.”

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11SUMMER 2014 | UCSB

Julie Cohen has written for decades about science, engineering,

technology and medicine for a variety of international

publications and websites from the perspective of journalism

and public relations. This experience helped her land her

dream job as science writer for UCSB’s Office of Public Affairs

and Communications.

Sonia Fernandez is a writer who has written for several newspapers, magazines

and websites for the last decade on a wide range of topics,

from government issues, water politics, business and medicine

to arts, history, travel and culture. Science and technology are

among her favorites.

K. M. Kelchner received her PhD from UCSB’s Electrical and Computer

Engineering Department in 2012 and worked as a

postdoctoral researcher in the UCSB Materials Department

until 2013 investigating growth of nonpolar GaN-based

materials. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon where she

works in the semiconductor industry.

@KK_PhD

Shelly Leachman is a senior writer in UCSB’s Office of Public Affairs &

Communications. She is an award-winning former

newspaper journalist who has covered education, crime,

culture, social issues, media and technology and more.

Rachelle Oldmixon is a self-professed science nerd who often wonders why

she had to choose just one area of science to study. With

her MA from UCSB’s own Psychological & Brain Sciences,

Rachelle has begun a career in science communications.

She is currently working as a science co-host on Al Jazeera

America’s TechKNOW.

@RachelleIsHere

Melissa Van De Werfhorst is the Marketing Manager for UCSB College of Engineering

and the editor of Convergence magazine. She has an

education in and a strong affinity for science,

both real and fictional.

The University of California, in accordance with applicable Federal and State law and University policy, does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender, gender expression, gender identity, pregnancy, physical or mental disability, medical condition (cancer relatead or genetic characteristics), ancestry, marital status, age, sexual orientation, citizenship, or ser-vice in the uniformed service. The University also prohibits sexual harassment. This nondiscrimination policy covers admission, access, and treatment in University programs and activities. Inquiries

regarding the University’s student-related nondiscrimination policies may be directed to the Office of Equal Opportunity & Sexual Harassment/Title IX Compliance, Telephone: (805) 893-2701.

About our ContributorsConnect with UCSB College of Engineering and Division of Mathematics, Life and Physical Sciences on social media

@ucsbengineering @ucsbnews

Visit The UCSB Current at news.ucsb.edu for daily headline news in science, engineering, and technology at UC Santa Barbara

12 Convergence

Before joining the faculty at UC Santa

Barbara’s College of Engineering, Luke

Theogarajan lent his circuit designing

expertise to Intel for five years as part of the

Pentium 4 design team. An electrical engi-

neer by training, Theogarajan has a Ph.D. in

electrical engineering and computer science

from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

However, his talents aren’t limited to the

world of computers. Theogarajan’s research

interests have applications in fields as diverse

as biomedicine and energy efficiency, thanks

to collaborations with various researchers on

campus. His work has earned him four pat-

ents and prestigious recognition, including

the 2010 NIH New Innovator Award and a

2011 NSF Career Award.

Theogarajan, who heads the Biomimetic

and Nanosystems Group, is a found-

ing faculty member for UCSB’s Center

for Bioengineering, and designed the

undergraduate curriculum for a new

Bioengineering emphasis for College of

Creative Studies biology majors. He has also

received a Northrup Grumman Excellence

in Teaching Award in 2011 and was named

outstanding faculty member in the electri-

cal engineering department for four years

straight.

Convergence interviewed Theogarajan

about his work and the many applications

that have come from it.

Q&Awith Professor

Luke TheogarajanInterview by Sonia Fernandez


C: What are the main areas of research in

which you’re concentrating right now?

LT: I can broadly classify my work in two areas.

One is in biomedical engineering, and the other

one is in high-speed communications, which

actually grew out of some research I was doing

in biomedical engineering, but fundamentally,

neural interfaces is the one thing that I’ve ded-

icated my life to.

C: You started your work with neural inter-

faces before you came to UCSB; tell us what

kind of work you’ve done.

As a graduate student at MIT, the main work I

did there was to develop an electrical implant

that goes inside the eye and stimulates the retina,

eventually sending information to the brain.

In the middle of my Ph.D., I changed direc-

tion. I realized that if a visual prosthesis of any

significance is going to be developed at some

point there has to be a different interface to the

nervous system. It cannot be electrical, because

the power required for the distance the cur-

rent needed to travel would generate too much

heat eventually leading to cell death. Current

implants have limited number of electrodes to

around 64-100, which pales in comparison to

the 140 million photoreceptors in the eye. So

if you are using a limited number of electrodes

then it is imperative that you know the precise

relationship between electrical stimulation and

the neural code sent to the brain, which has not

been deciphered yet.

What we’ve been trying to concentrate on

is a chemical interface, because if you deliver

a sufficient amount of potassium ions local to

the neuron, it will actually make the neuron fire,

because it upsets the chemical balance. So the

question then was: How do you actually make a

device that can uptake potassium from the body

and release it on command? You have to make

a system that almost mimics a real living cell.

What is fundamentally needed for a chemical

prosthesis is a scaffold by which you can mimic

neurons. You want to make artificial channels

and membranes. We developed a system where

we take a very thin inorganic membrane about

30 nanometers thick and drilled very tiny

holes using a focused electron beam, creating

a structural ion channel scaffold. Once we had

the structural motif, we needed to enable the

functionality of recognition. What we’re doing

now is to attach a recognition molecule in the

interior of the pore so it selectively moves things

across.

14 Convergence

C: Your research into biomimetic materials

has had other applications as well.

Originally, when I was doing my Ph.D, I had to

figure out a way to make a synthetic molecule

that behaved like a lipid, so I made a polymer

system based on previous research that was

done by others, and I modified it to the purposes

that I needed. That ended up having interest-

ing properties that are useful for drug delivery.

We just published a paper about making very

modular blocks using “click” chemistry, which

is a popular way of coupling polymers together.

We are also studying how these polymers

interact with the innate immune system.

Anytime a drug delivery system is introduced

into your body, the first thing your body’s going

to do is recognize whatever you put in and take

it out of circulation. You have to impart a stealth

property to anything you do in drug delivery so

it avoids detection. Using a complement activa-

tion assay, we proved that yes, if you use these

materials, you’re going to get stealth behavior,

provided you don’t use certain types of copper

coupling chemistry. Craig Hawker [UCSB pro-

fessor of materials and chemistry] was a real

source of inspiration. I was completely brought

up in a different field; I’m a formally trained

circuit designer.

The ion channel work can also be applied to

the field of single molecule detection, especially

DNA sequencing. We have married the world

of electronics (i.e. CMOS) with the nanopore

(a tiny hole in an insulating membrane) and by

monitoring the ion current flowing through this

membrane one can perform single molecule

detection. We try to thread the DNA through

these holes and look at the amount of current

that they can block. You can also tell other char-

acteristics like protein folding and misfolded

Alzheimer’s proteins using the same technique.

One key issue in these detection platforms

is the baseline background current can dwarf

the change in ionic current due to the biomol-

ecule. Because we have a strong expertise in

electronics, we built a new electronic platform

that can distinguish very small changes on very

large backgrounds.

Finally, if a useful system is to be designed,

a way of coupling the sensor, the electronics

and the microfluidics are necessary. Each of

these domains operate in a different length

scale: the nanoscale, microscale and macro-

scale, respectively. However, if you make an

electronic chip larger just for interfacing the

cost goes up exponentially and the yield drops

dramatically. So to circumvent this we take a

very small chip and make it look very large at

a reduced cost, enabling the coupling to the

microfluidics. The same technology can be used

for integrating electronics and photonics, which

is how I started working with John Bowers, who

is known around the world for his expertise in

optics and photonics.

C: Your work in biotechnology actually bene-

fitted John Bowers’ work in energy efficiency?

Tell us more about that.

Yes, I realized that if you use a photonic wafer

rather than a dummy silicon wafer like we

did with our bio-related work, then very inti-

mate connections can be made between the

photonics and electronics. This enables very

short electrical interconnects and thus lowers

the power of the system, which is essential for

energy efficient communications. We also have

a grant with DARPA on electronic/photonic

integration to implement advanced communi-

cation systems using electronics coupled with

photonics. John has been a great mentor to me,

he’s a fantastic guy.

C: You mentioned that you were essentially

dedicated to creating neural interfaces. Aside

from the visual prosthesis work and bio-

mimetic cell membrane, what else are you

working on?

We’re also working neural recording arrays for

brain implants, to help paraplegics or people

Q&A with Professor Luke Theogarajan


with neurological damage. For example if the

connection between the brain and motor func-

tion is damaged one can record from the brain

and then stimulate the muscle or control a

robotic arm, partially replacing lost function.

One of the big problems in this area is that

these implants are made of silicon or stainless

steel. However, the modulus of the electrode is

so stiff, because it has to withstand the pressure

of implantation, that micro shearing happens on

the brain, so it develops inflammation. One of

the things we’re trying to do is make some arrays

that do not have this shearing, using materials

that are soft and flexible. We have developed a

flexible polymer array with soft electrodes, and

are starting a collaboration with the Department

of Bioengineering at UC San Diego to test them.

The last question we ask is: how do you mimic

brain function? How do you make circuits

behave like a brain? How do you make them

learn? We have a multiuniversity collaboration

(MURI), funded by the Air Force headed by Tim

Cheng and Dimitri Strukov, who is an expert

in memristor technology (memory resistor – a

resistor that remembers). We want to use the

memristor as a learning synapse and use that

synapse to create artificial circuits that behave

like neural system and does tasks of recognition.

mimetic.ece.ucsb.edu

16 Convergence


UCSB engineering researchers turn to geometry in their quest to map social networking data in real time

By Sonia Fernandez

Living Story of Social Graphs

17

From flash mobs at the local mall to trending

activist hashtags, social networks have quickly

integrated themselves into modern human life

and become a tool for instantaneous global

communication. Every day, an estimated 700

million people (out of billions of registered

users) worldwide are weighing in on the top

social networking sites, swaying others, making

decisions and forming relationships in a con-

stant torrent of information.

While it’s true that we can analyze the com-

plexity of networks, given time, the deluge

of data is too massive, too complex and too

time-consuming for current technology to sort

in real time.

Which is why UC Santa Barbara professors

of computer science Ben Zhao, Subhash Suri

and Heather Zheng, along with electrical and

computer engineering professor Upamanyu

Madhow, have teamed up for an ambitious proj-

ect that not only aims to further understand

social networks but also creates a means for

analyzing them as they happen. It will provide a

deeper comprehension of an increasingly “real”

virtual world, as well as ways to monitor or pre-

vent viral outbreaks, both in the real world and

online, or track systems like transportation or

biological protein networks.

Their project, titled Social Network Analysis:

Geometry, Dynamics and Inference for Very

Large Data Sets (SNAG-IT), was awarded a

$6.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of

Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects

Agency (DARPA). SNAG-IT’s obvious chal-

lenge – considering the sheer size of the network

and the enormous amount of information – is

unraveling data in real time,.

To help Zhao and colleagues in this task, they

have partnered with information technology

giant Hewlett-Packard, the project’s primary

contractor, which is researching and building

scalable graph processing systems.

18 Convergence

“When you look at Facebook, or LinkedIn or

Twitter, you’re talking about networks of more

than a billion people,” said Zhao, who leads the

four-year project. Traditional algorithms devel-

oped and proved near-optimal decades ago no

longer apply, he said. Developed for smaller sets

of data, current algorithms scale poorly when

the amount of data skyrockets.

To compound the problem, social networks

are based on constantly changing relationships,

which affects what kind and how much profile

information can be seen by others. Meanwhile,

some people gain popularity, others lose clout,

and events have immediate impact on topics of

cyberspace discussions and real-life decisions.

For example, a LinkedIn profile page could

tip a company toward hiring a certain individual

if his or her list of connections was popu-

lated with influential people in the industry.

Conversely, an offhand comment, a change

of profile picture, even a “like” could lose a

user friends, connections or followers — and

therefore influence in the social network, and

opportunities in real life.

The power of geometry

To understand this modern kind of dataset,

the researchers are using an ancient system:

geometry.

“Geometry is a powerful way of visualizing

complex relationships,” said Suri, who special-

izes in computational geometry.

User profiles can be plotted as points —

nodes — on a coordinate space, with distance

and dimension representing relationships, for

instance. Other information deemed relevant

can also dictate the node’s positioning or inter-

action with other nodes around it.

The group is also interested in teasing out

data that is not explicitly mentioned from the

flow of information: inferred associations from

professional affiliations or shared skill sets, for

instance, or implicit relationships from timing

of events — not just the presence of a connec-

tion, but also its quality.

“Geometry is a powerful way of visualizing complex relationships.” - Subhash Suri

“We seek to develop a systematic framework

for teasing out information from spatiotem-

poral patterns of activity on social networks,”

Madhow said. “As one example, by correlat-

ing the timing and volume of activity with the

timing of a class of external events, for exam-

ple baseball games, it may be feasible to make

inferences about a user’s interests, such as, is

he or she a baseball fan? Furthermore, such

inferences can be strengthened and extended by

examining the patterns of activities for groups

of linked users. As another example, by look-

ing at the spatiotemporal spread of a rumor,

can one make systematic statistical inferences

about its source?”

But dealing with massive — and rapidly

growing — amounts of sometimes seemingly

disparate information is no small feat, and

current technology does not have the power

necessary to analyze such vast amounts of data

at a meaningful speed. Even now, queries for

profiles on current social media websites like

LinkedIn, for instance, return precomputed,

sometimes days-old information, which may

or may not reflect up-to-the-moment devel-

opments, the scientists say.

As an example, Suri said, take GPS naviga-

tion systems, with main roads and side roads all

plotted out in relationship to the driver’s coor-

dinates, and measurements taken and relayed

continuously via satellite as directions are sent

to the driver while he moves from one location

to the next.

“Road networks are large graphs that people

are just now getting comfortable with in terms

of real-time response,” he said.

But road information relayed via GPS is

minuscule and simple compared to the quan-

tities that flow through networks like Facebook

18


and LinkedIn, with profile views, public and

private interactions, status updates, evolving

relationships, responses to external events,

timing of communication and constant changes

over time.

“Current systems simply limit the power of

the queries you can execute. LinkedIn for exam-

ple does not let you query more than three hops

away from yourself,” Zhao said. “Others simply

limit functionality. For example, you cannot yet

search for all users on Facebook while sorting

by social distance away from you. Enabling that

would significantly improve your chances of

finding friends you already know, especially

those with common names.”

Breaking down complex data structures

Enter modeling and algorithms, meant to

efficiently and elegantly describe and approxi-

mate behaviors; reveal elements like influential

thought leaders and communities; and poten-

tially even predict events, whether it’s the next

Internet meme or the next Arab Spring.

At the same time, these complex data

structures have to be condensed into as small

a dimensional space as possible to allow for

rapid computations while sacrificing the least

amount of accuracy.

“We are going to have errors,” Zhao said,

explaining that capturing a data structure with

up to 100 dimensions or more — depending on

how comprehensive the social network is trying

to be with its users — into a small number of

dimensions that can be visualized in a graph

“fundamentally just cannot be done perfectly.”

Some nodes in the data may just be out of place,

he said.

The intensity of information will also make

it more difficult for people to lie about their

cyberselves, Zhao said, because even if a person

changes his or her information in one sense, the

other dimensions, relationships and inferences

drawn from those associations still exist.

“In a practical sense, it’s very difficult to

mislead the data in a meaningful way,” he

said. “Unless you move your location, change

your job and change your circle of friends, that

closeness with certain people or things will still

remain.”

To evaluate and validate these algorithms

and models, the group will be using preexist-

ing datasets from previous projects, the largest

of which is a 40 million-node graph of ano-

nymized user profiles from a Chinese online

network.

“It becomes a mathematical problem,” said

Zhao, who specializes in modeling and mining

massive graphs as well as analysis of social net-

works and Internet communities.

It also becomes a laborious process in which

they take a “brute force” approach to get to the

ground truth: Run lengthy computations with

the preexisting data and see how close they get

with their algorithms. Computations for even a

small, 20,000-node network can run for weeks.

Ultimately, however, the result will be pow-

erful programs, applications and systems that

can run fast, compute enormous amounts of

data and do it with today’s machines, with all

the physical constraints they face.

“The intensity of information will also make it more difficult for people to lie about their cyberselves.” - Ben Zhao

The research could also lead to uses in other

fields. For instance, the high-speed computing

and real-time capacity could be used to observe

transportation systems and biological protein

interaction networks. The algorithms would

prove useful in the monitoring and possible

prevention of viral outbreaks, both biological

and online.

Such research into the complex dance of

social media networks can provide a founda-

tion from which social scientists might study

a variety of behavior patterns and interactions

in an increasingly “real” virtual world.

19

Once elusive, solar-to-fuel conversion is looking like gold in a UCSB lab. By Sonia Fernandez

THE FREE ELECTRON MOVEMENT


LIGHT: Without it, life would be nothing like it is now.

Modern technology’s ability to generate, manip-

ulate, sense, and convert light has resulted in

man’s capacity to do everything from stay up

past sundown to communicate across vast dis-

tances, even to see into the distant past of the

universe or deep into our bodies.

At UC Santa Barbara, researchers continue

to find novel ways of using light — in both

the visible and invisible spectra — to address

man’s growing need for energy and hunger for

information. Through the combination of plas-

monics and nanotechnology, researchers have

been able to capture a storable form of energy

from visible and invisible parts of the spectrum.

Manipulating this electromagnetic energy could

allow researchers to develop new technology

for power generation and imaging.

A new way of harvesting the sun’s energy

In a little water-filled vial in UC Santa

Barbara chemistry professor Martin Moskovits’

laboratory, a tiny disc may hold the key to our

pressing present and future fuel needs. When

illuminated by the sun, this disc — no bigger

than one’s fingertip — is capable of breaking the

chemical bonds of water, producing hydrogen

and oxygen, thus directly storing sunlight as

usable fuel.

“This pursuit has been growing for more

than 100 years,” said postdoctoral researcher

Syed Mubeen, of the ongoing search for a more

robust and efficient way to harvest solar energy

and turn it into fuel. Unlike solar-to-electricity

applications, where conventional photovolta-

ics have made great strides in efficiency and

affordability in the decades since their inception,

developing a technology for sustainable solar-

to-fuel conversion processes has been elusive,

until now.

“Such devices have been made by many

researchers in the past, using conventional

semiconductor materials,” said Mubeen. “The

problem is, when highly efficient semiconduc-

tors, such as silicon or gallium arsenide, are in

an aqueous environment, they photocorrode,

and stop working after a few minutes.”

There have been some inroads made in the

solar-to-fuel quest using semiconductors based

on metal oxides, like titanium, for instance.

These semiconductors don’t fail as readily the

silicon-based types, but the tradeoff is that they

absorb only the ultraviolet portion of sunlight —

about four percent of the spectrum — so their

efficiencies are highly limited. Meanwhile, the

search for a viable means of converting the Sun’s

energy into fuel intensifies, as concerns over

the environmental drawbacks of using fossil

fuel mount.

Enter gold, one of the Earth’s most stable and

conductive metals. Resistant to corrosion, it can

be placed in many aqueous solutions without

disintegrating, or otherwise reacting. Enter also

an entirely new application for plasmonics.

“We have been working on plasmonic mate-

rials for many years in other contexts,” said

Moskovits, whose research emphasis is in

physical chemistry and materials. For decades,

plasmons — the collective oscillation of con-

duction electrons — have been studied and used

in applications such as enhanced spectroscopy,

for instance, or to detect molecules adhering

to surfaces. However, it was the specific social

context, which in this instance is the urgent

concern to develop alternative energy resources,

that spurred the group into considering plas-

monics as a source of non-fossil fuel energy.

Harnessing excited electrons

In conventional photovoltaics, sunlight hits

semiconductor material, one side of which is

electron-rich, while the other side is not. The

photon, or light particle, excites the electrons,

causing them to leave their positions, and create

positively-charged “holes.” The result is a cur-

rent of charged particles that can be captured

and delivered for various uses, including power-

ing lightbulbs, charging batteries, or facilitating

chemical reactions.

In the technology developed by Moskovits

and his team, it is not semiconductor materials

that provide the electrons and venue for the

conversion of solar energy, but the surface of

one of the world’s most well known and pre-

cious metals.

“When certain metals are exposed to visible

light, the conduction electrons of the metal can

be caused to oscillate collectively, absorbing a

great deal of the light,” said Moskovits. “This

excitation is called a surface plasmon.”

However, these excited, “hot” electrons

are very short-lived, lasting only about ~ 10

22 Convergence

femtoseconds (~ 1014 seconds) before

they relax.

To get an idea of just how briefly

these electrons stay hot, imagine a

stretch of beach that’s 20 feet long by

20 feet wide by five feet deep. That’s one

second. Ten grains of sand would be

comparable to 10 femtoseconds.

“The question was, can you capture

these electrons effectively and put

them to useful work?” said Mubeen. To

do this, the Moskovits team — which

also included chemistry postdoctoral

researcher Joun Lee, chemical engi-

neering graduate researcher Nirala

Singh, materials engineer Stephen

Kraemer, and chemistry professor

Galen Stucky — turned to the very

tiny world of nanostructures.

“These hot electrons tend to travel

~106 meters per second, which means

they could travel at least a few tenths

of a nanometer before decaying as heat.

The challenge was to come up with an

appropriate nanostructured design so

that before these electrons decay as

heat you use them to do useful chem-

ical reactions,” Mubeen said.

The result is an array of gold

nanorods, each rod measuring 80 to

100 nm in diameter and 500 nm in

length. Ten billion of these nanoreac-

tors can occupy one square centimeter.

Six hundred of them lined up side by

side would span the diameter of an

average (clean) human hair.

Left to right: Syed Mubeen and Joun Lee, postdoctoral researchers in chemistry; Nirala Singh, chemical engineering graduate student; Professor Martin Moskovits.

Plasmonic Technology

▶


Each nanorod is capped with a layer of

crystalline titanium dioxide decorated with

platinum nanoparticles. A cobalt-based oxida-

tion catalyst was deposited on the lower portion

of the array, and the entire arrangement is sub-

merged in water.

When the negatively charged hot electrons,

excited by sunlight, oscillate, they travel up the

rod, through the titanium dioxide layer and are

captured by the platinum nanoparticles, caus-

ing the reaction that splits water molecules.

Meanwhile, the positively charged “holes” left

behind by the excited electrons head down-

ward to the oxidation catalyst to form oxygen.

According to their study, hydrogen production

was clearly observable after two hours, and

the nanorod array proved to be the durable

visible light-harvesting device sought by the

researchers.

“The device operated with no hint of failure

for many weeks,” Moskovits said. Additionally,

according to Mubeen, the use of nanostructures

provides the opportunity to scale up for rela-

tively little cost, even with an expensive metal

like gold.

Quest for efficiency

Currently, efficiencies for this plasmonic

technology are at about .25 percent, which is

comparable to silicon semiconductor-based

photoprocesses almost a century ago. And,

plasmonic technology is still more costly than

that for conventional semiconductors.

“We still have a lot of work to do,” said Mubeen,

ticking off a list of ideal qualities that would

make nanostructured plasmonic materials

competitive with conventional semiconduc-

tors. “We need to test cost-effective plasmonic

metals, so we can make fuels cheap enough.

We need to re-engineer the system design to

be more efficient.”

Copper and silver are being eyed as alterna-

tives to gold, and an efficiency of 5 percent or

more is one of the early targets for the research.

“If the last century of photovoltaic technol-

ogy has shown anything, it is that continued

research will improve on the cost and efficiency

of this new method - and likely in far less time

than it took for the semiconductor-based tech-

nology,” said Moskovits.

“In view of the recentness of the discovery,

we consider .25 percent to be a ‘respectable’

efficiency,” he said. “More importantly, we can

imagine achievable strategies for improving the

efficiencies radically.”

Catching the (invisible) wave

Meanwhile, in another lab on the UCSB

campus, researchers Hong Lu, Art Gossard

and Mark Sherwin have performed a feat that

may provide a wide array of applications, from

more efficient solar cells to higher-performance

telecommunications to enhanced imaging and

sensing technologies.

It comes in the form of a compound semicon-

ductor of nearly perfect quality with embedded

▶ Artist’s concept of nanometer-size metallic wires and metallic particles embedded in semiconductors, as grown by Dr. Hong Lu.

24 Convergence

semimetallic nanostructures, and it capitalizes

on the manipulation of the infrared (IR) and

terahertz (THz) range of the electromagnetic

spectrum. These invisible areas of the spectrum

— with longer wavelengths and lower frequen-

cies than the naked eye can sense — offer much

in the way of information they can provide.

However, the development of instruments that

can take advantage of their range of frequencies

is still an emerging field.

Bridging optics and electronics

To cope with the demands of today’s

information technology — more data, faster

transmission, better energy efficiency —

researchers have been turning to optics, using

IR light to transmit information.

However the transition between optics and

electronics is a difficult one because they operate

at vastly different scales, with electron confine-

ment possible in spaces far smaller than light

waves. The size gap between the technologies

have been a hurdle for scientists and engineers

trying to integrate the two with a circuit that

can take advantage of the speed, capacity and

energy efficiency of optics with the compact-

ness of electronics for information processing.

Here plasmonics plays a vital role, by pro-

viding the highly sought bridge between the

two technologies. Key to this technology is the

use of erbium (Er), a rare earth metal that has

the ability to absorb light in the visible as well

as infrared wavelength, and has been used for

years to enhance the performance of silicon in

the production of fiber optics. Pairing erbium

with the element antimony (Sb), the researchers

embedded the resulting compound — erbium

antimonide (ErSb) — as semimetallic nano-

structures within a semiconducting matrix of

gallium antimonide (GaSb).

When IR light hits the surface of this

semiconductor, electrons in the semimetallic

nanostructures begin to resonate — that is,

move away from their equilibrium positions

and oscillate at the same frequency as the infra-

red light — preserving the optical information,

but shrinking it to a scale that would be com-

patible with electronic devices.

“This is a new and exciting field,” said Hong

Lu, project scientist in materials and in elec-

trical and computer engineering. But the

ability to translate optical information into

electronic data is only one benefit of this unique

semiconductor.

‘A new kind of heterostructure’

In the world of semiconductors, structural

quality is of utmost importance: the more regu-

larly repeating and aligned — “flawless” — the

arrangement of atoms in the semiconductor’s

crystal lattice is, the more reliable and better

performing the device in which it will be used

will be.

Generating these perfect structures is no

minor feat. Any mismatch in size or alignment

becomes magnified and could result in cracking.

The difficulty becomes even greater when incor-

porating different atoms, which may be desired

for their properties, but not so for their poten-

tial to result in defects. While semiconductors

incorporating different materials have been

studied for years — a technology UCSB pro-

fessor and Nobel laureate Herbert Kroemer

pioneered — a single crystal heterostructured

semiconductor/metal is in a class of its own.

ErSb, according to Lu, is an ideal material

to match with GaSb because of its structural

compatibility with its surrounding material,

allowing the researchers to embed the nano-

structures without interrupting the atomic

lattice structure of the semiconducting matrix,

each atom aligned with the matrix around it.

“The nanostructures are coherently embed-

ded, without introducing noticeable defects,

through the growth process by molecular beam

epitaxy,” said Lu. “We can control the size, the

shape and the orientation of the nanostructures.”

The term “epitaxy” refers to a process by which

layers of material are deposited atom by atom,

or molecule by molecule, one on top of the

other with a specific orientation.

“It’s really a new kind of heterostructure,” said

Arthur Gossard, professor of materials and elec-

trical and computer engineering.

Seeing things in a new light

The semiconductor’s ability to capture and

manipulate IR and THz range light opens doors

into better imaging and sensing, as the embed-

ded nanostructures/nanowires offer a strong

broadband polarization effect, filtering and

defining images with IR and THz signatures.

In addition to the thermal signatures that are

captured by infrared cameras, traces of chemi-

cals found in explosives and illegal narcotics can

Plasmonic Technology


be sensed using the semiconductor. Terahertz

wavelengths, which occupy the space between

infrared and microwave frequencies, can pene-

trate a variety of materials, including the human

body, opening up the potential for high reso-

lution imaging without the danger posed by

higher energy x-rays.

The researchers have already applied for

a patent for these embedded nanowires as a

broadband light polarizer.

“For infrared imaging, if you can do it with

controllable polarizations, there’s a lot of infor-

mation there,” said Gossard.

The researchers credit the collaborative

nature between departments on the UCSB

campus for this multidimensional breakthrough.

“One of the most exciting things about this for

me is that this was a ‘grassroots’ collaboration,”

said Mark Sherwin, professor of physics, direc-

tor of the Institute for Terahertz Science and

Technology at UCSB. The idea for the direction

of the research actually came from the junior

researchers in the group, he said, grad students

and undergrads from different laboratories and

research groups working on different aspects

of the project, all of whom decided to combine

their efforts and their expertise into one study.

“I think what’s really special about UCSB is that

we can have an environment like that.”

Researchers on campus are also exploring

the possibilities of this technology in the field

of thermoelectrics, which studies how tempera-

ture differences of a material can create electric

voltage or how differences in electric voltages

in a material can create temperature differences.

Renowned UCSB professors John Bowers (solid

state photonics) and Christopher Palmstrom

(heteroepitaxial growth of novel materials)

are also investigating the potential of this new

semiconductor.

Materials researcher Hong Lu peers down one of the many chambers of a molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) instrument.▶

“For infrared imaging, if you can do it with controllable polarizations, there’s a lot of information there.” - Art Gossard

26 Convergence


The ordinary light bulb is an innovation so

extraordinary that a sudden brilliant idea is

called “a light bulb moment.”

Credit for inventing the first incandes-

cent-style light bulb often goes to Thomas

Edison, but even that wasn’t a light bulb moment.

In fact, his patent for an improved electric light

came after 75 years of hard work by several sci-

entists and engineers, all scrambling to find the

best way to run an electrical current through a

filament and get it to glow.

Luminaires based on light-emitting diode

(LED) technology already are 10 times

more energy-efficient and last 20 times

longer than old-fashioned Edison-

style bulbs. Today, researchers

in the Materials Department

at UC Santa Barbara are

working hard to get even

more bang for the

buck from these

high-tech light

sources.

A team led by professors James Speck and

Claude Weisbuch from the Center for Energy

Efficient Materials (CEEM), along with collab-

orators at École Polytechnique in Paris, have

developed a technique to tackle possibly the

most difficult technological mystery of LED

research: efficiency droop. Their recent discov-

ery could have exciting implications in terms

of how we understand and use this new way to

make light.

Just like Edison’s tricky filament, though, the

devil is in the details.

It is widely known that incandescent bulbs

are terribly inefficient light sources; 90 percent

of the electrical energy goes toward generating

heat and only 10 percent goes to making light.

An LED generates light a completely different

way, by passing electric current through layers

of semiconductor material called a diode. In

a perfect LED, every electron passing through

the diode would release its energy in the form

of light. It would generate no heat at all.

In a real LED, however, not every electron

does what it should. As you apply more and

more current, the LED doesn’t emit a propor-

tional, increasing amount of light. The LED

actually becomes less efficient the harder you

turn up the juice. The efficiency, for lack of a

better word, droops.

The challenge of LED droop

LED droop is a challenge for LED bulb

designers who want to squeeze the most light out

of each chip, especially if they want to replace

the incandescent light bulb, which despite being

really inefficient happens to be really bright and

really cheap.

“Efficiency droop has been the biggest prob-

lem for blue LEDs for a long time,” explained

Shuji Nakamura, a professor of materials and

co-director of the Solid State Lighting & Energy

Center at UCSB. While still a researcher in

Japan in the late 1990s, Nakamura was the first

to demonstrate a modern blue LED using an

electrically injected diode made from a semi-

conductor called gallium nitride (GaN).

GoodbyeTo Droop

Case Closed. Researchers discover the science

behind the mystery of efficiency droop.

By K.M.Kelchner

28 Convergence

The Paris connectionJustin Iveland, a materials graduate student

who worked on this project for the past two

years, joked that the most important piece of

lab equipment was the trans-Atlantic airliner

that let him travel to Paris to collaborate with

researchers in the Laboratoire de Physique de

la Matière Condensée at École Polytechnique.

“This kind of experiment takes experience,”

said Weisbuch, distinguished professor of mate-

rials at UCSB and a faculty member at École

Polytechnique.

Weisbuch enlisted his colleagues Lucio

Martinelli and Jacques Peretti to help because,

as he put it, they have more than 30 years of

experience taking the kind of careful electrical

measurements this experiment required.

Still, the experiment was quite complex. To

start, the samples had to be carefully prepared

and subjected to a very high vacuum. The equip-

ment had to be aligned just so to detect Auger

electrons, which have a unique high-energy

signature. The hardest part of all, according to

Weisbuch, was “getting everything right.”

Not only was the measurement successful in

detecting Auger electrons, but the more elec-

trons pumped through the LED sample, the

more Auger electrons they measured. The emer-

gence of Auger electrons directly corresponded

with the onset of LED efficiency droop. They

call this kind of discovery unambiguous, which

is perhaps a nicer way to say, “We told you so.”

“Based on our data and analysis, it offers direct

proof that Auger is the dominant mechanism

UCSB researchers Justin Iveland and Professor James Speck.▶

Since then, Nakamura has played an import-

ant role in seeing these tiny light emitters go

mainstream for white lighting. According to

Nakamura, solving the enduring efficiency

droop problem could have a huge impact on

reducing the cost of LED bulbs, which still sell

for more than $10 apiece.

For years, the exact cause of efficiency droop

has been hotly debated. LED manufacturers

have engineered workarounds for the droop

problem, but the answer to the mystery lies

in fundamental science. How a single electron

generates light at all involves some magic of

quantum physics. Albert Einstein won the

Nobel Prize in 1921 for explaining the so-called

photoelectric effect.

The concept comes down to this: If you want

to get as much light out of an LED as possible,

you must account for all the electrons.

UCSB professor Chris Van de Walle and

his research team theorized in 2011 that LED

droop can be blamed on misbehaving electrons.

Instead of releasing their energy as light as they

should, some electrons traveling through the

diode transfer all their energy to another elec-

tron. Think of billiard balls colliding in a game

of pool. These pesky energetic electrons are

called hot electrons or Auger electrons. The

more Auger electrons you have, the less light

you get. There have been several experiments

trying to prove the existence of Auger electrons

in LEDs, but measuring them directly has been

nearly impossible.

Very recently, professors Speck and Weisbuch,

along with their collaborators, have managed to

directly measure Auger electrons for the first time.

Goodbye to Droop


for GaN-based LED droop,” explained Professor

Speck, the Seoul Optodevice Chair in Solid State

Lighting at UCSB. “It’s the first direct measure-

ment of Auger electrons in any semiconductor.

The result provides a direct pathway to mitigate

droop and the Auger process.”

Materials Professor Steven DenBaars,

Mitsubishi Chemical Chair in Solid State

Lighting and Displays and co-director of

SSLEC, added: “Professor Speck and Professor

Weisbuch’s groundbreaking experimental ver-

ification solves one of the greatest mysteries of

light-emitting diodes. Now that we understand

the fundamental process, we can focus on ways

to solve it through novel LED device structures

and designs.”

The past 20 years have seen rapid develop-

ments in LED technology, but as Thomas Edison

himself said, “Genius is 1 percent inspiration,

99 percent perspiration.” This is a testament to

the hard work that scientific discoveries and

technological innovations often require.

In a few more years, the ordinary light bulb

will be a thing of the past, and our options will

be bigger, brighter and cheaper — all thanks

to contributions made in research labs around

the world and right here at UCSB.

LED emitting light under forward bias in an ultra high vacuum chamber allowing simultaneous electron emission energy. Photo credit: École Polytechnique, Ph. Lavialle

▶

30 Convergence

The Delicate Mystery of

Brain Trauma


At 29, John*, an active police officer and part-

time graduate student, was in a car accident.

Despite the impact to John’s head, a hospital CT

scan revealed no damage to his brain. He was

released from the hospital and told he should

recover fully.

After several months, however, John (not his

real name) still had not recovered. He sought

help for numbness in his toe and complained

of severe memory problems for the courses he

had taken since entering his master’s program.

He had difficulty making decisions, found it

hard to maintain attention, and noticed subtle

personality changes. He asked to be removed

from active patrol. Back at his desk, he found

that even the standard paperwork proved

difficult.

John’s case is among hundreds of thousands

like it — incidents of people who suffer mild

Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI) after an auto

accident, during high-impact sports or on the

battlefield. Most people recover from an mTBI

incident within a few weeks.

But 10 percent do not recover and, for those

people, the symptoms worsen to the point of

chronic, life-debilitating cognitive deficits. The

problem is that cognitive symptoms of mTBI are

vague and offer little tangible evidence for common

imaging techniques to detect neural damage.

“If a patient with a concussion and lingering

cognitive trouble goes in for a conventional brain

scan, there’s less than a 3 percent chance of seeing

something on the MRI,” said Dr. Scott Grafton,

co-director of the Institute for Collaborative

Biotechnologies and a professor of psychological

and brain sciences at UC Santa Barbara.

Grafton hypothesizes that mTBI-related

brain damage evades common hospital imaging

techniques because the damage is occurring at

The Delicate Mystery of

Brain TraumaTo detect the subtle but debilitating damage from mild traumatic brain injury,

scientists at UC Santa Barbara are peering into neuron networks with high-powered imaging and analysis. By Rachelle Oldmixon

*Name changed to protect privacy.

32 Convergence

the level of individual neural connections rather

than in larger brain areas.

He believes the long-term symptoms associ-

ated with mTBIs may be the result of “shearing”

of the neurons. In order to investigate this pos-

sibility, Grafton and his team are developing a

new brain-imaging technique that will allow

doctors to see neural connections with greater

clarity.

The problems of misdiagnosis

The complaints associated with chronic

mTBI are similar to those surrounding Post-

Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which is

misdiagnosed often, and particularly among

veterans who have seen active combat.

Between January 2000 and March 2011,

more than 163,000 mTBIs reportedly were

incurred by U.S. military personnel on active

duty, usually the result of blows or jolts to the

head. About 10 percent of those people — more

than 16,000 — were reported to have developed

cognitive deficits from mTBI.

Despite how common it is, a PTSD diagnosis

is seen by many soldiers as a sign of weakness,

and many will deny experiencing symptoms

related to the triggering event. Because of this,

medical experts must rely on the symptoms

that soldiers will admit, such as memory loss

surrounding their time in combat, irritability,

difficulty concentrating, and a loss of interest

in previously enjoyable activities.

While PTSD is technically a psychological

disorder that can improve with time and ther-

apy, mTBI is physiological in nature. An early,

accurate diagnosis of mTBI may be the only

way to help doctors provide optimal therapies

from an early point.

“The U.S. military is interested in screening

for mTBIs, but this would require a full cog-

nitive baseline examination of every soldier

before each deployment and when they return,

which is prohibitively expensive,” Grafton said.

This has left our military in a quandary:

Requiring cognitive exams for every soldier

would be too costly, but, without pre-injury

measures, minor dips in cognitive function or

minute abnormalities on a brain scan could be

explained away as low-average cognitive ability

or artifacts from the machine.

Grafton is addressing the intricate mTBI

diagnosis problem by investigating the

possibility that mTBI is an issue of connectivity

tissue in the brain. Currently, the magnetic res-

onance imaging (MRI) technology commonly

found in hospitals and clinics is most useful for

finding lesions or the sources of strokes. Some

techniques available in hospitals have been cal-

ibrated to find small hemorrhages, down to a

few millimeters in size.

The detection of mTBI may, however, lie in

the finer — and more complicated — details

of neural connection.

Visualizing white matter

Essentially, when the brain experiences a

trauma in the form of a blow to the head, the

thinner neural connections are damaged. These

thinner connections exist where the projections

from a distant area of the brain reach their

target and fan out to connect to many other

areas of the brain.

“Think of a cable with a lot of wires. In the

middle it’s nice and tight, all packed together.

But at the ends, the cables splay out in different

directions and hook back together again. That

is where the tearing probably occurs,” Grafton

explained.

“The white matter is like train tracks connecting many different cities. But for brains, the connections are between different modules of the cerebral cortex. And there can be lots of tracks connecting any pair of modules. No matter where we are in the white matter we can test if the normal connections are present or not.”- Dr. Scott Grafton


Fewer or damaged synaptic connections to

certain brain regions would result in impaired

communication among areas of the brain.

With the use of Diffusion Tensor Imaging

(DTI), it is possible to visualize the brain’s white

matter, which consists of axon bundles. DTI,

also known as diffusion MRI, is an imaging

method that uses the diffusion of water through

the brain to map the white matter.

The problem with DTI is that each person

has a different pattern of connectivity, so it’s

almost impossible to know where to start ana-

lyzing the information. Additionally, DTI is not

quite sensitive enough to visualize the thinner

neural connections.

To address this, Grafton’s lab team, in collab-

oration with research teams at the University of

Pittsburgh and at Siemens, utilize a technique

called Diffusion Spectrum Imaging (DSI) that

was first invented at Massachusetts General

Hospital by Van Wedeen.

While it takes about five times longer to scan

than DTI, DSI more accurately maps where the

fibers of axons cross — the architecture of tissue

— based on where water is and how it moves.

Their research involved improving the way the

DSI scans were collected and more importantly,

in the way the information is analyzed.

Because there are billions of places in the

human brain where the axons of those neurons

cross, each DSI scan produces several gigabits

of data — requiring a new level of data com-

putation power.

Necessity breeds the reinvention of data

analysis

To meet the need, Grafton and graduate stu-

dent Matt Cieslak have completely reworked

how DSI data is analyzed.

34 Convergence

Currently in DSI, axon bundles are tracked

by starting with two different areas of gray

matter. The bundles, or white matter, found

between the two areas are then counted and

observed.

Grafton and Cieslak have found, however,

that axon bundles don’t cross neatly. Instead, the

bundles can pass through one another, dividing

into smaller axon cables and weaving through

one another before rejoining into the original

bundle. Rather than tracking axon bundles

indirectly, Grafton’s team decided a new ana-

lytical program was needed that could trace an

axon bundle along its pathways.

Grafton’s new statistical analysis allows

researchers to visualize the ends of the bun-

dles, where the axons splay out and shearing

is more likely to occur in patients with mTBI.

Once the theory behind the statistical program

was developed, Grafton saw a need for several

additional functions. They needed the ability

to view multiple scans at once, for starters, to

allow researchers and doctors to compare scans

from the same brain or among patients with

similar injuries.

Translating research into real help

Grafton and his team work with Dr. Philip

Delio, medical director of stroke services at

Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. Delio eval-

uates many of the patients who are brought

to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, a level II

trauma center that sees thousands of brain-in-

jury patients every year. Delio is a neurologist

and the lead recruiter of patients for the mTBI

study with UCSB.

“This study has tremendous implications for

our population of mild traumatic brain injury

patients; there has been no way to characterize

or predict which patients will have more pro-

longed symptoms,” said Delio.

More than 15 patients suffering from cog-

nitive deficit related to mTBI have volunteered

to participate in Grafton’s ongoing study. Their

injuries have been the result of a range of events,

including skateboarding accidents, sports inju-

ries and car crashes.

“This study has tremendous implications for our population of mild traumatic brain injury patients; there has been no way to characterize or predict which patients will have more prolonged symptoms.” - Philip Delio

“Patients with seemingly severe injuries often

make remarkable recoveries, while some with

apparently mild injuries may have persistent

deficits for month or years, or permanently,”

Delio said, adding that this research will “be

imperative in helping to predict functional out-

comes and recovery.”

Lacking initially detectable brain damage,

the mTBI patients are ideal candidates to test

the sensitivity of the new analytical program.

Grafton has also begun distributing the

analysis tools to other laboratories across the

country in an effort to evaluate its potential

and to add functionality. It will take some time

and a carefully designed clinical trial to test

the final version of these tools. The utility of

diffusion spectrum imaging coupled with the

custom analysis tools for diagnosing mTBI will

require this larger-scale effort.

For mTBI patient John, an early diagnosis

could have made a huge difference. A year later

when he received a proper diagnosis, he was

able to develop coping mechanisms to make it

through graduate school. With significant help

from friends, family and his professors, John

was able to finish his graduate degree. But in

John’s case, he still finds cognitive tasks difficult

that were once simple.

If cognitive exercises started soon after an

mTBI incident can improve the brain’s ability

to recover lost function, then early diagnosis

could mean the difference between debilitation

and hope for recovery. Grafton’s new analytical

method could lead to a better outcome from

chronic brain injury and mental debilitation

for tens of thousands of people.

The Delicate Mystery of Brain Trauma


Can mTBI trigger a pathway for more serious disease?

Zooming in to the cellular and molecular levels, Dr. Megan Valentine of

the department of mechanical engineering is exploring whether force-

based neural damage can be attributed to molecular-level changes on

and within neurons.

Valentine is investigating possible changes to the individual neurons

after force-based damage. Her research team applies controlled stress

via magnetic fields to the neural cells to see how they react, identify and

repair the impact – and whether there are short-term and long-term

connections to neural health.

Their challenge is to develop new tools that work at smaller length

scales and higher force ranges — that is, tools sensitive enough to detect

molecular-level changes after a force is applied.

“We’re miniaturizing magnetic tweezer technology to apply forces

inside these cells,” Valentine said, “and at the same time introducing

high-resolution optical imaging to capture what happens in a split second.”

Valentine’s study keeps tabs on the neuron’s changes over time to see

how a single-force event — a traumatic brain impact, in theory — changes

a neuron’s behavior and properties over the long term. Her research

further addresses the question: Are young people who are exposed to

TBI in turn predisposed to early-onset dementia diseases?

“Neuron adhesion and cargo transport are important for healthy

nervous systems,” Valentine explained. “There are other diseases where

either loss of adhesion or loss of transport leads to neurological defects,

including Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia.”

Valentine wonders if impact-force injury can, in essence, trigger these

other disease pathways that are otherwise thought to be attributed to

genetic predisposition.

In 2013, Valentine was one of three UCSB engineering professors

to be awarded a prestigious National Science Foundation Early Career

Award. The award keeps her research going for at least four years and

includes an outreach component that creates education and research

opportunities for students.

Aptly enough, Valentine’s program brings in and involves students

who are military veterans.

“The program is a nice intersection between outreach and research

because veterans in particular understand the seriousness of these types

of injuries,” she said.

Employing all the proper tools and modalities, Valentine sees great

promise in the research.

“There is a diversity of adhesion proteins on neurons, and they’re very

sensitive to mechanical signaling.” she said, adding that if cell adhe-

sion governs the ways in which axon bundles are formed and intersect,

understanding these molecular-level mechanics could be another key

to understanding why and how any traumatic brain injury takes its toll.

◀ From left: Mechanical engi-neering graduate student Nick Zacchia; mechanical engineer-ing associate professor Megan Valentine; and Tim Thomas, U.S. military veteran and VIBRANT program summer intern from Pasadena City College - working at a fluorescence microscope.

36 Convergence


When optoelectronics graduate student Jared

Hulme attended a Technology Management

Program lecture about UC Santa Barbara

technologies that were available to license, he

left inspired to explore how solid state lighting

research could be commercialized.

“After seeing last year’s New Venture

Competition finals, I decided I wanted to be

a part of the program,” commented Hulme.

TMP’s New Venture Competition is an annual

business competition for student teams to try

their hand at commercializing new or existing

technology, much of it stemming from campus

research efforts in science and engineering.

Hulme connected with materials graduate

student Kristin Denault, who was research-

ing high efficiency laser diode lighting in

the solid state lighting lab of Professor Ram

Seshadri, co-director of the Materials Research

Laboratory. Like Humle, Denault was interested

in taking the technology to market.

“My graduate research work with Professors

Ram Seshadri, Steve DenBaars, and Shuji

Nakamura led us to combine phosphor mate-

rials with laser excitation,” explained Denault.

This highly promising research formed “the

basis of our motivation,” she added, to enter

the competition with a company called Fluency

Lighting Technologies.

“I have found inspiration in this research

because of the far reaching impacts that light-

ing has on the world, and the associated global

energy reduction that can be made possible

through this type of research,” said Denault.

Denault and Hulme joined forces with eco-

nomics major Daniel Moncayo, and their team

went on to place second in the competition,

taking home seed money for a newly established

technology venture.

“We expect our technology to be well received

in a market estimated to be worth $3 billion,” com-

mented Moncayo.

AnEntrepreneurial EducationScience and engineering students suit up for the high tech business world through UCSB’s Technology Management Program.

by Sonia Fernandez

◀ Laura Johnson, graduate student at the UCSB Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, presents her team’s start-up, Salty Girl Seafood, at the 2014 New Venture Competition finals. Salty Girl Seafood, which took home second place in the Market Pull category and a People’s Choice Award, is a sustainable seafood distribution company that bypasses the traditional supply chain to ship seafood directly from fishermen to restaurants and markets.

38 Convergence

TMP has been the birthplace for many student-run startups,

several of which they can now showcase as multi-million dollar

success stories in a spectrum of technology industries. Fueled

by students fired up about their innovations, and guided by

mentors with experience in the marketplace, TMP has helped

spawn dozens of successful UCSB-founded businesses in its 14

years on campus.

Before considering the techpreneur world, the three co-found-

ers of Fluency Lighting Technologies took advantage of TMP’s

course offerings and lectures available to students. Denault

completed TMP’s Graduate Program in Management Practice

concurrently with her graduate education in materials.

“The three of us have also attended several of the TMP

Executive-At-the-Table round table discussions and

seminars,” Denault said. “We have really found TMP

to be a great source of help and guidance through

this whole process.”

TMP’s academic offerings and student business compe-

tition are led by UCSB professors and lecturers with business

acumen and experience under their belts who impart knowl-

edge to students over six months of courses and seminars. The

curriculum covers everything a “techpreneur” could dream

of: business ideas and models, intellectual property and pat-

ents, marketing, finance, operations, and how to find start-up

investors. The results for participants are a broader network,

concrete business plans, working prototypes, and polished

presentations.

Though not exclusive to tech majors, students in science

and engineering are drawn to the program, which aims to pre-

pare them to perform as business leaders in global technology

teams. Their curricula encourage cross-disciplinary teamwork

between the hard sciences, economics, marketing, and other

disciplines to bring balanced perspectives and talents.

An Entrepreneurial Education

◀ Kristin Denault, materials graduate student and co-founder of Fluency Lighting Technologies.

Advice from seasoned pros

For mentors, TMP is sometimes a way to watch the evolution of

technology, as students tackle old problems with new insights.

Morgan Pattison, whose consulting firm specializes in high-efficiency

lighting, mentored a team of engineering seniors, Taylor Umphreys,

Siddhant Bhargava, Arshad Haider, and Ben Chang. Their team, Brightblu,

proposed a Bluetooth-based home automation system that could be

controlled with a smartphone.

“I encouraged them to make it something cost-effective and easy to

use,” said Pattison. The problem with current automated lighting systems,

he said, is that they tend to be complicated and unwieldy, affordable

only to large buildings. Compatibility with legacy circuitry, such as in

a home, was a problem.

“The idea for me was to see where the concept would go and I wanted

these guys to spend time on the technical issues,” he said. His job was

to guide their creative power as someone who was familiar with the

practical realities of the market.

They ran with the concept and refined the technology, but they didn’t

stop with lighting solutions. In the process they demonstrated that the

device — a smartplug — could not only control lights, but could also

work with other appliances. In essence, they designed a smartplug that

turns any power outlet into an intelligent outlet that users can control

from a smartphone.

After taking home People’s Choice at the New Venture Competition,

the team landed a top spot at the 2012 Plug and Play Expo, scoring major

networking opportunities in the Silicon Valley. Today, their original

prototype has evolved into a product called Zuli. They used Kickstarter

to successfully fund their expansion.

To test themselves against the reality of a startup experience, stu-

dents can take courses like “Creating a Market-Tested Start-up Business

Model,” taught by Steve Zahm, president of Santa Barbara-based Procore

Technologies, Inc., a cloud-based construction management software

firm.

“Tech entrepreneurs often confuse a technology with a product, and a

product or service with a business,” said Zahm. “Conducting a thorough


and detailed market validation process — in

other words, getting out and talking to potential

customers and partners before launching the

product and company — is the one key step

for designing a successful business model.

Once that business model has been validated

by actual market and customer feedback, then

you can move forward.”

As the venture matures, like any company,

there will be growing pains. If the business is

successful, roles change and goals evolve.

“Start-ups have fewer formal rules, are nimble,

flexible and more organic in their organizational

structure – there are roles rather than formal-

ized jobs – people tend to do more than one

thing,” said Kathryn McKee, human resources

expert and TMP lecturer.

As the venture grows, so does the need for

the company’s leaders to keep the focus more

on long-term productivity and less on short-

term survival. For this eventual need, McKee

co-teaches “The Entrepreneurial Leadership of

Teams and Talent” with Deb Horne, who is also

in human resources.

“Experience has shown that entrepreneurs are

typically focused on the technology, product or

service and give little thought to the legal side of

a startup, including hiring and compensating

employees,” said Horne. “The class is designed

to provide an awareness of the legal compliance

issues they face when starting up and running

a business.”

Entrepreneurship with a purpose

In the world of new technology ventures, the

waters can be a little choppier, the navigation

a little more uncertain. Not only are startups

inventing new things, they have to convince

investors to believe in them, and then persuade

the public to trust their products.

Which is why a strong purpose plays an

important role in the life of a tech entrepreneur.

For James Rogers, creator of aPEEL

Technologies, Inc., there were two purposes.

He wanted to own his own business and he

wanted to create something that could have a

positive impact on peoples’ lives. He found a

way to fulfill both purposes in the world’s first

organic preservative, a spray-on post-harvest

coating that preserves the freshness — and thus

extends the shelf life — of produce.

“In the U.S. we throw out up to 20 percent

of the produce that we harvest. And we use 80

percent of our fresh water in the United States

to irrigate,” said Rogers, who earned his PhD

in Materials at UCSB.

▶ Team Shadowmaps won over 2014 NVC judges with urban geolocation improvement technology that combines GPS data with algorithms that correct for building satellite shadows. Pictured: Andrew Irish (electrical engineering graduate student), Danny Iland (computer science graduate student), Dayton Horvath (chemistry graduate student), and Jason Isaacs (electrical and computer engineering postdoc).

40 Convergence

Through the development of a thin film

composed of molecules extracted from plants,

strawberries that go fuzzy the next day will be

good for several more, and in the future leafy

greens could stay leafy and green for far longer.

From growers to grocers, it means better sales

and less waste overall.

Much of this support he received from TMP,

starting with the first entrepreneurship classes

led by John Greathouse.

“I think TMP is like a series of lighthouses

that warn you where you’re going to crash. They

don’t tell you where to go; they tell you where

not to go,” he said. There might be ideas that

take too much time and energy, or it might be

the wrong time to take money from a certain

investor, he said.

aPEEL Technology and its organic edible

spray coating took home the top spot at the

2012 New Venture Competition.

Not satisfied with helping the agriculture

industry on the home soil, Rogers is actively

researching ways to bring the technology to

developing countries, where not only are shrink-

age and spoilage major issues in places with

hot weather and lack of refrigeration, but also

biotic stressors — infestations and infections

by bacteria, fungi and parasites. For this work

Rogers was awarded a $100,000 grant from the

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation under its

Grand Challenges Explorations Initiative, for a

proposal that paved the way for a coating that

would not only prevent shrinkage but also act

as a camouflage, keeping the fruit or vegetable’s

surface from being recognized as a food source.

For the next crop of young innovators con-

sidering entrepreneurship, Rogers offers this

advice: Get started. Do anything.

Learning to innovate

Not all students who enter TMP are looking

to be the next big startup. A common thread

between the program curricula is encourag-

ing students to keep their minds in innovation

mode.

“Innovation-related skills are vital because

we’re frequently working with game-changing

research that requires new thought and practices

concerning industry and market applications,”

said Dave Seibold, UCSB professor and director

of the TMP Graduate Program in Management

Practice. “For example, technological or com-

ponent innovations that disrupt traditional

models to increase efficiency and production

or open new markets.”

Seminars such as “Thinking Out of the

Box” and “How Do Things Work?” are taught

by TMP lecturer Virgil Elings, a UCSB physics

professor turned wildly successful techpreneur,

even before tech entrepreneurship became the

vogue. Elings co-founded Santa Barbara-based

Digital Instruments in 1987, which brought the

first commercially-available scanning probe

microscopes to market — including the Atomic

Force Microscope and the Scanning Tunneling

Microscope.

“Virgil has a passion for helping students,”

said Rod Alferness, dean of the College of

Engineering. “His workshops are effective

because they’re hands-on, very cross-disci-

plinary, and the student-teacher model is wide

open.” Elings, a renowned entrepreneur and

lifelong advocate of learning by doing, is known

for eschewing traditional learning models for

the head-first approach.

An Entrepreneurial Education

◀ A $5,000 Elings Prize was awarded to a team by method of random drawing at the 2014 New Venture Competition, prefaced by words of experience by Virgil Elings that “success in business is fifty percent hard work and fifty percent dumb luck.”

“Innovation-related skills are vital because we’re frequently working with game-changing research that requires new thought and practices concerning industry and market applications.” - Dave Seibold


This approach, and the deceptively simple

questions Elings asks his students, engages

both student and teacher, giving participants

the kind of mental calisthenics needed to train

for the fast pace and often unpredictable envi-

ronment of a technology-based business career.

“TMP gave me a chance to teach a course

where the subject matter is just a medium

for thinking about things,” Elings said. “The

material was not constrained and could cover

everyday things and very technical things.

Two of my favorite simple problems for the

students to think about were ‘How does a play-

ground swing work?’ and ‘How does an ice

skater gain speed?’ We went from swings to

relativity in one course and I learned as much

as the students.”

“The class was much more focused on the

‘hows’ and ‘whys’ as opposed to the ‘whats’ that

we could be studying,” said Benji, a former TMP

student. “I learned not only a lot about how the

things we covered really work, but also some

better questions to ask when trying to learn

more about anything.”

Despite (or perhaps, because of) their

unconventionality, his seminars are a tremen-

dous hit with both engineering and College of

Creative Studies students at UCSB. Students

often cited Elings’ seminars as the best classes

they ever had.

Next-gen technology, next-gen leadership

Expanding their current offerings, TMP

will launch a new Master of Technology

Management program in 2015. This intensive

master’s degree program will be the first of its

kind at UCSB and is intended for exceptional

students in science, engineering, or quantitative

social science backgrounds with a “demon-

strated potential for leadership,” explained

Bob York, professor of electrical and computer

engineering and Chair of TMP.

“This program will propel students with

advanced technical qualifications to successful

careers as business leaders and entrepreneurs.”

said York. “We’re empowering UCSB scientists

and engineers to become leaders and innova-

tors. I think that’s a big step, and important one.”

Learn more at tmp.ucsb.edu.

▶ Inogen founders Brenton Taylor, Alison Perry, and Byron Myers

42 Convergence


Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

For the UC Santa Barbara community of students, faculty, and staff, the

tragic events of May 23, 2014 will never be forgotten. The death of six

UCSB students was devastating to the entire campus and to our alumni

and supporters who put their faith and pride in UCSB. The following

weeks were some of the most difficult we have experienced; the mourning

on campus was palpable.

Then, something quite amazing happened amidst sorrow. The commu-

nity at UCSB came together to support one another in a collective spirit

that was beyond moving. As official letters were promptly issued from

the Deans and the Chancellor addressing concerns and communicating

important details about safety and support, thousands of us gathered in

Isla Vista for a candlelight vigil. The student community mobilized to

build memorials and organize events. Counselors and academic advisors

opened their doors on weekends and after hours to support students

– in part because spring finals week, already a challenging time, was

fast approaching. Resources were made available to every person on

campus to process and heal, and to prepare ourselves for the aftershocks

of mourning.

There was an awareness among us that it didn’t matter how long we

worked into the night, or which classes were postponed, or what meetings

we had to cancel – we were going to get our UCSB community through

this heartbreaking time.

Perhaps the largest gathering of people in the history of UCSB took

place a few days later as more than 20,000 people attended a memorial

service at Harder Stadium for George Chen, Katherine Cooper, James

Hong, Christopher Ross Michaels-Martinez, David Wang and Veronika

Weiss. The news of the tragedy had traveled the world, and “We Stand

with UCSB” tributes were organized at every University of California

campus. Thousands of UCSB alumni broadcast their #GauchoStrong

support on social media and through the UCSB Alumni Association.

Hundreds of people gathered at an Isla Vista beach for a Paddle Out

Memorial, on surfboards and rafts, holding hands in a giant chain as

flowers drifted into the Pacific Ocean.

This June, we celebrate our graduating seniors who have worked

incredibly hard for their education and their careers. They leave UCSB

knowing grief, but also knowing solidarity. For students whose gradua-

tion is yet to come, UCSB is a stronger and more connected place today.

In response to requests by the UCSB community, alumni, and our

donors, a scholarship fund has been established in the names of the vic-

tims. The fund supports student scholarships, as well as counseling and

academic assistance resources at UCSB. To donate, visit bit.ly/victimfund.

This is our message of gratitude to everyone who has stood beside

UCSB after the tragedy, and has joined us in remembering six students

who had tremendous potential and embodied the wonderful qualities of

a Gaucho: hard work, community involvement, fun spirit, and positivity.

Thank you, UCSB.

From Deans Rod Alferness and Pierre Wiltzius, on behalf of the staff

and faculty of UCSB Engineering and the Sciences.

UCSB Heals United

Located just over 20 miles off the coast of Southern California, Santa Cruz Island is the largest of the chain known as the Channel Islands. Countless UCSB research-ers owe their careers, in part, to Santa Cruz Island.

“It’s like what Southern California looked like a hundred years or more ago,” said Lyndal Laughrin, director of the UCSB Santa Cruz Island Reserve.

Drought-resistant chaparral gives way to pine trees at eleva-tion, endemic manzanitas spread across the landscape and native grasses are returning after decades of ranching and wine making. The scenery is vast and breathtaking, virtually unchanged from what the native Chumash witnessed in their millennia of existence on the island. The island’s geography makes it a strategic place to study a diversity of sea-dwelling life forms. Meanwhile, endemic species, cut off from their mainland counter-parts for generations, have taken different evolutionary routes, earn-ing the island comparisons to the famed Galapagos.

Article and photography by Sonia Fernandez

Nonprofit OrganizationU.S. Postage

PAIDSanta Barbara, CA

Permit No. 104University of California Santa BarbaraSanta Barbara, CA 93106-5130

ConvergenceThe Magazine of Engineering and the Sciences at UC Santa Barbara

Visit us online at convergence.ucsb.edu

Convergence Issue 18

Documents

uc santa barbaraissue

associate dean of research

physical sciences

research leaders

research project

issue of convergence

sonia fernandez

infrared light