final gutsforpdf - USC Viterbi School of Engineering

PULSE OF THE FUTURE

ENGINEERED FORSUCCESS

Spring/Summer 2002

ENGINEERED FORSUCCESS

Daniel J. Epstein, BSISE ’62 NamesISE Department

Still the Pioneer inAdvanced Computer

Science and Engineering

USC Leads Research intoUltra-wideband

Wireless Technology

Published by the University of Southern California Volume I Issue 1

PULSE OF THE FUTURE

ISI@‹‚ISI@‹‚

A Nanorobot Swarm

LILLIPUTIANSOF TROY

LILLIPUTIANSOF TROY

Welcomea journal for the USC School of Engineering’s

alumni and friends.

to the premiere edition of USC Engineer,

P R E M I E R E I S S U E

pdean’s age

USC ENGINEER Vol. 1 No. 1 Spring/Summer 2002

Welcome to USC Engineer! This publication has been created

for you, the thousands of alumni and friends of the

USC School of Engineering worldwide. It is with great

pride that I introduce this premiere issue, which chronicles the School’s

accomplishments, as well as individual success stories, all in our ongoing

pursuit of excellence.

As the new dean of the School of Engineering, one of my top

priorities is to reconnect with our alumni and friends in many

different ways. Communication with you on a regular basis is an

important way for all of us to share in the growth and successes of the

School. In USC Engineer you will read of the School’s achievements,

research topics and trends, faculty and student honors, current and

upcoming events, and, of course, news about yourself, your classmates,

and colleagues. I hope this communication will be two-way. Equally as

important to me, are your opinions and reactions about what you read

on these pages.

Much of the magazine will be dedicated

to highlighting the successes of our alumni. In

this issue, our cover story features Daniel J.

Epstein (BSISE ’62), who has made the largest

gift by an individual to name an academic

department in USC history, and the largest gift

to name a department of industrial and

systems engineering in the nation. As Daniel

Epstein exemplifies, the quality of our alumni

is without match. The alumni profiles of

Jay L. Kear (BSME ’60) and Alice P. Gast

(BSCHE ’80) clearly illustrate this as well.

Just as extraordinary are the dozens of success

stories revealed by our alumni from all over the

country and the world.

This publication will also point out the strengths of our programs

and research centers. The Information Sciences Institute, celebrating

its 30th year, is aggressively expanding the boundaries of information

technology. To say that ISI has few peers is an understatement. It is

leading the pack.

You will also read about an unprecedented seven junior faculty

members who have recently won prestigious National Science

Foundation Career Awards. The highly competitive awards signify

that these individuals will undoubtedly be future leaders in their

disciplines.

Our senior faculty is also contributing to the prestige and

influence of the school. The article on Ultra-Wideband Wireless

technology, featuring UWB pioneer, Dr. Robert Scholtz, who recently

received the 2001 Military Communications Conference Award for

Technical Excellence, demonstrates how

our professors and research centers, in

extraordinary collaboration with other top

universities, are developing leading edge and

relevant technology.

And, there is so much more currently

happening at the USC School of Engineering

to be excited about. As we look ahead, we have

tremendous opportunity for continued

growth and future achievement. The various

engineering disciplines are helping to shape

the way society functions on a daily basis.

Recently, we have all witnessed how quickly

our world can change, presenting new,

never-before-asked questions. The researchers,

faculty, students and alumni of the USC School of Engineering are

poised to face the challenges of an ever-changing world. I hope you

will join me in celebrating their stories, sharing your own, and looking

toward a bright future.

As we look ahead, we have

tremendous opportunity

for continued growth and

future achievement.

The various engineering

disciplines are helping to

shape the way society

functions on a daily basis.

C.L. Max NikiasDeanSchool of Engineering

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Investing in

Excellence3Com Corporation ADC Telecommunication, Inc. Advanced Bionics Corporation The Aerospace CorporationAgere Systems Inc.Agilent TechnologiesAirborne 1 CorporationAkamai Technologies, Inc.The American Electroplaters and

Surface Finishers Society, Inc. Alfred Mann Foundation American Chemical Society Amgen Inc. ARCS Foundation, Inc.Autodesk, Inc. Avery Dennison Corporation Beckman Coulter, Inc. The Boeing Company Brandow and Johnston Associates Brush Engineered Materials Inc. Cadence Design Systems, Inc. Charles Lee Powell Foundation ChevronTexaco Corp. Cisco Systems, Inc. Colachis Family Foundation Compression Science CorporationComputer Sciences Corporation Conexant Systems, Inc. Cost Xpert Group, Inc.Cypress Semiconductor Corporation Cytec DaimlerChrysler D-Link Systems, Inc. The Charles Stark Draper

Laboratory, Inc. DRS Technologies, Inc. E2O Communications, Inc. Eastman Kodak Company Edison International Electronic Data Systems Electric Power Research InstituteElectronics and

Telecommunications ResearchInstitute

Equilon Pipeline Company LLC ERC, Incorporated Ernst & Young Foundation eXcelon Corporation ExxonMobil FoundationEyematic Interfaces, Inc. Fastrack Information Inc. Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC Ford Motor Company Freshwater Software

Fulton Foundation FX Palo Alto LaboratoryGalorath Incorporated GC Environmental, Inc. Geometrix, Inc. Gerondelis Foundation, Inc. Group Systems.comHewlett-Packard Company Hitachi America, Ltd. HKC Research Honeywell International Inc.House Ear Institute HRL Laboratories LLC Hughes Electronics Corporation Hughes Network Systems, Inc.Human Frontier Science Program IBM Corporation Industrial Technology Research

Institute Infonet Services CorporationIntel Corporation Interactive Video Technologies, Inc. InterVideo, Inc. Ipitek Japan Science & Technology

Corporation JATO International Group The John and Dorothy Shea

Foundation Jet Propulsion Laboratory Kluwer Academic Publishers The Kresge Foundation The Lemelson FoundationLightchip, Inc. Lockheed Martin Corporation Lord Corporation Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital

Foundation Los Angeles TimesLucent Technologies/Bell Labs MAG InnoVisionMarotz, Inc. Marsh & McLennan, Inc. Maven Technology MBC Software Solutions Ltd.McAloney Enterprises, Inc. M.C. Gill CorporationMcDermott Technologies, Inc. Meade Instruments Corporation Memorial Park Engineering and

Construction Company Merrill Lynch & Company, Inc.Metromedia Fiber Network, Inc.Microsoft Corporation

MicroTest Laboratories, Inc. Medtronic MiniMed Mitsubishi Digital Electronics

America, Inc.Motion TV, Inc. Motorola, Inc. MP3.com, Inc. NAV CANADANavigation TechnologiesNCR Corporation NetQuest nLight Photonics Nortel Networks LimitedNorthrop Grumman CorporationNorthstar Consulting Group, Inc. Nowcom CorporationNTT DoCoMo Nuevo Energy Company Occidental Petroleum Corporation Panoram Technologies, Inc.Pearson PlcPhaethon Communications, Inc.Phillips Multimedia CenterPrentice Hall PTRPRICE Systems, LLC Primavera Systems, Inc.QUALCOMM IncorporatedQuest Software Inc.R & S Processing Company, Inc.Rational Software CorporationRaytheon Company Reuters ConsultingThe Richards Family Foundation The Ryland Group, Inc.Society of Automotive Engineers

International Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.Scandinavian Airlines

System Science Applications International

Corporation

The Seattle FoundationSega of America Semiconductor Research

Corporation Sempra Energy Semtech CorporationSierra Monolithics, Inc.Silicon Graphics, Inc.Southern California Edison Southern California Gas Company STMicroelectronics, Inc. SulphurX IncorporatedSun Microsystems, Inc. TACAN Corporation TCL Integrated Marketing, Inc.Tekelec Telcordia Technologies, Inc. Teledyne Technologies IncorporatedTeradyne Inc. Texas Instruments Incorporated TMH Corporation The Toyota Foundation Toyota Motor Corporation TRC Environmental Solutions TRW Inc. Universal Studios Verizon Communications VProtect System, Inc. Vulcan Ventures Inc.The Walt Disney CompanyWatson Pharmaceuticals, Inc.The WB Television Network The Whitaker Foundation The William and Flora Hewlett

FoundationXerox CorporationXian-Janssen Pharmaceutical Ltd.Xircom, Inc.

Investing in

Excellence

For more information on how your firm can help to shapethe engineers of tomorrow, please contact:

Anna NorvilleDirector of Corporate RelationsSchool of Engineering213/740-2502 e-mail: [email protected]

The USC School of Engineering thanks the following corporations, foundations and

organizations for their recent gifts. Their generosityis crucial to the success of our students and

faculty as they pursue scientific and academic excellence.

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USC ENGINEER 3

Dean’s PageThe inaugural issue of USC Engineer

page 4 Publisher’s Note

page 5 Straight & To the PointShort Subjects

page 28 Alumni ProfileAlice P. Gast, BSCHE ’80

page 29 Alumni ProfileJay Kear, BSME ’60

page 30 Snap ShotsFall 2001 and Winter 2002 Events

page 33 Calendar

page 34 Class NotesAlumni News & Notes

page 39 Gifts & Support

page 14 Engineered for SuccessDaniel J. Epstein (BSISE ’62), Names ISE Department

by Bob Calverley

page 19 ISI@30Still the Pioneer in Advanced Computer Science and Engineering

by Eric Mankin

page 24 Pulse of the FutureUSC Leads Research into Ultra-Wideband Wireless Technology

by Rick Keir

page 26 Lilliputians of TroyA Nanorobot Swarm

by Rick Keir

ifeatures

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departments

Assistant Professor Elaine Chew believes music is an ideal domain in whichto study communication, creativity, human perception, and cognition.

By building computer models that can probe more deeply into the structure ofmusic and by relating this structure to performance decisions, she hopes to gain

a deeper understanding of human creativity and communication.

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BOARD OF COUNCILORSChairmanJay L. Kear, BSME ‘60Kear Enterprises

Robert V. Adams Capital Management

Dean K. Allen, BSME ‘57Retired, Parsons Corporation

Gordon M. Anderson, BSME ‘54Retired, Santa Fe International Corp.

Carlton H. Baab, BSEE ‘81Raining Data Corporation

William F. Ballhaus Jr. The Aerospace Corporation

Ronald R. Barnes, BSACCT ‘76Norris Foundation

Dwight J. Baum Dwight C. Baum Investments

Andrew C. BeersMicrosoft TV

Gregg E. Brandow, BSCE ‘67Brandow & Johnston Associates

Xiaofan Cao, MSEE ’87, PhD EE ‘90Avanex

David W. Chonette, MSME ’60,ENGME ‘64Brentwood Venture Capital

Richard A. Croxall TRW Inc.

Malcolm R. CurrieHughes Aircraft Company

Steven D. Dorfman, MSEE ‘59Retired, Hughes Electronics Corporation

Daniel J. Epstein, BSISE ‘62ConAm Management Corporation

Alan J. Fohrer, BSCE ’73, MSCE ‘76Edison Mission Energy

Merwyn C. Gill, BSCHE ‘37M.C. Gill Corporation

Jeanette K. Harrison, DPAPUAD ’94Intel Corporation

Karl Jacob III, BSCSCI ‘91Keen.com

James J. Keenan, BSEE ’61, MS ‘67Hendry Telephone Products

Marie L. Knowles, BSCHE ’68,MSCHE ’70, MBA ‘74Retired, ARCO

David A. Lane, BSEE ‘81Diamondhead Ventures

Robert Lee, BSEE ‘70Retired, Pacific Bell

Alfred E. MannMannKind Corporation

Gordon S. Marshall, BSBUS ‘46e-Connections

Paul W. MartinSikorsky Aircraft Corporation

Richard G. MillerParsons Corporation

Narayana N. R. Murthy Infosys Technologies Limited

Daniel J. Niemann Trammell Crow Company

Allen E. PuckettHughes Aircraft Company

F. Edward Reynolds, Jr., BSCE ‘81The Reynolds Group

Forrest D. SawyerSawyer Media Inc.

George M. Scalise Semiconductor Industry Association

A.R. Schleicher III Retired, IBM

Regina P. Smith The New Internet Computer Company(NIC)

Peter Staudhammer TRW Inc.

Richard D. Stephens, BSNSMA ‘74The Boeing Company

Mark A. Stevens, BSEE ’81,BAECON ’81, MSCENG ‘84Sequoia Capital

George A. Strait The Dr. Spock Company

Cyrus Y. Tsui, BSEE ‘69Lattice Semiconductor

Andrew J. Viterbi, PhD EE ‘62The Viterbi Group, LLC

One of the most distinctive and enduringcharacteristics of USC, the thing that inmany ways sets it apart from other

great universities, is the notion and reality of theTrojan Family. It is a concept experienced notonly by the communication and wholeheartedinteraction between alumni, but also throughthe participation and enthusiasm of adoptedTrojans. At the School of Engineering, we arereconnecting with you, our branch of the familytree, and continuing a great USC tradition.

Dean C.L. Max Nikias’ mission for theschool centers on expanding and focusing inseveral key areas. One of the most importantand ultimately enduring of these areas isAlumni Relations. The School has establisheda new Alumni Relations program withunprecedented support and investment. Theprogram’s mission statement is simple: Tojoin together the School and our thousands ofalumni and friends in mutually beneficial ways.

Through this kind of printed communica-tion, on-campus and regional events, volunteeropportunities, stewardship, and a new alumniwebsite, we will keep you informed, involvedand most importantly, full of pride about yourrelationship with the School of Engineering.The creation of this publication was mandatedby the need to “get the word out” aboutthe incredible legacy of our alumni, andthe excellence of the School’s academicdepartments, programs, research centers,faculty and students.

In this premiere issue or USC Engineer,our cover feature, “Engineered For Success”,highlights the generosity of accomplished

alumnus, Daniel J. Epstein, who credits theUSC School of Engineering with laying thefoundation for his many achievements, andwhose desire for continued involvement withthe School is not only a testament to thestrength of our individual departments, butonce again speaks to the fortitude of theTrojan Family.

We will produce this publication biannual-ly. Its different sections will highlight not onlyour alumni andtheir stories of suc-cess, but also dis-tinguished facultymembers who havereceived high hon-ors, cutting-edgeresearch occurringat the School, andimpressive workcoming out of ourresearch centers and institutes.

We hope we will hear from you about whatyou see and read on these pages. Your feedbackand communication are integral to the qualityof our programs. Just as most families do, welook internally to our alumni and friends fortheir inspiration, challenges, analysis, collabora-tion and support. Our goal in establishing a newAlumni Relations program is to provide a placefor you to seek the same things from us. Wehope you will do so, because, ultimately, oursuccess is measured by your success. We lookforward to continuing the partnership.

Annette BlainDirector, Alumni Relations

DeanC.L. Max Nikias

Chief Executive Officer, External RelationsChristopher J. Stoy

Director of Alumni RelationsPublisher, USC Engineer

Annette Blain

Senior WriterMark Ewing

Contributing WritersBob Calverley, John Cohoon,

Rick Keir, Eric Mankin

Art Direction & Graphic DesignTracy Merrigan Creative

We wish to acknowledge the followingindividuals for their contributions to thepremiere issue of USC Engineer:Susan Heitman, Margery Berti, Louise YatesLisa Van Ingen Pope, Anna Norville,Holly Preble, Kim Cabral, Mona Eberhart,Bill Fornoff, and Barbara Honegger.

USC Engineer is published twice a yearfor the alumni and friends of the Schoolof Engineering at the University ofSouthern California.

Letters to the publisher and comments arewelcome. Please send them to: USC Engineer,Alumni Relations Office, Olin Hall 300,Los Angeles, California 90089-1454, or emailthem to [email protected]

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There are secret agents, real estate agents, travelagents, and talent agents, to name just a few. Butthe professionals who attended a special week-long instructional program at the USC Schoolof Engineering in early January were interestedin a different kind of agentry: intelligentcomputer agents.

“This is rapidly becoming a key area ofcomputer science,” says Milind Tambe, anassociate professor in the Department ofComputer Science and a project leader at theInformation Sciences Institute (ISI). “It is anarea where we have been the leader and that isthe reason we organized this ‘Agents School.’”

“Agents,” Tambe explains, “are artificialentities. They’re computer programs, or robots,that exhibit autonomy, purposefulness, behavioralflexibility, and even social capability. Researchersin the field vary on the specific characteristics ofagents, but there's general agreement that suchsoftware has the ability to respond to complexsituations in flexible, ‘intelligent’ ways.”

The USC instructional program, the first of its

kind, attracted an overflowenrollment. Sixty-two graduatestudents came from as far awayas Japan and Slovenia to listen topresentations by top scientists inthe field, many of whom werefrom USC Engineering’sComputer Science Department,the Institute for CreativeTechnology (ICT), and ISI. Facultyfrom Carnegie-Mellon, the Universityof Michigan, and other research centersalso attended the program.

Since the first autonomous agentscongress took place at ISI in 1997,

Tambe believed it was logical to conduct the firstagents school at USC as well. He described theevent as a service to the field, offering students abroad sampling of a wide range of approachesin creating computer agents.

W. Lewis Johnson, director of the Center forAdvanced Research in Technology for Educationat ISI, brought two pedagogical agents to theschool, Steve, a trainer who appears in virtualenvironments either individually or as a team, andAdele, who is a web-based teacher for distancelearning applications.

Dr. Randall W. Hill, Jr., ICT deputy directorof technology, chaired arrangements for theprogram. He noted that the field is relatively new,with useful applications only beginning to appearin the early 1990s. “USC is well-positioned tocapitalize on this emerging field,” he says. “We hada lot of expertise already in place, we went outand recruited more talent and now we’ve becomea leader.”

Hill also lauded the collaboration of theComputer Science Department, ISI, and ICT“in pitching in and working together” to conductthe instructional program.

USC ENGINEER 5

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Teaching Agents a week-long program on approachesto creating intelligent computer agents

MARKSTEVENSThe MidasTouchIn its February 18issue, Forbesmagazine listedUSC alumnusMark Stevens(BSEE ’81,BAECON ’81,

MSCENG ’84) as tenth on its annualMidas List of “Tech’s Top VentureInvestors.” Stevens, a member of theUSC Board of Trustees and the Schoolof Engineering’s Board of Councilors,was 86th on the same list a year ago.The Midas List identifies managers whohave built businesses that are valuable,efficient, attract loyal customers, andhave earnings.

Stevens is a general partner withSequoia Capital, a large Silicon Valleyventure capital firm. He focuses onsoftware and semiconductor-relatedinvestments for the firm, which gainednotoriety for backing such icons as AppleComputer, Yahoo!, and Cisco Systems.Forbes credited Stevens with helping tocreate Pixelworks, QuickLogic, Terayon,and Nvidia.

The upbeat Forbes story “It’sMorning Again in Silicon Valley”, notedthat “the engine of innovation still hums”despite the tech sector’s problems, andadded that venture capital firms raised$40 billion in 2001.

Stevens earned his MBA fromHarvard University. He resides inNorthern California with his wife Maryand three children.

W. Lewis Johnson is pictured with computer agenttrainer “Steve,” seen on the screens behind himand “Adele” on the laptop in the foreground

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6 USC ENGINEER

Whitaker Foundation GrantBoosts Biomedical EngineeringThe Whitaker Foundation has given a $1 million, three-year grantto USC’s Biomedical Engineering Department. The foundationrealizes that a steady supply of well-educated professionals,thoroughly grounded in both biomedicine and engineering, isessential to the ongoing progress of the biotechnology industry.The grant is accompanied by matching funds from the Schooland additional support from the Alfred E. Mann Institute forBiomedical Engineering.

“Biotech firms are constantly on the look-out for people whoseeducation has included the fundamental principles underlyingbiomedical devices and diagnostics, as well as familiarity with theprocess of technology devel-opment,” says Dr. DavidD'Argenio, professor andchair of the BiomedicalEngineering Department.

Biomedical Engineeringgraduates meet theserecruiting requirements asa result of the instruction,laboratory courses, projects,and internships they havewhile at USC.

“The Whitaker grant,”D’Argenio explains, “willenable USC Engineering todeepen and strengthen thiseducational process and thuscontinue to provide this high-tech segment of the economywith engineers capable of visualizing, designing, building, and test-ing the next generations of medical devices and instrumentation.”Biomedical Engineering will use the Whitaker grant, as well as other

funding, to expand bothgraduate and undergraduatedegree programs, and to addthree new full-time facultypositions.

“We plan to add aspecialty track in biomedical device and diagnostic technologies atthe graduate level,” D’Argenio says, “and we will offer fellowshipsupport for students who pursue it.”

The department also has plans to establish an undergraduateinternship program with certain biomedical device companies andthe Mann Institute. When recruiting three new faculty members,D’Argenio will seek those with research and educational interests inareas key to the next generation of implantable devices, sensors, anddiagnostic technologies.

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MILITARYSALUTEElectrical EngineeringSystems professor,Robert Scholtz, receivedthe 2001 MilitaryCommunicationsConference Award forTechnical Excellence forhis sustained contribu-tions to military wireless research into spread spectrum communi-cations and ultra-wideband radio technology. Scholtz is only thefourth person to earn the award in the conference’s 20-yearhistory. (For more on ultra-wideband radio technology see page 24)

The chairman of the award committee, Professor LaurenceMilstein of the University of California at San Diego, describesScholtz as “one of the foremost contributors in moving themilitary communications field ahead. He is one of the mostimportant investigators nationally in the new field of ultra-wideband radio.”

Scholtz established the Ultra-wideband Radio Laboratory,or UltRa Lab, in the School’s Integrated Media Systems Center in1996. It was the first academic program to perform fundamentalresearch on ultra-wideband radio.

The award is sponsored by The Institute of Electrical andElectronics Engineers Communications Society and the ArmedForces Communications and Electronics Association.

Biomedical Engineering chairDavid D’Argenio

1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

2 Stanford University

University of California, Berkeley

4 Georgia Institute of Technology

5 University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign

6 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

7 California Institute of Technology

8 University of Southern California

Cornell University

10 Carnegie Mellon University

University of Texas, Austin

U.S. News & World ReportTop Ten Schools of Engineering

April 5, 2002–USC’s graduate school ranks 8thin the nation

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As her fingers flew back andforth across the keys of a grand pianointerpreting the intricate bi-tonal composition“Doubles” during a December concert inLos Angeles, Elaine Chew was also gettingin a little practice for her day job.

“My technical training is in operationsresearch, the science of decision making,”explains the assistant professor of the Daniel J.Epstein Department of Industrial and SystemsEngineering. “A concert performance is theresult of a series of decisions, conscious orunconscious. A musician plots a coursethrough a complex network of choices usinghis or her experience, analysis, and instinct.”

Chew is also a senior investigator at theIntegrated Media Systems Center (IMSC), ateacher, an accomplished international concertpianist, and an avid proponent of new music.

Crossing Cultures & DisciplinesBorn in Buffalo, New York, she spent most ofher childhood in Singapore before returningto America to study music, mathematics, andengineering. She majored in music andcomputational mathematics as anundergraduate at Stanford, and received hermaster’s and PhD in operations researchfrom MIT.

In her PhD dissertation, Chew began toexplore tonality in music by using mathemati-cal models. She has since created computermodels that mimic human capabilities infinding keys. “Most people have the abilityto determine the key of a musical passageintuitively, though they may not realize it,”

she says. “When you hearthe music, you can pickout the most stable pitch,which is ‘doh,’ and youhave found the key.”

Chew believesmusic is an ideal domainin which to study com-munication, creativity,human perception, andcognition. By buildingcomputer models thatcan probe more deeplyinto the structure ofmusic, and by relating this

structure to performance decisions, she hopesto gain a deeper understanding of humancreativity and communication.

“Music, mathematics, and engineeringare all human attempts to describe andunderstand the logic and patterns in the worldin which we live,” she explains. “Using thelanguage of one to describe the other, andunderstanding the commonalties amongseemingly disparate fields, reveals as muchabout ourselves as it does the world around us.”

Research Through CompositionPeter Child, an MIT professor of music,composed Chew’s concert piece, “Doubles.”It stemmed from several Chinese and Malaymelodies and folk songs from her childhood.The MIT professor reworked the melodies intoa series of complex pieces for piano. “I am nota composer,” she says, “but I do like to workclosely with composers on their creations.”

In Child’s bi-tonal composition, thepianist’s left and right hands each play indifferent keys and often in widely varyingrhythms. It can be a challenge for pianists andaudiences alike. Yet “Doubles” was easily themost melodic part of the evening’s program,and many of the images from the words of theoriginal folk songs were apparent to the mind’seye. This was surprising because Chew gaveChild the melodies to the folk songs, but notthe lyrics.

Chew says that as a child, she and hersiblings competed to see who could sing“Spring Song” the fastest. The song is aboutan old man lamenting over his spent youth

symbolized by birds flying away. Child presentsthat melody in a rush of fleeting notes, thefastest tempo heard in “Doubles.” The“Cockatoo” is characterized by a series ofplayful and staccato notes that sound like abird hopping. Two other Malay melody-basedpieces, “Riversong” and “Sampan Variations,”culminate in a burst of ragtime, an Americanmusical genre from the Mississippi Delta. Themusic has made cross-cultural connectionsabout rivers and water.

In a discussion that preceded the concert,Child said that composers who put poems tomusic must carefully match the rhythm andtone of their music so that it reflects what thepoet’s words convey. Why then, did Child’s“Doubles” capture so many of the images andfeelings expressed in lyrics he had not seen?

“It must have something to do with thepiece’s original composition,” Child says, andChew adds that “folk songs are some of theoldest music in existence.” Many of the songsChew sent to Child were songs that childrenhave been singing for countless generations,perhaps for thousands of years. The wordsand the music have combined on a veryfundamental level.

“I’m not surprised,” Chew says, “that aNew England composer can evoke the sameemotions from audiences that I felt as a child inSingapore, because music transcends cultures.”

Some artists maintain that it is notpossible to explain a concept such as melody.Chew clearly disagrees. She uses modern engi-neering tools to investigate music. “Understandmusic and you begin to understand how thehuman mind works.”

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USC ENGINEER 7

“Music, mathematicsand engineering areall human attempts todescribe and understandthe logic and patternsin the world in whichwe live…”

Composed Research Faculty profile: Elaine Chew

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pFor the nearly 40 million people whose vision is consider-ably less than 20/20, buying a pair of eyeglasses poses aproblem: when the customer tries on new frames, pre-scription lenses are not in place. The customer often can-not clearly see the details of his or her own face in theoptician’s mirror, let alone the finer points of the frames.Buying glasses becomes heavily dependent on guessworkand the opinions of others. Considering the impact theright, or wrong, frame can have on a person’s appearance,it’s little wonder the $16 billion eyewear industry considersthis issue a major barrier to increasing sales.

With help from an innovative face-modeling technol-ogy developed at the School of Engineering’s IntegratedMedia Systems Center (IMSC), a National ScienceFoundation Engineering Research Center at USC, some ofthe guesswork in buying eyeglasses has been eliminated. IMSC’stechnology has been incorporated into a new product called 3DiView, which was developed by Geometrix of San Jose and itspartner, Visonix of Israel. Hoya Corporation of Japan, the world’ssecond largest manufacturer of eyeglass lenses, is introducing its ownbranded version of the 3D iView system in its home-market retail stores.

“This is a great example of how IMSC technology moves from thelaboratory to a commercial product,” according to Dr. Isaac Maya,IMSC’s director of Industry and Technology Transfer Programs.

The in-store application of 3D iView is simple and quick. At a Hoyastore, a customer takes off his glasses and poses before an array of sixcameras, which simultaneously photograph his face at different angles.After only 90 seconds of digital mapping, the six photos are stitched into a3D virtual representation of the customer’s face, which then appears on acomputer screen along with a wide selection of virtual frames. Placingdifferent frames and lenses on the virtual face requires only a few clicks ofa computer mouse. A customer can “try on” many frames in rapid

succession while still seeingclearly, because the customernever has to remove his orher current prescriptionglasses. As with many“object” movies now onthe Internet, the customer’svirtual face and eyeglasses

can be moved by mouse and cursor into a wide range of views. Oncethe customer has chosen frames and lenses, the system automaticallyperforms all the measurements previously taken by an optician, andtransmits that data to a lens-processing lab for production.

Another potential use, although not currently offered by Hoya,is that once a facial model is created at the store, the customer can shopfrom home, using the system through the store’s web site.

Dr. Gérard Medioni, professor and chair of the Computer ScienceDepartment, developed the IMSC face-modeling software, which islicensed by IMSC corporate partner Geometrix. Dr. George Chen, aformer IMSC student, assisted Dr. Medioni. Dr. Chen received his PhDin December of 1999, and now works for ST Microelectronics, anotherIMSC partner.

8 USC ENGINEER

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The Frame Game

“This is a

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IMSC technology moves from the

laboratory to a commercial product.”

Achieving the goals set out forthe School by Dean C.L. MaxNikias will require successfulrecruiting of the best engineer-ing minds. Recent awardsgarnered by junior faculty areevidence that the School ofEngineering is on course. Sevenjunior faculty have won EarlyCareer Development awardsfrom the National ScienceFoundation.

The highly competitiveawards provide upwards of$300,000 each for research,

teaching, and outreachactivities during the next fiveyears. The purpose of EarlyCareer awards is to helppromising young professorsestablish academic careers.

Four of the recipients,Mathieu Desbrun, Ashish Goel,Christos Papadopoulos, andGaurav Sukhatme are assistantprofessors of computer science.Two more, Ahmed Helmy andWon Namgoong are assistantprofessors of electricalengineering/systems. The final

recipient, Chongwu Zhou, is anassistant professor of electricalengineering/electrophysics.Desbrun, Papadopoulos,and Sukhatme are also keyinvestigators at USC’sIntegrated Media SystemsCenter.

Mathieu Desbrun isdeveloping new mathematicaland computational tools fordigital geometry that willadvance the field of computergraphics. His research isfocused on how computers can

improve the way they representand process curved surfaces,and more generally, anyirregular, non-uniform sampleddata. He said the tools he isdeveloping can accelerate theuse of 3D graphics in medicalimaging, biology, electroniccommerce, video games, andhaptics. “I am working oninitiatives to incorporateadvances in my project intoboth the graduate andundergraduate curriculum,”said Desbrun.

continued on page 11

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USC ENGINEER 9

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ILLUMINWhat do a father in Argentina, a high school student in Texas,a businessman in Korea, and a Master Sergeant stationed in Japanhave in common? They’ve all found answers to their technicalquestions at Illumin, an online magazine written, edited, andpublished by undergraduate students at USC’s School of Engineering.

The School of Engineering started Illumin (illumin.usc.edu) threeyears ago as a response to students’ need to improve their writingand communication skills. The magazine’s specific mission is toexplain the role of engineering in everyday life. By writing articles thatlink classroom theory to real-world applications, students learn how

to communicate with and influence the world aroundthem. Simply put, they make engineering accessible tonon-engineers.

Six undergraduates and one graduate student make upIllumin’s editorial team. They meet once a week to planupcoming issues, discuss technical and layout possibilities,and consider ways to increase readership. Articles comefrom the required undergraduate advanced writing course,so every student gets a chance to submit an article forpublication. The student editors review and rate close to 350articles per year to create four issues with ten articles each.

Because the articles are on the Internet, multimediafeatures (from short lectures by USC faculty to Flashpresentations) add a visual component unavailable ina traditional published medium. The site also featuresa glossary of terms used in the articles and an archive ofpast issues.

The student editors are constantly thinking of newapplications and audiences. One of their next projects isto use the magazine to attract more women and minoritystudents to engineering. An essay contest for high schoolstudents is also in the works. As college students, the editorsknow that clearly informing young women and men aboutengineering is a vital step in their professional development.

As part of the School of Engineering’s approach toinnovative teaching, Illumin will continue to challengestudents to communicate how engineering influencesour world.

–Stephen Bucherstu

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Students (left to right) Kim Vu, Jonathan Mapel, Johanna Wonsowicz,Melissa Patterson working on an issue of Illumin

His sea-shell pink Hancock Park home could just as easily bethe set for a film about a storied 19th century adventurer. It’sbrimming over with diplomatic medals, university degrees,ceremonial swords, 300-year-old Russian iconography, andmuseum-quality rugs and tapestries presented by the late Shahof Iran and Arab princes. Photos taken with kings, presidents,prime ministers, and some of the developing world’s morecolorful rulers of the past 50 years cover nearly every squareinch of wall space. The common element in this life story is theworld’s primary energy source: light sweet crude.

In the past year, Dr. George V. Chilingar (BSPE ’49,MSPE ’50, PhD GEOL ’56), professor of petroleum andenvironmental engineering at USC, has added two moreawards to the hundreds already crowding his home.

Last September, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia acknowledgedDr. Chilingar’s contributions to the success of Saudi Aramco,Saudi Arabia’s national oil company. King Fahd also noted thatsome of the discovery and extraction of oil reserves aroundthe world were due to Chilingar’s successful blending of

petroleum engineering and geology, both of which he studiedat USC. The Saudi Consul General in Los Angeles,Ambassador Mohammed A. Al-Salloum, presented the award,a globe signifying the worldwide reach and importance of thepetroleum industry and Saudi Aramco. Among those attend-ing the award luncheon were Dean C.L. Max Nikias and Dr.Carter Wellford, chair of the Civil Engineering Department.

A Russian KnightLike many exiles of Stalinist Russia, Chilingar grew up acrossthe Caspian Sea in Iran, where his father served as the Shah’s


Oil Man – the passion of a man with

a lifetime of discoveries worldwide

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MAKE A LASTING COMMITMENT TO THE USC SCHOOLOF ENGINEERING AND BENEFIT FROM YOUR OWN SMARTPLANNED GIVING.

OPTIONS FOR CHARITABLE GIVING TO THE USC SCHOOL OFENGINEERING HAVE NEVER BEEN GREATER. AND, WITH OURGOVERNMENT’S BLESSING, YOUR GENEROSITY CAN SAVE YOUTHOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN TAXES.

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THE USC SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING WILL TEAM WITH THE OFFICEOF PLANNED GIVING TO EXPLAIN HOW GIFTS OF CASH, REALESTATE AND SECURITIES CAN BE TO YOUR ADVANTAGE.

IT’S A GREAT WAY FOR YOU TO UNLOCK THE EQUITY IN YOURASSETS AND INCREASE YOUR INCOME WHILE SAVING MONEY ONINCOME, ESTATE AND GIFT TAXES–INCLUDING CAPITAL GAINS TAX.

BY MAKING A GIFT THAT IS OUTRIGHT, DEFERRED, OR IN TRUSTYOU WILL BE MAKING A SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTION TO THEFUTURE OF USC. YOU’LL ALSO BE HELPING YOURSELF WITHTAX-SAVING BENEFITS.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT HOLLY PREBLE,EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT, USC SCHOOL OFENGINEERING AT 213/740-2502.

Dean C.L. Max Nikias has made it a vitalpriority to discover new faculty members whoare leading relevant and exciting research. Aspart of the new dean’s plan, the results of thisresearch will build strong ties to industry,elevate the School of Engineering in thenational rankings, and deliver the best possibleeducation to our undergraduate and graduateengineering students.

In 2001 and early 2002, the School recruitedan exceptional group of brilliant researchers ina range of engineering disciplines, whose workwill undoubtedly enrich the School’s offerings.

Elaine Chew, Assistant Professor,Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial andSystems Engineering, earned her PhD at MITin 2000. Dr. Chew’s expertise is in the comput-er modeling of music perception and cogni-tion, the representation and visualization ofmusical information, and optimization andalgorithm design. She also has a researchappointment at the Integrated Media SystemsCenter. (See article on page 7)

Leana Golubchik, AssociateProfessor, Computer Science, earned her PhDat UCLA in 1995. She comes to USC from theUniversity of Maryland, where she was anassociate professor. Dr. Golubchik’s researchareas include Internet-based computing,multimedia systems, computer systemsmodeling and performance evaluation.

Norberto Grzywacz, Professor,Biomedical Engineering, joined the Schoolfrom the Smith-Kettlewell Eye ResearchInstitute, where he was a senior scientist. Theresearch Professor Grzywacz performs uses a

combination of experimental techniqueswith computational models to investi-gate neural processing in the retina andvisual perception. He also studies retinaloptimization in order to performcomputations underlying early vision.

Tzung Hsiai, AssistantProfessor, Biomedical Engineering,received his PhD from UCLA in 2001,and his MD from the University ofChicago in 1993. Dr. Hsiai’s researchfocuses on the use of Bio-MEMS(Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) andmicrofluidics to investigate mechanismsby which hemodynamics regulatecoronary artery disease and acutecoronary syndrome, or heart attack.

Cauligi Raghavendra,Professor, Electrical Engineering/Systems, was asenior engineering specialist at the AerospaceCorporation from 1997 to 1999. Prior to that,he was the Boeing Centennial Chair Professorin Computer Engineering at Washington StateUniversity. His research interests include paralleland distributed systems, routing and multicast-ing networks, reliability and fault tolerancein networks, and power aware protocols forwireless networks.

Milind Tambe, Associate Professor,Computer Science, received his PhD fromCarnegie Mellon in 1991, and has since beenserving as a research assistant professor at theInformation Sciences Institute. Dr. Tambe’simportant contributions in the areas of multi-agents, teamwork, coordination, negotiation andintelligent agents have merited his appointment.

Two additional faculty members will beginin the Summer 2002 semester.

Ramesh Govindan, AssociateProfessor, Computer Science, has been aresearch assistant professor at ISI sincereceiving his PhD from UC Berkeley in 1992.His research focuses on computer networks,operating systems, and multimedia.

Kirk Shung, Professor, BiomedicalEngineering, served as a distinguishedprofessor in the Department of Bioengineeringat Pennsylvania State University. Hisresearch involves high-frequency ultrasonictransducers/arrays for applications inophthalmology and vascular therapy. Hiswork has led to the development of novelpiezoelectric materials, very high frequencysingle-element transducers, and linear arrays.

10 USC ENGINEER

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From left to right: Professor Norberto Grzywacz,Biomedical Engineering; Professor Cauligi Raghavendra,Electrical Engineering/Systems; Associate ProfessorLeana Golubchik, Computer Science; Associate ProfessorMilind Tambe, Computer Science; Assistant ProfessorTzung Hsiai, Biomedical Engineering.

Bright Additions

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USC ENGINEER 11

Alumnus Honored for ShuttleSoftware Reliability Model

Ashish Goel is creatingalgorithms aimed at improvingthe performance of computernetworks by taking intoaccount issues such as fairnessand availability, as well asefficiency. He plans to developtwo new courses, “Algorithmsfor Computer Networks” and“Modern AlgorithmicTechniques.” “I’m looking atsimple mechanisms that pushselfish users toward approxi-mately fair solutions,” he said.“We need to combine this withthe traditional objectives opti-mizing the bandwidth cost ortotal throughput, and we needsome general rules of thumbfor system developers.”

Christos Papadopoulosis a computer networkspecialist working to developthe next generation of architec-

ture for the Internet. “There aretwo camps on what approachto take,” said Papadopoulos.“One group holds that theInternet architecture mustcontinue to be simple, whichcould make it difficult toimprove performance, security,and network management.Others maintain thattomorrow’s Internet will haveto be a lot more intelligent—and complex—to do the thingsthat we want it to.”

Papadopoulos proposes anew paradigm governing hownew computer applicationsinteract with networks. Hewould decompose applicationsinto smaller components sothat much of the increasedcomplexity resides with applica-tions. Network componentswould be kept general and

simple so they could be easilyimplemented on existingequipment. “It means youhave to think deeper aboutthe distinction between anapplication and the network,”he said. Papadopoulos alsoplans to expose students to thenew concepts in his computerscience classes.

Gaurav Sukhatme isperforming fundamentalresearch on large-scale, mobile,multi-robot teams. “Mobilerobot teams hold the promiseof performing tasks that cannotbe done by a single robot.They will have increasedtolerance for faults and theymight be able to performtasks more quickly,” saidSukhatme. “However, a firmtheory base for such systemsdoes not exist.”

Sukhatme will study large-scale robot groups experimen-tally by testing his hypotheseswith physical and simulatedrobots, and theoretically, bymathematically characterizingtheir behavior. He said hecurrently works with robotgroups of a dozen, but thatcontrol and communicationssystems needed to handle theinteractions of groups number-ing in the hundreds, andeventually thousands of robots,will be far more complex.Sukhatme is also an investiga-tor on another NSF projectaimed at building nanoscalerobots to track ocean pollution,as well as an NSF project thatinvestigates coordinationalgorithms for large-scalerobotic sensor networks.

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National prestige and national security rarelyintersect in the life’s work of a single individual.But that’s precisely the case for the 2001 winnerof the Institute of Electrical and ElectronicEngineers’ (IEEE) Reliability Society’s“Reliability Engineer of the Year” Award–NavalPostgraduate School Professor and Director ofthe NPS Software Metrics Laboratory, NormanF. Schneidewind (MSORE ’70).

Every Space Shuttle mission, Tomahawkcruise missile launch, and readiness validationfor the nation’s Trident nuclear missile force,depends on the painstaking, visionary work ofthis 30-year professor of information sciencesat the Navy’s postgraduate school. In fact,all 400,000 lines of avionics software–theon-board computer code that controls andguides all aspects of the spacecraft’s flight fromlaunch, to on-orbit, through landing–havebeen given the NASA seal of approval afterbeing checked and double checked for life-and

mission-threatening errors by theSchneidewind Software Reliability Model.

In addition to the Space Shuttle, ProfessorSchneidewind’s software reliability modelis also critical for the safe and accuratefunctioning of the nation’s strategicsubmarine-based Trident nuclear missile force,as well as the Navy’s ship-launched Tomahawkcruise missiles.

The “Reliability Engineer of the Year”award is presented annually by the IEEEReliability Society to one individual whosework has significantly increased the reliabilityof hardware systems, software systems, or both.Professor Schneidewind received the honor onJanuary 26, 2002 during the Society’s annualawards banquet.

Professor Schneidewind earned hisdoctoral degree in operations research from theUniversity of Southern California GraduateSchool of Business Administration in 1966.

He has three masters degrees: in operationsresearch from USC’s School of Engineering,and in computer science and electricalengineering from San Jose State University.His BS, also in electrical engineering, is fromthe University of California at Berkeley.

–Contributed by Barbara HoneggerNaval Postgraduate School

continued from page 8

USC Alumnus Norman F. Schneidewind (left)receives his award at the IEEE banquet inSeattle on January 26, 2002. Presenting thehonor is Dr. Sam Keene (right), past presidentof the Society.

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Won Namgoong isdesigning a high-performance,ultra-wideband radio based onthe same standard low-costsemiconductor technology usedto make microprocessors. Ultra-wideband radio is an emergingand radically different wirelesstechnology in which data istransmitted by rapid-fire low-power pulses of radio energyspread across the entire radiospectrum rather than byradio waves tuned to narrowfrequencies (see the UWB storyon page 24).

While the technology couldlead to highly secure wirelessvoice and data communications

and devices such as handheldground- and wall-penetratingradar, it also poses hugeengineering design challenges.A major concern of ultra-wideband radio proponentsis the ability of the radios toefficiently handle the extremelyhigh bandwidth, dynamicrange, and clock speeds––radiopulses last nanoseconds, orbillionths of a second—requiredfor ultra-wideband radio. “Thisresearch will demonstrate thefeasibility and effectiveness ofthe proposed architecture forreception and transmission ofultra-wideband signals,” saidNamgoong. He proposes to

channelize incoming ultra-wideband signals and toprocess them in parallel.“Our goal is to design a high-performance single-chip ultra-wideband radio.”

Ahmed Helmy is develop-ing protocols and the architec-ture to multicast to large-scale,mobile, ad hoc wirelessnetworks. Multicasting issending a single message toa large but selected group ofindividuals. Ad hoc networksare groups where participantsjoin and leave at will. “Ad hocnetworks consist of wirelessdevices that are able to operatewithout a network infrastruc-

ture. Device mobility poses anadditional challenge to providea robust and scalable multicast-ing service,” Helmy said. “I planto develop a series of courseson protocol design and ad hocnetworking and establish awireless networking laboratory.”

Chongwu Zhou plans todesign, fabricate, and evaluatemolecular scale versions of twocore elements in integratedcircuits: transistors andmemories. The transistors willbe two orders of magnitudesmaller than today’s mostadvanced silicon-basedtransistors. “I am findingconductive molecules that

12 USC ENGINEER

continued from page 11

As part of the Computer ScienceDistinguished Lecture series,Academy Award-winning computergraphics pioneer Alvy Ray Smithaddressed the question, “Will DigitalActors Replace Human Ones.”On January 30, faculty, staff, andstudents filled the auditorium at theAndrus Gerontology Center to hearSmith say that digital actors werenot likely to replace the humanvariety anytime soon.

“Colleagues have, for years,claimed that they will eliminate thehuman actor from the screen,” saidSmith. “The appearance of actors isunder threat, but the acting of actorsis secure.”

He argued that the animatorswho are creating characters with theirpowerful digital tools should themselvesbe viewed as actors. While computerscan make increasingly sophisticatedand realistic digital representations ofhumans, Smith said the machineswouldn’t be able to produce the

emotional facet of charactersanytime soon.

Smith co-founded four centers ofcomputer graphics excellence—Altamira,Pixar, Lucasfilm and New York Tech—before joining Microsoft as its firstGraphics Fellow. His work has appearedin “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,”“Toy Story,” and “Tin Toy,” the firstAcademy Award-winning computer-generated short film.

Digital Actors Not Likelyto Replace the Human Variety

Computer graphics pioneerAlvy Ray Smith

National Science FoundationFunds Biological InformationTechnology Research

Theodore Berger, professor of biomedicalengineering and director of the USC Centerfor Neural Engineering, and John Granacki,director of the Advanced Systems Divisionof the Information Sciences Institute (ISI),have each been awarded grants worth$850,000 to $950,000 over the next threeyears. The National Science Foundationis funding their research to developbiologically inspired computer chips underthe new Biological Information TechnologySystems program. ISI is adding $250,000 tocover fabrication costs, bringing the totalfunding for the project to about $2 million.Berger and Granacki will act as co-principalinvestigators on each other’s grants.Other co-principal investigators are VasilisMarmarelis, professor of biomedicalengineering and electrical engineering/systems; Armand Tanguay, professor ofelectrical engineering/electrophysics; andJack Wills, senior computer/electronicsengineer at ISI.

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Dean C.L. Max Nikiasappointed ProfessorUlrich Neumanndirector of the School’sIntegrated MediaSystems Center,effective March 15,2002. Neumann is aprofessor of computerscience, and in his newpost, he will hold theCharles Lee PowellChair in Engineering.

“I am honored tobe named the new

Director of IMSC,” Professor Neumann says, “and I lookforward to working closely with IMSC faculty, staff, andstudents, as well as with NSF and our corporate partners,in meeting the challenges of multimedia and Internetresearch in this new century.”

The Integrated Media Systems Center, with an $11million annual budget, is the National ScienceFoundation’s only Engineering Research Center formultimedia and Internet research. The Center providesan environment where academia and industry can worktogether on complex, next-generation engineeringsystems important to the nation’s future.

Neumann has been with USC since 1994 and with

IMSC from its inception. He played a pivotal role indeveloping USC’s proposal for the creation of IMSC,and Nikias lauded him “for articulating the center’svision and research agenda.”

Neumann earned a Master of Science in ElectricalEngineering at the State University of New York atBuffalo in 1980. He completed his PhD in ComputerScience at the University of North Carolina at ChapelHill in 1993, where his focus was on parallel algorithmsfor interactive volume-visualization.

His research in video-based tracking systems forAugmented Reality applications in manufacturing andtraining earned him a National Science FoundationCareer award at USC. Also at USC, his work in 3Dmodeling and animation systems earned him the JuniorFaculty Research Award.

Within the Integrated Media Systems Center,Neumann has overseen research into computerinterfaces, interactive media, 3D computer graphics,and immersive environments. He directs the ComputerGraphics and Immersive Technologies Laboratories,and his work on motion tracking is a key componentin producing special effects for movies and creatinginteractive augmented realities for training andnavigation applications. The research he has done onanimating 3D facial expressions and human hairmodeling has advanced the realism of these simulationsand the ease with which they are created.

USC ENGINEER 13

mimic the electronic compo-nents that we fabricate fromsilicon today,” Zhou said. “Theeventual success of this pro-gram will firmly establish molec-ular electronics as an intriguingand practical technology withgreat potential to replacesilicon-based electronics.”

Zhou was also cited in thecover article for the December2001 issue of Science for hiswork in creating moleculardiodes for nano-circuits.Science selected nano-circuitsas the “Breakthrough ofthe Year.”

Jerry Mendel, professorof electrical engineering, has

won the 2002 Transactions onFuzzy Systems OutstandingPaper Award for his paper“Type-2 Fuzzy Logic Systems.”The paper was co-authored bytwo electrical engineering grad-uate students: Nilesh Karnik,who received his PhD in 1998;and Qilian Liang, who receivedhis PhD in 2000.

Clifford Neuman, seniorresearch scientist at the USCSchool of Engineering’sInformation Sciences Institute(ISI), was named by InfoWorldone of the Top 10 TechnicalInnovators for 2001.

Neuman was cited for hiswork on Kerberos, a computer

network authentication proto-col. Kerberos is used to makesure people on the Internet arewho they say they are, and thatcomputers are what they saythey are, and it has applicationsin electronic commerce.

The senior editors ofInfoWorld annually choose 10people whose contributions totechnology have had the mostsignificant impact on business.Profiles of Neuman and theother innovators ran in theMarch 3, 2002 issue ofInfoWorld.

Fabio Silva, ISI program-mer, earned the ISI MeritoriousService Award for the work

he performed for a militarytechnology demonstration atthe Twentynine Palms MarineBase last year. The demonstra-tion was part of a DefenseAdvanced Research ProjectAdministration (DARPA)program involving militarysensor information technology.

George Bekey, holder ofthe Gordon S. Marshall Chairin Engineering and a universityprofessor with appointmentsin computer science, electricalengineering, and biomedicalengineering, has been invitedto be an honorary member ofthe Hungarian Academy ofEngineering.

Neumann Named Director of IMSC

Ulrich Newmann, IMSC’snew director

Associate Dean,School of EngineeringExecutive Director,Information Sciences InstituteHerbert Schorr

Associate Dean,Academic AffairsYanis C. Yortsos

Associate Dean, Research Randolph Hall

Associate Dean,AdministrationKathleen Ash

CEO, External RelationsChristopher J. Stoy

Assistant Dean,Undergraduate Student AffairsLouise A. Yates

Assistant Dean,Graduate Student AffairsMargery Berti

Assistant Dean, ProgramPlanning and DesignSusan S. Lewis

School ofEngineeringLeadershipTeam

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THE DANIEL J. EPSTEIN DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING – SAN DIEGO REALESTATE ENTREPRENEUR DANIEL J. EPSTEIN HAS GIVEN THE SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING $⁄‚ MILLION TO ENDOWTHE INDUSTRIAL AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT, FROM WHICH HE GRADUATED WITH HONORSIN ⁄·§¤. THE DEPARTMENT HAS BEEN RENAMED IN HONOR OF HIS GIFT. MR. EPSTEIN MET WITHUSC ENGINEER TO DISCUSS NOT JUST HIS CAREER, BUT ALSO HIS ENDORSEMENT OF DEAN NIKIAS’PLANS TO ELEVATE THE SCHOOL INTO THE RANKS OF THE NATION’S ELITE ENGINEERING SCHOOLS.

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USC ENGINEER 15

“I couldn’t have

achieved what I

have without the

education in

industrial systems

engineering I

received at USC,”

said Epstein.

“USC has really

been important to

me, and giving

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meaningful way

fulfills a lifelong

dream.”

scover tory

Great outcomes sometimes turn on small pivots. For Daniel J. Epstein, it was a day at USC in 1962 when he overheard

two industrial and systems engineering students discussing a trainee position being offered by the Paul Hardeman Company,

a world-wide, independent construction company. Intrigued by the position’s prospects for major project experience,

professional growth, and promotion, Epstein characteristically thought it through quickly, made a decision, and then acted.

He sought out the firm’s recruiter and applied for the position.

“I interviewed for it,” he recalled recently forUSC Engineer, “and convinced them that what theyreally needed was an industrial and systems engineer,not a civil engineer.” Not coincidentally, Epstein wasan industrial and systems engineering major.

He got the job, and with USC diploma in hand,Epstein set off for Cape Canaveral, Florida, as a fieldengineer. The project was the National Aeronauticsand Space Administration’sgargantuan Vehicle AssemblyBuilding in which the Apollo-Saturn moon rockets were tobe assembled.

Time was short and thetask immense. President John F.Kennedy had pledged to landmen on the moon by the endof the 1960s. “To pull all thedifferent construction elementstogether required a schedulingtechnique called ‘Critical PathMethod,’” Epstein said.“Fortunately for me, I’d taken a‘CPM’ course at USC so I knewhow to do it. And I did it.”

His work habits andsolid engineering skills didnot escape the notice of others.Less than 10 years aftergraduating from USC, he hadbecome the constructionmanager for a large builder ofapartment complexes in Dallas,Texas. Then in 1975, he founded his own firm,the ConAm Management Group, in San Diego.

Epstein readily acknowledges that his USCeducation has been a major factor in his success.ConAm, which stands for Continental American,is today the tenth largest real estate and property

management organization in the United States.“I couldn’t have achieved what I have without

the education in industrial systems engineeringI received at USC,” said Epstein. “USC has really beenimportant to me, and giving back to USC in ameaningful way fulfills a lifelong dream.”

The San Diego entrepreneur has now given$10 million to the School of Engineering. In

recognition of thisbeneficence, theIndustrial and SystemsEngineeringDepartment, the samedepartment from whichhe graduated in 1962,will be renamed theDaniel J. EpsteinDepartment ofIndustrial and SystemsEngineering. Inaddition, the School'sEngineeringManagement Award,presented at theAnnual Alumni Awardsluncheon every spring,will now bear the title ofthe “Daniel J. EpsteinEngineering

Management Award.”Dean of the USC

School of EngineeringC.L. Max Nikias, expressed

the University’s and his own deep gratitude tothe Epsteins.

“Since becoming dean last summer,” Nikias said,“I have had several occasions to share with Dan myplan to take USC Engineering into the ranks of thenation's elite engineering schools. Dan’s generous gift

An engineering periodical from 1965featured the construction of the VehicleAssembly Building at the Kennedy SpaceCenter in Florida

ENGINEERED FOR SUCCESS

is a most encouraging endorsement of thisplan. It demonstrates that Dan truly caresabout USC, about the School of Engineering,and about his own academic department.”

Nikias explains that the gift, the singlelargest gift from an individual to name anacademic department in USC history, will givea significant boost to the School’s endowmentfund. “Part of the gift will be allocated toestablish two chairs in this discipline,” headded. “And we will seek top-notch seniorfaculty to hold those positions.” The deanpromises that the ultimate purpose of thisgift will be to ensure academic excellencefor the ISE department so that it will berecognized as one of the nation’s best.(See ISE sidebar on page 18)

Professor Randolph Hall, associatedean for research, professor of Industrial andSystems Engineering and department chair,said that Epstein, in his role as chairman ofthe ISE Advisement Committee, has longadvocated a curriculum that ensures futuregenerations of engineers are well grounded inmanagement and economics. Hall explainedhow the gift will allow the School ofEngineering to join with the Marshall Schoolof Business in offering cross-disciplinaryundergraduate minors, as well as graduatedegree programs in engineering management.

“Dan feels strongly that engineers shouldbe able to analyze the financial implications oftheir engineering decisions,” said Hall. “He alsobelieves that engineers must be good commu-

nicators and has been an enthusiastic advocateof our writing program.” (See story on “Illumin”on page 9)

Through the years, Epstein has remainedconnected with USC. In February, 2002, USCPresident Steven B. Sample announcedEpstein’s election to the Board of Trusteesand described him as “a thoughtful andvisionary addition to the board.”

In addition to serving on the EngineeringSchool’s Board of Councilors for the pastdecade, Epstein also sits on the USC AlumniAssociation’s Board of Governors, the executivecommittee of the USC Lusk Center for RealEstate Development, and is a USC PresidentialAssociate. In 1996, he joined the advisorycommittee for the Industrial and SystemsEngineering Department. In 1994, he washonored at the School of Engineering AnnualAwards Luncheon with the DistinguishedAlumnus Award.

The Trojan spirit runs in the family.Epstein’s two children are both USC graduates.Daughter Julie graduated with a master’sdegree in public administration in 1993,and son Michael received a BS in publicadministration and planning in 1994. Son-in-law, George Bronstein, is currently enrolled inthe master’s program for ConstructionManagement.

“I’m very pleased to become a significantsupporter of the School of Engineering,” saidEpstein. “I hope my gift will encourage othersto consider their ties to USC. This is not justabout becoming good; it’s about becoming thebest. That’s clearly the journey Max is on.”

Because of his position on the Board ofCouncilors, Epstein became well acquaintedwith Nikias and describes the dean as “an excit-ing visionary” with deep convictions aboutengineering education. Epstein recalls withenthusiasm the new dean’s presentation at hisinauguration last November, when Nikias laidout his vision for the School. It connected withEpstein like a jolt of electricity.

“Max had one of the most comprehensiveand well thought out presentations on theSchool that I’ve ever heard,” he said. “He talkedabout where the School was and what it neededto do to move up. It really got me excited.”

Epstein also immediately grasped the keyelement of the plan. It was about people,not things. It was about building faculty,

not just bricks and mortar.“To achieve the dream of moving the

School up to the top tier, it’s faculty, faculty,faculty,” said Epstein, echoing Nikias. Herecognizes the promise in the dean’s plan byrelating it to the success of his own company.“Although what we do at ConAm is buildbuildings and manage properties, our mostimportant assets are, in fact, our people. To besuccessful, our associates must be the premierprofessionals in the industry.”

Epstein’s interest in people explains whyhe gravitated toward industrial and systemsengineering which, among other things, is thebranch of engineering most focused on theinteraction between humans and complexsystems.

He laughs when he recalls that upongraduating from USC in 1962, the expectationwas that he would find work in the more“traditional” pursuits of an industrial andsystems engineer—laying out plants orperforming time and motion studies toimprove manufacturing systems. Althoughthese were worthy tasks, his aspirations layelsewhere, and he translated what he learnedas an ISE student into his own uniqueprofessional journey.

At USC, Epstein was taught to employ asystematic approach when solving problems.

cover torys

16 USC ENGINEER

Epstein visiting the Vehicle AssemblyBuilding that he helped build at theKennedy Space Center, Florida

“I’m very pleased tobecome a significantsupporter of the Schoolof Engineering…I hopemy gift will encourageothers to consider theirties to USC. This is notjust about becominggood; it’s aboutbecoming the best.”

He studied how to manage the multiplevariables that determine whether a projectwould be completed on time, and withinbudget. He knew how to adjust when some-thing went wrong.

“Systems engineering is not a strictlydelineated discipline,” explained Hall, “becauseit usually pertains to a complex network ofentities.”

Factory assembly lines, airline scheduling,military logistics, electric power grids,emergency medical response, and water and

sewage systems are just a few examples ofthe kinds of complex systems that systemsengineers design, operate, maintain, andcontinually tweak in an effort to optimizeperformance. How should machines andsupply networks be scheduled and organizedin order to keep a factory humming? Howshould aircraft and flight crews move aroundin order to carry the most passengers, withoutlosing their baggage, while ensuring thehighest profit? How should information flowsbe managed in today’s rapidly changingtechnology environment?

“A systems engineer applies computerscience to business problems,” says Hall.“Industrial and systems engineering preparesstudents with a blend of technical and businessskills. One of the things we will do withEpstein’s gift is start an undergraduate programin information systems engineering.”

In 1962, Epstein left USC armed withthese skills. They proved to be essential tohis mastering the extremely complex businessof building and managing apartments,condominiums, single-family homes, officebuildings, retail shopping centers, and hotels.His skills also included the flexibility to adaptto the inevitable changes in the industry.

“In the early days, you bought a piece ofzoned property, figured out how many unitsyou could put on it, and then built them,”he said. “You didn’t have all the reviews thatyou have now: American Disability Act, basicdesign, environmental reviews, radon, moldconsiderations and so on. Back then, the

savings and loans were in the business ofmaking capital available on a favorablebasis and tax laws were particularlysupportive to real estate development.”

Things have changed, but he is notcomplaining. In fact, he smiles as he talksabout the changes that have made hisbusiness more difficult. He clearly relishes

new challenges. He’s still the student whoprefers a difficult task to an easy one, becausehe recognizes and enjoys his own competitiveinstincts.

Following these instincts, Epstein’s careerin real estate took him from Dallas, Texas,where he was building apartment complexes forthe I. C. Deal Company, back to California anda position as executive vice president ofAmerican Housing Guild, a major residentialdeveloper based in San Diego. Epstein initiatedthe company’s expansion from single-familyhousing into developing and managing apart-ments. He began to acquire sites, hire architects,determine project feasibility, develop plans, andbuild the properties, mainly in San Diego andaround Southern California. Then in 1974 and1975, there was a major economic downturn.

“It was a fairly serious recession so thecompany decided to get out of the apartmentbusiness and retrench. That was when I hadan opportunity to acquire the company,” saidEpstein. He sought capital, borrowed, andboldly named his new company ContinentalAmerican Properties.

“We knew our future lay in coast-to-coastmanagement,” he said. “Rental housing was abusiness for which I had intuitive inclinations.I knew what the essential ingredients were.”

Building an apartment complex requiresa large upfront investment. A company has toacquire property, hire architects, design, buildand finally market a structure to those who willpay the rent. Success hinges on such factors aslocation, local politics, and local and national

economic variables.“There is always a lag time between

occupancy and the start of the rental cashflow”, said Epstein. “Is the projected incomeadequate to justify the upfront investment andassociated risks?” This is the kind of complexproblem that a systems engineer like Epsteinlives for. What he calls “intuitive inclinations”is rooted in the systems engineering that helearned at USC.

THINGS HAVE CHANGED, BUT HE IS NOT COMPLAINING. IN FACT, HE SMILES AS HE TALKS ABOUT THECHANGES THAT HAVE MADE HIS BUSINESS MORE DIFFICULT. HE CLEARLY RELISHES NEW CHALLENGES.

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USC ENGINEER 17

At home in La Jolla on the golf course

Steven B. Sample, USC President,Daniel J. Epstein, and

Dean C.L. Max Nikias at the ISEnaming celebration

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Epstein is now chairman and CEO of theConAm Group of Companies, a full-servicereal estate organization that operates in about250 cities in 14 states. Its companies include:

� ConAm Management Corp., which man-

ages a $3 billion-plus portfolio of more

than 50,000 apartment units in the nation.

� ConAm Asset Management Corp., which

provides strategic direction and oversight

services such as financing, brokerage,

property renovation and risk manage-

ment for 18,000 apartment units.

� Continental American Properties, Ltd.,

which has been involved in the

development of more than 15,000

apartment units, and which serves as

the general partner in partnerships that

own more than 23,000 units.

� ConAm Research Group, which does

economic and demographic research for

real estate development, financial, and

legal communities.

Both Epstein and his wife Phyllis grew upin West Los Angeles, but now reside in La Jolla,California. He manages to find time for golfand shoots in the mid to low 80’s. He is clearly

proud of his accomplishments but is not afraidto poke fun at himself. Asked for the preferredpronunciation of the family name, he jokinglyreplies: “Well, I say ‘ep-steen’, but I have anidentical twin brother who goes by ‘ep-stine’.”

This light-hearted humor is just one of hismany facets. The characteristic that stands outmost distinctly, however, is his generosity and

compassion. On a coffee table in ConAm’s lobby is an album with photos of a group ofworkers building a small house. A closer lookreveals Epstein among the crew. The photos,he explained, were taken one weekend lastyear when he and about two dozen ConAmemployees went to Mexico to build twohomes for poor families.

“There’s an organization in Tijuana thatwill provide building materials for any groupthat will provide the labor to build homes forfamilies in need,” he said. “My associates heardabout this and wanted to do it. So we wentdown, and it was a wonderful experience. Thelook on the faces of those families when wefinished those houses was well worth the effort.We’ll go back next year.”

It’s a curious twist on a 40-year career, onethat began as a young field engineer helping toplan what was then the world’s largest enclosedvolume structure-–almost 130 million cubicfeet. And now, at the pinnacle of his corporateand philanthropic success, he is a volunteerinstalling dry wall on a 500 square foot,low-income house. But that’s Dan Epstein.He wouldn’t have it any other way.

–Bob Calverley

cover torys

EXECUTIVE ENGINEERING: INDUSTRIAL AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERS COMBINE ENGINEERINGWITH SAVVY BUSINESS SKILLSStudents wanting to learn the best ways of organizing people, material,capital, and information in order to produce goods and services, oftenmajor in industrial and systems engineering.

“Systems engineering is the management branch of engineering,” saysRandolph Hall, professor and chair of the School of Engineering’s Daniel J.Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. “And more andmore, we are becoming the information technology managers of today.”

In addition to production, design, computer programming,probability and statistical modeling, ISE students at USC learn how toemploy the analytical tools of economics and finance. They must be ableto combine good engineering with business skills.

“Engineers may work in a technical environment, but they have busi-ness responsibilities. They must understand the business impacts of theirdecisions,” Hall says. “To be successful, they also have to be good commu-nicators, which is why we also teach our students communications skills.”

During the last five years, the number of students graduating fromindustrial and systems engineering at USC has steadily risen. The numberof BS degrees awarded has grown from 80 in 1997, to 85 in 2001. Duringthe same period, MS degrees have increased substantially, going from86 to 183. PhD degrees have increased from 22 to 30.

Many of the master’s degree students take their courses throughthe Distance Education Network at their employers’ expense. Today’s

companies are increasingly recognizing the management value of theindustrial and systems engineering curriculum.

Hall and Dean C.L. Max Nikias say that with the $10 million gift fromalumnus Daniel J. Epstein, the department will concentrate on buildingexcellence in the areas of engineering management and informationsystems. The department will introduce new educational programs atboth undergraduate and graduate levels. In addition, the School ofEngineering will introduce cross-disciplinary undergraduate minors andgraduate degree programs in engineering management.

Hall studied other industrial and systems engineering departmentsaround the nation and determined that to enter the top ten, thedepartment needs at least 15 full-time faculty.

“Currently, we have eight and a half faculty. We have eight full-timeprofessors and two devoting 25 percent of their time to the department,”he says.

Epstein’s gift will allow the addition of two new named chairs.Top-tier senior professors will fill the chairs, and new junior faculty willbe added to the department as well.

“I have already interviewed several young assistant professors andsenior faculty from MIT, University of Michigan, Cornell and otheruniversities for these positions,” says Nikias. “If they’re the best in theirfield, then we want them for Industrial and Systems Engineering at USC.

Epstein with ConAm’s AcquisitionsDirector, Rob Singh at “Homes for Hope”project, Tijuana, Mexico

USC ENGINEER 19

The USC School of Engineering's Information Sciences Institute, of which he is the

executive director, celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, and there is much to smile about.

During his 14-year tenure, ISI has expandedgreatly and pioneered many new areas ofcomputing and computational science.Practical applications of the Institute’s researchare popping up in industry and academia–grid computing and artificial intelligenceautonomous agents are two examples. Schorrlikes to say ISI deals in “real-world results.”Indeed, geophysicists are drawing upon theexpansive computer resources made possibleby grid computing to better study earthquakes,and a number of organizations are creatingagents to do planning, robotics, and evenclassroom instruction.

ISI is also creating new designs for fasterand more energy-efficient microchips; comput-er programs for better understanding, use andtranslation of languages; new techniques totransmit richer and more varied informationwith greater security over the Internet; novelways to structure data using maps andlocations instead of traditional indexes; and

more effective ways for government agencies tointeract with and serve constituents.

The Institute last year utilized $58.3million in research funds, which is roughly halfof the School of Engineering’s research volume.Research dollars for USC Engineeringconsistently rank it in the top 5 schools in thenation. ISI has a staff of 338, twenty-seven withjoint academic appointments at USCEngineering.

Engineering graduate students were few atISI when Schorr became director; now thereare as many as 80 involved in different researchprojects. Encouraged byC.L. Max Nikias, dean ofthe USC School ofEngineering, Schorr isnow starting to bringundergraduates to ISI's tower campus inMarina del Rey as well and plans to engage stillmore undergraduate participation through theSchool’s Distance Education Network.

“ISI under Herb’s direction has compiled agreat record,” Nikias said. “In all the years I’veknown him, he has shown consistent, excellentleadership as well as a great technical andbusiness sense. That’s why, when I became deanlast year, I wanted Herb to be associate dean ofthe School.”

Nikias was just as laudatory about thecontributions made to ISI by Keith Uncapherand Zohrab Kaprielian. The idea for theInstitute came from Uncapher, then with theRAND Corporation, and its implementationcame from Kaprielian, then the dean of USC

Engineering. “Without Uncapher andKaprielian,” Nikias said, “ISI would not existtoday.”

At RAND, Uncapher’s research had been

“Without Uncapher and Kaprielian,”Nikias said, “ISI would not exist today.”

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ISI@30

Herb Schorr sits, smiling, in a sunny, Marina del Rey high-rise office overlooking the sailboats in the harbor below

and an endless golden sweep of California beach and Santa Monica Bay just beyond. His smile is not simply

a result of the view.

Both Keith Uncapher (right) the firstdirector of ISI, and Herb Schorr (left)the current executive director andassociate dean of the School ofEngineering, are responsible forthe ISI’s 30 years of success

focused on information processing for U.S.military and civil applications. The AdvancedResearch Projects Agency, the Department ofDefense’s research and development organiza-tion (today known as the Defense AdvancedResearch Projects Agency, or DARPA) had beensupporting his work in packet switching forcomputer communication networks andwanted him to expand both its scope and levelof effort–at RAND, if possible, or, if not, at anacademic institution where the research would

be immersed in a stimulating intellectualenvironment. And time was critical.

RAND management at that time was coolto the proposal and so Uncapher, assured byARPA that it would support his researchwherever he located it, approached UCLA.

But the university told Uncapher it wouldtake at least 15 months to create anorganizational structure for the work.“I don’t have three weeks,” Uncapher replied.

A mutual friend put Uncapher andKaprielian in touch. The two met on severalsuccessive evenings one week in 1972 todiscuss the idea and by that Friday night,had reached an agreement to establish ISI atUSC. “The whole thing,” Uncapher recalled,“got done in one week.”

Within 30 days of the Uncapher-Kaprielian handshake, the institute began withUncapher, a staff of four other formerRAND engineers, and an umbrella grant ofapproximately $4 million from the AdvancedResearch Projects Agency. It was located inMarina del Rey, instead of University Park,because of its proximity to Los AngelesInternational Airport–a requirement Uncapherinsisted on for the convenience of his frequentWashington, D.C. visitors.

Some exceptional research soon followed.Along with several other institutions, theInstitute was one of the founders of theInternet, and staffers such as the late Jon Posteland Paul Mockapetris, now board chairmanof Nominum, Inc., created much of the

network's domain system–the familiar.com, .org, .edu, that are the provinces ofemail and web site addresses.

These gifted researchers also playedsignificant roles in the development ofthe Transmission Control and Internetprotocols (TCP/IP) that initially linkedvarious Defense Department computernetworks and were so successful preciselybecause they satisfied a few basic, widelyneeded services (file transfer, electronicmail, remote log on), across a very largenumber of client and server systems.

Uncapher steered the Institute intoearly work in artificial intelligence andalso developed a unique resource for thecomputer community: the MOSIS (MetalOxide Semiconductor ImplementationService) prototyping service, a cooperative

arrangement that allows computer chipdesigners to share costs and economicallyproduce advanced copies of their ideas.Originally conceived by Xerox, but developedby ISI, this service prototyped such famouscreations as Sun Microsystems’s Scalable

Processor ARChitecture (SPARC) chip, anddesigns that became the heart of the MillionInstructions Per Section (MIPS™) system usedby Silicon Graphics.

ISI continues to be a major resource forresearch in the engineering community, aswell as the academic community, thanks to aspecial program that allows students free chipprototyping.

Schorr, a native New Yorker whose accentis pure Bronx, became the Institute’s director in1988 when Uncapher left. While interested ina wide range of art, literature and music, hedecided early on, after a 1950s summer job inthe then-nascent field of computers, thatcomputers and information technology wouldbe his life’s work. He graduated from the CityCollege of New York, and in 1963, earned hisPhD from Princeton. His PhD thesis expandedon the pioneering work in digital transferregisters by Irving Reed, a noted mathemati-cian and inventor who later joined the USCEngineering faculty. Reed received theMillennium Medal last year from the Instituteof Electrical and Electronic Engineers and aDistinguished Emeriti Award from theuniversity in 1999. Schorr expanded Reed'swork into a new and more powerful basisfor key computer functions, ideas that hedeveloped when after a year as a professor at

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The Internet Guru…Dr. Robert Kahn, a pioneer incomputer communications whois widely acknowledged as the“builder of the ARPAnet” and anInternet pioneer, had this to sayabout ISI: “Since its inception,ISI personnel provided key supportfor the Internet, which enabledit to grow from a research tool toa major national and internationalsystem.”

Researchers used modem-equippedportable computers like these when theInternet, as a new invention calledARPAnet, was being developed at ISI andother centers.

A team of hardware and software expertsdesigned this new chip to break througha processing speed barrier imposed bydelays when retrieving information frommemory. The first examples are nowbeing tested.


The Great Global GridThe Next Major Step In Computing

USC Engineering’s Information SciencesInstitute (ISI) is no ivory tower, DirectorHerb Schorr is quick to tell people,but delivers "real-world results" in bothbasic and applied research––and gridcomputing is one particular ISI projectthat is rapidly impacting the field ofgeneral computing worldwide.

Just as ISI research shaped thegrowth and development of theInternet 30 years ago, grid computing(also called "distributed computing"),is swiftly making its influence felt bypooling the power of many computersand making them available as a singleaccess point for individual desktops orwork stations.

That grid computing is an ideawhose time has come was evident at therecent Global Grid Forum in Toronto,Canada. This conference attracted morethan 400 participants from universitiesand companies around the world. TheNew York Times reported from theForum that IBM and Microsoft areexpected to announce their supportfor the ISI-developed Globus gridarchitecture, in order to integrate theirWeb services. Other companies were saidto be nearing the same decision.

This news followed the announce-ment last fall that five American andthree Japanese firms––Compaq, Cray,SGI, Sun Microsystems, Veridian, Fujitsu,Hitachi, and NEC, have adopted theISI-developed Globus software for theirweb service platforms. Earlier in 2001,the National Science Foundation madea $12.1 million grant for a "MiddlewareInitiative" to establish a GRIDS centerpartnership involving ISI, the NationalCenter for Supercomputing Applicationsat the University of Illinois, and threeother universities.

"GRIDS" stands for Grids ResearchIntegration Deployment and Supportcenter. Web services run on Web-basedservers instead of individual PCs, so userscan connect to them through any devicewith Internet access; and "middleware"is software common to multipleapplications.

"Much of the NSFnet network,

established in 1985, laid the ground-work for the dramatic success of theInternet," said an NSF spokesman. "Weexpect this NSF Middleware Initiative tolay foundations for the Grid, and spuradoption of the advanced services thatwill define the networks and distributedsystems of tomorrow."

Dr. Carl Kesselman (MSEE ’84),director of the USC/ISI Center for GridTechnologies and research associateprofessor of the School of EngineeringComputer Science Department, has beena pivotal figure in the developmentof this software discipline. The NSF-supported National Partnership forAdvanced Computational Infrastructurerecently recognized his major role in thefield by naming him the partnership’s"chief software architect."

Since 1994, Kesselman and hiscollaborator Ian Foster, of the ArgonneNational Laboratory, have been develop-ing the concept of grid computing,so-called by analogy to the grid used byutilities. Just as electrical power can beshared between consumers in severalstates, grid computing allows a user todraw upon the resources of computersystems all around the world.

The computational grid offers morethan just raw computing power fromremote machines. It also enablesdesignated individuals to access specialinstruments, such as a space telescope,an array of oceanographic sensors, andhuge data bases like those for weathermodeling or genomic studies.

"The grid gives a researcher sittingat his or her own workstation the powerto assemble a special computing tool toattack a problem," said Kesselman. "Thetool might use computing power fromidle machines in Germany, and databaseinformation from Florida or San Diego,but all the elements work together as ifparts of a custom-built system."

Kesselman and Foster developedthe Globus Toolkit, specially written"middleware" that bridges the gapsbetween computing machines andapplications. It also addresses securityissues arising from strangers using each

other's machines and resourcesautomatically and instantly.

The two began their collaborationwhen they were living and workingon different continents, and they havecontinued for years without everworking in the same city concurrently.

They met when Kesselman was aUSC graduate student, and the NewZealander Foster was at Imperial Collegein London. Distance was no obstacle totheir bouncing ideas off each otherabout new ways to use the Internet.

Collaboration bore fruit in 1995,when Foster was on the staff at Argonneand Kesselman was working on his Ph.D.at Caltech. The Defense AdvancedResearch Projects Agency funded anambitious study project based on theirconcept. "If you look back at that paper,which first used the word ‘Globus’," saidKesselman, "almost all the ideas we’vesince developed are there."

In 1997, Globus won the GlobalInformation Infrastructure (GII) Award.Other systems have emerged to sharecomputer resources, one of the best-known is SETI@home, which harnessesthe unused time of personal computersto analyze signals from radio telescopesfor signs of extraterrestrial life.However, these other systems were allspecial purpose, and most posed securityissues.

The Globus project has remainedgeneral and open source, like Linux,rather than proprietary, Kesselmanexplained, and that has been animportant reason for its rapid spreadand acceptance.

Carl Kesselman, director of the ISI Centerfor Grid Technologies

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Columbia University, he joined IBM.At IBM, Schorr rose steadily, first as a

researcher and then as a manager. He isparticularly proud of his contribution to RISC(Reduced Instruction Set Computer, whichedited down the number of base functionsto speed up machines), and of being theco-author of “the world's fastest garbagecollection algorithm.” The latter speeds theremoval of leftover electronic data fromprocessors after they have executed a programsegment, clearing them for the next job.

“But my forte, my best skill,” he believes,was as a director of research–identifyingtalented engineers and important problems,pairing the two, and then getting the engineersto cooperate with one another. By 1987, Schorrhad become a vice president for research,the first to hold that title, was responsible forthe introduction of new, advanced technology,and reported directly to IBM’s managementcommittee.

Despite this success, Schorr wasincreasingly concerned about a continuingseries of cutbacks at IBM and less confident thecompany was addressing the root causes of itsslowdown. He looked for a change, and of theseveral opportunities that presented themselvesto him, he chose ISI and never looked back.

Schorr said that his immediate challengeat ISI was to move the Institute away from itsoriginal umbrellagrant structure, to amore flexible arrange-ment in which a widevariety of projectswould get fundingfrom an increasednumber of places.

To do this,Schorr explained, ISIhad to broaden its base of expertise, buildingon its proven reputation in networking andsoftware engineering, along with promisingwork in artificial intelligence. It was particularlyimportant, he decided, to recruit fresh talentin a few important areas.

“We had silos of competence, but notcompetence across the board,” he recalled, andso he went looking for expertise in such areasas systems architecture compilers, and Very

Large Scale Integration(VLSI) chip design. ISI hadto show it had the researchmuscle to undertake awider variety of jobs, whichtypically require collabora-tion by numerous experts.

Schorr was lookingfor more than just expertise,however. “We needed peoplewho could not only doresearch,” he said, “butpeople who could writeproposals for contracts andgrants, people who could sell their ideas to thefunders.” Under Schorr, the Institute has tripledits research budget.

As one example of this new breed ofInstitute engineers, Schorr points to CarlKesselman, a young researcher who had avision of an operating system that would allowdistributed computing on an enormous magni-tude scale, carried out over high-bandwidthconnections.

This research thrust paid off handsomelythis year, when the Globus Toolkit developedby Kesselman, his group, and collaborators atthe Argonne National Laboratory, was adoptedby the largest corporate developers of hardwareand software in the United States as thestandard for grid computing. The toolkit has

also become part of a National ScienceFoundation initiative. (See sidebar on page 21)

Another major example of successfulISI expansion has been Artificial Intelligence,particularly the development of “agents”–software exhibiting such characteristics asautonomy, purposefulness, behavioral flexibili-ty, and even a capacity for social interaction.

ISI is now among the leading worldcenters in artificial intelligence, running

remarkable projects in which agents teachhuman students, and schedule and coordinatethe complicated interactions of numerouspeople and machines. Agent programs canalso direct modular mini-robots to knitthemselves together into larger robots forspecial tasks, such as search and rescueoperations, or reconnaissance in hazardousor difficult-to-reach areas.

Other key artificial intelligence arenasinclude adaptive learning and patternrecognition. There is also ISI’s venture intoa brand new area: “Digital Government,” a

National Science Foundation-fundedeffort using information technology tomake government services at all levelsmore efficient and more accessible tocitizens.

Networking, ISI's longstandingstrong point, has not been neglected.ISI researchers are pioneering the nextgeneration Internet, including new waysto transmit full bandwidth high-

definition television over the Internet. A specialapplication of the technology will createa “virtual amphitheater” for education andentertainment.

Internet security, at a time when theintegrity of complex modern systems isconstantly being challenged, is also a priority,and the Institute is exploring several differentcountermeasures. Some efforts bolster thesecurity of the information itself; others are

f

The Immersedesk, used for advance imagingand interactive applications, offers a three-dimensional view that changes when theuser’s head moves.

ISI@30 continued from page 20

ISI is now among the leading world centers inartificial intelligence, running remarkable projectsin which agents teach human students, andschedule and coordinate the complicatedinteractions of numerous people and machines.

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aimed at making the system as a whole, at atime when the Internet has become a criticalartery of commerce, less vulnerable tosabotage.

Still other initiatives are new computerarchitectures–faster and more flexible chips,linked together in new architectures, and newand more ingenious uses for the technology ofembedded systems. AndSchorr continues to branchout. This year, ISI collaboratedwith USC InformationServices to open the HighPerformance Computing andCommunications (HPCC) center on the USCcampus, including the most powerful cluster

computer in Southern California academia.With this as a base, and working with

other Engineering departments, the USC KeckSchool of Medicine, and the College of Letters,Arts and Sciences, ISI plans to enter theexploding field of computational biology,already a major area of USC scientific strength.And finally, ISI will be a central part of the

USC SchoolofEngineeringplans toexpand itsDistance

Learning program, which already enrollshundreds of students in companies all across

the country who study and receive USCcredits from their workplaces.

ISI played a central role, along with theIntegrated Media Systems Center, the School ofCinema-Television, and the Annenberg Schoolfor Communication, in winning the U.S.Army’s contract to establish the Institute forCreative Technologies in 1999.

“Even at age 30, ISI is only beginningto hit its stride,” Dean Nikias said. “With Herb’sleadership and with the staff he’s assembled,the future of ISI, like that of the EngineeringSchool itself, is very bright.”

–Eric Mankin

“…the future of ISI, like thatof the Engineering Schoolitself, is very bright.”

medical doctor. In part due to his Russian heritage and thepetroleum reserves in his native Caucasus, Chilingar hassignificant ties to the Russian scientific community. Heserves as president of the U.S. branch of the RussianAcademy of Natural Sciences, 17 of his 45 books havebeen translated into Russian, and in 2001 he co-authoreda book on petroleum engineering with a Russian scientist.

In recognition of these contributions, the RussianAcademy of Sciences recently honored him as a Knightof Arts and Sciences. Fellow USC Engineering professorDr. Solomon Golomb received a similar award at thesame ceremony.

Significant AchievementsIn more than a half-century of academic

achievement, Chilingar has published 45 books andhundreds of articles in the fields of geology, petroleumengineering, and environmental engineering. Withbachelor’s and master’s degrees in petroleum engineeringand a PhD in geology, all earned at USC, Chilingar is apioneer in the concept of interdisciplinary study.

His greatest contribution to the petroleum industryis a means of identifying oil-rich rock by analyzing theratio of Calcium/Magnesium in core samples. Thismethod was used in discovering one of Iran’s largest oilfields, which is fittingly named “Chilingar.”

He also played a key role in the developmentof Thailand’s offshore oil reserves. While westerncompanies drilled without success onshore and werepreparing to depart from Thailand as a potential sourceof oil, Chilingar saw natural gas bubbles in the Gulf ofSiam and redirected exploratory efforts, thus saving thenascent Thai oil industry.

Oil Man continued from page 9

WE NEED YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS!The School of Engineering is starting an e-maildrive. We are collecting e-mail addresses for allof our 23,000 alumni and as many friends ofthe School as possible. Don’t miss out onthe opportunity to stay connected whilecontinuing to play an important part in theSchool’s progress.

� Exciting e-mail updates about cutting edge research andhonors

� Opportunities to participate in important surveys

� Occasions to volunteer for special programs

� Reunion planning

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� Invitations to events (like our upcoming Tech TransferWorkshop!)

� Special give-aways

Please send us your e-mail address and those of fellow alumnior friends of the School of Engineering. Go towww.usc.edu/engineering and click on “Alumni.”

Keep in touch with your Trojan Family!

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Ultra-wideband (UWB) is an emerging radio technology that isforcing a reevaluation of all the narrow-band radio assumptionsand premises engineers have made since the time of Marconi.

It promises a dramatic shift in the design and use of many consumerelectronics products, from wireless home computer networks to securitysystems incorporating UWB-based radar.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently easedrestrictions on ultra-wideband in spite of continuing opposition to thetechnology from the airlines, who believe ultra-wideband could interferewith their navigation systems.

USC Engineering, the Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC),and the School’s leading ultra-wideband investigator, Dr. Bob Scholtz ofElectrical Engineering/Systems, have pioneered academic research intoultra-wideband technology for more than seven years. Scholtz and hisresearch team have been collaborating with the technology’s private patentholders, a number of companies interested in the technology, and the U.S.military. Ultra-wideband is exactly the type of leading-edge and relevanttechnology that Dean C.L. Max Nikias wants the School to pursue.

PULSE RADIO

Whereas standard wireless systems emit radio waves on specificfrequencies, ultra-wideband transmits digital information with pulsesof radio energy. It works by sending out weak radio energy pulses thatare extremely short, less than a nanosecond (a billionth of a second) induration, millions of times each second. The pulses are emitted over abroad (ultra-wide) portion of the radio frequency spectrum.

In short, ultra-wideband impulse signals represent small amountsof energy sprinkled across an extremely wide portion of the radiospectrum, including frequencies reserved for military agencies andcivilian aviation, thus the commercial air transport industry’s concernsand the great interest from the military.

Because standard wireless technology is approaching itsdevelopmental limit––major improvements in information bandwidth(the rate at which data is transmitted), and channelization (number ofsimultaneous users), are not foreseen. Ultra-wideband technologyoffers a new way ahead.

Other advantages to ultra-wideband are:� More immunity to radio-signal fading effects� Potentially simpler low-power implementation� Increased ability to penetrate physical objects because UWB

provides a comparable bandwidth in a lower portion of theelectromagnetic spectrum

� A near immunity to eavesdropping because the extrabandwidth can be used for encryption purposes

� The tolerance of significant levels of interference

Preliminary laboratory results for ultra-wideband radio indicate thatin comparison with other systems in the same frequency range, this newtechnology’s coded pulses, transmitted and measured precisely in time,can carry orders of magnitude and more data because of dramaticallyincreased radio-frequency bandwidth. It, therefore, can potentiallysupport a larger number of users over short distances, a constraintimposed by the new FCC regulations, than conventional radio systems.

CONSUMER DEVICES

Thanks to the recent loosening of regulations by the FCC, consumerelectronics firms are now free to develop a range of new productsincorporating ultra-wideband. Rather than using cable connections,camcorders in the not-too-distant future will be able to download videoto PCs through an ultra-wideband wireless connection.

While cable will remain a primary connection to the Internet,wireless computer networking systems within the confines of a buildingcan be based on UWB transmissions. Think of UWB-based wirelessnetworks as Macintosh’s AirPort system multiplied by a factor of 10.

Daimler/Chrysler and other automakers are working onaccident-avoidance systems employing UWB-based radar. When theultra-wideband radar in either the car’s nose or tail senses objects thatmight cause an accident, the car’s central computer takes control andapplies brakes and stability control systems to help avoid a collision.

WIDER APPLICATIONS

Beyond obvious home and office electronics applications, ultra-wideband might also bring great changes and new uses to radar.

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WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY

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The systems send up to one billion pulses of radio energy per second,and by the precise timing of returning pulses, can sense objects andmeasure their position much more accurately than standard radar.

Prior to the FCC’s recent steps to ease regulations, ultra-widebandgained its first practical field service this fall when the FCC allowedfederal and local authorities to use UWB-based high-resolution ground-penetrating radar systems to locate victims buried in the rubble of theWorld Trade Center. Similar radar systems could be used for land minedetection, an application that could have significant impact on thedevelopment of peaceful life in Afghanistan and other war-torn countrieswith documented and undocumented minefields.

It’s not hard to imagine a consumer version of UWB-based radaras an integral part of a home’s security system, identifying possibleintruders with finely tuned radar pulses.

A handheld military variation of ultra-wideband radar could beused to identify enemy combatants hiding behind walls when militaryunits are sweeping buildings in urban combat situations.

Special Forces units carrying out such actions might also useshort-range ultra-wideband radio transmissions to communicatebecause UWB radio is completely digital, thus making encryptionpossible. A military radio receiver can be programmed with a code totranslate pulses into digital ones and zeroes. A “zero” might be indicatedby transmitting an irregularly spaced, or coded, string of pulses 100picoseconds (trillionths of a second) early and a “one” by sending it 100picoseconds late, relative to a known clock. A receiver without the propercode and clock would receive no information. Unless enemy forces hadaccess to the exact codes used on a specific mission, they would behard-pressed to intercept and decipher messages.

The ability of radio to determine range is inversely proportional toits bandwidth. Global positioning satellites currently span 1 megahertzof bandwidth to determine location quickly via satellite to an accuracyof roughly 10 meters. Ultra-wideband radios transmit over a gigahertzor more of bandwidth. “That's a factor of a thousand times more band-width, enabling measurements that are a thousand times more accuratethan GPS,” said Scholtz. “Ranging down to a centimeter or less, perhapsthrough walls and foliage, should be possible.”

In a more conventional application, the School’s IMSC ultra-wide-band research team has collaborated with the U.S. Navy to evaluate thepotential for a UWB-based inventory tracking system for use on warships.

USC RESEARCH

Dr. Scholtz, who established the Ultra-wideband Laboratory (UltRa Lab)at USC in 1996, said that ultra-wideband’s future applications will

depend on the actual local radio frequency interference environment andon the regulatory restrictions placed on ultra-wideband radio emissionsby the FCC.

Presently, Professor Scholtz is leading a team of top researchers atUSC, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley, who are studying critical problems in short-rangeultra-wideband radio applications under a three-year, $3.6 million grantawarded by the U.S. Army in 2001. Other investigators from USC areProfessors Keith Chugg and Won Namgoong.

Team members outside of USC who are well known in the fieldinclude, Professors David Pozar, Dan Schaubert, and Dennis Goeckelfrom the University of Massachusetts, and Professors Bob Brodersen andDavid Tse from UC Berkeley. Dr. Brodersen is the co-founder and headof UC Berkeley’s Wireless Research Center.

This multi-university team is in many ways the product of yearsof work at USC. In 1998, Dr. Scholtz organized an IMSC workshop onultra-wideband radio that served as a catalyst for focusing privateindustry concerns on regulatory constraints of the FCC that hinderedcomprehensive research and commercialization of ultra-widebandsystems. In 1999, the FCC issued waivers to three companies to producelimited numbers of ultra-wideband systems and granted an experimentallicense to Dr. Scholtz to conduct tests up to 15 miles from the confines ofthe laboratory.

In 2000, through Dr. Scholtz’s efforts, IMSC’s research inultra-wideband was boosted by a $200,000 contribution by computerindustry pioneer Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft Corp., to buildan RF anechoic chamber for ultra-wideband research. The chamber,which opened on campus in 2001, is shown in the photo above.

Dr. Scholtz said the Allen test facility enables careful measurementof ultra-wideband signals in a controlled electromagnetic environment.He pointed out that the facility allows researchers to characterize ultra-wideband radio antennae without having to worry about the multipatheffects and interference that normally occur in a laboratory environment.

THE FUTURE IS NOW

The FCC’s easing of regulations means that the first generation ofUWB-based consumer products—from camcorders and computernetworking systems to radar home security systems—will be inAmerican homes as soon as this year. As academic institutions like theSchool’s UltRa Lab continue their research of the next generation ofultra-wideband, the technology’s applications will become even morewidespread.

–Rick Keir

Ultra-wideband gained its first practical

field service this fall when the FCC allowed

federal and local authorities to use

UWB-based high-resolution ground-penetrating

radar systems to locate victims buried in

the rubble of the World Trade Center

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The concept seems reminiscent of a Star Trek:The Next Generation episode, in which aglittering metallic swarm of artificial life formscalled the Nanites have taken over all controlsof the Starship Enterprise, only releasing theship after appropriate steps for coexistence havebeen negotiated.

Yet a team of researchers at the USCSchool of Engineering has already laid out thefundamentals to create a swarm of nanoscalerobots that will swim our coastal waters, moni-toring potentially dangerous microorganismsin the ocean. In theory, when these Lilliputiancitizens of Troy have identified a problem inthe water—like Brown Tide or a toxic spill—they will relay that information back to shore,alerting swimmers not to dive into water that’sconsiderably less than pure blue.

“With increasing urban runoff, sewagespills, and blooms of harmful algae near heavilypopulated coastal areas, it is very important tobe able to sense, and then identify, particularocean microorganisms quickly,” saysAri Requicha, a professor of computer scienceand the project’s principalinvestigator. “The quickerwe learn that a pathogen ispresent in the water, thesooner we can warn peopleand begin action to correctthe situation.”

To sustain this research,the National ScienceFoundation’s InformationTechnology Research programrecently granted Requicha andhis team $1.5 million. Theproject is a prototype for thesort of interdisciplinary researchthat Engineering Dean C.L. Max Nikias isencouraging. It spans the fields of nanotech-nology, robotics, computer science, and marinebiology. The central thrust of the currentprogram is the refinement of the nanomanu-facturing process, as well as the developmentof the ultra-small robotic sensors and softwaresystems that will control the actions of thenanorobots.

Requicha directs the School ofEngineering’s Laboratory for Molecular

Robotics. There, his team has beenexperimenting with nanometer-scalestructures for nearly seven years. Incomprehending the nature of thiswork, it’s best to carry a measuringstick: one nanometer is one-to-onebillionth of a meter. In other words,a nanometer is to a meterwhat a small grape is to theentire Earth.

ConstructionMethodsIn the 1980s, scientistsdiscovered that the sharp silicontip of the newly invented scanningprobe microscope not onlyproduced images revealing individualatoms and molecules, but it could alsosometimes move them. The computer-controlled microscope scans microscopicsamples, sensing their minute atomic forcesand precisely mapping the surface at amolecular or even atomic level.

Working with colloidal gold and silverballs as small as two nanometers, andstring-like organic molecules called dithiols,which tether the balls to each other, Requicha’sgroup has programmed their atomic forcemicroscope, a particular kind of scanning-probe microscope, to slide the “nanoscale”particles into precise positions on tiny slabs ofmica or silicon. They can chemically link theparticles to form crude assemblies, and make“nanowires” by depositing metals on strings of

carefully positioned balls.“We do this at room temperature and at

normal air pressure, and we can also work inwater and other liquids, which is crucial forbiological applications,” Requicha explains.

Thus far, Requicha’s group has constructeda nanoscale single-electron transistor and anoptical waveguide, which is a structure used toguide light. They are working on an actuator,or switch, and are starting to fabricate morecomplex 3D “nanostructures” by building upsuccessive layers of nanoscale assemblies.

Moving to the construction of nanostruc-tures is a crucial step in achieving Requicha’svision of true nanorobots. The team willprogress from simple, single-function nanoscaleobjects to far more complex structures. Increating nanostructures, Requicha and his teamwill be using a “sacrificial” material that holdsthe assemblies in place by surrounding eachlayer. This material will be removed when allthe layers are complete, leaving a tiny nano-electromechanical device. Substances beinginvestigated for use as the sacrificial materialinclude charged polymers, zinc phosphonatefilms, and organic compounds containingsilicon known as silanes.

Requicha believes it will be possible tobuild nanoscale devices with electrical and mechanical components so that the devices

“Withincreasing urbanrunoff, sewage spills, and

blooms of harmful algae off heavilypopulated coastal areas, it is veryimportant to be able to sense, and

then identify, particular oceanmicroorganisms quickly.”

Ari Requicha and David Caron in their lab

Lilliputians of TroyUSC Engineers Look for Ocean Pathogens With Swarms of Tiny Robots

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Ensuring theUSC EngineeringAdvantage: SupportOur Annual Fund The USC School of Engineering is atthe forefront of engineering educationand research. As we strive towardseven higher levels of excellence,annual gifts from alumni and friendslike you have increasingly moreimpact and significance.

The Engineering Annual Fundensures our competitiveness in manyimportant ways–scholarships foroutstanding students, recruitment

of superiorfaculty,improvementsin thetechnologyinfrastructure,and support forour internalprograms andservices.

Annual gifts are essential to theSchool’s ability to continue offeringhigh quality, innovative programs yearafter year.

Your gift, regardless of theamount, makes a difference.

If you would like to give to theSchool of Engineering, please calltoll-free 1-877-GIVE-USC (448-3872)or give online via our secure web siteby going to www.usc.edu, clicking on“Giving to USC” and allocating yourgift to the School of Engineering.

To stay informed about thelatest news from the School, visit usat www.usc.edu/dept/engineering.You may also update your contactinformation or send us news aboutyourself or fellow alumni.

Thank you for helping to ensurethe future of the USC Engineeringadvantage.

USC ENGINEER 27

tcan propel themselves, send electronic signals,and even compute. While individual nanoscaledevices will have far less computing power andcapability than full-sized devices, Requicha’splan is to have vast numbers of them operatingin concert.

It often takes Requicha’s team weeks toassemble even a simple nanoscale object, butthe procedure will be automated once thecomputer programming is perfected. Otherlabs are working on atomic force microscopeswith more than one tip. Requicha says a singleatomic force microscope could theoreticallyhave an array containing thousands or evenmillions of tips, all controlled by the samecomputer program. If such a capability isdeveloped, the manufacture of large numbersof nanoscale devices should be possible.

Enter Marine BiologyDavid Caron, professor of biological sciences anda co-investigator on the project, says seafaringrobots needn’t be terribly complicated or power-ful to be useful. A single robot might sense onlywhether the water is fresh or saline and commu-nicate by a faint radio signal with the robotsclosest to it. The swarm would form an informa-tion chain not unlike those used by ants, witheach robot relaying information to the next robotin the network, culminating in a link to theInternet from the final robots in the sequence.

In the next 12 months, Caron hopes toattach an antibody to a microscope tip. Herecently created an antibody that binds toAureococcus anophagefferens, the toxicalgae known as Brown Tide. With the sameprocedure widely used to test for HIV andother diseases, he can reliably test for the algae.

“That test takes a day in the lab, which isan improvement over current testing, but it’sstill not fast enough,” says Caron. “The micro-scope should detect the algae the instant amicroorganism binds to the antibody on its tip.”

Requicha estimates that it will be a decadebefore researchers can build and deploynanoscale robots in the ocean capable of thekind of instant and specific test like Caron’s forBrown Tide.

Technology Spin-offAlong the way, Requicha and Caron hope theproject will spin off technology in marinebiology and other areas.

“Suppose we put 15-nanometer particleson a grid with 100-nanometer spacing, whichwe can routinely do in our lab today. If weinterpret the presence of a particle as a binaryone and its absence as a zero, we have a schemeto store data,” he says. “The bit density is 10gigabytes per square centimeter, which meanswe have data storage that is 100 times betterthan today’s compact discs. And it could beeven greater with smaller particles and spacing.”

Development ProcessRequicha’s team of researchers will first buildsmall robots, not to nanoscale, that will move,sense, and communicate while tethered in a tankof water in a laboratory. They will graduallyprogress to building and controlling increasinglylarger numbers of increasingly smaller freelymoving robots. The ultimate goal of the projectwill be to create robots that are as small as themicroorganisms that they seek to monitor.

“Today, we commonly do experimentswith five or ten robots,” says Gaurav Sukhatme,USC assistant professor of computer scienceand a co-investigator on the project. “But we’llneed algorithms to coordinate a million ormore robots, all of which are freely movingin the ocean. Each robot will have limitedcapability and will only communicate withother robots that are close to it. That is adaunting problem, and we must start layingout the foundations for large numbers ofrobots long before they are a reality.”

Maja Mataric, associate professor ofcomputer science, is another investigatorworking on these issues. Deborah Estrin,a computer networking specialist from UCLA,and a former Information Science Instituteresearcher, will play a significant role indeveloping protocols that will enable thousandsof individual nanorobots to communicate.

Requicha says that nanotechnology todayis at the same stage of development that theInternet was in the late 1960s. “The idea thatwe’ll have swarms of nanorobots in the oceanis no more improbable than the idea ofconnecting millions of computers was 35 yearsago,” he says. “I don’t think these robots will beconfined to the ocean. We will eventually makerobots to hunt down pathogens or repair cellsin the human body, not unlike the story linein the 1960s movie Fantastic Voyage.”

–Bob Calverley

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Dr. Alice P. Gast has recently beennamed the vice president for researchand associate provost at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, anachievement in engineering and academia thatshould serve as an inspiration to all USCengineering students and alumni.

In addition to her administrativepositions, Gast is the Robert T. HaslamProfessor of Chemical Engineering. Prior toaccepting the position at MIT, Gast was theassociate chair of the Department of ChemicalEngineering at Stanford University.

At MIT, Gast coordinates policy regardingresearch and graduate education and overseesthe Institute’s large inter-school laboratories.She also reports to Chancellor Phillip L. Clayon matters of graduate education policy.

Formative Experiences at USCRecently, Dean C. L. Max Nikias had thepleasure of speaking and exchange e-mails withDr. Gast, and took the opportunity to askabout her experiences at USC. She shared somevivid memories of her time at USC, memoriesthat will undoubtedly be appreciated by manyalumni readers.

“I was blessed by excellent teachers,progressive educational opportunities, andforward-thinking leaders in the School,” Gastsaid. Among those inspirational leaders wasDean Zohrab Kaprielian who, Gast believes,“had a wonderful influence over the School andthe University during my student years.” Gastmentioned that she was “also in awe of JohnMarburger, Dean of Letters, Arts, and Sciences,partly because he was a physicist who couldplay the harpsichord.”

Of her studies at the School ofEngineering, Gast said that “among my best

courses were the graduate transport phenome-na course taught by Joe Goddard, the polymerscience courses taught by Ron Salovey, thekinetics and reactor design course taught byTheodore Tsotsis–I taught this course myselffor seven years at Stanford–and the materialsscience laboratory where we got to play witha real electron microscope!”

Beyond engineering, Gast mentionedthat she was significantly influenced by thechemistry faculty and a wonderful curriculumranging from freshman chemistry with OttoSchnepp, to graduate quantum mechanics withDavid Dows. “The great mentoring by JoeGoddard and Victor Chang convinced me thatI could pursue the research I wanted as anengineer rather than a chemist,” she said.“I have always been extremely grateful for thatadvice, and while I work closely with chemists,I am very happy to be an engineer.

“Another engineer and physicist who hada great influence on me is Bob Hellwarth,who let me into his lab to work with lasers onnonlinear optics for my project on piezoelectricpolymers with Victor Chang. I remember theday I met Bob by knocking on his door toapply for a Rhodes scholarship, though it wasprobably good that I didn’t win.Pursuing a research project withVictor in the laboratory of BobHellwarth was a great step towardmy graduate studies. It gave me theconfidence to pursue my PhD in arather competitive environment myfirst year at Princeton.”

The flexibility of her courseworkat USC helped shape her career. “TheSchool of Engineering HonorsProgram run by Willard Rush had a big impacton me. It brought excellent speakers that I stillremember, and it allowed me to rearrangemy schedule to follow my love of chemistry.I managed to substitute the graduate quantumclass I took for my engineering economics, andto duck out of circuits to take the graduatetransport class. As a student taking qualifyingexams at Princeton and later in my own lab,I had to make up these deficits in mycurriculum, but I was always grateful for themathematics those two classes taught me ina way that no pure math class could.”

Gast pursued the sort of well-rounded,interdisciplinary studies considered crucial ina USC education. “Outside science,” she said,“I must mention three other people at USCwho had a big influence on me. Doyce B.Nunis, whose constitutional history class gaveme a great appreciation for our constitutionand the law. His lectures were an absoluteinspiration.

“Thom Mason, my music teacher, wasalso important. His class on the history of jazzprobably had the largest impact on my life andcontinuing love of jazz.

“And Dick Caldwell’s classics and Greeklanguage course on the island of Skopelos wasa life-changing event. Epharisto!”

She also mentioned Joan Schaeffer, thementor of Mortar Board. Mortar Board, Inc.is a national honor society that recognizescollege seniors for distinguished ability andachievement in scholarship, leadership, andservice. “That experience gave me much neededcontact with other brilliant women.”

At MITDr. Gast’s new employers are singing thepraises of this distinguished member of theTrojan Family. “Alice is a renowned researcher,

scholar, educator, and a tremendous advocatefor research,” said MIT Provost Robert A.Brown in announcing her appointment.“She will add a wonderful perspective to theleadership of MIT in these and otherimportant areas.”

MIT President Charles M. Vest added,“Alice Gast has an ideal background, interests,and skills to foster interdisciplinary research atMIT. Her own work has been at the interfaceof science and engineering. She has thoughtdeeply about how to create supportive

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Alice P. Gast has an ideal background,

interests, and skills to foster

interdisciplinary research at MIT.

Her own work has been at the

interface of science and engineering

Alice P. Gast, BSCHE ’80

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Jay L. Kear is one of the original earlypioneers in high technology. While he wasattending USC in the late ’50s and early

’60s, the School of Engineering had one Univaccomputer system that was used for accountingfunctions. In those days, there were no coursesoffered by any university in computer softwareor hardware. Electronic calculators had not yetbeen invented, requiring all of the engineeringstudents to use slide rules for calculatingsolutions to problems. Upon graduation in1960 with a bachelor’s degree in MechanicalEngineering, Jay turned down a job offer fromIBM, as he was not sure that computers werehere to stay. Instead he joined the GeneralElectric Company where it quickly becameclear to him that computers indeed were goingto be the industry of the future. He transferredto the GE Computer Department where hebecame a systems engineer for GE business andscientific computers.

In those early days, a large mainframewould require a dedicated air-conditionedroom with raised floors to house the cool airplenum, as well as the massive power and logiccables. Programming was not performed withcompilers, but rather by binary machinelanguage that was input by paper tape orpunched cards. By comparison, a multi-million-dollar computer system in the early’60s did not have the computational power ofour modern-day notebook computers. Whenthe General Electric Company decided to getout of the computer business in the late 1960s,Jay made the decision to stay in the businessby joining General Automation, an earlyminicomputer company. From that point on,his career led him to several high technologycompanies, working with several otherearly pioneers.

Perhaps of greatest interest was Jay’smentor, Ray Noorda, whom he worked withat General Electric and General Automation.Following this, Jay worked with him againwhen Noorda was chairman and CEO ofNovell. Jay’s role was to make and manageventure capital investments in high-technologycompanies. In this capacity, he representedNoorda and his venture capital company onthe board of directors of several portfoliocompanies.

While working with Noorda, Jay presenteda company to him that wanted a $1.5 millionventure investment. After hearing thecompany’s business plan, Noorda told Jay thathe would invest the $1.5 million if Jaywould join its Board of Directors asChairman and teach the CEO howto be a CEO. This created anopportunity for Jay to work withthis company, as well as several others,as a mentor for their CEO’s. “I feltthat I could give back to the youngerexecutives by sharing some of thelessons that I learned from many yearsin the industry,” says Jay. One of hismost rewarding moments came whena CEO that he was working withbecame the Ernst & YoungEntrepreneur of the Year for OrangeCounty, California.

In 1993, Jay formed KearEnterprises to provide early stageinvestments and board-level servicesfor emerging growth high-technologycompanies. Kear Enterprises addresses suchcritical issues as:

� Proper corporate governance� Strategic planning� Marketing and sales� Financing strategy� Management teams� Boards of directors� Increasing shareholder value� Strategic paths to liquiditySince being elected to his first board of

directors in 1970, Jay has served on over 40corporate boards, both public and private.

At the present time, Jay is a board memberof LeadingWay, Aspeon Solutions, ThinkOutside, Microspeed, Sequel, and In.Vision

Research. These companies are either privateor public high technology companies. Healso participates on the board of several LLC’s,some non-profit boards and numerousadvisory boards.

In 1998, the Orange County Forum forCorporate Directors honored Jay as theDirector of the Year for Emerging GrowthCompanies. He remains one of the mostsought-after individuals for the role of directorat software and hardware high technologycompanies in Southern California.

Skiing and golf are Jay’s great athleticpassions, but even when playing he findsbusiness opportunities. He built a personal

residence in Telluride, Colorado, to pursue hispassion for the mountains, golf, and skiing.While in Telluride, he started a real estatedevelopment business, successfully completinga single-family spec house, several condomini-ums and a large 110-unit condominium hotel,which is currently managed by WyndhamResorts. His enthusiasm for athletics eventuallylanded him on the board of a company calledUniversity Netcasting, which is an Internetaffinity sports site for most major universities,including USC.

Connections to the School of Engineeringremain strong, as Jay currently serves as theChairman of the School’s Board of Councilors,an advisory board to the dean made up of

Dean C.L. Max Nikias, Lauren and Jay L. Kearat a reception in San Diego in February

Jay L. Kear, BSME ’60


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Dean’s Circle ReceptionsHeld on August 12, 2001, the Summer Dean’sCircle Reception featured Engineering’s newdean, Dr. C.L. Max Nikias. Held at the homeof Hanna and Jack McConaghy (BSME ’66,MSME ’68) in Pasadena, over 70 alumni,friends and special guests were gathered forthe evening reception at which Dean Nikiasshared his vision of excellence for the USCSchool of Engineering.

Cayley and Philip MacDonald(BSCE ’70) hosted the Winter Dean’s CircleReception at their home in Irvine onDecember 2, 2001. Dr. Herbert Schorr,associate dean of Engineering, provided anupdate on the state of the USC School ofEngineering, and Dr. David Z. D’Argenio,professor and Dwight C. and Hildegarde E.Baum Chair of Biomedical Engineering,delivered a presentation titled “Engineeringthe Future of Medicine.”

The Dean’s Circle is pleased to presentthe engineering community with a series of

informal, informational receptions through-out the Southern California region. Eachreception is held at the home of a member ofthe Dean’s Circle, highlights the currentresearch of different faculty members, andprovides engineering alumni and friends withthe opportunity to network and socialize.

Orange County BreakfastHeld at the Irvine Marriott on October 10,2001, over 200 people attended the kickoffbreakfast of the 19th Annual Orange CountyExecutive Briefing Series. Dean C.L. MaxNikias led a panel discussion, titled“Leadership and New Technology on theInternet.” Panelists included Gerard Medioni,chair of USC’s Computer ScienceDepartment; Ulrich Neumann, director ofUSC’s Integrated Media Systems Center; andHerbert Schorr, associate dean of Engineeringand executive director of USC’s InformationSciences Institute.

Chicago ReceptionOn October 19, 2001, the USC School ofEngineering held a reception prior to theAlumni Association’s USC v. Notre Dame PepRally in Chicago. Nearly 40 alumni, parents,and friends joined Dean C.L. Max Nikias atthe Navy Pier gathering, and enjoyed “balconyseating” for the main-floor rally. Although themighty Trojans suffered a loss to the FightingIrish on the football field that weekend(27-16), all in attendance reveled in theopportunity to celebrate the 75th anniversaryof this great rivalry.

Homecoming and ReunionCelebrationThe School of Engineering 2001 Homecomingand Reunion Celebration was held on Saturday,November 3, prior to the USC vs. Oregon Statefootball game. Dean C.L. Max Nikias joinednearly 200 engineering alumni, family, andfriends at the pre-game barbecue on the southlawn of Doheny Library, and over 200 more

Dena Scaffidi (BSBMME ’99), Kara Crawford,and Timur Taluy (BSEE ’98) at the Pasadenareception

Bruce Barnes (BSBUS ’59), Laurie Firestone,John MacLeod, and Randy Glein (MSEE ’90)at the Chicago reception

Lindy Yow (BSBME ’82, MSEE ’86) andDavid D’Argenio, chair of Biomedical Engineering,at the Orange County Dean’s Circle reception

snapshotsUSC School of Engineering Events Fall 2001 & Winter 2002

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Hong-Kong AlumniConferenceDean C.L. Max Nikias delivered thekeynote address on “USC’sInformation TechnologyInnovations” at the first-ever USCInternational Alumni Conferenceheld in Hong Kong last fall. DeanNikias also addressed more than 300parents and students at a special USC Admissions gathering. Over 250 people were in attendancefor the three-day event featuring seminars, workshops, and keynote speeches by prominent alumni,corporate professionals, and academic leaders in Asia, as well as from USC. Dean Nikias isscheduled to participate in the 2002 conference to be held in Shanghai, China.

cheered on our team at the Coliseum.A drawing benefiting the Engineering StudentScholarship Fund included numerous Trojanspirit prizes such as USC hats and t-shirts, andthe grand prize: four seats on the 50-yard line!Pete Carroll’s USC Trojans capped the celebra-tion with a 16-13 win over the OSU Beavers.

Menlo Park ReceptionMark A. Stevens (BSEE ’81, MSCENG ’84),USC Trustee and General Partner of SequoiaCapital, introduced Dean C.L. Max Nikias toour Northern California engineeringcommunity at a reception held at the MenloPark Country Club on November 9, 2001.Over 80 alumni, friends, and special guestsgathered to hear the Dean’s goals for theSchool and plans for activity in the area.USC Presidential Associates, Cynthia andRobert Hockey graciously sponsored the useof the Menlo Park Country Club.

“Excellenceand Innovation”To celebrate the appointment of the School ofEngineering’s new dean, Dr. C.L. Max Nikias,over 250 distinguished alumni, friends, andspecial guests attended a reception and dinnerat The Omni Hotel in Los Angeles onNovember 16, 2001. Master of CeremoniesJay L. Kear (BSME ’60), chairman of the USCSchool of Engineering Board of Councilors,welcomed all in attendance and introducedspecial guests Dr. Steven B. Sample, Presidentof the University of Southern California, andMark A. Stevens (BSEE ’81, MSCENG ’84),USC Trustee and member of the School ofEngineering Board of Councilors. BothPresident Sample and Stevensdelivered supporting remarks, andthe Dean concluded the evening bysharing his vision of excellence andinnovation for the school.

Rancho Santa Fe Receptionwith the DeanOn February 27, 2002, Trustees Daniel J. Epstein(BSISE ’62) and Andrew Viterbi (PhD EE ’62)hosted a reception with Dean C. L. Max Nikiasat the Fairbanks Ranch Country Club inRancho Santa Fe. Over 80 alumni and friends ofthe School of Engineering enjoyed Dean Nikias’presentation about his plans for the Schoolin the next decade. Mr. Epstein graciouslysponsored the entire event and gaveintroductory remarks.

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Robert Hockey, and Kay and John Lambertat the Menlo Park reception

Dean C.L. Max Nikias, President Steven B. Sampleand USC Trustee Mark Stevens at the celebrationof the dean’s appointment

Engineering Alumni at the Homecoming Celebrationon November 3, 2001

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USC Trustee Andrew Viterbi, Erna Viterbi, andAndreas Polydoros at the Rancho Santa Fe reception

Dean C.L. Max Nikias at the three-day InternationalAlumni Conference in Hong-Kong last fall

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Derek Hazeur of Microsoft speaks with an undergraduateengineering student.

USC alumnus Richard Chiang (PhD EE ’88) of Boeing speakswith aerospace engineering student Chi-hao Ho (left).

USC alumnus and QUALCOMM recruiter Tong Tang (MSCENG ’98)speaks with Nabil Sadaha, a master’s candidate in EE/Systems (right).

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Dean Nikias Hosts his First Boardof Councilors MeetingHosting his first meeting of the annual gathering of the Board ofCouncilors on November 16, 2001, Dean C.L. Max Nikias explainedhow he plans to elevate the USC School of Engineering into the ranksof the nation’s elite engineering schools. The foundation of his vision isbuilding academic excellence.

“We need to lift three or four of our academic departments into thetop ten,” Nikias said, “and that will benefit both the School and otherdepartments. My planbegins and ends withrecruiting the verybest scholarly faculty.”

Dean Nikias describedthe following logic train:

One, the foundationof academic excellenceis a scholarly faculty.

Two, a scholarlyfaculty leads toexpanded andrespected research.

Three, goodresearch elevates ourimage and reputationand attracts quality students demanding both a first-rate education andopportunities to participate in exciting, cutting-edge research.

Four, corporations, universities, and others preferentially recruitour graduates.

Five, supporters and alumni see all these indicators of quality and aremoved to increase their support.

Six, greater resources enable us to provide all that’s necessary toattract more first-rank faculty.

At the meeting, David D’Argenio, professor and chair of theBiomedical Engineering Department addressed the Board about theSchool of Engineering’s Biomedical Technology initiative. CarlKesselman, director of the new Center for Grid Technologies at theInformation Sciences Institute and a research associate professor ofcomputer science, made a presentation on grid computing. PaulRonney, professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, describedhis research on microscale power generation.

Bart Kosko, associate professor in the Signal and Image ProcessingInstitute and author of several popular books on fuzzy logic, deliveredthe keynote address, “Fuzz and Noise in the Biotech Era.” Later in theday, the Board toured laboratories in the Integrated Media SystemsCenter, the Neural Engineering Center, and the Alfred Mann Institute.

The day’s activities concluded with a reception and installationdinner at The Omni Hotel in Los Angeles attended by USC PresidentSteven B. Sample and Mrs. Sample, several trustees, other USC deans,and many other friends of USC Engineering. After Dean Nikiaspresented his vision and strategic plan for the School, he received astanding ovation from the more than 250 guests in attendance.

Board members (from front to back) Dean Allen(BSME ’57), Andrew Beers of Microsoft TV,USC Trustee Malcolm Currie, and Steven Dorfman(MSEE ’59) at a laboratory presentation

EWeekDuring the week of February 18, Archimedes Plaza (knownto all as E-quad) was teeming with activity as representativesof Boeing, Microsoft, QualComm, and dozens of otherengineering and high-tech firms interviewed USC engineeringstudents for prospective employment. The Career Expo is thekey event of National Engineering Week at USC, as contactsmade often lead to a position after graduation. For informa-tion about participating in the 2003 Career Expo, contact theSchool of Engineering Career Services office at 213/740-4530.

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Events for Late Spring, Summer and Fall 2002

Please call External Relations at the School of Engineeringat 213/740-2502 for more information about these andadditional future events. This list does not include all eventsscheduled.

CommencementMay 10, 2002Main Ceremony at 9:00 am Alumni ParkSchool of Engineering Ceremonies Engineering QuadUndergraduate at 10:30 am Graduate at 2:30 pm Receptions will immediately follow the ceremoniesHonoring new graduates and their families

USC Wrigley Marine Science Center Open House on Catalina IslandJuly 27, 2002 and August 10, 2002 Noon – 8:00 pmThis event is sponsored by the USC Associates. For more information, contact the Associates Office at 213/740-8722,or the Wrigley Institute at 213/740-6780. Space is limited.

USC Engineering On-the-Road Series: Tech Transfer WorkshopAugust 2002San Diego Area, Location and Time TBAThis Saturday workshop will feature presentations and discussions about Tech Transfer led by a panel of esteemed USC faculty, alumni and corporate leaders in the region.Opportunities for networking and information sharing.

Reception with the DeanSeptember 2002 Seattle Area, Location and Time TBA

Trojan Family DayOctober 12, 2002USC vs. Cal/Berkeley, Time TBAParent and student picnic to take place 3 hours prior to kick-off, Engineering Quad, USC

Reception with the DeanNovember 8, 2002San Francisco Area, Location and Time TBA

2002 Board of Councilors MeetingNovember 15, 2002USC Campus, Location and Time TBA

mark your calendar!Daniel J. Epstein Departmentof Industrial and Systems EngineeringNaming CelebrationOn March 20, 2002, nearly 300 alumni, friends, faculty, and specialguests of Daniel J. Epstein gathered at the Regent Beverly WilshireHotel in Beverly Hills to celebrate his generous gift to name theIndustrial andSystems EngineeringDepartment.Both Dean Nikiasand President StevenB. Sample spokeabout Epstein'saccomplished careerand dedication tothe School ofEngineering.President SamplepresentedMr. Epstein witha stunning crystalstatue in recognitionof his support, and Dean Nikias gave him a variety of golf itemsembroidered with the new name of the department–The Daniel J.Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. Theevening concluded with a moving piano concert by Dr. Elaine Chew,ISE professor and classical pianist. Her performance was dedicated tothe memory of Mr. Epstein’s mother, herself an accomplishedclassical pianist.

Daniel J. Epstein (BSISE ’62) and his wife Phylliscongratulate Elaine Chew on her performance

time capsule–what year is this and who’sthe chili chef? Email [email protected]

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1939Robert E. Sellers (BSCHE ’39) and wifeCarol Osterlund have written the bookArrival Time – A Journal of Love for FithianPress. The book is hailed as “proof thatromantic love is alive and well in thetwenty-first century” and illustrates theirtwelve year courtship through letters,poems, and phone calls.

1948 Donald Cummings (BSEE ’48) and wifeNaomi Jackson Cummings (BS ’47, MS ’54)celebrated their 50th wedding anniversaryon July 1, 2000.

Louis Glist (BSME ’48) has written abook published by Emerald Ink entitledChina Mailbag-Uncensored. The bookreveals China through his eyes as anAmerican soldier during World War II andthrough correspondence with his youngwife, Lottie. Glist was attached to theChinese Army as an Ordnance Officer in theChinese Combat Command and alsoworked in Shanghai after its recovery fromthe Japanese.

1960Karl Kohlhoff (MSCE ’60, MPA ’69) hasjoined HDR as National Director of WaterBusiness.

Ralph L. McCormick (MSAE ’60) andHelen Hampton Melvin (BSBUS ’51) weremarried.

1962Albert A. Dorman (MSCE ’62) hasreceived the award for Outstanding LifetimeAchievement in Leadership from theAmerican Society of Civil Engineers. He is

Founding Chairman of the Los Angeles-based AECOM Technology Corporation,a global group of architecture andengineering firms.

Andrew J. Viterbi (PhD EE ’62) hasjoined Continuous ComputingCorporation’s Board of Directors. Thecompany is a leading provider of voice-overpacket platform solutions for telecomequipment manufacturers. Dr. Viterbi isthe inventor of the Viterbi Algorithm andCo-Founder of Linkabit Corporation as wellas Co-Founder and retired Vice-Chairmanof Qualcomm. He is presently involved inventure capital investing through theViterbi Group.

1963Scott Manatt (BSME ’63, MSME ’68) hasbeen elected as a corresponding member ofthe International Academy of Astronauticsand serves in its life sciences division.

1967Wesley G. Bradford (MSEE ’67) is amember of the clinical faculty in familymedicine at Harbor-UCLA Medical Centerand is Vice President for BusinessDevelopment of Meridian Holdings, Inc.and Medical Director of Capnet IPANetwork.

1969 Kenneth C. Dahlberg (MSEE ’69) hasbeen named Executive Vice President forGeneral Dynamics’ Information Systemsand Technology Group.

1970Norman Schneidewind (MSORE ’70)of the Naval Postgraduate School, received

the Institute of Electrical and ElectronicEngineers “Reliability Engineer of the Year”Award on January 26, 2002. (See articleon page 11)

1971David Crain (MSMASC ’71, PhD MASC’76) has been named Vice President ofMarketing for Radiant Technology Corp.He is also an Adjunct Professor of BusinessStrategy at both Pepperdine Universityand USC.

Peter L. McAdam (MSEE ’71, PhDENGR ’74) has joined PeregrineSemiconductor Corporation as VicePresident of Corporate Development.

1972Harvey R. Gobas (BSCE ’72, MSENVE’75) has accepted a position with Brown andCaldwell as Director of Water Resources inSouthern California. Brown and Caldwelldesigns and executes environmentalsolutions for public, government, andprivate industries.

1973Roger A. Fontes (MSCE ’73) is aspokesperson for the California PowerNetwork, a statewide coalition of publiclyowned electrical utilities. He is alsoAssistant General Manager of NorthernCalifornia Power Agency.

William R. Lee (BSME ’73) has beensworn in for a 14 year term as the bankrupt-cy judge in the Ninth Circuit Court, Courtof Appeals, in Fresno, CA. This Court is oneof the top five busiest bankruptcy divisionsin the nation.

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1974Clemente Teng (BSEE ’74) has joined KBHome as Director of Investor Relations.

1975Joseph L. Ardini (MSEE ’75) has beenappointed VP of Strategy and BusinessDevelopment for NetOctave, Inc.

Dipankar Ganguly (MSEE ’75, MSBME’76) has been named Executive VP and CTOof LifeSpex, Inc.

Bruce Kuhse (BSAE ’75, MSSM ’84) hasreceived his law degree from Florida StateUniversity, College of Law and is currentlyan associate attorney in Tallahassee, Floridawith Katz, Kutter, Haigler, Alderman,Bryant & Yon.

Darrell Tamosuinas (BSME ’75)announces the formation of VolitionAdvisory Group LLC. Tamosuinas foundedthe company with Steve Friswold and BruceSenske; the three will serve as managingdirectors for the company specializing insmall to mid-sized companies withfinancial and operational difficulties.

1976Wayne A. Beninger (BSPTE ’76) ofForemost Operating, LLC has been chosenas the Operations Consultant for WarriorResources, Inc.

1978Heidrun Mumper-Drumm (MSENVE’78) is owner and proprietor of Perrin& Kabel Design & Publishing, whichrecently published Manners-in-a-Minuteco-authored by Pamela Hillings Tegtmeyer(BA ’83) and Phyllis Hillings (BA ’47).Drumm is also an instructor at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, CA.

1979Kenneth R. Richardson (MSSM ’79)is the manager of Technical Publicationsfor Resource Consultants Inc.

Carey W. Terasaki (BSAPMA ’79) is thenew Assistant Chief Counsel for the FederalAviation Administration in its Europe,Africa, and Middle East area office inBrussels, Belgium.

Mark T. Thatcher (MSME ’79) is thenew President and CEO for ABB VetcoGray, Inc., which specializes in drilling andproduction equipment for the petroleumindustry.

Timur Taluy, BSEE ’98Less than three years after visiting theUSC campus as a high school sophomore,Timur Taluy was a Trojan studyingelectrical engineering. “I rememberreturning home and telling my family I hadmade the decision to attend USC, and I wasonly a sophomore in high school at thetime,” Timur told USC Engineer.

Not content to simply earn high marksduring his time at USC, Timur’s approach to campus life mixed scholarship withorganized social activities and entrepreneurial pursuits. “I like the way my experienceat USC blended learning, social growth, and a wonderful network of people who haveremained important to me,” Timur said.

In 1995 he became a dot.com entrepreneur, creating a business out of his campusapartment. Building from the platform of his father’s well-established tax preparationand financial planning firm, Timur launched FileYourTaxes.com, one of the firstsuccessful online tax preparation companies.

Timur assumed an active role in the Student Senate, Engineering Student Council,and the Order of Omega leadership society. As a sophomore he was selected for theleadership class taught by President Steven B. Sample and Dr. Warren Bennis. Duringhis senior year, Timur worked for Louise Yates’ Engineering Student Affairs Office asa student tutor, offering free mentoring to engineering students.

Upon graduation in 1998, IBM hired Timur as a circuit designer for its Power 4line of processors. Shortly after moving to IBM’s Austin, Texas, facility, he founded theUSC Central Texas Alumni Association, which aids USC recruiting efforts and throwssend-off parties for Texans heading for Troy. Timur also served as IBM’s TechnicalLeader for Campus Recruiting at USC, visiting the campus often to help graduatingseniors and grad students find opportunities within IBM.

Two years after moving to Austin, Timur’s father asked him to come hometo Oxnard. FileYourTaxes.com had grown considerably and survived the dot.comimplosion, but Timur’s father needed his help. “Business is going well now,” Timursaid, “with significant growth over last year. We have also introduced some new servicesthat are taking a strong hold in the tax filing community.”

After resettling in Oxnard, Timur joined the USC Associates. and became amember of the Dean’s Circle within the School of Engineering.

As a member of the Dean’s Circle and the USC Associates, Timur encouragesyoung alumni to interact with the University by supporting regional recruiting eventsand speaking in high school classes. He is currently working with the Dean’s Circleon a new young alumni membership drive in Ventura, and is growing more deeplyinvolved with the Ventura and Santa Barbara Alumni Club. “The football games andpre-game events are as always a blast, a place where I can make new friends and runinto old ones.”

In a move that weds his two greatest passions in life, Timur hopes to establish aprogram at FileYourTaxes.com that triggers a donation to the School whenever anyUSC alumni, students, faculty, staff, or associated person does business with him.“This year, we have even begun working with my associates from USC in a range ofmarketing ventures. Being involved with other USC alumni benefits the business andmyself through its wealth of experience and connections,” Timur said.

As always, his new life in Oxnard perfectly blends his desire to achieve with a senseof fraternity, civic duty, family ties, and devotion to his alma mater.

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1980David K. Grant(BSCSCI ’80) is presentlyat Sumter County YouthDevelopment Center inGeorgia. In addition toteaching, he has releasedan album entitled Songsfrom the Big House and aneducational journal, theParable of the Sower. Heand wife Sharonannounce the birth offuture Trojan, KarolDietrich.

1981Edmund Aramayo(BSEE ’81) works for awell-known technologycompany. He and his wife,Lisa Marie, have two chil-dren, Edmund Alexander,3, and Andrew Javier, 1.

Mark Stevens (BSEE’81, MSCENG ’84) andwife, Mary, announce thebirth of their daughterSamantha Noel, born on December 16, 2001.

Cyril Eze Wanorue (MSPTE ’81)is happily married with four children,three boys and one girl.

1982Karen M. Lade (BSCHE ’82) has joinedPharmacia & Upjohn Animal Health ase-business Director. Pharmacia & Upjohndevelops products designed to promote thehealth of pets and livestock.

Michael D. Mount (BSME ’82) joinedR. J. Rudden Associates, Inc. as a ManagingConsultant in July 2001.

Keith Nobuhara (BSCHE ’82) and wifeMary Ellen request a Trojan Welcome fortheir new son Dylan Koji.

Edmond Sardariani (BSEE ’82) hasreceived his MS degree in Engineering fromSan Jose State University.

Susan L. Sloan (BSME ’82) has beenappointed Director of Integrated SatelliteFactory Operations for the Boeing SatelliteSystems Inc. She also received a nominationfrom the Society of Women Engineers forWoman Engineer of the Year.

1983Megan Eskey (BSME ’83, MSCSCI ’87)has directed After the Apocalypse: BurningMan, a short film that was screened at theNew York International Film Festival andthe Los Angeles Video Festival.

Vincent R. Kagawan (BSPTE ’83,MSPTE ’86) has married Lisa H. Wallace(BSACCT ’88).

Roy Myose (BSAE ’83, PhD AE ’91)was honored as a Fullbright Scholar to theUniversity of Limerick in Ireland last springand summer. Presently, he is an AssociateProfessor of Aerospace Engineering atWichita State University.

Douglas A. Thiessen (BSCE ’83) hasbeen named Chief Harbor Engineer for thePort of Long Beach. His new responsibilitiesinclude overseeing all port engineering andconstruction projects.

1984Pravin Kumar (MSIE ’84) has beenpromoted to Principal Consultant forPricewaterhouse Coopers in Atlanta, GA.

Carl Sarrazolla (BSEE ’84) and wifeGretchen have founded Tivera Consulting,Inc., a new information services andconsulting company. They reside inCarlsbad, CA with their two sons, Nathanieland Damien.

1985Erwin C. Hudson (BSEE ’85) has beenpromoted to President of WildBlueCommunications Inc.

John W. Mulligan (BSBME ’85) and wifeMichele announce the birth of futureTrojan, Connor Patrick.

James K. Shiba (MSCE ’85) and wife Judirequest a Trojan Welcome for new sonJonathan Kunio.

Kevin J. Woods (BSEE ’85) has beenpromoted to VP of Product Marketing atTollBridge Technologies, a provider ofvoice-over-broadband solutions to the newgeneration of carriers.

1986Steven Nakagawa (BSME ’86) marriedJennifer A. Rische.

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Daniel J. Neimann, Senior VicePresident, Trammell Crow Company,is an alumnus and a member of theSchool’s Board of Councilors, and is theexecutive in charge of “2000 Avenue of theStars”, an exciting new mixed-use project inCentury City, that will replace the existingABC Entertainment Center. The project isapproximately 1 million square feet ofoffice and retail space, which combinedwith the Century Plaza Towers, is a 3.2million square foot asset. The existing plazawill be removed and replaced with anexpansive 4 acre park-type open space. Theproject is currently the largest commercialreal estate building project in SouthernCalifornia. Neimann’s responsibilitiesinclude oversight of the planning, design,entitlements, financing, leasing and con-struction of the project. He was named areal estate pro to watch in the January 1,2002 edition of the Los Angeles Times RealEstate section. Planned completion for theproject is the first quarter 2005. Neimann(left) is pictured here with Andrew Cohenof Gensler.

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Donald L. Thoma (MSAE ’86) has beenappointed VP of Data BusinessDevelopment for Iridium Satellite, LLC.

1987William Abboud (MSEE ’87) has beennamed VP of Engineering for Denver-basedFischer Imaging Corp.

Simon Cao (MAPHYS ’85, MSEE ’87,PhD EE ’90) and wife, Whitney Lu,announce the birth of their daughter, Anica,born on January 27, 2002.

Jason Kuo-Chaw Chen (MSENE ’87,PhD ENV ’92) has joined the Viquity Corp.as VP of Engineering. Viquity is a leader inthe development and management of e-business networks.

David C. Flattum (BSEE ’87) has beennamed Head of United States CorporateServices and United States General Counselfor Allianz Asset Management.

Ramiro Garnica (BSCHE ’87) has beenappointed VP and Wealth ManagementConsultant for Sanwa Bank California in theSan Diego region.

Kirt E. Maxwell (MSSM ’87) has receivedhis MS degree in Mechanical Engineeringfrom San Jose State University.

Dietmar Ostermann (MSISE ’87) hasbeen promoted to CEO of A.T. KearneyEurope, a global management consultingfirm.

Parsa Rohani (BSEE ’87) has been namedVP of Marketing and Strategic Planningfor Procom, Inc., a manufacturer of datastorage and access appliances.

Gary Vonderlinden (BSAE ’87)is currently with Lockheed Martin Corp.managing systems engineering analysis onthe THAAD Missile Defense.

1988Wanda M. Austin (PhD ISE ’88) hasbeen named Senior VP of Engineering andTechnology at the Aerospace Corp.

Donald E. Townswick (BSME ’88) andwife Sarah celebrate the birth of daughter,Charlotte Margaret Elise.

1989Heather Cruz (BSISE ’89) is currentlyliving in New York City. After receiving anMBA and a JD from New York University,she is practicing corporate law at Skadden,

Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.

Ashok Kumar (MSCENG ’89) is theSenior VP of Engineering and CTO forenterprise performance management leader,Again Technologies, Inc.

1990 Shannon S. (Davis) Clark (BSAE ’90)is currently a test director for the BoeingCompany on board the F-22 Flying Testbed,a highly modified Boeing 757 used to testF-22 avionics and sensors prior to customerdelivery. In addition, she and husbandAlfred announce the birth of daughter,Emily Michelle, born April 3, 2001.

Ronald R. Dull (MSEE ’90) has joinedCincinnati-based tech company BluespringSoftware as VP of Solutions Delivery.

Gary Flack (BSEE ’90) and his wifehappily announce the birth of their son,Kevin Richard Flack, on October 6, 2001.

Ahmet Cevdet Gokcek (BSEE ’90)has received an MS degree in ElectricalEngineering from San Jose State University.

Ki S. Kim (BSCSCI ’90) joinedPricewaterhouseCoopers ManagementConsulting as a principal consultant.Additionally, the Kims announce the birthof son and future Trojan, Ethan Sun-Woo.

Janine Nghiem (BSEE ’90) and husbandMichael B. Diamond (MSME ’91)announce the birth of Trojan daughter,Rachel Ariel Diamond.

Jack S. Thomas (BSISE ’90) and wifeHeather Krishine announce the birth ofdaughter of Troy, Jessica Arielle.

1991Eric A. Anderson (MSCHE ’91) has beenpromoted to VP of the Bender Corp. Inc.,an engineering consulting firm and memberof the Badische Stahl Engineering Group inBeverly Hills, CA.

Stanley M. Jaskot (MSCHE ’91) marriedBarbara Ann Fourcade at St. Catherine ofSiena Church in Metairie, LA on November25, 2000.

Greg Mendolia (MSEE ’91) has joinede-tenna Corporation, a Titan Subsidiary, asan Executive VP.

Tarique Mustafa (MSMFE ‘91) spokeat Wireless Internet UCLA on November 9,2001. He is CEO of Network Utilities Inc.

and an acknowledged expert in the areas oflarge-scale databases, artificial intelligence,and large-scale software architecture.

Min Yang (PhD CHE ’91) has beenrunning Plymath, SAT Prep. & CollegeConsultation, for the last 10 years. Polymathhas served more than 5000 students sofar in Los Angeles, South Bay, andLa Crescenta/La Canada areas of California.

1992Hugo A. Bernardo (MSEE ’92) and wifeLilia welcomed daughter Sophia Lily onMarch 29, 2001.

Mark Klezig (BSISE ’92) has 2 kids, a newhouse, and recently left a small consultingfirm in favor of a large radar systemmanufacturer.

Scott T. Toborg (PhD CENG ’92) hasbeen appointed CIO for 360networks,an international provider of broadbandnetwork services in Seattle, WA.

1993Eric Busbey (BSEE ’93) was married onSeptember 8, 2001.

Jay S. Chang (MSORE ’93) has beennamed Senior VP of Providian Financial.

Joyce (Cushman) Freymiller (BSBMME’93) was married on September 1, 2001.She works as a mechanical engineer inAlbuquerque.

Thomas E. Vice (BSAE ’93) has beenpromoted by the Northrop Grumman Corp.to VP of Material.

1994 Victor E. Alvarez (BSAE ’94, MSSAE ’99)married Shannon L. Dolan at St. Peter’sCatholic Church in Lancaster, PA onNovember 11, 2000. The couple resides inRedondo Beach, CA.

Andrea L. Amram (MSSAE ’94) has beennamed Principal Director of the Architectureand Design subdivision of the SystemsEngineering Division at Aerospace Corp.

Michael E. Dunlop (BSCHEE ’94) wascommissioned by the United States AirForce as a Bio-Environmental EngineeringOfficer on May 2, 2000. He is stationed atKirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque,NM with his wife, Kendall R. Semays.

Ian M. Overholt (BSEE ’94) marriedGina Macias in September 2000.

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Mark A. Ruzon (BSCSCI ’94) hasreceived his PhD in Computer Science fromStanford University and is presently workingwith Quindi Corp. in Palo Alto, CA. Inaddition, he and wife Lesley (Vuillemenot)(BA ’96) announce the birth of Trojandaughter, Samantha Marie.

Walter A. Tackett (PhD CENG ’94)was the featured speaker at the BOT 2001East Conference in Boston in June 2001.Dr. Tackett is the CEO and founder ofNativeMinds, Inc., a leading provider ofsoftware and service, creating automatednatural-language customer service software.

1995 David S. Atteberry (BSBME ’95) gradu-ated from the University of Pittsburg Schoolof Medicine and has begun his residency atthe University of Pittsburg Medical Centerin neurological surgery. He also announceshis marriage to Carla Spagnoletti.

Kyle T. Fujikawa (BSEE ’95, MSCENG’00) and Jennifer K. Kawakami (BARCH’96) were married.

Miriam (Dixon) McKenna (BSCE ’95)has been named Project Manager forBerryman & Henigar. She was also a teammember in the California State, ASCEaward-winning Urban Water Run-OffDiversion and Penaquitos projects.

1996Brian D. Anderson (BSCECS ’96) andJennifer Ott (BACAAS ’96) were married.

Mark Chechelnitsky (MSCSCI ’96) hasbeen named VP and CTO of iVideoNow,Inc., a supplier of Internet video solutions.

Francisco A. Rubio-Campos (MSEE’96) has joined the Los Angeles office ofSonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal Attorneys.Rubio-Campos is specializing in intellectualproperty and technology, as well aspatents, trademarks, licensing, portfoliomanagement and strategy.

Scott Shultz (BSME ’96) and VivianQuon (BABRJO ’96) were married.

1997 Jay Scott Goldstein (PhD EE ’97)became a Fellow of the Institute ofElectrical and Electronics Engineers onDecember 4, 2000. He is presently anAssistant VP at Science ApplicationsInternational Corp. Goldstein also

announces the birth of his son, JaysonDaniel, born on October 17, 2000.

Omar A. Siddiqui (MSENVE ’97)has graduated with a JD degree from LoyolaLaw School and passed the Californiabar exam.

1998David Escandon (BSEE ’98) is the proudowner of a new townhouse in the beautifulcity of Thousand Oaks.

Armando Santana (BSCECS ’98) andhis wife Nora celebrate a birth of their firstdaughter Alexandria Grace. He has recentlybeen promoted to technical staff at WaltDisney Imagineering Research andDevelopment, Inc.

Sean P. Shelvin (BSBMME ’98) hasreceived his Master’s of Education degree atUSC. He is presently teaching high schoolalgebra and geometry and coaching the girlswaterpolo and swim teams at ValenciaHigh School.

1999Manoj Asnani (MSCSCI ’99)was married.

Hyuk Man Kwon (BSISE ’99) has beenpromoted to Director of Planning &Managing at Sung Bo Development Co.,Ltd. located in Seoul, Korea. He alsocelebrates the birth of his new baby.

Jonathan A. Leitner (MSEE ’99) iscurrently working with Conexant Systemsin the wireless communications division asan Applications Engineer.

Roy Nwaisser (MSCSCI ’99) attendedmore than 100 consecutive USC home androad football games. He started his streakduring his junior year as a Trojan.

Mike T. Repede (BSEE ’99) has beenpromoted to Staff Engineer at IBM’s eServerEngineering Software group.

2000Matthew Denio (BSME ’00) joinedTeradyne, Inc. as a manufacturing engineer.Teradyne manufactures test equipment forelectronics, communications, and softwareindustries.

Chiram Littleton (MSCSSE ’00)has been hired as a software engineerfor Mixed Signals Technologies, a pioneerin interactive television technology.

Philip Ruder (BSCECS ’00) is pursuinghis MS in Computer Science at USC. Heis expected to graduate in May 2002.

2001Hui-Fen Chen (MSISE ’01) and Chun-Wei Chang (MSEE ’00) were married.

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Board of Councilors NewsN.R. Narayana Murthy, chairman ofInfosys Technologies, made headlinesaround the globe this year, snatching tophonors like “Emerging Markets CEO ofthe Year Award” and “IT Man of theYear.”BusinessWeekchosehim asone of“TheStars ofAsia” forthreeconsec-utiveyears and Asiaweek selected him for its“Power-50,” a distinguished group ofAsia’s most powerful people. He alsoreceived the “JRD Tata CorporateLeadership Award for 1996-1997.” Today,Murthy is a member of the NationalInformation Technology Task Force ofIndia, a member of the Prime Minister’sCouncil on Trade and Industry, as wellas a member of the USC School ofEngineering’s Board of Councilors. Healso symbolizes the power of Indian ITand its role in the global phenomenon asInfosys heralds the era of the NewEconomy in the country.

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This edition of class notes representsupdates received between January2001 and March 2002.

Please keep us informed of yourpersonal and professional progress,as well as changes in your contactinformation by visitingwww.usc.edu/engineering and clickingon alumni. Or by writing to theAlumni Relations Office at the USCSchool of Engineering, Olin Hall 300,Los Angeles, California 90089-1454

There are numerous ways to support the School of Engineering. We arepleased to share a selection of recent gifts that demonstrate the variety of waysto support the School.* From gifts of stock and securities, to planned givingopportunities, to outright contributions, our departments, programs, facultyand students can benefit greatly from your philanthropy.

Please call External Relations at the School of Engineering at213/740-2502, to discuss the wide-range of giving options.

ARCS Foundation – $180,960 In support of graduate and undergraduatestudent scholarships

The ARCS (Achievement Rewards for College Students) FoundationScholarships will provide vital assistance to students inBiomedical/Biochemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Industrial andSystems Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Electrical Engineering,Mechanical Engineering, and Environmental Engineering.

Philip R. MacDonald (BSCE ’70, MBA ’72) – $20,000 In support ofa $100,000 pledge to the Engineering Academic Center

The new Engineering Academic Center will house state-of-art teaching andresearch laboratories, and provide much needed space for innovativeeducational advances.

Gloria Lee Wilson (BSEE ’64, MS ’66) – $5,000 In support of theEngineering Annual Fund

The Engineering Annual Fund supports the School’s most critical needs,including emergency scholarship supplements, vital curriculum development,and technological enhancements.

Scott R. Shoults (BSEE ’88) – $1.8 million A charitable remainder trustin general support of the School of Engineering

A charitable remainder trust at USC is an excellent option for individualswishing to preserve asset values and make thoughtful allocation arrangementsfor long-term charitable goals, including those involving children,grand-children and other loved ones.

Emrick A. Webb (BSISE ’50) – $100,000 A gift annuity in general supportof the School of Engineering

Gift annuities at USC enable individuals to contribute to the growth andsuccess of the university while taking advantage of guaranteed incomeimportant in the current market climate.

Peter Willcox (BSME ’65, MSME ’71, PhD ENGR ’74) – $25,000Including a matching ITT Industries gift in support of the Posch BiomedicalEngineering Endowed Fellowship in honor of Peter’s wife, Nancy Willcox, motherof Theodore “Ted” Posch Jr.

Established in 1996 to honor Ted’s father, Theodore Eugene Posch (BAPSYC’65, MSEE ’70), the Posch Fellowship is awarded to a top PhD candidate in theDepartment of Biomedical Engineering who intends to pursue research in thefield of Neural Engineering.

*The above list is not a comprehensive record of all gifts received, but rather asampling of gift options and categories at the USC School of Engineering.

Alumnus Merwyn C. Gill PledgesSupport for the Center forComposite MaterialsA Pasadena industrialist who started a company inhis garage 55 years ago has given $7 million to theUSC School of Engineering's Center for CompositeMaterials

Merwyn C. Gill (BSCHE ’37), Chairman of theBoard of M.C. Gill Corporation in El Monte,California, has pledged $7 million through theM.C. Gill Foundation to endow the Merwyn C. GillFoundation Composites Center and will providean additional $250,000 per year for eight years tosupport operations.

“The world of materials science has advancedtremendously since my early days, and compositematerials are an increasingly important aspect of oureveryday lives,” said Gill. “It is important that theUSC School of Engineering play a bigger role incomposite materials research and education.”

The center was established in 1995 for researchand development in composite technology. It contin-ues to collaborate with corporate partners in theLos Angeles area. Composites are used in everythingfrom fishing rods and wall paneling to bullet-proofvests and satellites.

Center director Steven Nutt, holder of the M.C.Gill Chair in Composite Materials, points out that thecenter harbors more than a dozen projects, involvingeight faculty members from six different departments.

In 1945, Gill began making “Wallfab,” a wash-able, laminated, decorative wall covering. It evolvedinto “Gillfab,” a puncture-resistant liner for aircraftcargo compartments. The El Monte company is nowthe world's largest manufacturer of cargo liners forpassenger and freight aircraft.

Gill is a member of the School of EngineeringBoard of Councilors, a Presidential Associate,a member of Cardinal and Gold, and the USCNorris Auxiliary. He resides in Pasadena with hiswife, Hester.

Recent Giftsto The USC School of Engineering

Dean C.L. Max Nikias and Merwyn C. Gill at theOctober 19 dinner to celebrate Gill's gift to theCenter for Composite Materials

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USC ENGINEER 39

Ensuring an Excellent Future –Endowment Naming Opportunities

environments and facilities for faculty who want to pursue research andeducation that cross traditional boundaries. I very much look forward toworking with her.”

Gast, who joined the Stanford faculty in 1985 after earning hermasters in 1981 and PhD in 1984 from Princeton University, is an experton complex fluids and colloids. Her research explores the frontiers of thechemical physics of colloidal and polymer solutions, polymer absorption,and most recently proteins, using experimental scattering methods andstatistical mechanics. She is the co-author of a classic textbook on colloidand surface phenomena. Her achievements have been recognized with anarray of honors, including a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher ScholarAward, and the Allan P. Colburn Award of the American Institute ofChemical Engineers. She was elected to the National Academy ofEngineering last spring.

On April 26th, the USC School of Engineering will honorDr. Gast at the 24th Annual Engineering Awards Luncheon inLos Angeles. She will receive the Distinguished Alumni Award inAcademia. This year marks the inauguration of the award, whichrecognizes an alumnus or alumna who has excelled in a leadership rolewithin higher education. Dr. Gast’s accomplishments have certainlyhelped to define this new honor.

alumni and business professionals. Dean C.L. Max Nikias enjoys a closeworking relationship with Jay. “I enjoy speaking with Jay and getting hisadvice on decisions we are making for the school.” Nikias says, “He trulycares about engineering and has great ideas and talents to share.”

Jay echoes these sentiments for himself when talking about hisinvolvement with the School. “I love USC, and I love the School ofEngineering. I’m trying to give back of my time and my talents. It’s veryrewarding and I enjoy it a lot.” When asked where he thinks the school isheaded, he is truly excited about the future. “I think if we follow Max’svision, USC will become one the top engineering schools in the countryand that will position us with some pretty good company!”

In addition to several years of service on the Board of Councilors,Jay also served on the Commercialization Advisory Board. He is alsoco-chair of the USC Orange County Advisory Council DevelopmentSubcommittee. He has been a guest speaker in the Dean’s Seminar onEntrepreneurship, a class jointly taught through the Marshall School ofBusiness and the School of Engineering.

While employed by the General Electric Company, Jay found timeto attend the Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochesterand the University of Southern California. He has co-authored a bookon software business startups.

Jay resides in Newport Coast, California with his wife, Lauren. Jayhas three grown daughters who also reside in Southern California and areall USC graduates. His plans include his four grandchildren following inthe Trojan Family tradition and one day attending USC. Who knows, wemay even have another USC engineer or two in the Kear family.

Gifts to the USC School of Engineering that build the endowment are the foundation of our academic excellence. Endowment naming gifts providean enduring base that enables the School to achieve more and to continually grow. Daniel J. Epstein recognized the importance of supporting anindividual department with a endowed naming gift that will establish two new chairs and considerably increase the department’s and the School’sendowments. There are numerous other giving opportunities that will have significant impact for the School, and our ability to achieve future success.

Named Departments and CentersDaniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems EngineeringMerwyn C. Gill Foundation Composites Center

Academic Department Naming Opportunities Aerospace and Mechanical EngineeringBiomedical EngineeringChemical EngineeringCivil and Environmental Engineering Computer ScienceElectrical Engineering- Electrophysics Electrical Engineering- SystemsMaterial Sciences

Research Center and Institute Naming Opportunities(this represents a partial list) Communications Science InstituteCenter for Photonic TechnologyEngineering Technology Transfer CenterInformation Sciences InstituteInstitute for Robotics and Intelligent SystemsIntegrated Media Systems CenterSignal and Image Processing Institute

Faculty Chairs in Various DisciplinesUndergraduate and Graduate Student Fellowships Undergraduate and Graduate Research Fellowships

For more information on endowment naming opportunities to the USC School of Engineering, please contact Holly Preble, Executive Directorof Development, at 213/740-2502.

Alumni Profile Alice P. Gastcontinued from page 28

Alumni Profile Jay L. Kearcontinued from page 29

40 USC ENGINEER

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About the School

Dean’s Message

News and Events

Administration

Faculty Photos

Facts

Celebrating Excellence in Engineering

USC Engineering News

24th Annual Awards Luncheon…Full Story

The Integrated Media Systems Center…Full Story

Leonard Adleman…Full Story

P R E M I E R I N G F A L L 2 0 0 2USC School of Engineering Alumni Website

S E V E R A L N E W A N D I M P R O V E D F E A T U R E S A N D S E R V I C E S I N C L U D I N G :

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� Important Links

The School of Engineering Alumni Relations Office welcomes your suggestions about new servicesand programs that you would like us to offer through our website. Please email us [email protected] with your ideas.

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ACADEMICSUPPORT SERVICES

Distance Education Network213/740-4488den.usc.edu

Science and Engineering Library213/740-8507www.usc.edu/isd/locations/science/sci

ACADEMICDEPARTMENTS

Aerospace and MechanicalEngineering213/740-4303 Aerospace 213/740-0484 Mechanicalame-www.usc.edu

Biomedical Engineering213/740-7237bme.usc.edu

Chemical Engineering213/740-2225www.usc.edu/dept/che/index.html

Civil Engineering213/740-0603www.usc.edu/dept/civil_eng/dept

Computer Science 213/740-4494www.cs.usc.edu

Daniel J. Epstein Department ofIndustrial and Systems Engineering213/740-4893www.usc.edu/dept/ise

Electrical Engineering–Electrophysics213/740-4700www.usc.edu/dept/ee

Electrical Engineering–Systems213/740-4446www.usc.edu/dept/ee

Materials Science213/740-4339www.usc.edu/dept/materials_science

ORGANIZEDRESEARCH UNITS

Biomedical Simulations Resource 213/740-0342bmsr.usc.edu

Center for Advanced TransportationTechnologies213/740-4452www.usc.edu/dept/ee/catt

Center for Electron Microscopyand Microanalysis 213/740-1990www.usc.edu/dept/CEMMA/cemma.html

Center for Neural Engineering213/740-7237www.usc.edu/dept/engineering/CNE

Center for Photonic Technology213/740-0257www.usc.edu/dept/engineering/eleceng/

photonics

Center for Research on AppliedSignal Processing213/740-0877

Center for Software Engineering213/740-5703sunset.usc.edu/index.html

Communication Sciences Institute 213/740-4685

Engineering Technology TransferCenter213/743-2353 www.usc.edu/dept/engineering/TTC

Foundation for Cross-ConnectionControl and Hydraulic Research213/740-2032www.usc.edu/fccchr

Information Sciences Institute 310/822-1511www.isi.edu

Institute for Robotics and IntelligentSystems 213/740-6428iris.usc.edu

Integrated Media Systems Center 213/740-0877imsc.usc.edu

International Institute for InnovativeRisk Reduction Research on CivilInfrastructure Systems 213/740-7840

Merwyn C. Gill FoundationComposites Center213/740-1634www.usc.edu/dept/materials_science/ccr

PTTC West Coast Resource Center213/740-8076

Signal and Image ProcessingInstitute 213/740-4145sipi.usc.edu

Sustainable Cities Program213/821-1325

Western Research ApplicationCenter 213/743-2788www.usc.edu/dept/engineering/wesrac

Western Trade AdjustmentAssistance Center 213/743-2732www.usc.edu/dept/engineering/wtaac

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School of EngineeringUniversity of Southern CaliforniaOlin Hall 300Los Angeles, CA 90089-1454

www.usc.edu/engineering

Alumni Relations213/740-2502

Corporate Relations213/740-2502

Dean’s Office213/740-7832

Development213/740-2502

External Relations213/821-2400

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