:

From JPL to USCand Beyond

:

From JPL to USCand Beyond

Gray MattersUSC Teams withIsrael’s Technion toInvestigate NeuralArithmetic

Postcardsfrom ParisViterbi SchoolStudents Discoverthe City of Light

Thought forFoodComputer ScienceProvides BetterNutrition

USC Viterbi School of EngineeringUSC Viterbi School of Engineering

Fall/Winter 2004

Published by the University of Southern California Volume 3 Issue 1

p33page 3 Dean’s Message

page 4 Editor’s Note

page 5 Straight & To the PointShort Subjects

page 39 Alumnus ProfileAl Dorman, MSCE ’62

page 40 Alumnus ProfileA. V. Balakrishnan, MSEE ’50, Ph.D. Mathematics ’54

page 41 Alumnus ProfileArthur P. Adamson, BSME ’41

page 42 Alumna ProfileAimee Lopez, BSCE ’99

page 43 Parent ProfileAsad M. Madni

page 47 Snapshots2004 Summer & Fall Events

page 49 Class Notes & News

page 51 In Memoriam

page 52 Notebook

ifeatures

in this ssue

departments

page 26 Section 331: From JPL to USC and BeyondHow a Distinguished Group of Space-Race Pioneers Landed at USC

by Carl Marziali

page 31 Gray MattersUSC Teams with Israel’s Technion to Investigate Neural Arithmetic

by Diane Ainsworth

page 33 Postcards From ParisViterbi School Students Discover the City of Light

Compiled by Bob Calverley

page 37 Thought For FoodComputer Science Provides Better Nutrition Boost

by Eric Mankin

p41

"It shrank the

world from

seven days to

seven hours for

a transatlantic

crossing,"

Adamson says.

See Adamsonprofile on page 41

p37

p26

The USC Viterbi School of Engineering thanks thefollowing corporations, foundations and organizations fortheir recent gifts. Their generosity is crucial to the successof our students and faculty as they pursue scientific andacademic excellence. For more information on how yourfirm can help to shape the engineers of tomorrow, pleasecontact:

Ace Beverage Co.

Advanced Bionics Corporation

The Aerospace Corporation

ALi Corporation

Alias Systems, Inc.

American Health AssistanceFoundation

American HeartAssociation, Inc.

American Society Of CivilEngineers

Ami/Coast Magnetics, Inc.

Amgen, Inc.

Margot Anderson BrainRestoration Foundation

ANSYS, Inc.

Aramark Uniform & CareerApparel Group, Inc.

Arcs Foundation, Inc.

Armenian Professional Society

Asociacion Sindical De Pilotosde Aviacon

Association for Network CareResearch Corporation

BAE SYSTEMS

BEI Technologies, Inc.

Bi-Centennial Realtors

The Boeing Company

Brash Industries, Inc.

Btg International, Inc.

California CommunityFoundation

Center for BreakthroughThinking, Inc.

Ch2m Hill Foundation

ChevronTexaco

Cisco Systems, Inc.

The Cleveland ClinicFoundation

Conexant Systems, Inc.

Consortium of Organizationsfor Strong MotionObservation Systems

Crystalmedia Technology, Inc.

DaimlerChrysler AG

The John Deere Foundation

Disney WorldwideServices, Inc.

Doheny Eye Institute

E2O Communications, Inc.

Earth Mechanics, Inc.

Edison International

Electronic Arts, Inc.

Ember Corporation

Engineering Research& Consulting, Inc.

E Splosion Consulting, LLC

Estee Lauder, Inc.

Everfocus Electronics Corp.

Exxon Mobil Corporation

Fujitsu Laboratoriesof America, Inc.

Fx Palo Alto Laboratory, Inc.

General Electric Foundation

Geometrix, Inc.

George Ignatius Foundation

The Merwyn C. GillFoundation

Gunn Center of Gynecologyand Female Urology

Harvest Energy Technology, Inc.

Hathaway DinwiddieConstruction Company

Hewlett-Packard Company

House Ear Institute, Inc.

International Business MachinesCorporation

Institute for InformationIndustry

Intel Corporation

j2 Global Communications, Inc.

J. Dreyfuss + Associates, Inc.

JDS Uniphase Corporation

Jewish Community Foundation

KDDI R&D Laboratories, Inc.

Kluwer Academic Publishers

L’garde, Inc.

Lawrence Livermore NationalLaboratory

Lockheed MartinCorporation

Medtronic Minimed, Inc.

Microsoft Corporation

Motorola Foundation

National Financial Services, LLC

National Heart Foundation

NCR Corporation

The Kenneth T. & Eileen L.Norris Foundation

Northrop GrummanCorporation

NVIS, Inc.

O2 Technology, Inc.

Occidental Oil and GasCorporation

The Okawa Foundation

Olympus Optical Co., Ltd

O Miller Associates

OPNET Technologies, Inc.

O’Reilly & Associates, Inc.

Parker Hannifin Corporation

The Charles Lee PowellFoundation

Ppg Industries Foundation

QUALCOMM Incorporated

Raytheon Company

The Reynolds Group

Robert Bosch Corporation

Rockwell Science Center

Science ApplicationsInternational Corporation

Semiconductor ResearchCorporation

Sempra Energy

The John and Dorothy SheaFoundation

Singapore Airlines Limited

Society Of Women Engineers

Softstar Systems

STMicroelectronics N.V.

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

TeleGIF, A Non-ProfitCorporation

Texas Instruments Incorporated

Toyota Motor Corporation

Trellisware Technologies, Inc.

Verizon Foundation

Vivendi Universal Games, Inc.

The Whitaker Foundation

WirthlinWorldwide, Inc.

Xilinx, Inc.

In Pursuit of Excellence

Isadora Gullov-Singh Director of Corporate Relations USC Viterbi School of Engineering

Tel: 213/740-2502 E-Mail: gullovsi@usc.edu

mdean’s essage

USC ENGINEER Vol. 3 No. 1 Fall/Winter 2004

C. L. Max NikiasDeanUSC Viterbi School of Engineering

The Path to Success

Nik

ias

phot

o by

Max

S.G

erbe

r

Engineering schools that can create dynamiccollaborations among academia, business andgovernment will be the real leaders in the 21st

century. And these leaders will not necessarily be thetraditional top-10 schools. If the past year is any indication,the USC Viterbi School of Engineering is becoming one of

those leaders.It has been an

extraordinary year startingwith an extraordinary $52million naming gift fromAndrew (Ph.D. EE ’62) andErna Viterbi. Arguably,the naming was the mostsignificant event of the yearin all of engineeringeducation. Our School isnow linked forever with aname that exemplifiesacademic excellence,engineering innovation andcreative entrepreneurialism.Increasingly, our Schoolreflects those values.

During the past year we secured the BiomimeticMicroElectronics Systems (BMES), our second NationalScience Foundation Engineering Research Center, and theCenter for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events(CREATE), the first Center of Excellence awarded to auniversity by the Department of the Homeland Security.In both cases, our proposals for these centers finished firstin hard-fought national competitions.

Why were we successful? One reason is the trulyimpressive ability of the USC Viterbi School’s faculty tocollaborate with others. BMES is largely a collaborationbetween our School and the Keck School of Medicine atUSC, but it also has researchers from Caltech andUC-Santa Cruz, and medical device industry participates.The CREATE team includes researchers from several otheruniversities across the nation and other parts of USC,particularly the USC School of Policy, Planning andDevelopment.

There are 30 faculty from the USC Viterbi School whoare serving as principal investigators or co-principalinvestigators in cross-disciplinary research collaborationswith other USC units, and the total current funding forthese projects is $87 million. Our School is leading the wayat USC, and increasingly, leading at a national level.

We have been blazing a trail in industry collaborationswith the ChevronTexaco Center for Interactive SmartOilfield Technologies (CiSOFT) and the Pratt & WhitneyInstitute for Collaborative Engineering, which also includesKorean Air. Additionally, we are close to finalizing theestablishment of a third industry center to be announcedlater this fall.

The industry collaborations are important. If engineersare going to continue improving our quality of life in the21st century, they must be prepared to address the realworld problems found in industry and commerce.

Tomorrow’s engineers are today’s students, and USCViterbi students are also pacesetters. For the thirdconsecutive year, our incoming 2004 freshman class has thehighest SAT average at USC —1386. The GRE scores of ourgraduate students are also among the highest at USC. If thefaculty is our School’s foundation then our students are itspillars, and those pillars are growing stronger.

Our Distance Education Network (DEN) now offers24 master’s degree programs — more than any otherengineering school — using modern high-speed Internettechnology envied by our competitors and so popularwith students that enrollments grew by almost 25%this year.

Our success has not gone unnoticed. The USC ViterbiSchool has risen to sixth place in the U.S. News & WorldReport rankings of graduate engineering programs. Whilethat is exciting and good news, it is not important news.For as leaders, we must continue to find our own pathto excellence rather than following one dictated by theconstantly shifting metrics set by others.

As we approach the year’s end, on behalf of the faculty,students and staff of the USC Viterbi School, I wish all ofyou a holiday season filled with the close-knit warmth andjoy of family and friends. And in 2005, may each of you finda path to prosperity and success.

This year, I am celebrating my 10threunion as a Trojan. I’m sure that

many alumni have shared in thequestion — “Where has the time gone?”In my case, ten years has passed in theblink of an eye and in that time USC hasflourished and developed into the type ofuniversity where equal numbers of alumnithink, “I’m not sure I’d get in today!”

Luckily, we did get in. And we earnedso much more than our degrees. Weearned membership into the legendaryTrojan Family. Working with alumni, I amconstantly reminded of the strength ofthat family and the bond the reaches acrosscities, oceans, languages and cultures. Thiswas never more apparent than this Octoberwhen Dean Nikias and I traveled to Seoul,South Korea for the 3rd Annual USC AsiaConference. Trojans from all corners of theglobe converged on this amazing city tolearn more about USC, the societies of thePacific Rim and each other. It was truly aremarkable gathering.

Just as remarkable, are our Trojans backhome. Our alumni profile of Al Dorman(MSCE ’62) paints the picture of anincredibly humble man, a true Renaissancescholar, whose career developed as Californiadid, and shines just as brightly.

This issue’s other alumni profilesare just as impressive and live up to theprecedent we have set in this magazine —stories of excellence reflected in research,students, faculty and alumni.

Our alumni continue to support us andinspire us. Thank you to those who havestayed involved and engaged. I am proud toknow so many of you and always lookforward to meeting more. Please join ourannual Homecoming picnic this Novemberfor a chance to reminisce with old and newfriends and ponder once again thequestion — “Where has the time gone?”

Always involved and engaged, Jack McConeghy(BSME ’66), chair of the Alumni AdvisoryBoard, and myself at the School’s “Evening atthe Hollywood Bowl” in August.

neditor’s ote

BOARD OF COUNCILORSCHAIRMANJay L. Kear, BSME ’60Southern California Ventures

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

Gordon M. Anderson, BSME ’54Retired, Santa Fe InternationalCorporation

Sonny Astani, MSISE ’78Lambert Smith Hampton

Carlton H. Baab, BSEE ’81Raining Data Corporation

William F. Ballhaus, Jr. The Aerospace Corporation

Ronald R. Barnes, BS ACCT ’76Norris Foundation

Dwight J. Baum Dwight C. Baum Investments

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

Edgar S. Brower, BSISE ’59Retired, Pacific Scientific

Xiaofan Cao, MA PHYS ’85,MSEE ’87, Ph.D. PHYS ’90Arasor Corporation

Yang Ho Cho, MBA ’79Korean Airlines

David W. Chonette, MSME ’60,ENGME ’64Versant VenturesBrentwood Venture Capital

Leo ChuHollywood Park Casinoand Crystal Park Casino Hotel

Malcolm R. CurrieRetired, Hughes Aircraft Company

Kenneth C. Dahlberg, M.S. EE '69Science Applications InternationalCorporation

John DeiningerJ.D. Investments, Inc.

David DiCarlo, Ph.D. EE ’79Northrop Grumman SpaceTechnology

Vinod DhamNewPath Ventures

Albert Dorman, M.S. CE ‘62RetiredAECOM Technology Corporation

Daniel J. Epstein, BSISE ’62ConAm Management Corporation

Alan J. Fohrer, BSCE ’73, MSCE ’76Southern California Edison

Alice P. Gast, BSChE ’80Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Thomas O. Gephart, BSME ’62Ventana Capital Management

Hester GillMerwyn C. Gill Foundation

M.C. Gill, BSChE ’37Merwyn C. Gill Corporation

E.R. “Ed” Glasgow, MBA ’70Lockheed Martin AeronauticsCompany

Kenton Gregory, BSEE ’76, MD ’80Oregon Medical Laser Center

Jen-Hsun HuangNVIDIA Corporation

Karl Jacob III, BME ’91, BS CSCI ’00Cloudmark

John C. Johnson, MSSM ’74Northrop Grumman ElectronicSystems

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

Kenneth R. Klein, BSME ’82Wind River Systems, Inc.

Geraldine Knatz, MSENV ’77,Ph.D. BISC ’79The Port of Long BeachDevelopment Bureau

Marie L. Knowles, BSChE ’68,MSChE ’70, MBA ’74Retired, ARCO

David A. Lane, BSEE ’81Diamondhead Ventures

Robert Lee, BSEE ’70Retired, Pacific Bell

Alexander G. LivanosBoeing Satellite Systems, Inc.

Alfred E. MannMannKind Corporation

Gordon S. Marshall, BS BUS ’46Retired, Marshall Industries

Fariborz MaseehPicoco, LLC

Bryan B. Min, B.S. ISE '86Epsilon Systems Solutions, Inc.

John Mork, BSPE ’70Energy Corporation of America

Bonnie OptekmanNBC News AssuranceNBC News Production Systems

Donald L. PaulChevronTexaco Corporation

Allen E. PuckettHughes Aircraft Company

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

George E. Scalise, BSEE ’88Duncan-Hurst Capital Management

F. John Shea, BS ENG ’49J.F. Shea Co., Inc.

Darlene SolomonAgilent Technologies

Peter Staudhammer Alfred E. Mann Institute - USC

Richard D. StephensBS NSMA ’74The Boeing CompanyShared Services Group

Mark A. Stevens, BSEE ’81,BS ECON ’81, MSCE ’84 Sequoia Capital

Parviz Tayebati, Ph.D. Physics ’89Azna Corporation

Cyrus Y. Tsui, BSEE ’69Lattice Semiconductor Corporation

Andrew J. Viterbi, Ph.D. EE ’62The Viterbi Group, LLC

William P. WiesmannBioSTAR Group

Annette BlainDirector, Alumni Relations

DeanC. L. Max Nikias

Chief Executive Officer, External RelationsChristopher J. Stoy

USC ENGINEER

EditorAnnette Blain

Managing EditorBob Calverley

Contributing WritersDiane Ainsworth, Bob Calverley, John Cohoon,Meredith Goodwin, Eric Mankin, Carl Marziali,

Gia Scafidi

Art Direction & Graphic DesignTracy Merrigan Creative

We wish to acknowledge the following individuals for theircontributions to this issue of USC Engineer: William Lindsey,Craig Rettig, Julie Fox, Gerard Medioni, Jacqueline Williams,Christopher Noll, Linda Wright, Joyce Oo Mayne, BarbaraMyers, Isadora Gullov-Singh, Matthew Bates, JasonDziegielewski, Talin Arisian, Ana Gamez, Alison Kibbey andStephanie Marchan.

USC Engineer is published twice a year for alumni and friendsof the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of SouthernCalifornia.

Letters to the editor and comments are welcome. Please sendthem to: USC Engineer, Alumni Relations Office, Olin Hall 300,Los Angeles, California 90089-1454, or email them touscengineer@usc.edu.

This issue of USC Engineer is dedicated to the memory ofGregory Parrillo, 1974-2004.

4 USC ENGINEER

USC ENGINEER 5

pthe oint

In order to position the USC Viterbi School,to take full advantage of rapidly growingopportunities in space, in August, Dean Nikiasannounced the creation of a new Astronauticsand Space Technology Division (ASTD).

“Following the drastic funding cutbacksin the early 1990s, space technology andastronautics has recently re-emerged as animportant sector of economic and engineeringactivity not only in the Southern Californiaeconomy but also in the nation as a whole,”he said. “Both defense applications and spaceexploration projects are driving this resurgence.However, recent congressional studies havewarned of a looming shortage of engineers inthis area.”

The dean appointed Professor MikeGruntman as chair of the division. Otherfaculty are Professors Joseph Kunc and DanielErwin. All three will continue to have courtesyappointments in the department of aerospaceand mechanical engineering. Secondary ASTDappointments went to Professors Stan Settles,Joseph Sullivan and Peter Will, from theInformation Sciences Institute (ISI).

ASTD will be solely responsible for allresearch and degree programs in astronauticsand space technology. It will offer a programin astronautics and space technologyconcentrating on meeting the educationaland research needs of the space and defenseindustries. The new division has already takenresponsibility for 24 courses formerly in thedepartment of aerospace and mechanicalengineering.

The division will function as an

independent academic unit within the USCViterbi School similar to a department. It willbe governed by the same rules and policies andthe division chair will report directly to thedean. Like departments, the division willestablish an advisory board with membersfrom industry, government laboratoriesand academia.

“For more than a year, the USC ViterbiSchool of Engineering with strong supportfrom ISI has been engaged in a carefullyorchestrated effort to secure major funding inspace technology,” said Nikias. “I expect thecreation of the new division will help bringthese efforts to fruition, and look forward tothe continuing close collaboration with ISI.”

Mike Gruntman

A New Frontier: ASTRONAUTICS AND SPACE TECHNOLOGY DIVISION

Gru

ntm

an p

hoto

by

Max

S.G

erbe

r

DEAN MAX NIKIAS’ efforts to build bridges between the Viterbi Schooland industry were the subject of a major interview on MarketplaceRadio May 5, which mentioned specifically the Viterbi School’s$5 million research grant from Chevron Texaco. “What I watch is thatwe don’t want to compromise any academic integrity,” said Nikias.Two days earlier, SocalTECH.com published its interview with thedean about the Viterbi gift and the School’s dynamic. “This place is onfire,” he said.

“9/11 was a failure of imagination,” said RANDY HALL, co-director ofthe USC Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events(CREATE) in an August 22 Los Angeles Times story (carried on AP)about CREATE’s USC campus simulation of the effects of the explosionof a dirty bomb on the L.A. waterfront. “This university center has amission to exchange ideas to look at long-term threats.” Voice ofAmerica, La Opinión, and National Public Radio also covered thestory. Hall was quoted a few days later on KNBC on the terrorsituation in Russia, and earlier in the Washington Times and KFWBabout CREATE’s new degrees in antiterrorism.

JAMES MOORE and NAJM MESHKATI offered perspectives on futureauto travel and safety in the August 29 Los Angeles TimesMagazine. Moore foresaw an increase in automatic controls on cars,while acknowledging “the stakes of failure [in an automated highway]are much higher.” Meshkati, who specializes in safety problems ofhighly technical systems — air travel, nuclear power, etc. — notedthat the interaction of human factors with automated systems wascomplex. A July 10 Times story about the L.A. Metro Greenlinesystem also quoted Moore, while Meshkati was interviewed inThe Australian about nuclear plant safety in an article on “Narrowingthe Human Factor.”

On July 6, The New York Times ran a major feature on theInformation Sciences Institute’s (ISI) addition of artificial intelligenceand speech recognition to a commercial computer game program tocreate a powerful system to teach Arabic quickly to military personnel.LEWIS JOHNSON, the director of ISI’s Center for Research in Technologyfor Education, and HANNES VILHJALMSSON were quoted and picturedin the story. The same project was featured in the June 14 Newsweekand on ABCNews.com’s FutureTech on March 9.

Aerospace engineer DON SHEMANSKY, who has an ultraviolet imagingspectrograph on the Cassini spacecraft that rendezvoused withSaturn this summer, was featured in The New York Times andthe Los Angeles Times on July 3, along with other stories in suchoutlets as Chemical & Engineering News, the San FranciscoChronicle, and Reuters, as well as a special report in the July 9 issueof Science.

Mechanical engineer PAUL RONNEY was the most prominently featuredresearcher in a long story about tiny internal combustion engines thesize of a penny or smaller in the June 14 issue of New Scientist.Ronney also spoke about the history of the more familiar, larger oneson “Modern Marvels,” broadcast on the History Channel.

ROBERT SCHOLTZ’S prestige as the world’s leading authority on thetechnology of Ultrawideband enabled him to conduct an internationalexperts poll on what the first uses for the new technology would be —a study reported on in CMP’s EE Times and CommsDesign on June 4,Wireless.com, and other industry publications. See story on page 8.

National Science Foundation’s Engineering News ran a feature onresearch developed by BEHROKH KHOSHNEVIS to use robotic technolo-gy to build a house in 24 hours. Regarding his achievement in buildinga complete wall using the system, they declared it “the most historicwall since the Great Wall of China.” The system has also attractednotice in publications in France, Spain, Britain, Italy, Brazil, Vietnam,Russia, Ukraine, Finland, Japan, Taiwan and Australia, along withearlier features in The New York Times and NBC Network News.

IRAJ ERSHAGHI’S op-ed in the May 2 Los Angeles Times called foreffective aid to small oil producers to increase the low recovery ratefrom the nation’s oil wells. A new masters program Ershaghi hasstarted on “smart” oil extraction technology, which will be availablethrough the Viterbi School’s Distance Education Network (DEN), wasreported on in media serving oil producing areas, including theHouston Chronicle, Bakersfield Californian and Rocky MountainNews. Ershaghi, an expert on world oil reserves, was quoted.See story on DEN’s new degree programs on page 17.

SHRIKANTH NARAYANAN’S work on software to detect emotion invoices continued to draw attention, adding a prominent story inNewsweek May 17 and a designation of the system as one of five“ideas to watch” by INC.COM. Naranayan’s work was also previouslycovered in numerous international print and web publications, such asthe French magazine L’Expresse which headlined “Détecteurs defureur.” In June, Texas Innovator, a monthly newsletter published bythe state as a “toolbox for the 20th century,” included it as a new tool.

Readers in Britain — and scientists worldwide — saw prominentstories on PETER WILL and WEI-MIN SHEN’S work on modularminirobots that can knit themselves together in diverse formscontrolled by multipurpose “hormonal” software. Nature magazinepublished reportage of a London demonstration of the technology,followed by a prominent story on May 25 in The Times of London.“Professor Shen says, ‘We can literally take the legs off a spider andplug them into the head and it becomes a snake.’” Will was alsointerviewed on space faring robots for the Australian BroadcastingCorporation’s science program “The Buzz” on June 12.

A breakthrough in the use of “quantum dot” receptors for detectionof infrared emissions was made by ANUPAM MADHUKAR of USC andJoe Campbell of the University of Texas/Austin and was heavily coveredin the industrial press, in such publications as Compound/SemiNews, NanotechWeb, the Instrumentation, Systems, and AutomationSociety’s InTech, Innovations Report, and CompoundSemiconductors. Additionally, the Air Force Office of ScientificResearch, which funded the effort, singled out the achievement as oneof the “July Accomplishments” in the Air Force ResearchLaboratory News source.

Also in nanotech, new research on composite nanocables byCHONGWU ZHOU received widespread industry coverage. MaterialsToday, Nanotechnology News, the MEMS and NanotechnologyClearinghouse, Nanojournal, and other specialty publications carriedstories on the work. See story on Zhou on page 25.

LEN ADLEMAN’S work using the genetic substance DNA as a computa-tional medium was part of an April 29 report in The New York Timesabout a new DNA based computer that has been proposed todiagnose disease and automatically dispense medication to treat it.

In the NewsUSC Viterbi School of Engineering projects and faculty continue to generate headlines and here are some of the highlights…

6 USC ENGINEER

pthe oint

USC ENGINEER 7

Researchers from the USC Viterbi School ofEngineering’s Information Sciences Institute(ISI) have successfully integrated theirnext-generation “smart memory” chip intoa standard Hewlett Packard computer.

“It’s a major milestone,” says Mary Hall,co-project leader of the Godiva Teamworking at ISI. “Even though our chip has afundamentally different architecture than theconventional hardware the HP platform wasdesigned around, it’s working. Now we’reseeing if it will deliver the extra speed andpower theory promises.”

The new device is an expanded andimproved version of the product of an earliereffort by Hall, hardware architect Jeff Draperand ISI Division Director John Granacki.That project, called DIVA (Featured inUSC Engineer Fall/Winter 2002) involved a55-million transistor processor-in-memory(PIM chip). The Godiva project chip is slightlylarger (56 million transistors), offers addresstranslation and eight single-precision floatingpoint units, and perhaps most importantly,contains a memory interface compatible with

DDR SDRAM memory buses.Both the DIVA and the Godiva designs

are among the largest chips ever realized inacademia and both were fabricated at TaiwanSemiconductor Manufacturing Corporation(TSMC) through ISI’s MOSIS chip brokerage.

Hall is an ISI software specialist who alsoholds an appointment in the Viterbi School’sdepartment of computer science. She has beenworking on a DARPA-funded effort to improvePIM chips for more than four years. She andDraper deployed their team’s new chips in HPLong’s Peak server memory modules.

“And these modules are now functioningas designed, as part of a working computer,”says Hall adding that HP and Rice Universityare also part of the project.

“Computer scientists have been talkingabout the potential of PIM chips for most ofthe past decade and have released devices theycall PIM chips,” says Draper, “but this is thefirst smart-memory device designed to supportvirtual addressing and capable of executingmultiple threads of control.”

PIMs potentially eliminate thecommunication bottleneck that takes place

when processing chips have to go back andforth to separate memory chips in order to getdata for computations, and then store theresults. A PIM chip can keep results and data inits own memory, resulting in dramatic gainsin speed.

But this theory has proven very difficultto turn into practice. The successfulintegration of the new chips into a standardcomputer like the Long’s Peak server marksa substantial new achievement, according toHall and Draper.

The researchers and colleagues are nowtesting the PIM-enhanced Long’s Peak serveron tasks such as multimedia, complexscientific modeling and database access. “Ourcalculations indicate we may get as much as anorder of magnitude better performance.”

Besides Hall and Draper, the Godiva teamincludes ISI researchers Jacqueline Chame(Simulation, Benchmarking and Compiler),Tim Barrett (System Integration), Jeff Sondeen(VLSI), Dale Chase (System Integration)and Spundun Bhatt (Programming). ManyUSC graduate students also contributed tothis project.

Can ISI Boost HP Server Performance?ISI “PROCESSOR IN MEMORY” CHIPS ARE NOW RUNNING IN A STANDARD HP LONG’S PEAK SERVER

“…this is the first smart-

memory device designed to

support virtual addressing and

capable of executing multiple

threads of control.” —Draper

Hal

l an

d D

rape

r ph

oto

by M

ax S

.Ger

ber

The 56-million-transistor Godivaprocessor-in-memory (PIM) chip is oneof the largest ever created in academia.

Mary Hall and Jeff Draper

8 USC ENGINEER

pthe oint

A USC Viterbi School of Engineering surveyof academic and industry experts finds thatcommercial products utilizing Ultrawideband(UWB) radio technology should begin to rollout within three years. Experts predict thatthe new technology will first be used forrange-finding applications and wireless localarea networks for computers.

“Everyone is waiting to see that firstconsumer product come out,” says RobertScholtz, professor of electrical engineering whohas pioneered UWB technology. “Judging fromhis survey, the world won’t have to wait muchlonger.”

UWB works by sending out very shortand very weak radio pulses spread across ahuge range of the frequency spectrum, whileconventional radio signals use a carrier waveconfined to a small frequency range of theradio spectrum.

After extensive study about whether UWBdevices could interfere with broadcast media or

global positioning satellites, the FederalCommunications Commission approved thenew technology for unlicensed use under strictpower limitations for a large portion of theradio spectrum in a decision published inMay 2002.

Scholtz’ presented the preliminary resultsof his survey last month to an internationalUWB conference held in Kyoto, Japan. The89 experts from academia, the businesscommunity and governments all over theworld who responded were asked whether fivepossible applications would be viable businessapplications within the next three years.

The group found the two most likelycommercial applications to be high-speedwireless local area networks that would have

much higher data transfer rates than currentWi-Fi 802.11 technology and precise range-finding systems. Close behind in the surveywere applications to use UWB technologyto “look” through opaque materials, radiofrequency tags and intrusion alarms.

Scholtz also asked which of the twoalternative competing UWB formats now beingevaluated by a standards group from theInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers(IEEE) was superior. Respondents were almostevenly split between a format being developedby Intel and Texas Instruments and anotherfrom Motorola. About a quarter of therespondents acknowledged having a financialinterest in one or another of the formats.

Scholtz asked the group to grade thedifficulty of the pending challenges to buildvarious hardware elements for UWB systems.While UWB uses radio signals, most of thecurrent design procedures for chips andbroadcast antennas will need drastic revisions

to function in UWB devices.In general, the experts thought meeting

those challenges for most UWB hardwarewas now possible with sufficient effort. Thisincluded hardware such as a high qualityfull-band antenna, a local area network design,a unitary full-band transmitter, a 500 MHzall-digital receiver and a hybrid, analog-digitalfull band receiver. But they rated anotherdesirable element; an all-digital, full frequencyreceiver as by far the most difficult designproblem facing engineers.

The group surveyed included 29professors, 27 advanced students, 12government specialists and 18 industryrepresentatives, plus three anonymouscorrespondents. Most were from North

America (47) and Asia (27), with a fewernumber (10) from Europe and other areas.

Scholtz is a communications specialistwho holds the Fred H. Cole Chair in theUSC Viterbi School’s department of electricalengineering and directs the Schools UltRa lab,a leading world center in UWB research. Hiswork, both theoretical and practical over thepast decade, has been widely recognized ascentral in the field.

The complete survey can be downloadedat the UltRa laboratory websitehttp://www.ultra.usc.edu/New_Site/

Experts Predict Commercial Applications of Ultrawideband Technology in Three Years

Robert Scholtz

Scholtz also asked which of the two alternative competing UWB

formats… was superior. Respondents were almost evenly split

between a format being developed by Intel and Texas Instruments

and another from Motorola.

Scho

ltz

phot

o by

Max

S.G

erbe

r

Meet the 21st century map. The militaryalready has it and the rest of us soon will.

Decades worth of detailed, accumulatedgeographical information is now available tofront-line troops in a concentrated, portable,easy-to-use laptop package created by the USCViterbi School of Engineering.

HeraclesMaps can instantly solve life-and-death tactical questions like, “Help us find aroute from point A to point B where wecannot be observed (or shot at) by someone atpoint C.”

It can instantly dissect the geography of acity, displaying man-made features such asbuildings, the electrical power grid, railwaytracks, roads, pathways and more, both in mapand photographic form. After intensive trialsover a five-year development period, it is nowin use by selected units of the U.S. armed forcesin training.

Computer scientist Craig Knoblock of theViterbi School’s Information Sciences Institute(ISI) led a team that developed the systemworking with specialist veteran consultants.

Knoblock says that the main challenge wasthat information “obtained from various datasources may have different projections,

different accuracy levels, and differentinconsistencies. The applications thatintegrate information from variousgeospatial data sources must be able toovercome these inconsistenciesaccurately, in real-time and for largeregions.” HeraclesMaps digests satelliteimagery and mapping data, and allowsusers to access the full range of thedata quickly and intuitively throughan interface that anticipates questions.

“This material had beendistributed on multiple CDs thatessentially only specialists could use,”says Knoblock. “HeraclesMaps letsstrategic and tactical planners asktheir own questions and get their ownanswers, on the spot, instantly andeasily, using a portable laptopcomputer”

According to Knoblock,HeraclesMaps has many potentialcivilian applications including anextremely powerful travel planner.The Heracles Project, the parent ofHeraclesMaps, uses a variety of powerfultools including artificial intelligenceagents to extract and dynamicallyreconfigure information from diverse sources.Other Heracles applications can potentiallyadd data from online or other sources. Forexample, one might access additional databasesto highlight the cheapest fuel available orfind all-night restaurants serving a specificcuisine.

Knoblock is a senior project leader at ISIand a research associate professor of computerscience. For his work on such agent-driveninformation collection and organizationsystems, Knoblock was honored this year bybeing elected a fellow of the AmericanAssociation for Artificial Intelligence, oneof only six researchers worldwide so honoredin 2004.

pthe oint

No Folding RequiredA Super Map for Soldiers or Other Travelers

USC ENGINEER 9

Kn

oblo

ck p

hoto

by

Max

S.G

erbe

r

Craig Knoblock

HeraclesMap of Iraqi port of Um Qassr withoverlay showing ferry crossings, piers/wharfs,railroads, roads, trails and airport.

HeraclesMap of USC campusneighborhood with overlay showingrailroad line.

10 USC ENGINEER

pthe oint

Body MechanicsUNIQUE, 3-D MODELING TECHNIQUES HAVE HELPED TURN SOME USC ATHLETES INTO OLYMPIC MEDALISTS

What makes Lenny Krayzelburg’s backstrokegold medal material? What sets KaitlinSandeno apart from her swim mates in the800-meter freestyle? What nuances of form didKlete Keller use to close in on MichaelThorpe’s world record in the 400-meterfreestyle recently?

Skill, a lot of practice, and in some cases,a little help from some high-tech biomedicalmodeling going on at the USC Biomechanics

Research Laboratory. The lab, in collaborationwith the USC Viterbi School’s departments ofbiomedical engineering and aerospace andmechanical engineering, is running anexperimentally based research program todevelop state-of-the-art biomechanicalmodeling techniques for USC athletes, someof whom went to the summer Olympic Gamesthis year in Athens.

“We look at ways to improve a swimmer’sflips, dives and strokes, or show sprintershow to spring from the starting line,” says

Jill McNitt-Gray, associate professor ofkinesiology, biomedical engineering andbiological sciences. “In gymnastics, we’llvideotape and model someone’s performanceto get a sense of how they are generatingvertical and angular momentum when theylaunch a back flip from the balance beam. Wecan advise them on how to shift their weightjust a little or spring up just a little sooner toperfect the performance.”

McNitt-Gray specializesin force impact to the lowerextremities, an experimentalmodeling technique inkinesiology that can be appliedto a wide range of skilledperformers — athletes, musiciansand workers at risk of developingrepetitive stress injuries — toimprove performances withoutoverloading the musculoskeletalsystem.

MUSCULOSKELETALDYNAMICS “Integrating experimental andmodeling approaches of thestudy of human movementallows us to understand how thenervous system takes advantageof musculoskeletal dynamics, andhow it distributes load duringhuman movement,” she says.“We use engineering mechanics,biology and neuroscience todevelop three-dimensional

dynamic models of the human body, and thenuse experimental and simulation results todetermine the internal and external forces atwork on an athlete’s body when they maintainbalance, change directions, sprint, flip, or land,”says McNitt-Gray, who directs the biomechan-ics research laboratory at USC.

The field is called “sports biomechanics,”a relatively new field of inquiry spawned bythe convergence of knowledge in kinesiology,engineering and human biology. Kinesiologyhas been around for 35 years, but it has lately

experienced a renaissance with new electronics,video and modeling techniques.

McNitt-Gray’s approach takes severalsteps. She starts by talking with coachesand athletes to understand the athlete’sperformance problems. Then she attacheselectrodes to the athlete’s body to measuremuscle firing patterns and neural controlduring their performance. With runners, sheuses force plates to measure the amount ofpush being generated. The data she recordsduring a performance will show her how muchforce is exerted by different muscle groups andjoint movements. She then combines thatmodel with a video of the performance tocome up with some answers.

KRAYZELBURG’S PERFORMANCE For instance, an analysis of force measurementsand slow-motion video might show her howformer Trojan swim champion LennyKrayzelburg is moving his shoulders afterundergoing two shoulder operations. Or theycould tell her how Klete Keller, another Trojanswimmer, is shifting his weight — and how hemight adjust it — to increase his speed.

“Simulations will help us identify andevaluate potential solutions that are feasible foreach individual athlete,” McNitt-Gray says.“Then during training, the coaches will workwith the athletes to execute whatever it is —a jump, fall, dive, flip — just a little bitdifferently, but enough to make a difference.”

She works with Henryk Flashner, a USCViterbi School professor of aerospace andmechanical engineering, to model the controland dynamics. They concentrate on studyingthe central nervous system to understand howit is generating force.

Flashner’s job is to convert the motion,force and muscle activation data acquiredduring an athlete’s performance into 3-Dcoordinates and equations of motion. Thisinterdisciplinary approach is based onwell-established principles in aerodynamics,he says, and allows the researchers tocharacterize movements of the spine, joints,arms and legs. The researchers use customized

Jill McNitt-Gray

McN

itt-

Gra

y ph

oto

by M

ax S

.Ger

ber

kinetics-processing and dynamics-processingsoftware to crunch the numbers and render3-D movement simulations. As the simulationsare viewed, the researchers can ask a seriesof “what if ” questions about the athlete’smovements.

“What ifs are questions like ‘what if theathlete modifies the timing of the arm swing?Or what if she strengthens her hip muscles?Or he pushes on the ground in a differentdirection?’” says McNitt-Gray. “How will thesemodifications of someone’s technique improvethe consistency of the athlete’s performanceunder the stress of Olympic competition?”

U.S. DIVING TEAM The researchers’ unique modeling has beeninstrumental in a number of sports trainingprograms, most notably the U.S. diving team.McNitt-Gray takes her lab on the road andworks with athletes where they train andcompete. She works with divers training at theU.S. Diving Centralized Training Center inWoodlands, Texas, all of whom qualifiedduring trials held in late June 2004 for theU.S. Olympics diving team. She also coachesmulti-event athletes at the ARCO OlympicTraining Center in Chula Vista, CA.

In addition to Olympics athletes, McNitt-Gray works with some of USC’s coaches whowant to integrate the latest scientific findingsinto their athletics training programs. Sheworked with Mick Haley, head women’svolleyball coach, and former assistant coach,Olympian Paula Weishoff. The work seemsto have paid off: USC’s women’s volleyball

team scored two consecutiveNCAA championships in 2002and 2003.

But she also uses thesetechniques in a collaborativeproject with Phil Requejo, asenior research scientist at theRancho Los Amigos NationalRehabilitation Center, to studywheel chair propulsion andbalance control in older adults.And the pair collaborates withRick Naill, a musician andmaster teacher at the ColburnSchool of Music, as well asAnna Pattison and PeggyTsutsui of the USC DentalSchool, who are training thenext generation of dentalhygienists.

“If we understand anindividual’s body mechanicsand control mechanisms, wecan help them refine theirmovements and avoid injuryto the body,” McNitt-Gray says.“This goes for dentaltechnicians, athletes, childrenwho play sports and peoplewho are trying to recover fromcrippling injuries, such asdamage to the spinal cord orlosing a limb.”

p

USC ENGINEER 11

the oint

A musculoskeletal model of the launch of a back-dive shows acceleration forces in different musclegroups, which are color-coded. Sports kinesiologistsand biomechanics will study this motion data andrecommend strategies to compensate for weaknessesin the diver’s performance.

Kaitlin Sandeno, Athens gold medalist.

“We use engineering mechanics,

biology and neuroscience to

develop three-dimensional

dynamic models of the

human body, and then use

experimental and simulation

results to determine the

internal and external forces at

work on an athlete’s body

when they maintain balance,

change directions, sprint, flip,

or land,” says McNitt-Gray

Electrodes attached to a runner’s body will recordthe electrical activity of different muscle groups asthe athlete shoots off the starting block.

12 USC ENGINEER

pthe oint

How do you create a five-point star with apencil-thin beam of laser light?

Fifty middle school science teachers andindustry experts from Los Angeles, Orange andVentura counties gathered for three days lastsummer at USC’s Waite Philips Hall ofEducation to find out. Armed with laser lights,mirrors, protractors, paper cups and magnify-ing glasses, the teachers bounced, bent andmagnified light as part of the Mathematics,Engineering, and Science Achievement (MESA)program’s new optics training institute. TheUSC Viterbi School’s MESA program co-host-ed the conference with the Optical Society ofAmerica (OSA), the International Society ofOptical Engineering (ISOE), and the NationalOptical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO).

“This is a great opportunity for scienceteachers to brush up on their science and learnabout some of the technologies we see, buttake for granted, in our everyday lives,” saysLarry Lim, director of pre-college programs at

the Viterbi School. “We wanted to make thelearning fun.”

FIRST OF ITS KINDAnd fun it was. The workshop integratedlessons in optics with fun-filled technologydemonstrations, featuring everything fromlaser experiments to building telescopes.

“The kids are going to love this,”exclaimed Darren Hayes, a science teacher atWillard Intermediate School in Santa Ana, afterhe learned how to build a kaleidoscope andteach the lesson in his own classroom.

“This is so neat,” said Alyne DeCoteau, aMESA teacher at Mt. Adams Middle School inWhite Swan, Wash., who drove to LosAngeles for the session with four otherteachers.

“Southern California has neverheld a hands-on teacher traininginstitute like this before,” said AnthonyJohnson, a professor of physics,computer science and electricalengineering at the University ofMaryland's Center for AdvancedStudies in Photonics. Johnson is theprincipal investigator of a three-year,$3-million National ScienceFoundation grant to develop and dis-tribute the optics training modules toSouthern California MESA schools. “Educatorsare looking at the next 10 to 15 years and askingwhere U.S. scientists and engineers are going tocome from, so we’re going after untappedpotential — women and underrepresentedminorities at the middle and high school levels.I’m really fascinated at what I’m seeing here.”

‘MISSION IMPOSSIBLE’The hands-on projects were imaginativebut designed to be simple, using ordinaryinexpensive materials so that teachers couldeasily recreate them, explained Michelle Hauer,a USC electrical engineering graduate studentwho volunteered to staff the event. One of theprojects — called “Mission Impossible” — wasto design a laser security system intricateenough to protect a fictional museum’s prized,20-karat diamond. “If someone were tointercept a beam, an alarm would go off and

alert the guards,” the instructions read. “Useevery single one of the mirrors and lasersprovided to cover the floor of the room withlaser beams. Test out your setup by havingclassmates try to walk around without gettinghit by a laser beam. Protect that diamond!”

The teachers turned off the lights andpositioned a neon red laser beam so that itricocheted off six mirrors to form a web oflight that no intruder could step through.

“We use lasers because they’re everywhere,in CD players, scanners, security systems,surgery and military weapons,” said JasonBriggs, OSA education program manager. “Thephysics and technology of lasers are ideas every

student should be learning, but you’ve got toget the teachers onboard with the ideas first.”

As the magic of light and optics camealive, teachers were given an opportunity tobuild simple optical instruments. They startedby constructing a simple refracting telescopeusing cardboard tubing. Then they addedmulti-colored beads to create kaleidoscopes.“It’s important to reach these teachers, becausethey are really critical to MESA’s mission ofimproving students’ aptitude in math, scienceand engineering by the time they reachcollege,” Connie Walker, a workshopcoordinator and science education specialistat NOAO in Tucson, Arizona, stressed. “Thesixth, seventh and eighth grades are the perfecttime to catch kids and teach them aboutscience and technology,” she continued,“because by high school, they’ve shied awayfrom it. It’s not cool enough.”

Lessons in Light MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHERS GO BACK TO SCHOOL AT USC

Teachers scope out the classroom lighting usingthe new telescopes they built.

Connie Walker, a NOAO educationspecialist, helps Darren Hayes,a Santa Ana teacher, left, and RichardFarnsworth, right, of LawrenceLivermore National Observatory, designa five-pointed laser star using a singlebeam of light and some mirrors. P

hoto

s by

Ire

ne

Fert

ik

p

USC ENGINEER 13

the oint

Reaching Out to Latin AmericaHONDURAN CIVIL ENGINEER DAVID MURILLO STARTSMASTER’S DEGREE PROGRAM, THANKS TO A PROFESSOR’SFELLOWSHIP PROGRAM

David Murillo can turn textbook accountsof Hurricane Mitch into spine-tingling tales.Sitting in a classroom at USC, the 31-year-old Honduran engineer tells students aboutthe floods that destroyed 94 bridges andaltered the course of the CholutecaRiver forever.

Hurricane Mitch was one of the worststorms to hit Central America in recentmemory. It killed 10,000 people inNovember 1998 and left a path of destruc-tion that is still noticeable today. Hundredsof Hondurans perished, nearly 2 millionresidents were left homeless and anestimated 70 percent of the country’s mostimportant crops — bananas and coffee —were destroyed.

Murillo is something of a rarity at USC,not because he survived the disaster, butbecause there are only two otherHonduran engineering students who knowfirst-hand how much damage was done.

“Honduras doesn’t have many stu-dents who are studying environmentalengineering,” says George V. Chilingar(BSPE ’49, MSPE ’50, Ph.D. GEOL ’56), pro-fessor of civil and petroleum engineeringwho serves as one of Murillo’s advisors.“They need them very badly, just like otherLatin America countries. David is one of thefew who went to college and got a job inthe field.”

Murillo became the third Honduranstudent to enter the USC Viterbi School ofEngineering this fall, thanks to Chilingar’sown Varos Chilingarian Fellowship Programin Environmental Engineering, an endowedfellowship that covers his tuition for ayear-long master’s degree program inenvironmental engineering. Named inhonor of his father, Varos, Chilingarestablished the fellowship with a personaldonation to encourage more studentsin Honduras to study environmental engi-neering and use their newly acquired skills

in the service of their country.Chilingar is a longtime

champion of international part-nerships with resource-rich andresource-poor nations. Born inRussia and of Russian andArmenian descent, he was thefirst American petroleumgeologist to be elected to the RussianAcademy of Sciences. He is considered anambassador of goodwill by many nations,including Honduras, which 20 years agonamed him an Honorary Consul ofHonduras in Los Angeles. Recently,Chilingar was instrumental in establishingcooperation between USC, Russia’s NuclearResearch Center and the InternationalUniversity of Dubna in Dubna, Russia, inorder to form a collaborative partnership ofacademic and scientific research.

In 50 years of teaching at USC,Chilingar has designed many collaborativeprograms under different deans, but nonehas gone as smoothly as his work in LatinAmerica. He credits Dean Nikias with hissuccess in reaching out to Honduras.

“Because of his support, I amattempting to convince the U.S. Agencyfor International Development (USAID) tosponsor more Honduran fellowships,”Chilingar says. “None of it would havebeen possible without him. He has beenwonderful in helping us open the doors toLatin America.”

Murillo jumped at the chance to spenda year in Los Angeles studying underChilingar. “David was the best applicantfor the fellowship,” Chilingar says. “Hescored high on his exams and had a lot ofpractical experience.”

Eight years to be exact. Murillo earnedhis undergraduate degree from theUniversity of Honduras in 1996 andthen went to work for the Hondurangovernment.

“After Hurricane Mitch, I was part of acoordinating unit set up by the Hondurangovernment’s department of transportationto repair all of the bridges and roads thatwere destroyed in the storm,” Murilloexplains.

His unit was based in Tegucigalpa, thecapital of Honduras, but Murillo and histeam traveled to five or six of the largestcities in central Honduras to restore roads,bridges and other fragile infrastructure.Some of the country’s oldest and mostcritical bridges — such as the CholutecaBridge — were completely obliterated bythe hurricane.

“I’m looking forward to learningnew techniques and principles in civilengineering, not just for repairing roadsand bridges, but for addressing otherenvironmental problems,” Murillo says.“This is a wonderful opportunity.”

It’s his first time in Los Angeles, butthat does not faze Murillo. He lives with aHonduran family close enough to campusto ride his bicycle to school every day.Chilingar, who is committed to hisacademic success, helps him navigate thecampus and stay on top of his studies.

He keeps in touch with his wife andfive-year-old daughter in Tegucigalpa viaemail, but he does not plan to go homebefore he finishes his degree.

“I have to study all the time,” hesays, “and I will be in school the wholeyear, no breaks.”

That doesn’t faze him either. He isall smiles.

George V. Chilingar and David Murillo

pthe oint

14 USC ENGINEER

Cyrus Shahabi (Ph.D. CS ’96), associateprofessor of computer science and researcharea director of information management inthe Viterbi School’s Integrated Media SystemsCenter (IMSC), has been awarded a coveted2004 Presidential Early Career Award forScientists and Engineers (PECASE).

Shahabi was recognized for his innovativework in multidimensional databases andrelated techniques for storing and analyzingstreaming data. These large, complex streamingtechnologies have wide-ranging applications ina variety of fields, including scientific data

analysis, medicine and education. A prototypestreaming architecture, called Yima, has alreadybeen developed at USC to handle multiplesimultaneous high-bandwidth streams ofimages and sound, all synchronized tosingle-frame accuracy over the Internet.

“Cyrus’s accomplishments are nothingshort of remarkable for a young facultymember,” says Dean Nikias. “We are veryexcited that he is being acknowledged for hisexceptional talents in streaming technologies.He is extraordinarily gifted and has the abilityto make real headway in this field.”

The awards, presented in early Septemberin a ceremony at the White House, are givenannually to approximately 60 of the finest junior

faculty in science and engineering across thecountry. According to the President's Office ofScience and Technology Policy, which adminis-ters the awards, recipients possess “talents andpotential that are expected to make them leadersin 21st century science and technology.”

Shahabi is the fifth member of the ViterbiSchool faculty to win the award, which is sup-ported by nine federal agencies, including theNational Science Foundation (NSF). NSF con-tributes to the awards program through its ownprestigious Faculty Early Career Development(CAREER) program. Junior faculty receivingone of these grants become eligible for PECASEawards, but only 5 percent of CAREER awardeeswill receive the PECASE award annually.

Shahabi won an NSF CAREER award in2003. The grant provided him with $400,000over five years for research, teaching andoutreach activities in the management ofimmersive sensor data streams.

In his award letter from the Office ofScience and Technology Policy, Shahabi wascalled “a shining example to future generationsof researchers” and cited for his “talent andcommitment” to the field.

Shahabi is currently at work on AIMS,“An Immersidata Management System.”“Immersidata” consists of multidimensionalsensor data streams produced by a user’s inter-action within a 3-D environment of imagesand sound. Users interacting in a typicalimmersive environment are tracked and moni-tored through various sensory devices, such astracking sensors that they wear on their heads,hands and legs, or by using video cameras andhaptic devices, such as a “cyber glove.”

“These are the user interfaces of thefuture,” Shahabi explains, “which will becomeincreasingly popular as the next generation ofthe Internet — Internet 2 — comes online.”

“Internet 2 promises to be totallyimmersive, involving processing and accessingenormous amounts of data,” adds GérardMedioni, chairman of the computer sciencedepartment. “Shahabi’s work on multimediaindexing, using feature extraction and waveletsis clever, elegant and efficient. It has the poten-tial of becoming the reference in the field.”

The main objective of the AIMS project is

to address the challenges involved in managingthe multidimensional sensor data streamsgenerated in immersive environments.

“Immersive data can be multidimensional,spatio-temporal and delivered in continuousdata streams,” Shahabi says. “At the same time,it can be potentially large in size andbandwidth requirements, and it can be noisy.”

Currently, Shahabi is applying thetechniques developed in the AIMS project todesign backend storage and database architec-tures for two different application domains.One is in the area of scientific data analysis,supported by a grant from NASA/JPL andChevronTexaco’s Center for Interactive SmartOilfield Technologies (CiSoft) at the ViterbiSchool. The other is in the area of education,with development of the “20/20 Classroom,”which gives users an interactive classroom envi-ronment in which to learn via the computer.Shahabi co-leads that project, which is beingconducted within the IMSC, a National ScienceFoundation-funded engineering research center.

“Receiving this kind of national recognitionand encouragement puts an extra responsibilityon my shoulders to conduct the highest qualityresearch for the broadest impact on society,”Shahabi says. “My dream is to make these datatools practical and readily available to everyscientist, engineer and researcher who workswith immersive applications. That would have asignificant impact on science and engineering.”

Shahabi has received four significantgrants in the last year in the field ofmultidimensional databases and scalable,end-to-end streaming architectures. Thesetechnologies enable efficient delivery ofmultiple synchronized streams of high qualityaudio and video data over the Internet.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer sciencefrom USC and has been a key investigator inthe IMSC since it was founded in 1996.Shahabi came to USC from Iran in 1992,after earning a Bachelor of Science degree incomputer engineering from Sharif Universityof Technology. He also directs USC'sInformation Laboratory.

He is a resident of Irvine, CA, and theauthor of two books, more than 100 articles,book chapters and conference papers.

Cyrus Shahabi Wins High Honor from U.S. Government

Cyrus Shahabi

Shah

abi p

hoto

by

Max

S.G

erbe

r

Ellis Meng, a specialist in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)fabrication processes, has been appointed assistant professor in USC’sbiomedical engineering department.

Meng, the first woman to join the department’s faculty, will also beaffiliated with the ViterbiSchool’s BiomimeticMicroelectronic Systems(BMES) EngineeringResearch Center. TheBiomimeticMicroelectronic SystemsCenter is a NationalScience Foundation-funded interdisciplinaryresearch center aimed atdeveloping novel implantsto treat disabilities such asblindness, paralysis andmemory loss.

“We are very excitedto have Professor Meng onour faculty,” says MichaelKhoo, professor ofbiomedical engineeringand holder of thedepartment’s Dwight C. and Hildagarde E. Baum Chair. “Her work willhelp us pave the way for the development of some novel new biomedicaldevices.”

Meng specializes in MEMS fabrication. MEMS are tiny machinesmade using manufacturing techniques developed in the integratedcircuit industry. Meng has developed the first highly sensitive parylene-based thermal microsensor, which is capable of detecting flows as smallas 0.5 microliters a minute. These biological microsensors could be usedone day to build new cortical and sensory pathways in the brain or allowphysicians to implant devices to monitor medications.

Microsensors, micropumps and microvalves are combined with tiny

microchannel networks to create “lab-on-a-chip” systems.“These miniaturized, high-performance, integrated systems have

tremendous potential for revolutionizing biomedical engineering,” Mengexplains. “Our current research focuses on developing novel biomedical

devices that may one daybe used to treat manymore incurable ordegenerative diseases.”

In addition to thatwork, Meng has alsodeveloped a novel processfor fabricating parylene-based “neuron cages,” andhas demonstrated thatneurons in the hippocam-pus of a rat’s brain can besuccessfully grown in thesecages. The work will helpresearchers at USCdevelop bionic chips torestore neural pathways inthe brain and eye.

Meng says she wasattracted to USC by theunique opportunity to

collaborate on highly interdisciplinary topics with a top-flight group ofresearchers and students.

“The Alfred E. Mann Institute and the BMES EngineeringResearch Center make USC a particularly exciting research venue for thedevelopment of innovative biomedical devices to improve our quality oflife,” she says.

Meng, a native of Southern California, received her Ph.D. in electri-cal engineering from the California Institute of Technology in January2003. She became an assistant professor in UC Davis’s department ofmechanical and aeronautical engineering before joining USC. She hastwo patents to her name and has published 10 scholarly papers.

p

USC ENGINEER 15

the oint

Ellis Meng

Men

g ph

oto

by M

ax S

.Ger

ber

Ellis Meng Joins Department of Biomedical Engineering

Hire a Trojan Engineer! Would you like to hire some of the best engineers in the country? The USC Viterbi School’sOffice of Engineering Career Services can help! Just visit their website at:

www.usc.edu/engcs and click on “Employers”

You’ll find information about free services to employers, including job listings, resume collection,scheduling and hosting services for on-campus interviews, and more.

UNIQUE WORKBY SPECIAL PEOPLEAlexander A. Sawchuk, aprofessor of electrical engineer-ing in the USC Viterbi Schooland deputy director of USC’sIntegrated Media SystemsCenter, has been awarded thisyear’s Distinguished ServiceAward by the Optical Society ofAmerica (OSA).

The award, honoringoutstanding service to theoptical community, waspresented to Sawchuk for 23years of dedicated efforts onbehalf of OSA, including vital

contributions to publications,meetings, international rela-tions and general governance.

“Optics and photonicstechnology is leading the wayin a variety of fields, includingtelecommunications, biomed-ical engineering, even manufac-turing,” says USC Viterbi DeanNikias. “Sandy’s creativity andingenuity have helped to speedthat revolution and improve ourunderstanding of physics andthe natural environment.”

Sawchuk’s contributions toOSA have included chairing theSociety Objectives and Policy

Committee and TechnicalCouncil, as well as serving asa publications editor and chairor member of various othercommittees, including hiscurrent role on the OSAboard of directors and OSAfoundation board.

“The OSA board ofdirectors is proud to bestowawards on this year’srecipients,” added OSAPresident Peter Knight.“The winners have advancedthe science of optics and theentire industry through theirpersistence and ingenuity.”

Sawchuk was formallyawarded at a ceremony onOctober 12, during theSociety’s annual “Frontiersin Optics” meeting inRochester, NY.

Elaine Chew, assistantprofessor of industrial andsystems engineering and anIMSC researcher, was recentlyselected to participate in theNational Academy ofEngineering’s Frontiers ofEngineering program. Thisprogram brings togetherapproximately 100 outstandingyoung (ages 30-45) engineering

pthe oint

16 USC ENGINEER

Intensive Care A WOUNDED FACULTY MEMBER DISCOVERS HE HAS A TROJAN FAMILY

There really is a Trojan Family, unique and special and caring, andMihran Agbabian, emeritus professor of civil engineering, learned justhow special on March 1, 2004.

Agbabian and his wife, traveling with another couple, were on theirway home from San Diego to Santa Monica when his friend lost controlof his car on the I-5. The car banged into the guardrail, spun aroundseveral times and came to a stop in the middle of the freeway.

“Fortunately the other cars were able to stop,” says Agbabian. “But Idon’t remember it because I lost consciousness.”

The three others in the car weren’t injured but Agbabian waswhisked to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejosuffering from a large gash on his forehead and a broken hip. He was inintensive care for 12 days and in the hospital for a month sufferingfurther complications of a blot clot and pneumonia.

“During the time I was in intensive care, it was pretty close as towhether I would pull through. I thought a lot about my whole lifeand what was going to happen,” describes Agbabian. “I was entirelydependent on doctors. I thought if they do a good job, I will pull out.If not, I will die.”

Agbabian discovered that he and his doctor shared that specialTrojan kinship. Someone had told the doctor, Edward Bestard, MD, thatAgbabian was a USC emeritus professor.

“I’m cardinal and gold all the way,” said the ebullient Bestard, anorthopedic surgeon who received both his undergraduate degree(Biology ’75) and medical diploma (’82) from USC. He also did hisinternship from ’82-’83 at L.A. County-USC Medical Center. “I tookspecial care of him and gave him the works. We hit it off.”

Agbabian said he found someone to talk to who was clearly taking

a special interest in his treatment.He noted that he himself is agraduate of UC-Berkeley where hehas continued to maintain ties andwhere graduates have a strongmutual respect.

“But they don’t have theintimate relationship, the samewarm feelings as among Trojans. I was at USC for ten years. That’s all,not a very long time. But it was long enough to make me an intimatemember of the community,” says Agbabian.

Bestard described Agbabian as a “great motivated patient” who dideverything he was asked and who did well because of his motivation.“He was a very nice man and very appreciative of his care.”

Bestard, who said he spent most of his time as an undergraduatein the biology buildings, only vaguely recalls the engineering school.He occasionally returns to campus for football games, but his Trojanties remain strong. His sister, his wife’s brother and her father allattended USC.

Is there truly a Trojan Family?“For sure!” exclaims Bestard.Agbabian agrees. He is still recovering, but is now looking to the

future. Before the end of the year, he hopes to return to the AmericanUniversity of Armenia, where he is president emeritus. That universitywas founded by Agbabian and a UC-Berkeley colleague.

He also looks forward to resuming his luncheon engagements withcolleagues in the Viterbi School’s department of civil engineering. Afterall, they are part of the same special family.

Mihran Agbabian

talents from industry, academiaand government. ChrisKyriakakis, associate professorof electrical engineering,helped organize this year’sprogram and Paul Debevec,an assistant researcher profes-sor of computer science andexecutive producer of graphicsresearch at the Institute forCreative Technologies, is afeatured speaker.

Dean Nikias has appoint-ed Professor George Chilingaras the USC Viterbi School’s firstInternational AdvancementAmbassador. The dean cited his

successes in promoting Saudi-American friendships andhis teaching, research andphilanthropy.

Firdaus Udwadia hasbeen elected a fellow of theAmerican Society MechanicalEngineers (ASME). Udwadia is aprofessor of civil engineeringand aerospace and mechanicalengineering in the USC ViterbiSchool; a professor of mathe-matics in the USC College ofLetters, Arts and Sciences and aprofessor of information opera-tion management in the USCMarshall School of Business.

Computer scientistsGerard Medioni, professorand department chair; IsaacCohen, research assistantprofessor; Jinman Kang, doc-toral student and KalpitkumarGajera, master’s student, werehonored with a best paperaward at the first annualworkshop on Object Trackingand Classification beyond theVisible Spectrum in July. Theirpaper, “Detection and Trackingof Moving Objects fromOverlapping EO and IRSensors,” was one of twosingled out at the workshop

attended by researchers fromacademia, the vision industryand military laboratories.

The USC Viterbi School hasscored another trifecta in thecompetition for the prestigiousOkawa computer sciencegrants. The awards went toRamesh Govindan, a specialistin embedded networks anddirector of the EmbeddedNetwork Laboratory; MajaMataric, an expert in adaptiveand imitation robotics who isthe founding director of theUSC Center for Robotics and

continued on page 19

USC ENGINEER 17

pthe oint

DEN Offers Six New Master of Science Degrees and SAP CertificationThe USC Viterbi School of EngineeringDistance Education Network (DEN) has addedsix new Master of Science degrees this yearbringing the number to 24 programs availableentirely online. DEN now offers moreengineering degree programs online thanany other leading research university.

“DEN has experienced exponentialgrowth,” says Kelly Goulis, DEN’s executivedirector. “In the past two years, DEN hasdoubled its degree offerings. As technologyadvances in new fields, we continue to pro-vide professional engineers the skill sets theyneed to further their career and education.”

Added this year are two master’s degreeprograms in petroleum engineering, whichinvolves the technology of economicallydeveloping subterranean reservoirs of oil,gas, steam and hot water. One of thepetroleum degrees is in Smart OilfieldTechnologies, a unique program based uponthe petroleum industry’s request to train staffon the operation of smart oilfields.

According to Iraj Ershaghi, director of thepetroleum engineering program, “simple,traditional drill-and-pump methods leave asmuch as 80 percent of the oil in a reservoir inthe ground. The modern methods we willteach can recover 60 percent of the in-place

hydrocarbons, or even more.”Other new programs are in medical device

and diagnostic engineering; biomedicalengineering (medical imaging and imaginginformatics); computer-aided engineering andsystem safety and security. This last degreeemerged from the new Department ofHomeland Security Center of Excellence atUSC. It is designed to develop leaders in

industry and government who will be trainedto develop and evaluate systems that protectagainst natural disasters, accidents and attacksby terrorists or criminals.

“One of the particular emphases of thecenter will be attacks on infrastructure, becauseof their potential not only for loss of life, but

impact on the economy,” says Randolph Hall,center co-director, senior associate dean forresearch and professor of industrial andsystems engineering in the USC Viterbi Schoolof Engineering.

DEN is also offering an academiccertificate in SAP, one of the world’s leadingclient/server enterprise application softwarepackages. The objective of the certification

program is to give undergraduate andgraduate students an opportunity to gainknowledge of the SAP R/3 system, currentlyused in over 19,000 companies worldwide.SAP is the world’s largest inter-enterprisesoftware company, and the world’s third-largest overall independent software suppliernext to Microsoft and Oracle.

“As technology continues to evolve,knowledge of this widely used system willenhance the careers and education of ourstudents,” says Goulis.

Curriculum for the new program comesfrom state-of-the-art courses in the School’sinformation technology program as well asSAP, and is designed to provide professionalengineers and human resources, finance andother business executives with education inthe theory and practice of informationtechnology.P

hoto

by

Bri

an M

orri

Ultrasound Imaging in Three DimensionsJesse will get under your skin with newultrasound imaging technology

Three-dimensional ultrasonic imaging systemsbecame an indispensable diagnostic tool inobstetrics the minute they were introduced.Now researchers at USC’s Viterbi School ofEngineering are delving into 3-D ultrasonicscanners to detect breast, liver and kidneycancer.

The key to this technology’s commercialsuccess depends on advances in the design of“2-D array ultrasonic transducers.” Thesetransducers are the ultrasound source and actas both the receivers and “ear pieces” of thesystem, says Jesse T. Yen, a USC biomedicalengineer and designer. He has built the largesttransduceraround — anarray composedof over 65,500individualelements, 169transmitterelements and1,024 receiverelements —giving it fourtimes the imag-ing sensitivity ofhis previous arrays. The instrument operates atfive Megahertz and can produce 3-D volumesrather than 2-D slices of a targeted organ.

“This technology promises to givephysicians a much better diagnostic tool forspotting lesions in the breast, as well as fordetecting carotid arteries or disease in otherorgans, such as the liver,” Yen says.

“The arrays are able to focus ultrasoundbeams in three dimensions simultaneously,which gives doctors a 3-D view of the targetarea, rather than a two-dimensional plane, likeyou see using other imaging techniques, suchas x-rays or magnetic resonance imaging.”

Unsurpassed Diagnostic ToolThree-dimensional ultrasonic imaging isalready an unsurpassed diagnostic tool inprenatal care. The imaging technique is rela-tively inexpensive and non-invasive. It does notuse harmful ionizing radiation and it allows

obstetricians to detect fetal heart defects,spina bifida (curvature of the backbone),cleft palate and other prenatal deformities.

Yen says one of the first commerciallyavailable 3-D systems based on 2-D arrayslike his, is the GE Voluson, which is ideallysuited for fetal imaging, while the SONOS7500 from Philips is used mainly for cardiacapplications.

Ultrasound transducers come indifferent shapes and sizes, and are used toscan different parts of the body, Yen says.Because of the very high frequencies theyemit, pulsed ultra-short sound waves can be

aimed at specific targets,such as lesions the sizeof an apple seed in thebreast or liver.

“As transducersemit ultrasound in rapidpulses, the waves travelthrough the fluid andtissues of the body and areeither reflected, refracted orabsorbed,” says Yen. “Onlythe reflected sound wavesare processed into images

that can be displayed on an oscilloscope screenor a video monitor.”

Sound waves propagate at a speed ofapproximately 1,540 meters per second in softtissues. Yen explains that the thickness, size andlocation of various soft tissue structures, such assubcutaneous layers of skin, muscle and tissuemasses, can be determined based on theirdistance from the transducer. The variations inthe acoustic impedance of the tissue beingtargeted will determine the strength and shapeof the reflected sound wave and give physiciansclues about its origin and composition.

Higher frequency ultrasound waves arebetter at resolving small structures, but theyare not able to penetrate very deeply into softtissues, so Yen’s arrays are best at spottinglesions about two centimeters (less than oneinch) below the skin. Conversely, a transduceremitting lower frequencies will provide greaterdepth of penetration but won’t be able to

produce images that are as sharp. Eventually,Yen hopes to develop a transducer array thatoperates at ten Megahertz.

Narrowing the Sound BeamFocusing and aperture control technology isoften used to narrow the sound beam along itsentire path to achieve maximum resolutionlaterally or parallel to the transducer face.

Voluson uses a traditional 1-D array andan automatic electronically controlled motor toscan the imager up and down over the body.Images are “stacked up” to create a 3-D vol-ume. Yen’s 2-D arrays do not have any movingparts. Instead, they can focus the ultrasoundbeam in two lateral dimensions simultaneously.

“My transducer is a 2-D array of elementsthat will image in both the X and Y planes,” hesays. “The way it works is simple: I launchsound out into the body, which we refer to asthe ‘volume’ of space in which the sound waveis propagating, but then in receive mode, I canfocus the ultrasound beam in these twodimensions, right down to a single point.”

The images are more accurate because thearray has not moved up and down over thebody and because he is focusing in two lateraldimensions instead of the single dimension ofa 1-D array, he says.

pthe oint

18 USC ENGINEER

Jesse T. Yen

“This technology promises to

give physicians a much better

diagnostic tool for spotting

lesions in the breast, as well as

for detecting carotid arteries or

disease in other organs, such

as the liver,” Yen says.

Yen

pho

to b

y M

ax S

.Ger

ber

Yen built his 65,500-element array atDuke University, where he received his Ph.D.in electrical engineering in 2003, and iscontinuing the work in collaboration with KirkShung, professor of biomedical engineeringin the Viterbi School. He uses flexible printedcircuit boards, which are found in desktop

computers, laptops,stereos and otherstandard electronicequipment. The flexboards are bonded

with a ceramic material called PZT (leadzirconate titanate), which emits sound whenelectrically excited and converts received echoesinto electrical signals.

Cross ConfigurationThe array of electronic elements sits in thecenter of the flex circuit, and the ends of theflex have solder pads. It looks like a large cross.The cross configuration fits into the volumetricscanner so that a connection can be made.

The array area is 38.4 by 38.4 millimeters.Yen routed 169 transmitters along four “wings”of the cross-shaped array, so that the north,west, south and east wings have 48, 48, 37 and36 transmitters, respectively. Each wing alsocontains gold pads for 256 receivers for a totalof 1,024 receivers.

Using artificial, tissue-mimickingphantoms, he has been able to detect cysts twocentimeters (about one inch) in diameter, as

well as smaller cysts measuring one centimeterand half a centimeter (0.2-inch diameter).

“The images showed markedimprovement over the previous array,” Yensays. “I’ve also been able to see real-timeimages of in vivo hepatic blood vessels usingthis array technology.”

The new imaging technology is bound toimprove current cancer screening techniquesand help revolutionize prenatal care byallowing physicians to visualize and detect fetalheart defects and other inherited deformities intime to correct them with surgery.

“The ability to visualize organs in multipleplanes, in real-time motion will give physiciansan incredible advantage in finding and treatingdisease,” Yen says. “The technology isn’t farfrom becoming standard. Give it, maybe, threeto five years.”

Yen’s work on 3-D ultrasonic devices wasfeatured on the cover of the February 2004issue of IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics,Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control and hepresented his findings at the August 2004international IEEE conference on ultrasonicsin Montréal, Canada.

p

USC ENGINEER 19

the oint

Embedded Systems (CRES); and AristidesRequicha, who is a specialist in nanoro-botics and is associate director of CRES.“This is the first time ever that the comput-er science department has received threeOkawa grants in one year,” says depart-ment chair Gérard Medioni. “Consideringthat our faculty goes head-to-head againstStanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA and Caltechin the competition for these prizes, I thinkour record speaks for itself.”

Last year two researchers in thedepartment received Okawa awards —Milind Tambe and Aiichiro Nakano,while a third went to electrical engineerMelvin A. Breuer.

USC Viterbi School graduate studentSundeep Pattem won a prestigious bestpaper award at the ACM/IEEE International

Symposium on Information Processing inSensor Networks (IPSN). The paper, “TheImpact of Spatial Correlation on Routingwith Compression in Wireless SensorNetworks,” was co-authored by electricalengineering professors BhaskarKrishnamachari and Ramesh Govindan.

Henry Koffman, professor of civiland environmental engineering, has beenelected to the board of directors of theConstruction Management Association ofAmerica [CMAA] Foundation. CMAA’s mis-sion is to set and promote professionalismand excellence in the management of theconstruction process, and to make owners,developers and other industry participantsmore aware of industry standards.

Terence G. Langdon, the William E.

Leonhard Professor of Engineering anda professor of aerospace and mechanicalengineering, will receive the StructuralMaterials Division Distinguished MaterialsScientist/Engineer Award for 2005.Presented annually by The Minerals, Metalsand Materials Society, Langdon is beinghonored for his “long-lasting contributionsto the fundamental understanding ofmicrostructure, properties and performanceof structural materials for industrial applica-tions.” Langdon has also been elected anhonorary member of the Japan Institute ofMetals (JIM), in recognition of his “out-standing contributions in the field of metal-lurgy and materials science.” He will acceptthe award in March 2005 at the JIM AnnualSpring Meeting in Yokohama, Japan.

Close-up of Yen’s transducer, the largest ever built, with over 65,500individual elements, 169 transmitter elements and 1,024 receiver elements.That gives it four times the imaging sensitivity of previous arrays.

pthe oint

20 USC ENGINEER

Researchers from the USC Viterbi Schoolsay solid fuel particles may be safer forhazardous environments on earth and burnmore efficiently in the microgravity of spacethan gaseous fuels, which are morecombustible and difficult to transport.

In the Spring 2004 issue of NASA SpaceResearch, Fokion Egolfopoulos and CharlesCampbell, of the department of aerospaceand mechanical engineering, report that theyhave made significant progress towardunderstanding the complex chemicalprocesses that take place when tiny particlesof solid fuels burn.

Their findings could lead to the design ofsafer and more efficient solid fuels for propul-sion in space or for maintaining humanoutposts on the moon or Mars. Their researchcould also benefit fire-prevention practices.

“Understanding the thermal effects is afirst step toward improving fuel economy inboth space vehicles and those we use onEarth,” says Egolfopoulos. “It’s also a goodstart towards preventing spontaneous com-bustion in dangerous work environments,like in lumber milling, in grain elevators orin mine galleries. It’s a sort of walk-before-you-run kind of thing.”

Funded by NASA, the researchers madedetailed studies of solid fuel combustion,including the effects of gravity on theprocess. They measured the burning charac-teristics of various solid fuel particles onearth and in microgravity, using NASA’s KC-135 aircraft — known as the “Vomit Comet”— to simulate the weightlessness of space.

“It takes some getting used to, but aftera while, you learn to conduct the experimentvery precisely,” says Mustafa Gurhan Andac,a postdoctoral research associate from theViterbi School's Combustion and FuelsLaboratory, who ran the experiments in thenearly weightless environment aboard theNASA aircraft.

“You only have about 23 seconds inzero-g, so you have to ignite the flame beforethe zero-g parabola starts and be sure to fin-ish the experiment and record the data duringthose precious seconds of weightlessness.”

In their experiments, the team used two

laminar, smooth-burning flames in an“opposed-jet” configuration to compare theconsumption of solid fuel and gaseous fuel.The bottom burner slowly spews gas to carrysolid fuel pellets to the flame, while the topburner issues particle-free gas to fuel the flame.

“Depending on the prevailing flow con-ditions and characteristics of the particles,some particles will ignite and burncompletely, whereas others behave as half-inert and burn only partially,” Egolfopoulossays. The researchers measured particle size,speed and distribution to determine theoptimal conditions for efficient combustion.

“In reduced gravity, a low-speed gas wasmore effective for complete fuel consump-tion,” explains Campbell. “However, whenwe ignited the pellets in our laboratory atUSC, in earth’s gravity, a much higher gasvelocity was needed to carry the pellets tothe flame. Increased speed caused some ofthe fuel pellets to burn incompletely.”

NASA is finding additional applicationsfor the work as the space agency looks tolonger spaceflight missions and humanexploration of the moon and Mars. In trips tothe moon or Mars, solid fuels derived fromthe lunar or Martian soil, or solid carbon,extracted from the Martian atmosphere, mayfuel the astronauts’ return flights to Earth.

The researchers have created acomputational model to numericallysimulate their experiments and predict thecombustion of solid fuel particles in agaseous stream, based on thermal conditionsand particle properties.

They presented their findings at the30th International Symposium onCombustion held this past July in Chicago.

Researchers are studying how gravityinfluences the combustion of solid fuelsusing this opposed jet flame configuration.

Mustafa Gurhan Andac

Fokion Egolfopoulos

Fire on the “Vomit Comet” TINY PELLETS OF FUEL MAY BE SAFER AND BURN MORE EFFICIENTLY

Ego

lfopo

ulo

an

d A

nda

c ph

otos

by

Max

S.G

erbe

r

A .45-caliber pistol bullet slams into soft bodyarmor with the same impact as a 90 mile-per-hour fastball whacking a bare chest

This is one of the findings from anunusual study by a team of USC medical andengineering researchers that could lead to abetter bulletproof vest, and possibly to superstrong and “intelligent” armor.

“We studied how it would feel to get shotwhile wearing armor or bulletproof vests,” saysBart Kosko, a professor of electrical engineeringin the Viterbi School. The armor experimentsinvolved handguns and ordnancegelatin while the data analysisemployed a novel mix of standardstatistical methods and the more exoticneural-fuzzy rule-based techniques.

“This told us how much injury toexpect from a handgun bullet hittingarmor,” Kosko explains. “We quantifiedthe baseball comparison to helpunderstand gunshots and armor.Handgun bullets are like baseballs.They do not knock people backward as in themovies. Instead they bruise soft tissue.”

Kosko teamed with noted medicalresearcher W. French Anderson, director of theUSC Keck School of Medicine Gene TherapyLaboratories, and Viterbi School Ph.D. studentIan Lee on the paper “Fuzzy Modeling ofGunshot Bruises in Soft Body Armor,”published for the 23rd InternationalConference of the North American FuzzyInformation Processing Society held in June.

Kosko has authored many books, bothtechnical and popular, on fuzzy logic, atechnique that uses shades of gray rather thansimple yes/no answers and that allows humansto program computers with commonsenserules such as, “If the air is cool then set the airconditioner to slow.”

The research commenced from a simplequestion: What can science tell us about thebruising and other effects that result whensomeone gets shot wearing soft body armor?There had been virtually no scientific work onthe problem —yet it is a question that manypolice officers and soldiers face every day.

“The FBI had asked me to look into this,and I immediately thought of Bart Kosko. Bart

is an original thinker, and his ‘fuzzy logic’sounded perfect for this task.” Anderson says.

The available evidence was scattered andincomplete. The FBI published statisticsshowed that no handgun bullets killed armor-clad police officers by piercing. The militaryinserts so-called “trauma plates”in a soldier’s flack jacket to stoprifle bullets.

The National Institute ofSafety and Technology (NIST)developed armor test proce-

dures that used modeling clayto measure the backfacedeformation — the deformationin the armor’s backing materialafter a gunshot.

But what does a10-millimeter deformation inclay correspond to in a body?The researchers developed atrainable fuzzy system based ondata that they obtained fromnumerous test firings of fourdifferent caliber bullets (.22, .38, .40, and .45)into ordnance gelatin-backed vests and othermaterials. Their analysis was based on bruisepatterns from actual shootings.

The backface deformation depth andwidth on the armor estimated the trauma thatwould have been produced on the bodybeneath the armor. Timing established theaverage speed of each box of bullets.

The simplest findings dealt with bulletmomentum (mass times velocity) and bulletenergy. The energy of a speeding bullet growswith the square of its velocity. But slowermoving heavy bullets (like the .45 caliber)bruised more than high velocity lighter ones

(like the .22 caliber). Impact depth correlatedbetter with momentum than with kinetic ener-gy.

To get a clearer and more intuitive under-standing of the actual impact, the experimentsbacked the armor against Plumbers’ Putty,

measuring the impact, and then comparingthe impact with that of baseballs hurled by apitching machine. While a .45 hits a bulletproofvest with the impact of a major league fastballin the ribs, a .22 is equivalent to being hit by aball going 40 mph, the researchers found.

“This finding can help armor makersimprove the tradeoffs involved in making thinextended-wear armor that minimizes gunshotbruises,” Kosko explains. “It can also help givepolice officers a better sense of what it feels liketo be in the literal line of fire.”

“I often make presentations to lawenforcement personnel about surviving deadly

USC ENGINEER 21

pthe oint

Bullets and Baseballs A USC Medical Researcher and Engineer Join Forces to Improve Body Armor

Bart Kosko

The research commencedfrom a simple question:What can science tell usabout the bruising andother effects that resultwhen someone gets shotwearing soft body armor?

continued on page 23Kos

ko p

hoto

by

Max

S.G

erbe

r

22 USC ENGINEER

pthe oint

BMSR Wins $5.9 Million,5-Year RenewalBetter Treatments through ‘Quantitative Medicine’

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)recently approved two new drugs — Enbral,for treating adult and juvenile rheumatoidarthritis, and Xolair, the first monocloncalantibody for treating allergy-related asthma.

The testing of both drugs — and manyothers before them — relied heavily on thework and products of one of the USC ViterbiSchool’s longest standing and most productiveresearch efforts, the Biomedical SimulationsResource (BMSR). Dean Nikias calls the BMSR“a brilliant model for what creative universityengineering research should be.”

Once a daring vision, the BMSR hasdeveloped the classic, basic engineering tool of“systems modeling” into well-used technolo-gies. These technologies have been applied byfront-line medical researchers and industry tovarious biomedical problems. All 15 of theworld’s largest pharmaceutical companies nowuse BMSR-developed methods as part of theirprocess for testing new drug candidates.

The BMSR’s astonishing track record wasvalidated by this year’s five-year renewal of itsfunding from the National Institutes of Health(NIH). The new grant of $5.9 million runningthrough 2008, will bring the total funding to$21.4 million and like the previous ones, therenewal was competitive.

“It is difficult to get NIH center grantfunding,” says BMSR co-director DavidD’Argenio, “and even more difficult tomaintain it, let alone for more than 23 years.”

The record achieved by BMSR co-directorsVasilis Z. Marmarelis and D’Argenio of theViterbi School’s department of biomedicalengineering is the result of negotiating apromising but very difficult path. In many areasof engineering, success in understandingphysical processes and improving devices andtechniques has come from devisingmathematical models based on theoreticalprinciples, and then refining these models bychecking their predictions against observations,in an iterative process. The key is to preciselyquantify predictions, so that the model’s fit to

reality can be measured.Engineers have long

used the technique toimprove aircraft, chemicalplants and automobileengines, as well as theconstruction of structuresranging from the atomic tothe skyscraper level. Butapplying the technique tobiology and medicine wasstill fragmentary andunsystematic whenMarmarelis and D’Argenio made their initialNIH application in September 1984. Theyproposed a research unit with a mission “toadvance the state of the art in biomedical sys-tems modeling,” working on both basic researchmethods and practical software development.

Now, as the project approaches themidpoint of its third decade, biomedical mod-eling has become established and applied toconditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, stroke,diabetes, cancer, AIDS and sleep disorders.

“The FDA has recognized the importanceof an expanded role of systems modeling indrug development,” notes D’Argenio, “and arecent white paper has called for the creation ofa new product development toolkit thatincludes computer-based predictive models toimprove and accelerate the drug approvalprocess.” D’Argenio was recently appointed tothe FDA Clinical Pharmacology Subcommittee,the only engineer on this twelve member panelthat provides advice to the FDA on drugresponse modeling, pharmacogenomics andpediatric clinical pharmacology. “It is gratifyingto see that the systems modeling framework, aswell as the methods and tools created andrefined at the BMSR, are playing an increasing-ly important role in drug development,” saysD’Argenio.

This great success was not achievedovernight.

“The challenge in biomedical systemsmodeling,” explains D’Argenio, “is biological

processes are nonlinear, with complex feedbackmechanisms operating within and between atleast five interconnected, but separate levels: themolecular level, the cellular level, the intercellu-lar level, the organ level and the whole bodylevel. Accordingly, the methods and tools wedevelop must be able to describe the autoregu-latory consequences of these feedback process-es at all levels, both in health and disease.”

Diabetes, which Marmarelis, a professor ofbiomedical engineering and electrical engineer-ing, has recently been studying, is a classicexample. The condition results from a single,simple well-understood cause — the failure ofcells in the pancreas to manufacture enough ofthe blood sugar regulating substance insulin.The results of a shortage of insulin, however,are anything but simple and Marmarelis hasplayed a key role in better understanding dia-betes. The condition affects almost every organin the body differently, and in different degrees(in non-linear fashion). Because the function-ing of different organs is interconnected, theinitial effect of reduced insulin productiontriggers a cascade of other effects, creating thebewilderingly broad clinical picture of diabetes.

Marmarelis uses modeling methods toanalyze the complex dynamic interactionsbetween insulin, glucose and free fatty acids,with the goal of achieving the long-held dreamof an “artificial pancreas.” Such a device wouldmaintain the level of blood glucose fairlyconstant throughout the life of diabetics in an

David D’Argenio

Pho

to b

y M

ax S

.Ger

ber

automatic fashion. This advancedscientific understanding also revealscritical aspects of the causes ofobesity and offers clinical solutionsfor this growing epidemic threat.

“Ultimately, our goal is tounderstand the full complexity in thedynamic nonlinear interactionsamong the metabolic, the endocrine,the cardiovascular and the nervoussystem, thereby ushering in a new erain quantitative medicine,”Marmarelis asserts.

Clinical research has givenphysiologists a general, qualitativeoverview of what the mechanismsare, but in order to better controlthe disease, it is crucial to have adynamic, unified, quantitativemodel. Such a model must integrate

the multiple interconnected variables thatenable an experimenter to see, in a simulation,what happens to the whole system whenindividual inputs change.

Marmarelis’ BMSR work serves as thebasis for a new book, “Nonlinear DynamicModeling of Physiological Systems,” just pub-lished by Wiley Interscience and IEEE Press.

D’Argenio has applied the BMSR systemsmodeling philosophy to therapeutic drugdevelopment through “in silico methods,” using

it to study and evaluate candidate drugs to treatcancers, viral, autoimmune and other diseases.He has developed sophisticated methods tomodel the way drugs work, from their action onmolecular targets through clinical diseaseresponse. He has created software, embodyingthe methods and models, that other researcherscan use in their work, whether for drugdevelopment or physiological study.

“To date,” says D’Argenio, “more than4,500 biomedical researchers worldwide haveused BMSR developed software.” The titlesinclude the drug effect modeling softwareADAPT, the general biological modelingsystem LYSIS, the neural modeling systemEONs and PNEUMA, a set of programsdescribing cardiorespiratory function.

BMSR techniques and software requiretraining and since 1985, 2,400 researchers fromall over the world have attended 23 short cours-es and 19 workshops on BMSR techniques.

In addition to Marmarelis and D’Argenio,University professor Theodore W. Berger andMichael C. K. Khoo, professor and chair of thedepartment of biomedical engineering, serve asmain BMSR investigators.

Khoo’s research focuses on improving themodeling of biological control systems andhow they feedback on each other, withparticular emphasis to the intricate teamworkbetween heart and lungs. His applications to

cardio-respiratory coupling in sleep disorderswere highlighted in the Spring/Summer 2003issue of USC Engineer.

Berger’s long-term collaboration withMarmarelis centers on modeling neural activityin the brain, specifically the hippocampus. Thisresearch has been the springboard from whichhe embarked on his now widely known effortsto create sophisticated microelectronic compo-nents that can emulate the physiological func-tion of parts of the central nervous system. Hehopes to eventually repair damaged neural tis-sue and is also attempting to better understandthe processes leading to Alzheimer’s disease.

Marmarelis is more enthusiastic than everabout the prospects for BMSR as a leader inpromoting a new quantitative medicine thatwill be more flexible and effective, and givemore bang for the experimental buck.

“I believe the best is yet to come in ourarea,” he says. “Over the past twenty years, weestablished elements of biomedical modelingusing the computers and software tools of thetime,” he notes. “But I believe the acceleratingimprovement in computers, and advancedmethodologies of biomedical data analysis andcollection, is going to have an explosive impacton our specialty, and on medicine as a whole.And I think when the history of this impact iswritten, USC biomedical engineering will havea striking role.”

p

USC ENGINEER 23

the oint

Bullets and Baseballs continued from page 21

confrontations, but no one could explain in anunderstandable way what it feels like to be shotin the chest wearing soft body armor. Finallywe have something. Being hit by a baseball issomething we can relate to,” explains Anderson.

The researchers believe new nanomaterialsmay also provide the protection of heavy bulkytrauma plates in a lightweight flexible armor.Other researchers have already shown that supertough nanotube threads can augment or replacethe Kevlar fibers to strengthen armor vests.

A shear thickening fluid helps treatedarmor vests resist bullet penetration and reducebackface injuries. These and developments insmart materials and nanoscale devices promisesuper strong armor that can detect approachingbullets, report a soldier’s vital signs and

injuries, and then change armor nano-properties to react to threats.

Such super strong armors that couldprocess signals would be “intelligent” in theprimitive but important sense that they wouldbe able to make appropriate vest changes inresponse to new threat stimuli. Ian Lee ispursuing such designs as part of his Ph.D. workin the new field of nano-signal processing.

The researchers used no public researchfunding of any kind for this study.Ammunition, rental firearms and facilitiescame from the Orange County IndoorShooting Range, in Brea, California. Theresearchers performed the baseball comparisontrials in the batting cages at Home Run Park, inAnaheim, California.

A 14-ply Kevlar soft body armor panel(a Superfeatherlite* vest from SecondChance) and some sample cartridges(.22, .38, .40, and .45 caliber). Differentcaliber bullets struck the sample armor.

Shelley Howard, a 22-year-old chemicalengineering major, is passionate about envi-ronmental conservation in Africa. Duringthe spring 2004 semester, without leavingthe classroom, the graduating senior helpedan impoverished Central African villagedesign its first water and power system.

“As soon as I heard that one of theprojects in this class was about Africa, Ijumped right on it,” she says excitedly.“This is real life stuff. Africa is going tobe developed in the next 30 years andI fully intend to use my degree to workon international issues and environmentalconservation there.”

Her classmate, Eric Lim, a junior civilengineering major, was just as excited towork with the Central African township ofN’Djili. Hoping someday to “serve peopleas an engineer,” he says developing his

proposal to design a waterpurification system made himrealize just how undevelopedThird World countries really are.

Howard and Limparticipated in a new programto support undeveloped ThirdWorld countries as part of theircourse, WRIT 340, “AdvancedWriting: Communication forEngineering.” Now in its sixthyear, the course employs aninnovative, hands-on approachto improve engineeringcommunications skills of thejuniors and seniors who“transcend the classroom” andput their technical know-howto work on local communityservice projects. But in this case,the community lay on the otherside of the world.

N’Djili, a French-speakingtown of 277,000 people, isabout five miles from Kinshasa,the capital of the DemocraticRepublic of Congo. A hugeportion of adults have died ofAIDS and 40 percent of thechildren do not attend school.

Overcoming Barriers The engineers faced dauntinggeographic, cultural and languagebarriers to develop their infrastruc-ture projects, explains StevenWeinberg, a lecturer and one ofsix faculty who teach the course.

“They had to come to acultural understanding aboutN’Djili to understand that theywere dealing with a peoplewho don’t have a sanitationsystem for their town, but arecapable of having an Internetvideo-conference,” Weinbergdescribes. “Given these uniquecircumstances, we asked thestudents to think creatively andcome up with new approachesto solving some of the town’sneeds.”

The African MillenniumFoundation (AMF), a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organizationdedicated to the improvement ofeconomic, educational and healthcare standards, and general socialand economic empowerment inimpoverished areas of Africa, actedas the students’ go-between.

“N’Djili is like many partsof Africa,” says Malena Ruth,AMF president. “It’s a town withno infrastructure, no power orelectricity. People drink contaminated waterfrom ground wells and wash their clothesin the river. The children don’t know aboutflush toilets and the adults are being wipedout by AIDS.”

Students quickly learned that N’Djili“wasn’t just L.A. with dirt,” Weinberg says.But they focused on the “customer’sneeds” to find solutions that made senseto N’Djili.

The students broke up in teams offour to work on water treatment andpurification systems; drip irrigation systems;small, auxiliary hydroelectric power unitsand a computer lab. They only got onechance to speak directly to N’Djili officials,

during a two-hour videoconference thatrequired French-speaking translators onboth ends. Whatever wasn’t answeredduring that videoconference had to beresearched or answered via email.

The lack of contact with N’Djilifrustrated many. “Glitzy technology iswonderful, but if you don’t have enoughinformation to choose the right powersystem, it won’t work,” states MorganHendry, 21, an astronautics major. “Thereis no substitute for visiting,” adds MattFeehan, 22, a civil engineering major.

Just Like the Real World Shunning conventional pedagogy tothe end, the students eventually found

stu

den

t w

ork

s

24 USC ENGINEER

pthe oint

Stu

den

t w

orks

pho

tos

by I

ren

e Fe

rtik

INTO AFRICA Undergraduates transcend the classroom to help an African village

Stephen Bucher, director of the Engineering WritingProgram, introduces his students to the N’Djili officialsat the beginning of the class videoconference.

Left to right, Kathrun Ceballos, Victor Mitsouka andMorgan Hendry discuss questions they will ask theN’Djili representatives during a videoconference.

pthe oint

USC ENGINEER 25

themselves in formal business attire andarmed with PowerPoint slides to presenttheir recommendations for buildingwater, power and irrigation systems tothe African Millennium Foundation.

“We asked them to own their projects and do whatever it took tofinish them, like they’ll have to do inthe working world,” Weinberg explains.

The foundation will use thestudents’ reports to fill out grantapplications. If they come up emptyhanded, the next crop of studentstaking the course will pick up wherethis group left off. Or, they will likelytackle other AMF projects.

“It’s just the start of a long-termpartnership between USC and thefoundation to create mutually beneficialrelationships in Africa,” Weinberg says.

USC’S Engineering Writing Programhas helped a number of serviceorganizations in the Los Angeles areaand a growing number of them areasking program director Stephen Bucherfor help. Students have done everythingfrom reconfiguring computer labs todesigning playgrounds. Bucher saysorganizations have used the studentreports to obtain grants ranging from$5,000 to $800,000.

USC’s Civic and CommunityRelations Office brought AMF toBucher. AMF’s president, Ruth, saysthe first set of proposals was “trulygroundbreaking.” She added that N’Djilicould probably begin to build somerudimentary power and irrigationsystems, and try some new ways ofcooking, before the year is out. Thestudents were elated.

“That’s what we wanted studentsto experience,” Bucher explains. “Wewanted them to know that there wasmuch more than a grade at stake here.They got to see how their ideas directlyaffect others.”

For more information about theEngineering Writing Program, contactStephen Bucher at sbucher@usc.edu .Z

hou

pho

to b

y M

iche

lle A

.H.S

mit

h

Growing Nanocables: Bigger and BetterA USC Viterbi School engineer has discovereda way to manufacture composite “nanocables”from a potent new class of substances withextraordinary properties called TransitionMetal Oxides (TMOs).

Chongwu Zhou, an assistant professor inthe USC Viterbi School’s department ofelectrical engineering, is creating dense arraysof ultrafine wires made of magnesium oxide(MgO), eachcoated withuniform, precise-ly controlledlayers of TMO.

In the lastdecade, TMOshave beenintenselyinvestigatedbecause theydemonstrate awide range ofpotentially usefulproperties,including high-temperaturesuperconductivi-ty. Because ofthe greatpotential forapplications research, investigators have triedfor years to create TMO nanowires, but so farhave had limited success.

“But now we can supply a group ofpreviously unavailable materials to thenanotechnology community,” Zhou says.

The Zhou team demonstrated theirtechnique with four different TMOs: YBCO,a well-known superconductor with a hightransition temperature; LCMO, a materialshowing “colossal” magnetoresistance; PZT,an important ferroelectric material; and Fe3O4,known as magnetite in its strongly magneticmineral form.

The new structures all start with a newtechnique Zhou and his co-workers developedto create arrays of nanowires by condensingmagnesium oxide vapor onto magesiumoxide plates using gold as catalyst. Thisproduces a forest of magnesium oxide

nanowires, each 30-100 nanometers indiameter and three microns (100 millionth ofan inch) long, all growing parallel at a constantangle to the substrate plate.

“Now the magic starts,” Zhou says. A laservaporizes the TMO, which then condensesdirectly out of the gaseous state onto thewaiting magnesium oxide cores in very precisefashion. This process is called “pulsed laser

deposition.”The final

product lookslike nano-sizedcoaxial cable,with a magne-sium oxide coreand TMOsheath. “Thetrick is we canpreserve theTMO composi-tion using thistechnique,” saysZhou, “whileother techniquescannot.”

Zhou’spaper, “NanoLetters,” recentlyaccepted for

publication and currently circulating on theInternet, that the assemblies “can be tailoredfor a wide variety of applications, includinglow-loss power delivery, quantum computing,ultrahigh density magnetic data storage, andmore recently, spintronic applications.”

“We expect that these TMO nanowiresmay offer enormous opportunities toexplore intriguing physics at the nanoscaledimensions,” says Zhou.

Zhou, the winner of the USC ViterbiSchool’s 2004 Junior Faculty Research Award,believes that the four new nanowires are onlythe beginning. “Our synthetic approach willlead to other new nanostructures,” he says.

Working with Zhou are Song Han, ChaoLi, Zuqin Liu, Bo Lei, Daihua Zhang, Wu Jin,Xiaoleiu Liu and Tao Tang. A National ScienceFoundation CAREER award and DARPAsupported the research.

Chongwu Zhou

How a Distinguished Groupof Space-Race PioneersLanded at USC

:

From JPL to USCand Beyond

by Carl Marzieli

USC ENGINEER 27

scover tory

But inside those trailers, a rare clarity of thought emerged creatingan unlikely alliance of mathematicians and engineers. Bridgingdisciplines that were as easily mixed as oil and water, a small progressivegroup laid the foundations of the digital age.

They were brilliant minds in their early twenties, fresh out of schooland culled from every corner of the country. Later, most would joinUSC’s engineering school, turning it into a leading presence in digitalcommunications and information theory. One would put his name onthat school. At the time, however, academic honors were far from theirminds. The race for space was on, and the Soviets were in first place.

In 1957, William Lindsey, now a professor at the USC Viterbi Schoolof Engineering, was an electrical engineering junior at Purdue Universitywhen the launch of Sputnik shocked America. Every 96 minutes thesmall aluminum can flew over the United States, and with every pass thecountry’s reaction grew more dire. What was next: nukes in space?

More intrigued than alarmed, Lindsey hooked up a radio to aspeaker to see if he could pick up any signals. There it was — a steadybeep in the ham frequency range, put there by the Soviets to make sureevery American got the message. Lindsey knew the signal came fromSputnik, because it was Doppler-shifted: that is, the beep rose in pitchas the satellite approached and dropped down as it receded, every96 minutes, exactly.

“When I hooked the speaker up to this audio signal and we couldhear the Doppler shift, the whole university came running. It spread likewildfire through campus. The whole student body came to listen to thistone,” Lindsey remembers, still wide-eyed.

He realized two things: anything involving space was going to be ahot area for career-minded scientists; and, if you could pick up a signalfrom space, you could also modulate that signal and use it to carryinformation. It was at that moment Lindsey decided to become acommunications engineer.

“I knew there was something there,” he says.Soon Lindsey joined the trailer group, formally known as

Communications Section 331 in JPL’s Division 33. It was home to thetheorists, and had been their home for some time. Lindsey was one of itsyoungest members.

There was Eberhardt Rechtin, now an emeritus professor at USC,but then the long-serving head of Division 33 and in his words “chiefarchitect of the whole shebang.” He was in charge of the systems forspace communications, networks and devices.

There was mathematician Solomon Golomb, chief of Section 331

and father of the shift-register sequences used universally in messagecoding. Golomb now holds the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Chair inCommunications at the USC Viterbi School. His contribution goesbeyond mathematics, however. Both at JPL and later at USC, Golombdemonstrated a keen eye for talent and team-building.

“He had collected a very striking group of mathematicians andmathematically oriented engineers,” says Thomas Kailath, who spenta year at JPL and is now professor emeritus of engineering at StanfordUniversity. “Section 331 was actually a powerhouse.”

Kailath credits Golomb for having the vision to erase sometraditional boundaries.

“In those days mathematics and engineering were still regarded assomewhat separate entities,” Kailath says. “This was one of the groupsthat helped bridge that gap and showed the power of mathematicalreasoning and mathematical modeling. That was the main contributionof the place.”

Besides Lindsey, Golomb recruited Lloyd Welch, who with LeonardBaum developed the Baum Welch Algorithm, an important tool used inSp

utn

ik p

hoto

by

Mic

hael

Rou

gier

,Tim

e &

Lif

e P

ictu

res

’ ,

-

’, , . ,

.

In the smoggy 1950s at Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory,there were days when you could not see the mountain from thejunior scientists’ trailers at the base of the Arroyo Seco.

speech recognition and other areas. He is also now professor emeritus atUSC. Golomb also recruited a 22-year-old Andrew Viterbi (Ph.D. EE ’62),who would later become the co-founder of the cell phone giantQualcomm. Today, Viterbi holds the Presidential Chair in Engineering atUSC, and he and his wife Erna are donors of an endowed chair as well asthe most generous naming gift to any engineering school in the U.S.Modern wireless technology is based in part on the Viterbi Algorithmfor error decoding, the mathematics of which Viterbi says he learnedfrom Golomb.

“I landed at JPL in a den of mathematicians,” Viterbi says. What acontrast from his previous employer, Raytheon, whose engineers Viterbiremembers as being “rather dismissive” ofmathematical theory. Viterbi himself was rightin the middle: a prolific thinker with an innatenose for the most fruitful intersections oftheory and practice. Lindsey, who remembershimself as a naïve theoretician when he beganworking at JPL, credits Viterbi for redirectinghim to problems that were not only intriguing,but important. And just in time: Viterbiarrived in June of 1957, three months beforethe launch of Sputnik turned the placeupside down.

While Sputnik is credited with giving theU.S. space program a much-needed kick in thepants, few realize that JPL was ready to launch asatellite a full year before the Soviets. Just likeSputnik, the American version would have been small and rudimentaryand, most importantly, first in space.

In September 1956, Golomb recalls, the directors of JPL and a sistergroup in Alabama brought the satellite proposal to the White House.It was discussed by scientists on President Eisenhower’s committee forbasic research. That committee was supporting a rival project, calledVanguard. In addition, a majority on the committee felt that theexploration of space should be a non-military activity. Since JPL was runby the Army in the pre-NASA era, its proposal was dead on arrival.

“The Eisenhower administration was not aware that we were in anykind of a race at that point,” Golomb says. The launch of Sputnik raised

their awareness level substantially. Within three months the governmentwas ready with its counterpunch. In December of 1957, the U.S. invitedthe world’s press and television cameras to witness Vanguard’s debut atCape Canaveral, Florida. Embarrassingly, Vanguard blew up on thelaunch pad.

“And that was our competition,” says Golomb.A month later the scientists at JPL had their own answer to Sputnik,

called Explorer I. Much to the Eisenhower administration’s relief, this onemade it off the ground in one piece on January 31, 1958. There wereclenched fists and cold sweats in the Pasadena control room when severaltracking stations around the globe failed to detect the satellite at the

expected times. The communications teamlater realized that the thrust of the Explorer Iboosters had been greater than planned,making its orbit longer and therefore delayingits progress by about 15 minutes.

The ultimate barometer of nationalenthusiasm — Life magazine — featuredphotographs of Golomb and Viterbi in thecontrol room. More importantly, the satellite’ssuccess ensured the work of Section 331 wouldhave far-reaching impact. By helping thesatellite and mission control to communicatereliably, the scientists in the trailer had solvedmuch more than the problem at hand. Theyhad been drafting the blueprint for modernwireless communications.

The basic achievement had been the transport of information ina noisy environment with low-power transmitters. Out of that camesatellite communications solutions, coding technology, the ability totrack vehicles in space and time, the development of masers andrubidium, cesium standards for frequency and timing in all types ofcommunications. It was a time of wide-open frontiers.

“What was our mission? We were defining it as much as we werebeing told what it was,” Golomb recalls.

The science behind the group’s achievements boiled down to twoessential concepts. One was the idea of coding with shift-registersequences, developed by Golomb and further refined by himself, Viterbi

cover torys

28 USC ENGINEER

Soviet Unionlaunches first twoearth satellites,Sputnik I and II,using R-7 rockets.

Explorer I, firstsuccessful U.S.spacecraft, carriesinstruments tostudy cosmic rays& micrometeorites.

...

, ,

,

.

NASA’s Mariner 2carries solar-poweredinstrument packagepast Venus. Firstsuccessful planetaryflyby.

and Welch. A shift register of n slots (n can be any whole number) is adevice that takes an incoming stream of binary bits — ones and zeros —and, as each bit progresses from one slot to the next in the register, altersthe message according to a predetermined formula. As each bit comes outof the register, it is fed back into the other side a certain number of times.The end result is a much bigger stream of bits with two advantages: it iscoded to prevent jamming, and because it is redundant, with everyoriginal bit expressed multiple times, it is highly resistant to interference.Even if noise wipes out many bits in the stream, enough copies will be leftto reconstruct the message. At the receiving end, a decoder inverts thecoding formula and returns the original binary stream.

Another key technological building block was that of phase-lockloops, developed by Rechtin, Viterbi and Lindsey. The idea of aphase-lock loop is no different than every child’s favorite bath hobby:making the water slosh higher and higher until it splashes out of thetub. An oscillator on the receiver tunes itself to resonate at the samefrequency as the incoming signal. Resonance is a natural amplifier,helping to pull the signal out of deep noise. “Phase-lock” refers to theneed for the oscillator and the signal to be in phase and to stay that way.

“Phase-coherent communications and tracking is key to moderndigital communications,” says Lindsey, who should know. While at JPLhe worked secretly on the side for the U.S. intelligence community,monitoring Soviet communications. To his astonishment, he discoveredthat the other side was using phase-incoherent transmission — cheap,but very inefficient and not secure.

All these advances, though developed for communications in space,turned out to be vital for wireless transmission in a commercial airspacesaturated with conflicting signals.

“I can say, without boasting at all, that we were the foundation ofthe global communications that we now have,” Rechtin says. LincolnLaboratories, run by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, alsocontributed important advances, as did Purdue and Stanford. Thelegendary Bell Laboratories was a bastion of research but, according toGolomb, focused heavily on the land-based telephone system.

For years, no one in the group grasped the significance of their

research. “It was just interesting work,” says Welch. “I’m amazed, you see.We were basically in the digital communications era when nobody elsewas. Then as time goes on it’s found a use in commercial applications.They were using all the theory that we had developed back in the fiftiesand sixties.”

Years later, while consulting on the side, Lindsey was often askedhow the group came together.

“I think God made thisgroup,” he replied.

After God came ZohrabKaprielian, who did his best tolive up to his predecessor.Revered, scorned, loved, feared(he was all four at once);Kaprielian re-assembled the JPLgroup at USC. NominallyKaprielian’s title was chair ofthe engineering department,but everyone knew he wasmuch more.

Golomb recalls that at onepoint around 1970, there werefive levels of administrationbetween himself and thepresident of the university, “andall of them were ZohrabKaprielian.”

“At that time we operatedon the principle of one man,one vote,” Golomb says, “andKaprielian was the one man whohad the one vote.”

In matters of science Kaprielian used his vote brilliantly. Instead oftrying to compete head to head with bigger universities, he focused on

scover tory

USC ENGINEER 29

Soviet Luna 9 achieves softlanding on the moon.

“ , ,

,” .

continued on next page

Viking landersets down onMars.

cover torys

30 USC ENGINEER

hot new fields where he knew USC could move fasterthan its stodgie rivals. Digital communications was oneof those fields.

In 1963, on Viterbi’s advice, Kaprielian recruitedGolomb from JPL. Golomb’s presence attracted othersin the group: Welch and Lindsey, and later Rechtin andViterbi (who had done his Ph.D. at USC because it wasthe only institution that would allow him to study whileworking at JPL). But Golomb’s eye for talent wentbeyond JPL. Also in 1963, he persuaded Kaprielian tohire Irving Reed, a gifted computer scientist then atRAND Corporation. Reed was best known for havingbuilt the first computer on the west coast, a desk-sizedmachine that humbled eastern rivals ten times its size.

What was more intriguing to Golomb was Reed’s research on errorcorrection codes. Working with a collaborator, the late Gustave Solomon,Reed had shown that his algorithm for error correction was optimal, thatis, unbeatable. At the time their finding was only of theoretical interest.

“Error correction coding was brand new,” Reed remembers.Reed-Solomon codes became considerably less theoretical on the

Voyager spacecraft. JPL launched Voyager in 1977 to explore the outersolar system. As historian Peter Westwick explains in his forthcomingbook, Into the Black: A History of the Jet Propulsion Lab, 1976-2004(Yale University Press, 2005), older error correction codes began to fail asthe spacecraft sailed towards Uranus and Neptune. The Voyager projectteam then switched to Reed-Solomon codes, in combination with Viterbidecoding. The results were stunning: crystal clear photographs of theouter planets invaluable to scientists and inspirational to the public.Norm Haynes, the Voyager project manager, called this telecommunica-tions success “the finest technological achievement of Voyager: being ableto get images back from three billion miles away.”

Reed-Solomon/Viterbi decoding — and the underlying Golombcodes — have been standard on every spacecraft since Voyager, includingthe recent Mars Rovers and Cassini. And for billions of people, Reed-Solomon codes are part of everyday life. They are inscribed into everysingle compact disc and DVD sold in the world. (A real-world tip fromReed’s graduate student Gregory Dubney: when you clean your CDs,don’t wipe in a circle, as that will erase the Reed-Solomon codes over

time and actually make the skipping worse. Clean theCDs by wiping towards the center.)

Together, these six pioneers — Golomb, Lindsey,Rechtin, Reed, Viterbi, and Welch — put USC on themap for information science and contributed to theUSC Viterbi School’s ascent into the top tier ofengineering schools. Golomb, Reed and Welch wonthe prestigious Shannon Award, named for ClaudeShannon, the first formulator of information theory.All six belong to the country’s most select engineeringsociety, the National Academy of Engineering. Golomb,Viterbi and Stanford’s Kailath are also members of theNational Academy of Sciences.

Despite their many achievements over the last fourdecades, members of the old JPL group look back on those days with aspecial fondness.

“It was the finest adventure we ever had, that exceeded anythingI’ve done since,” says Rechtin. “I don’t think we could have done it singly,none of us could.”

Says Lindsey: “So much work, so many things, so many areas startedright in that Division 33, Section 331. We didn’t know where we wereheaded. A cluster of the key guys in digital communications cametogether and worked together closely as friends, as colleagues.

“We sorted out the problems and solved them and someone startedusing the results. Almost anything we solved we could write this paperand it would be published, because it was that new.”

That heady time may have come and gone in digitalcommunications, but it repeats itself in emerging fields suchas biotechnology, nanotechnology, bioinformatics and quantuminformation theory. Under Dean Nikias, the USC Viterbi Schoolof Engineering has continued Kaprielian’s legacy by seeking out thebrightest minds in the newest areas. In less than three years, thenumber of tenure-track faculty has increased from 140 to 170, whilethe school as a whole now ranks sixth, tied with Caltech, according toU.S. News & World Report.

Many scientists over the ages have built new industries. The menof Section 331 can also say they helped to build an institution, theUSC Viterbi School of Engineering.

Pioneer 10 reachesJupiter, and thencontinues onoutside the solarsystem.

.

research eaturef

USC ENGINEER 31

Researchers from the USC Viterbi School ofEngineering and the Technion MedicalSchool in Israel have uncovered new cluesabout how the brain’s ultra-complicatedcells, known as neurons, work.

Their findings — appearing in a recentissue of the journal Nature Neuroscience —contradict a widely accepted idea regardingthe “arithmetic” neurons used to processinformation.

“It’s amazing that after a hundredyears of modern neuroscience research,we still don’t know the basic informationprocessing functions of a neuron,” saysBartlett W. Mel, associate professor ofbiomedical engineering, and a contributingauthor of the journal’s article. “Historically,it has most often been assumed that abrain cell sums up its excitatory inputslinearly, meaning that the excitation caused

by two inputs A and B activated togetherequals the sum of excitations caused by Aand B presented separately.”

“We show that the cell significantlyviolates that rule,” Mel says. The researchteam found that the summation ofinformation within an individual neurondepends on where the inputs occur on thesurface of the cell. To understand theteam’s work and the significance of itsfindings, it helps to know a little moreabout a brain cell.

All of the information processing thattakes place in the brain is managed by aweb of neurons. These living cells comein a variety of shapes and sizes, oftenresembling trees or bushes. A neuronreceives input from other neurons atthousands of sites — called synapses —scattered across its surface. Each synapse

generates a small local voltage responsewhen it is activated. According to theclassical view of the neuron, synapticresponses flow down the cell’s branch-likedendrites, which act like electrical cablesand accumulate at the cell body. Theprevailing theory was that if the overallvoltage response at that location wassufficient, an electrical spike would fire,carrying down the cell’s axon andcommunicating to hundreds or thousandsof other neurons.

“Recent evidence suggests the storyis not quite that simple, though,” says Mel.“The input signals may interact witheach other in the dendrites and may beprofoundly transformed on their way tothe cell body.”

“In particular,” Mel adds, “individualbranches of the dendritic tree can, under

Gray Matters

Bartlett W. Mel

by Gia Scafidi

Bar

tlet

t M

el p

hoto

by

Max

S.G

erbe

r

INVESTIGATING NEURAL ARITHMETIC

research eaturef

32 USC ENGINEER

certain circumstances, generate local spikesthat greatly amplify synaptic responseslocally within the dendritic tree.”

The team set out to establish the“arithmetic” used by the neuron to com-bine its many synaptic inputs, focusing onthe pyramid-shaped neurons that make upthe bulk of the brain’s cortical gray matter.

The actual experiments were conduct-ed in Haifa, Israel by Alon Polsky, a gradu-ate student at Technion and lead author ofthe paper; and Jackie Schiller, contributingauthor and co-principal investigator. Usingslices of cortical brain tissue from rats,Polsky and Schiller located individualpyramidal neurons, filled them with dye forvisualization purposes (cells are otherwisetransparent), and using extra cellularelectrodes, stimulated the cells very close totheir dendritic branches. Whilerecording the voltage at the cellbody, the team would delivershocks through one or twostimulating electrodes directed todifferent locations in the dendritictree, for example, to the same ordifferent dendritic branches. Theywould then compare the voltage responseat the cell body as the two inputs wereactivated, first separately and then together.

“The powerful thing about [Schiller’s]method is that you can see where you’restimulating because the dye grows a littlebrighter wherever synapses are activated,”says Mel, who working with the teamremotely from USC, collaborated on theexperiment design and data analysis.

“You can direct the stimuli to veryspecific spatial locations on the cell andstart to look at what a difference locationmakes. That old real estate phrase‘location, location, location’ holds true forneurons as well.”

The data showed that three differentscenarios could occur when two electrodes,A and B, were used to stimulate the samedendritic branch:

� If the total response to the twoinputs (electrodes A and B) falls

below the branch’s local firingthreshold, the summation lookslinear — A plus B. � If the two inputs are just strongenough that together theycross the local threshold, thesummation looks superlinear —more than A plus B. � If each individual input isstrong enough to cross the localthreshold by itself, the summationis sublinear — less than A plus B. Mel explains the last point in this way:

“If two people are trying to build a firetogether and they each have a match, thefire isn’t going burn twice as bright ortwice as hot thanks to the second match,once it’s already been started with the first.The second match is irrelevant.”

In contrast to summation of inputsdelivered to the same branch, theresearchers found that summation ofinputs on different dendritic branchesalways looked linear — like lighting twoseparate fires. The findings support a 2003modeling study carried out in Mel’s lab, inwhich he and graduate student PanayiotaPoirazi predicted that pyramidal neuronswould behave in this way. This was the firstexperimental test of those predictions.

“So, we now think of the neuron interms of a two-layer model,” Mel says.“The first layer of processing occurs withinseparate dendritic branches. Each branchindependently adds up the inputs to thatbranch and then applies its own localthresholding non-linearity.”

“In the second layer of processing,”Mel adds, “the results from all the differentbranches are added together linearly at thecell body, where they help to determine

the cell’s overall firing rate.” While the results are promising, the

team is certain this is not the final word onthe pyramidal neuron.

“Undoubtedly, this is still too simple amodel,” Mel says. “But the two-layermodel is a better description, it seems, thanto assume that the neuron is simply com-bining everything linearly from everywhere.That’s clearly not what these data show.”

According to Mel, one additionalcomplexity that must eventually be dealtwith is that synaptic inputs arriving at themost remote part of the neuron — calledthe apical tuft — may interact in subtleways with inputs arriving on the basaldendrites, closer to the cell body.

“We’d now like to see if we needto extend the two-layer model into a

three-layer model,” Mel says.“It may be that the basal andapical dendrites each behave aswe’ve been saying, but when theyinteract with each other there’s anadditional nonlinear interactionthat occurs between them.”

Mel emphasizes that the“arithmetic” rules he and his colleaguesfound in pyramidal neurons may not applyto all neurons in the brain.

“There are other neurons that havedifferent shapes, inputs, morphologies andion channels,” he says. “There might be adozen different answers to the questiondepending on what neuron you’relooking at.”

While much more work lays ahead,new imaging techniques, lifelike modelsand modern laboratory procedures aremaking the task of understanding thebrain’s complicated neurons a whole loteasier. In the end, Mel says, the lessonslearned from individual neurons willbe crucial to advance researchers’understanding of the brain as a whole.

“We tend to view the brain as a com-puter,” he says. “If we want to figure outhow this computer works, we must firstknow how its separate parts function.”

“THAT OLD REAL ESTATE PHRASE ‘LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION’

HOLDS TRUE FOR NEURONS AS WELL.”

WHILE THE RESULTS ARE PROMISING,

THE TEAM IS CERTAIN THIS IS NOT THE

FINAL WORD ON THE PYRAMIDAL NEURON.

Some very lucky USC Viterbi

School undergraduates traveled

to Paris this past summer for a

six-week study abroad program.

They had a chance to fulfill academic

requirements while experiencing the

French lifestyle. Studying

overseas gives students

an opportunity to take

an accelerated program

of upper division courses

while gaining some

insight into cultural

differences that they may

face someday as working engineers.

The hours were long, the study

intense, but there was always time for

some fun. While they were in France,

many of them saw the Tour de

France, and most sent back postcards

from Paris about their experience.

Postcards from ParisPostcards from Paris

USC ENGINEER 33

USC Viterbi students at the Arc de Triumph,forming lifelong friendships. Clockwise,starting at top center are Joel Cicchella,Lino Manansala, Laura Brown, Tyler Cesar,Steven Funasaki, Carlos Espinoza,Todd Royce, Rockton Hill, Holly Chico andKimberly Mendonca.

Compiled by Bob Calverley

student eaturef

student eaturefThe Moulin Rouge Is NothingLike the MoviesIt was Rockton Hill’s first time in Europe andhe had not anticipated going to the MoulinRouge on his first night in Paris. But hisgirlfriend and her family just happened to bein Paris at the same time and they wanted togo. The show was “AMAZING, nothing likewhat I’d expected,” he said. The women were

beautiful and the lights, music and people were dazzling.“The group of students here is great; we all get along really well,”

Laura Brown decided early on. “It makes exploring Paris a lot more fun!”A group of them went to the Eiffel Tower and took the stairs.

“Cheaper,” explained Laura. “We watched the Olympic torch being rununder the Eiffel Tower, up the Eiffel Tower, and then taken down azipline.” Later the entire tower was lit up in fireworks.

That first week, some students went to see the gothic cathedral atChartres. A tour guide showed them the smaller details in the stainedglass and sculptures. Knowing how the positions of the statues had beendetermined andthe reason for theirdepiction helpedKimberlyMendoncaappreciate thebeauty of theartwork. Sheclimbed to the topof the north belltower imagininghow people in theMiddle Ages hadclimbed the sametower with only atorch for light. At thetop she could see thegargoyles and the flying buttresses. Later, the students sampled a largevariety of French meats and cheeses in an open-air market in the village.

“The market environment that is so unique to the French is verymuch unlike the market environment in the States,” said Kimberly. “Itwas also interesting to see the different types of food that are specific toFrench cuisine”.

Sunset at 10, Dinner at 11Todd Royce found the Parisian lifestyle heavily influenced by the northernlatitude’s long daylight hours. “It is common to saunter into the town wellpast 11 p.m. and find the majority of Parisians just sitting down todinner,” he wrote. “On several occasions I have tried to run a quick errandin the early afternoon but been unable to complete the task because storesare generally closed for an hour or two in the middle of the day.”

But he soon grew to love the more relaxed Parisian lifestyle. No one

ever rushed through a meal and supermarket checkerseffortlessly moved people with no sense of haste. Youcould sit in a café for an hour or two with a single drink.And you always had to ask for the check.

The French take their soccer seriously. Several USCstudents went to a city hall to watch the EuroCup soccergame when Greece ended up defeating France 1-0. Soona large rowdy French group was singing songs and thenlighting road flares in the hotel courtyard. “You don’treally see this kind of intensity and wildness in the U.S.after sporting events,” observed Steve Funasaki.

Two weeks into his classes in Paris, Sam Bagwell hadlearned that the biggest challenge was finding time to enjoy France whilestill keeping up with class work. Putting the two together was the bestsolution.

“When we went to Versailles,” he said, “we knew not only the factsabout the chateau, but also a historical interpretation of why it wasimportant. It was not only the residence of Louis XIV, but also a tool forhim to control the nobility while staying away from any political strife inParis. Context like this lends powerful meaning to what would otherwisebe normal sightseeing.”

Pleasant Surprises“More often than not, we can get overwhelmed and miss the littlesurprises worth seeing and feeling,” said Adrian Lim. While walkingthrough the vibrant Bastille district listening to Parisian chatter, a gentlebreeze wafting scents of freshly baked bread, Lim and her friends made afortunate discovery. They saw a recessed opening in the solid row ofbuildings leading to a quaint uneven cobblestone alley where lusciousgreen vines dangled from balconies, all of it hidden from the bustlingcity. They paused, drinking in the experience. “Paris has so many thingsto offer above and beneath the surface,” she said.

Holly Chico had come to Paris primarily to complete two courses,but the experience soon dictated a different lifestyle. She spent hours in asmall section of the Louvre, walked through the Picasso Museum, sawthe Arc de Triomphe and traveled to the palace and gardens at Versailles.There was little time for sleep and thoughts of papers due and home-work assignments often gnawed at the back of her mind. “Being in adifferent continent doesn’t lessen the stress of school work but makes itmore bearable with this amazing opportunity to see things,” she said.“Life as an American in Paris means immersing yourself in a differentculture from what you eat, to the Metro face you put on when you takethe train, to how you speak in public. Two weeks of eating Nutella andbaguettes, walking everywhere and anywhere, and perfecting my Pardonsand Excusez-moi has certainly turned my life around.”

Katie Rehdin had successfully avoided public transportation formost of her very suburban American life. “It was the second day herewhen I took the plunge,” she said. Soon she loved being on the 14Express home after a long day of the Metro. “Sure, sometimes it’s hard tofind a place to stand, but as a systems engineering major, I love watchingand seeing how it all works. No place in the city is more then a fewblocks from a station and thus everywhere is accessible in very little time.

34 USC ENGINEER

Sara Khan, a USC sophomore studyingcommunications, and Rockton Hill, a juniorelectrical engineering major.

The following“postcards”are some ofour students’highlights.

It is a beautifulsystem that makesme smile.”

Paris 101Shortly afterarriving, JoelCicchella wasconfident that hehad learnedeverything thatwas important forsurviving Paris andhe writes:

� Don’t have a sandwich; eat a baguette and a chunk of cheese for lunch.

� Parallel parking is an art form, but don’t be afraid to give the car in front or behind you a little bump.

� Leashes are optional when walking your dog. And there is no need to curb your animal.

� When riding the Metro, always wear your “Metro face,” meaning,don’t smile and if you happen to make eye contact with another individual, look away immediately.

� A crepe can be eaten as a main course or a dessert, or even both in the same sitting.

� It is not necessary to wait for the little green men to light up when crossing the street.

� Mayonnaise is a sauce used for dipping your frites (French fries).

� Do not bother to bring out your umbrella even if you look out your window and see rain because it will be sunny before you getoutside. But wait, and it will start again…so ignore that.

� Most important, don’t forget to begin a conversation with “bonjour,” and at some point throw in a “s’il vous plait” or “merci.” And always give a nice big “au revoir” as you leave.

At first Eun Sook Han found it difficult to do her homeworkwithout the constant access to a computer and the Internet. In addition,the computers and connections at the Internet cafes were not as good asback home. “Being here has taught me to be less reliant on technology,”said Eun. “Besides, we are here to enjoy the city and not spend all of ourtime with our computers.

Balancing the slower pace of Paris with the busy life of a USCstudent was not easy according to Erin Underwood. “I’ve started noticingthe differences between people here and those back home,” she wrote.“Life is more relaxed in France and people seem to enjoy it more. Gettingthat big job and making a lot of money doesn’t feel as important here.”

Tyler Cesar spent most of his time at the beginning of the weekconfined to his room or at the local Internet café, furiously trying to gethis class work done before the approaching weekend. “The sixteen hoursof sun per day takes getting used to,” he said, noting that it would still be

light at 9:30 or 10:00 p.m. But once Thursday rolled around, he and hisfriends began to focus on the approaching weekend because there wereno classes on Friday. By early Thursday afternoon, assignments done,they were heading out for excursions to places like Chartres or Versaillesor Que Pasa.

Nice, Normandy, Brittany and Omaha BeachKatie Rhedin headed for Nice on her first free weekend. She rememberedin high school that she had an antique travel poster for the city and alwayswanted to visit. “Old Town Nice was so beautiful and peaceful. It was howone would picture a Mediterranean village. Each section of the old build-ings was painted another bright color on a palette ranging from terracottato jade. Huge market places reigned by day while at night, little restau-rants with provincial food opened. One even served rabbit,” she said.

For Christine Mamuad, France was partly a homecoming. Herfamily had lived in the French town of Ferney-Voltaire for three years.But she was still in awe of being in a country so rich with culture andbeauty and most memorable was a weekend excursion to thefortress/port city St. Malo and the Abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel.

“It’s important to note the remarkable difference in St. Malo’s tides,which fill and refill natural swimming pools, as well as hide and revealbridges linking nearby islands to St. Malo,” she said. “The bridge to theIle du Grand-Be, an island which hosts the tomb of writer Francois-Renede Chateaubriand, appears only when the tide is low.” As the tide wentout she anda group ofstudents rock-hopped theirway to one ofthe tidalbridges thatwas onlypartiallyexposed. Theyshed theirsocks andshoes andcrossed thepartly submergedstone path.“The reward forcrossing the bridge and climbing up the hill to the writer’s tomb was thestunning view of the fortress city of St. Malo, boasting medieval towerstopped by wind-livened flags and the surrounding coastline, no lessimpressive with its strange juxtaposition of castles and buildings andboats.”

Todd Royce and several others visited Brittany and Normandy,taking in the Caen memorial Peace Museum and the cemetery at OmahaBeach. “The portion of land directly above Omaha Beach was given tothe U.S. in recognition of the thousands of Americans who gave theirlives fighting on the beaches of Normandy,” he said. “It was nice to onceagain set foot on U.S. soil.”

Carlos Espinoza, Rockton Hill, Kimberly Mendonca,and Erin Underwood sitting at the top of a hill atSt. Malo.

student eaturef

USC ENGINEER 35

Laura, Kimberly and Katie discover a quaint,Parisian alley.

continued on next page

student eaturef

36 USC ENGINEER

Francisco Tolmasky said Omaha Beach and the cemetery was “by farthe most moving place we’ve been to thus far. It reminded me of thesacrifice our ancestors went through, and made me feel somewhatconnected with the French.”

Bicycles are EVERYWHERE in AmsterdamEven though they had barely begun to discover Paris, Brad Tallon andAdrian Lopez headed for Amsterdam. Tallon observed that everyonerides a bike around Amsterdam. “Amsterdam has even developed its ownbike traffic system, creating lanes separate from foot and street traffic

specifically for bike use,”he said. “These lanes evenhave their own stoplightsystem.” Determinedto find one of thepicturesque Dutch wind-mills, Tallon rode about25 kilometers into thecountryside until hefound one.

“I have noticed thatParisians have a defiantstreak,” wrote AdrianLim. He decided thatthe most unusualmanifestation ofstubborn Parisianeccentricity was the Paris

Plage. Plage is French forbeach. Instead of

encouraging everyone to make the trip to the sunny coastal regions ofsouthern France, a few years ago the French decided to bring the spirit ofthe beach to Paris. So for several days, lining the banks of the Seine weretruckloads of sand, beach chairs, huge, potted palm trees and Parisianslounging about in bathing suits, tanning and making sand castles. Lim, anative of Hawaii, was somewhat taken aback. “I also developed a sense ofadmiration for the Parisian spirit. The mere thought of bringing thebeach to the city deserves recognition for originality and audacity.Making it an annual festivity is just crazy.”

With an ethics paper due in her writing class, Lisa Schilken choseto focus on safety concerns, especially the Indy car racing league. Whatbetter way to do research than to try out a full-blown Formula One rac-ing simulator? The Champs-Elysees not only has the Arc de Triomphebut also a number of car galleries including several displays of FormulaOne cars. One is a mock-up connected to a race simulator. An attendanthelps you into the car, adjusts the pedals and bolts in the steering wheel.

“You get to pick any track you want and then do three laps on it.The racing is awesome, complete with feedback so the wheel will jerk ifyou go over any bumps — or go completely off the track and onto thegrass like I did!” she said. “Adrian and Holly both tried it out too. Don’tget me wrong, the Arc was fantastic, but give me a racecar any day!”

One weekend, Eun Sook Han and friends took an early morningtrain trip to London. They packed two days with frenetic sightseeing,noting that they would now be able to read the signs everywhere. They

capped the tripby taking in aperformance ofLes Miserables andin stark contrast toFrench cuisine theyhad become accus-tomed to, a meal ofgreasy fish and chips.

“I think the longerwe are here, the morewe are realizing the interconnectedness with our work as engineers andthe actual world,” said Todd Royce. “Students have found inspiration …from anything between the Bastille Day fireworks show to the engineer-ing behind food preservation in France. Assignments like this encourageus to recognize our role as engineers as well as the significantapplications of engineering in everyday life.”

Steve Funasaki expected to meet many French people, and he did.But more important, he established lifelong connections with his USCViterbi colleagues. “Anytime there is an assignment, I see people workingtogether and helping each other out. This trip has been an invaluableexperience to make friends with both students as well as the professors.”

Bon Voyage CrèmeBrûlée and GelatoEventually, and sadly, thesix-week summer programin Paris drew to a close

“I tried to squeeze inas many activities as mytime would allow,” saidLino Manansala.“Averaging about three tofour hours of sleep for thewhole week, I do notknow how I mustered theenergy for so many out-ings and so much work.”

“Not only am Icompleting two engineeringcourses, but I am also visitingall the sites I’ve only heard about or seen in pictures,” said Holly Chico.“Climbing towers, riding the Metro, eating the best crème brûlée andgelato, and roaming the many famous museums have been some of thehighlights of my trip.”

On the plane ride home, Christine Mamuad decided it had justabout been the best six weeks of her life at USC. And while she was goingto miss exploring Paris, France and Europe, and the baguettes and thepastries, she was going miss the close companionship of her fellowTrojans more. Polite acquaintances had become close friends, and for thisbranch of the Trojan Family, the Spirit of Troy would forever have aFrench accent.

The complete postcards can be found at http://viterbi.usc.edu/news/news/2004/2004_06_28_paris.htm

Brad Tallon rode 25 kilometers just tofind this picturesque Dutch windmill.

Lisa Schilken tackles a Formula One racecarsimulator by the Arc de Triumph.

It is after 10:00 p.m. in Paris, the sunhasn’t quite set and Parisians arebeginning to think about dinner.

Thought for Food

An unlikely collaboration of USC computerscientists and nutrition experts triggered bya “Eureka moment” is bringing better, morenutritious meals to the 24 million Americanswho depend on community pantries.

Eduard Hovy and Andrew Philpot of theInformation Sciences Institute (ISI) at theUSC Viterbi School of Engineering, part-nered with Susan Evans and Peter Clarke,directors of the highly honored“Wholesalers to the Hungry” program. Theycreated an instant, individualized menu andrecipe planner for low-income seniors andfamilies who receive the fresh produce theprogram supplies to local food projectsaround the nation.

In preliminary tests, the system called“Quick! Help for Meals,” has showndramatic results in boosting pantry clients’use of fresh produce, “a critical element inimproving their nutrition,” says Evans, aresearch scientist at the USC Keck School ofMedicine’s Institute for Prevention Research.

“Hundreds of studies show that freshproduce in the diet helps people avoid orreduce obesity, which is linked to heartdisease, diabetes and many other illnesses,as well as early death and increased costs ofhealth care,” says Clarke, director of theCenter for Health & MedicalCommunication at USC’s Annenberg

School for Communication. “Fewer than one out of four persons

on average currently meet the recommend-ed minimum five servings per day of fruitsand vegetables. Low-income people scoreeven lower.

“The stores where they must shopdo not carry much produce, and price itexpensively when they do. Many of theworking poor have little time available forcooking and often have not learned culinaryskills at a parent’s knee. They lead stressfullives. Only well-designed and individualizedrecipes and nutrition tips will help break adependence on convenience foods that arehigh in fats, salt and sugar,” Clarke explains.

Supported by ISI, the National ScienceFoundation and Kraft Foods, “Quick! Helpfor Meals” will receive further testing thisfall. If results on immediate consumption offresh produce continue to be as positive asthey have been, field trials will be expandedto determine if “Quick! Help” improveslong-term dietary habits in households thatreceive the service.

Here is how the system works at the“Wholesalers to the Hungry” program:

While clients are waiting in line,volunteers collect information from themand enter it into a computer. Recipients arequeried about their cooking skills (beginner?

advanced?), available kitchen utensils(steamer? microwave?), householdcomposition (children? seniors?), foodpreferences (garlic?).

By the time the recipients have gonethrough the line and picked up their food,a detailed document is waiting for each ofthem with illustrated recipes tailored to theirspecific, individual needs, in English orSpanish.

More than 7,000 community pantriesnationwide could eventually become outletsfor teaching people how to prepare simpleand tasty meals. Just creating a big catchallcompendium — or even several differenteditions — didn’t work. “What we foundwas if people didn’t find what they neededimmediately, they assumed it wasn’t thereand tossed the flyer away.”

Compounding the problem, charitablefood pantries themselves got only a fewhours notice about which fresh foods wouldbe available that day. And if all they get thatday is broccoli, or carrots, suitable recipeswould have to be found. “We needed toinvent an information tool that would adaptimmediately to ever-changing supplies offood,” says Evans.

The bottom line: not one or twodifferent types of flyers, but flyers that could

thot opic

USC ENGINEER 37

by Eric Mankin

Thought for Food Computer Science Provides a SurprisinglyEffective Boost for Better Nutrition

Peter Clarke, Susan Evans and Eduard Hovy

continued on next pagePho

tos

by M

ax S

.Ger

ber

38 USC ENGINEER

thot opic

be individually produced, on the spot, towhatever needs and interests the foodrecipients expressed.

“We knew what type of informa-tion product we needed, but we didn’tknow how to do it,” says Evans. “Thenwe attended a presentation by EduardHovy in 2002.”

Hovy, an expert on computer-basedlanguage translation, text summarizationand web searches, was one of a numberof scientists presenting talks to KeckSchool faculty on activities at the USCViterbi School’s Information SciencesInstitute located in Marina del Rey. Hovydescribed computer software that couldproduce customized output on a variety oftopics, tailored to the information needed,the situation, and the user.

“We looked at each other and said,‘Eureka,’ Evans recalls. The team sat downwith Hovy, and began to explore variousdesigns, with research associate AndrewPhilpot working on the programming.Within six months Philpot had produced adraft version of “Quick! Help.”

“Even though the technology is triedand true,” says Philpot, “the engineeringrequirements were tougher in a sense. A sys-tem which works great when I demo it in thelab takes lots of loving care to work reliablyfor a coordinator in the field.” Quick! Help’slayout involves not just text but graphics,and includes a number of features thatrecognizes the low literacy of many users:

� A customized cover, with the nameof the recipient, and an illustration suchas a snapshot of the recipient and his orher children, or a religious figure.� Pictures of finished servings or keysteps in their preparation. Recipes alsohighlight useful hints about whetheritems make good leftovers, can befrozen, may be made in advance, are“kid friendly,” and more.

Clarke and Evans are pleased with theearly results testing the system’s effective-ness. For example, a recent study includedthree groups of recipients, all of whomreceived free produce. One group (controlgroup) received no information about foodpreparation; one group (generic group)received all recipes in the Quick! Helpdatabase. The final group (tailored group)got the individualized Quick! Help flyers.

“In interviews five days after receivingfood, recipients of the individually-tailoredQuick! Help recipes said that they had notonly used a recipe, but had used many orall the recipes, one after another. A muchlarger percentage (90 percent, versus 60percent) read the customized flyer than readthe generic one.

Twice as many recipients of the cus-tomized flyers were able to recall a recipefrom it. Individualized versions of Quick!Help motivated household cooks to trydifferent preparations, important forstimulating people’s interests in a food, andto use the perishable foods quickly, beforethey could spoil.

“We found no differences in use offresh produce between the control and thegeneric groups,” says Clarke, “suggestingthat giving typical flyers and giving nothinglead to the same results.”

“We called our food recipients again —six weeks after they had gotten flyers,” saysEvans. “We didn’t expect this, but we foundthat many of them still had and were stillusing the individualized Quick! Help materialprinted out for them. Households given thegeneric Quick! Help had discarded it.”

The Quick! Help technology is fairlysimple at heart, says Hovy. The mostcomplex step in building a tailored menu isdeveloping the models of the possible users,and associating each text fragment with justthe appropriate reader characteristics. Oncethis has been done, the software can stitchtogether hundreds or even thousands ofvariants of the basic recipe.

This technology, which was first

developed by Hovy and colleagues at theUniversities of Toronto and Waterloo inCanada, has been patented, and is thebasis of a small company in Canadawhich sold a version of the system to acompany supporting people who stopsmoking.

“Just as for Quick! Help recipes,individualized daily or weekly letters toencourage people to stick with theirnon-smoking regimens are significantlymore effective than generic one-size-fits-all reminders,” says Hovy. “It would be elementary to extend

Quick! Help to allow people at supermarketsto request individualized recipes whilethey wait in checkout lines. In fact, thistechnology is the logical next step, frombroadcast to narrowcast to individualizedpointcasting of information. You might oneday receive ads that were made exactly andspecifically for you, created by a Quick! Helpsystem of the future,” Hovy says.

The USC Office of the Provost, whichencourages interdisciplinary work, recentlyrewarded this project with a stipend for anundergraduate research assistant.

“What we are exploring now,” saysEvans, “is the possibility that if we canoffer a broad enough range of customizedchoices, we can help people change theirdiets in a healthier direction.”

Much remains to be done. “Thissummer, in July 2004, we rolled out thetablet PC-based system, with the capabilityto take digital pictures of the client (or theirchildren) and insert them into the outputbrochure,” says Philpot.

“We also need fast, high quality printcapability — lasers are too fragile andexpensive, inkjets too slow. We’d like tohave wireless communication between thetablets and the printers. We also need toadd many more food items, and anotherarea of work will be an extension foradditional languages — Mandarin Chinese,Russian, Armenian, Tagalog and whateverother languages are useful in thedeployment neighborhoods.”

But Philpot is glad to have a chance towork on the problems. “Underlying it all,the idea that technology can make a realdifference in the lives of food pantry clientscontinues to serve as a strong motivation forinvolvement,” he says.

At the last field trial, a volunteer collects informationthat will be used to prepare the customized Quick!Helpbrochure that a pantry client will receive along withfood at Share Our Food in Costa Mesa.

Albert A. Dorman, MSCE ‘62 Civil Engineering’s Renaissance ManAlbert A. Dorman may be one of the mostillustrious and intriguing civil engineers inAmerica. The rapidly ascending trajectory ofhis half-century career spans work as anengineering consultant; CEO of one of the firstmultidisciplinary architecture/engineeringfirms to practice worldwide; and chair of oneof the 200 largest private companies inAmerica. Along the way, he has worked on allseven continents, including Antarctica, and hasbeen registered as a professional engineer ineight states and as an architect in bothCalifornia and Oregon.

His honors are equally exceptional.Dorman has been elected to the NationalAcademy of Engineering, and is an HonoraryMember of the American Society of CivilEngineers (ASCE), as well as a Fellow of theAmerican Institute of Architects (FAIA) — theonly individual ever to have simultaneouslyachieved this dual distinction. He has served aspresident of the Consulting EngineersAssociation of California and the Los AngelesSection of ASCE, and has authored dozens ofpapers on an impressive range of subjects. In2000, Dorman received the ASCE’s inauguralOPAL Award for Outstanding LifetimeAchievement in Leadership.

Yet his many accomplishments andaccolades hide an even more remarkable storyof a strikingly modest man who has alwaysencouraged others to stand in the spotlight,while he worked to make the world abetter place.

“I grew up in a small Eastern town, whichtaught me about ethics and morality, and gaveme a strong love of nature,” Dorman explains.“My father owned a country store where Ihelped behind the counter. I learned thateverybody you meet — from the president ofthe bank to the man who pumps your gas —has something to teach you, if you’re willingto listen.”

Dorman was a good listener — and agood student, too. He served as student bodypresident and yearbook editor at the NewJersey Institute of Technology, graduating firstin his class with a B.S. degree in mechanicalengineering. “While I’ve also always loved the‘liberal arts,’ I chose to pursue engineeringbecause I wanted to make use of mymathematical, analytical and scientificabilities,” Dorman says.

After graduation, he served in the ArmyCorps of Engineers at the end of World War II.He soon realized that mechanical andindustrial engineering wasn’t a good fit forhim. “It was all “things” related, and I neededto deal with society and interact with people,”Dorman says. “Plus, I wanted to workoutdoors. I knew that if I switched to civilengineering, I’d be working on highways, dams,structures and other outdoor projects.”

Dorman saw California as an enticingnew frontier, and moved after completing hismilitary service. He worked for the CaliforniaState Division of Highways (Caltrans) on theSanta Ana Freeway, and then for the City ofLos Angeles Department of Building andSafety. “The latter in particular was a marvelousplace to work after the war,” he says.“Construction was booming, and I had anopportunity to plan-check the work of the bestarchitects and structural engineers on some ofthe more important buildings in Los Angeles,and to learn from their calculations, designsand details. Many of Southern California’stop structural engineers went through thedepartment at that time.”

Dorman also took the opportunity toenroll in USC’s civil engineering program. Heretains particularly fond memories of ProfessorDavid Wilson: “Professor Wilson was reveredby the people who studied structures. He wasinfluential and warm and I made a point of

taking his courses. I later became a member ofthe David Wilson Associates at USC and stillstay in touch with former students I met there.”It should be noted that Dorman maintained aperfect 4.0 average throughout his engineeringstudies at USC.

The USC engineering school honoredDorman with its Distinguished AlumnusAward in 1976. He has stayed involved withthe University by serving on the boards ofcouncilors for Performing Arts and the Schoolof Policy, Planning and Development (formerlyUrban & Regional Planning). He just recentlyaccepted Dean Nikias’ invitation to serve on theViterbi School’s board of councilors and willmake an impressive addition.

“I should have graduated from USC in1951,” Dorman recalls, “but I was one courseshort of my [master’s] degree when I moved tothe San Joaquin Valley with my wife, whom Imet when she was a graduate student at UCLA.It wasn’t until a decade later that I finallydecided to commute to Los Angeles for onesemester, to complete my degree.”

Joan and Albert Dorman raised their threechildren, Laura, Kenneth and Richard, inHanford, a town of then 10,000 residents inCentral California. There, Dorman founded aone-man civil engineering firm and was laterjoined by USC architecture alumnus LawrenceAlexander, to form an additional firm,Alexander & Dorman, Architect/Engineer.

A quiet and rather small-town modestysurrounds Dorman’s life and professionalcareer. In 1954, he was invited to work on anew theme park that was to be built inAnaheim. Walt Disney had hired electricalengineer J. S. Hamel, “the best lighting engineerin America,” as consulting engineer on thegroundbreaking Disneyland project. Hameltold Disney that he would need to work witha civil engineer in order to design the park’sgrading railroad, streets and otherinfrastructure. Hamel recommended Dorman,but cautioned Disney that “he’s only 28.” Towhich Disney reportedly replied, “I was 26when I introduced Mickey Mouse.” And soHamel & Dorman was formed.

“It was an immense undertaking,”Dorman recalls. “The project was scheduled to

USC ENGINEER 39

palumni rofile

Albert A. Dorman

continued on page 44

When A.V. Balakrishnan came to the UnitedStates in 1947, he wanted to become aHollywood sound engineer. The film industrywas at its peak, nearly a decade after the riseof sound film production, and was releasingprofitable wartime favorites one after another.But Hollywood was closed to anyone who wasnot a member of the guild.

“It was nearly impossible to get a job, soI switched to electrical engineering because itwas very close to sound engineering,” saysBalakrishnan, who earned his first USCmaster’s degree in cinema in 1949. Then heturned to electrical engineering, hooked upwith USC Professor R. Meigs, and got a jobas a laboratory assistant, earning about $200a month. It paid the bills, and in 1950, he hadearned a second master’s degree, this time inelectrical engineering.

“I would have gone into a Ph.D. programin electrical engineering from there, but USCdidn’t have one, so I enrolled in a doctoralprogram in mathematics,” Balakrishnan says.One of his professors, R. S. Phillips, aninternationally acclaimed mathematicianfrom MIT, recognized Balakrishnan’smathematical abilities and encouraged himto stay in the field.

“Bal was so gifted in mathematics,” says hiswife Sophia, a Russian-born linguist who worksas an academic translator, “but like mosttheoreticians, he’s always creating and destroy-ing his ideas. He’ll come up with an equation toexplain ‘air flutter’ at 50,000 feet, and then tellme 30 minutes later why it won’t work. Thenhe’s on to a new way of solving the problem.”

Balakrishnan considers himself an appliedmathematician, interested in pure research forresearch’s sake. A professor of mathematics andelectrical engineering at UCLA, and directorof the NASA-UCLA Flight Systems ResearchCenter, he specializes in problems ofaerodynamic stability and control. Much of histheoretical work forms the basis of computermodels, which are used to test the control ofunmanned aircraft flying through turbulentconditions.

From cinema to aerodynamics

He never imagined he would wind up inaerodynamics. Growing up in Chennai

(Madras) on the southeast coast of India,he entered the University of Madras inthe early 1940s and won a scholarshipcompetition from the Indian governmentto study in the United States and learn toproduce documentaries.

“The problem was that the job theyhad waiting for me at the Indian Institute ofScience just didn’t measure up to theopportunities I knew I would have with aPh.D. in the U.S.,” he says. “So I stayed.”

After earning his Ph.D. in 1954, hewent to the east coast and worked in radarat RCA for two years. “That was a hotbed ofactivity at the time, but I didn’t want to stayin Camden because it was known only forCampbell’s soup,” he laughs. “Instead, Ijoined the wagon going west, like so manyother engineers did.”

He became a visiting assistantprofessor in USC’s mathematicsdepartment in 1956. A year later, he took ajob at Space Technology Laboratories. Then in1961, his ship came in; he accepted a job as anassociate professor of electrical engineering atUCLA. One of the first people he hired wasAndrew Viterbi (Ph.D. EE ’62), namesake ofUSC’s engineering school.

“Andy was very good at spread spectrumloops for transmitting satellite signals, so weworked together,” he says. “Until that time,most of the work in this field was concentratedon the east coast, at MIT and Bell Labs. Controltheory was evolving into guidance andcommunications systems for spacecraft. Wewere the pioneers of that era on the west coast.”

In 1965 he became a full professor ofmathematics at UCLA, and in 1969 he becamefounding chairman of UCLA’s department ofsystem science. In 1986, he was named directorof the NASA-UCLA Flight Systems ResearchCenter. While he was making a name forhimself, Balakrishnan’s son, David, was doingthe same in music. A talented violinist, Davidattended The Juilliard School in New York City,then founded a jazz group, the Turtle IslandString Quartet, which has earned severalGrammy nominations. “Usually when someoneknows my name, they think it’s David, not me,”Balakrishnan quips.

His four other children are just as

accomplished. Jerry is a professor ofpsychology at Purdue University; Sally is acomputer scientist; Kenneth has a Ph.D. inlinguistics from Yale University; and Robertworks in the seafood industry in Los Angeles.

Flight tests at Dryden

Balakrishnan pulls out a Christmas card with apicture of his two grandchildren on the front.“They’re about as American as they come,” hejokes. He does not have much time to see them,not with his teaching, research and frequenttrips to the NASA-Dryden Flight ResearchCenter in Lancaster, California. He and hiscolleagues at UCLA collaborate with the NASAcenter on research in computation fluiddynamics, which addresses problems of airflow, velocity, turbulence and wing flutter.The pressure is on to flight test dozens of next-generation aircraft coming online in everyshape, size and weight imaginable.

The defense industry, which allocated $2billion this year to develop and buy moreunmanned aircraft, has taken a special interestin this testing. Just recently, the Pentagonboldly announced its vision to replace a third

A.V. Balakrishnan, MSEE ’50, Ph.D. Mathematics ’54

palumni rofile

A.V. Balakrishnan

40 USC ENGINEER

continued on page 45

USC ENGINEER 41

palumni rofile

Once the first jet airliners became reality,Arthur Adamson was thrust into thedevelopment of advanced jet engines atGeneral Electric Corporation. Much of thefrenzy centered on high-thrust jet engines —called turbofans — for commercial aircraft thatwould be larger than any ever built.

The TF39 turbofan, designed by GEfor large military transport planes, haddemonstrated that bypass six turbofans couldbe built in large sizes and with very high fuelefficiency. They outperformed every jet engineof the day and provided the basis for GE’s newcommercial transport engines.

“The TF39 engine could deliver the powerand fuel efficiency needed for intercontinentaltransport of passengers and freight,” Adamsonexplains from his home in Cincinnati, Ohio.“But it required numerous modifications forcommercial use. My job was to coordinate thetechnical teams as they applied the military’sknow-how in engine design to commercialaircraft.”

Before anyone knew it, the industry hadgiven birth to a new transport plane — thejumbo jet.

“It shrank the world from seven days toseven hours for a transatlantic crossing,”Adamson says.

GE’s first large commercial turbofan wasused on the new McDonnell Douglas DC-10turbofan jumbo jets; Boeing followed suit withits spacious 747s and Air Bus A300, the firsttwin-engine, wide-body airliner in the world.Within a few years, intercontinental travel hadskyrocketed and Adamson had earned hiswings in the race to establish turbofans as thedominant engine type in commercial aviation.

Engines and machinery had always beenpart of Adamson’s life, clear back to hisboyhood on a farm in Coffeyville, Kansas.He said he never had a doubt that he wouldbecome a mechanical engineer.

“Farm boys always know a lot aboutmachinery,” he says. “I liked airplanes inparticular. The engines are more fun thananything else.”

It didn’t take long before Adamsonsuccumbed to the call. After high school, hespent two years at a junior college in Coffeyvillebefore packing his bags in 1939 and heading

for Los Angeles. He moved in with his aunt andenrolled in USC’s mechanical engineeringprogram, supporting himself with summeraircraft plant jobs and a part-time job in theengineering school’s mechanical engineeringlab. Sydney Duncan became his favoriteprofessor; Thomas “Pop” Taylor Eyre, thenchair of the mechanical engineeringdepartment, was his inspiration.

He joined GE a month after graduation.There he spent his early years working onrocket and jet engine programs in Philadelphiaand then Schenectady, New York. Whileworking, he enrolled in GE’s advancedtechnical training program, which allowed himto move into technical leadership positions.

In 1955, he moved to Evendale, Ohio, asuburb of Cincinnati, to oversee rocket enginedevelopment. In 1959, while the countryscrambled to catch up with Sputnik-era launchcapabilities, Adamson became chief engineer ofa high-profile rocket engine program, whichresulted in the first manmade satellite into anEarth-orbiting trajectory.

“His creative genius led to several aircraftengine programs,” says USC classmate andfellow GE engineer Robert Hoffman(BSME ’41), a resident of Redwood City,California. “One of them was the XV-5A lift fanfor vertical launch, high-speed helicopters.That was a very rewarding program and a greatvehicle to see take off.”

In Lynn, Ohio, Adamson moved on to theGE 12 small turboshaft demonstrator, whichbecame the very successful T700/CT7 enginefamily and helped him win GE’s SteinmetzAward for “concepts in developing electricmotors, guided missile autopilots, electroniccontrols, rocket propulsion systems and theCF6, T700 and CF34 jet engines.” He alsohelped develop the TF 34 family of turbofanengines used in the Navy’s anti-submarineaircraft, the Warthog, and in regionalcommercial passenger jets.

Through the years, Adamson acquiredsome of the most prestigious aviation industryawards around. He is the recipient of GE’sPerry T. Egbert, Jr. Memorial Award “foroutstanding creativity in the developmentof the CF6-50 Commercial Jet Engine,” andthe Franklin Kolk SAE award for service to

aviation. He is also in GE’s Propulsion Hall ofFame and was elected to the National Academyof Engineering.

Staying busy even in retirement, Adamsonis a longtime wood carver. He also plays tennisevery day, likes to do computer programming“just for fun,” and is hooked on pre-1960movies. But most of all, he loves hopping ona plane for the east coast to be near his twochildren, five grandchildren and two greatgrandchildren. That plus the fact he justcan’t stay away from the drone of those ultrahigh-speed turbofans!

Adamson and his wife, Florence, ontheir way to a game of tennis in 2001.

Arthur P. Adamson, BSME ‘41

Arthur P. Adamson in his youngerdays at General Electric.

42 USC ENGINEER

Cromwell Field at USC won’t look any differentwhen it reopens in March 2005 for the TrojanInvitational Track Meet, but what lies beneaththe green carpet of newly planted grass will bebrand new, and cool.

Ask Aimee Lopez, the Turner Constructionproject manager for a new 3-million gallonwater storage tank built 40 feet below the field.The new thermal energy storage (TES) systembrought her back to USC five years after herown graduation and has given her an opportu-nity to “thank USC” for her undergraduateeducation and early career success.

“This is my mark on the world,” says thequick-spoken, petite Latina woman, beaminglike a mother with her newborn child. “Thisis the culmination of all my education andtraining in engineering, something that will lastforever and reflects the latest techniques in civilengineering. It’s a landmark and I’m veryhappy that I was able to work on the project.”

Unbeknownst to spectators in the 3,000-seat stadium, or to the athletes racing across itseight, 42-inch Rekortan surfaced lanes, theinvisible water storage tank will be doing its

thing: circulating chilled water to all of the airconditioning systems on campus, says RichardSnouffer, director of Energy Services in USC’sfacilities management office. TES is expectedto save USC about 4,500 megawatt-hours ofelectricity a year and roughly $400,000annually in electricity costs.

“Once this tank is buried, we never wantto see it again,” Snouffer says.

“This tank is designed to last forever,”Lopez adds.

Measuring 123 feet in diameter andextending 40 feet underground, TESincorporates the latest construction materialsand state-of-the-art design for water storagetanks. It was built with 2,310 cubic yards ofpre-stressed concrete and 484,000 pounds ofsteel reinforcements to safeguard it from cracksor damage incurred during an earthquake.

“The cold water will be circulated dayand night to air conditioning systems all overcampus, and used in some of the newbuildings, such as Tutor Hall of Engineeringand the new molecular biology building,”Snouffer explains. “The project actuallyexpands the capacity of the campus’s existingchilled water system and reduces our utilitycosts in the long run.”

TES consists of two components,according to Lopez: the chilled water storagetank under Cromwell Field and a new pumphouse in the basement of Grace Ford Salvatori

Hall. Construction workershad to tunnel 17 feetunderground to connecttwo 24-inch-diameterpipelines from the watertank to the pump house.

“The warmer watercoming back through thesepipes will have a chance tochill overnight before it isrecirculated,” Snoufferdescribes. “That allows us toshift a lot of our kilowatt-hour usage to off-peakhours — at night — whenelectricity is less expensive.That’s the beauty of thesystem.”

Sensors suspendedin the tank will monitor water temperatureand height. A computer energy controlmanagement system will alert facilitiespersonnel if anything goes awry.

Lopez has been overseeing the projectfrom a trailer next to Grace Ford Salvatori Hallsince the start of the preconstruction phase last

spring. Before the excavation could begin,construction crews had to build a bridge overthe track for dump trucks, cranes and otherheavy equipment moving on and off the field.

“It would cost more than a million dollarsto replace that track,” Snouffer says. “Thebridge, which is about 4 feet above the track,turned out to be the most viable way ofprotecting it.”

Lopez isn’t new to construction — shegrew up with it. Her father, a migrant worker,built apartments in the small agriculturalcommunity of Huron, California, about 100miles southwest of Fresno, when he was notout working in the fields.

“Since I was very small, I always wantedto be a builder of some type,” she says. “At first,I was interested in architecture, but then, seeingmy dad building apartments got me interestedin construction. So I told him that one dayI wanted to build the apartments for him.I wanted to make his dream come true.”

Lopez liked science and math. In middleschool, she was selected to enter an advancedsummer school program — the Coalinga-Huron House for the Academically TalentedDevelopment Program — for children giftedin math and science. She spent six summerson the UC Berkeley campus, taking college-level advanced placement courses. She appliedto a variety of college engineering schools,including “some of the state schools, CalPolytechnic University in San Luis Obispo,UCLA, Berkeley and some of the other UC

Aimee Lopez, BSCE ‘99

Aimee Lopez

continued on page 46

USC’s new thermal energy storage system under constructionin Cromwell Field.

palumni rofile

When Trojan Dad Asad Madni ran into hisdistinguished old friend, George Bekey, on aflight in 2002 from San Francisco to LosAngeles, their chance reunion turned quickly totechno talk and a new partnership.

“I asked him to serve on my company’sscientific advisory board, which heenthusiastically accepted,” says Madni,president and chief operating officer of BEITechnologies, Inc., a leading manufacturer of

precision sensors, motors and actuators forautomotive stability control systems andcommercial, industrial and aerospaceindustries. “Then I started to learn all aboutUSC’s engineering school and its progressiveattitude toward reaching out to industry.”

Before long, Madni had accepted areciprocal offer from Professor Cauligi S.Raghavendra, chair of electrical engineeringsystems department and Bekey, emeritus pro-fessor of computer science, electrical engineer-ing and biomedical engineering, and founderof USC's robotics research program, to jointhe advisory board of the Viterbi School'selectrical engineering department. His paternalinterests, with son Jamal, now entering histhird year of computer engineering/computerscience, and professional interests in wirelessand embedded sensors fueled a desire to “helpmold engineering curricula at USC that wouldhave a direct impact on him.”

The Perfect MatchMadni was a perfect match for USC’s electrical

engineering advisory board, bringing practicali-ty and balance to decisions about thedepartment’s academic programs. Hiscompany — BEI Technologies, Inc. — is theworld’s largest independent supplier of yaw ratesensors for automotive stability control and iswell known for its revolutionary MEMS-basedquartz rate sensor, the GyroChip®. Theminiature sensor is used by a wide variety ofinternational car manufacturers, includingGeneral Motors, Ford, BMW, Mercedes, Volvo,Toyota and Honda, to increase stability andprevent rollovers. The same technologydeveloped at BEI has been used to upgradeBoeing 737 airplanes, as well as to stabilizeNASA’s 1997 Sojourner rover while it traversedrocks and hills on the surface of Mars.

“We are striving to forge new partnershipswith industry, so we were truly fortunate tohave Dr. Madni join the board,” says Bekey.“He is a technically sophisticated executive andgets very involved in helping us find solutionsto our technical problems. It’s an idealconnection for a research laboratory.”

The Place to BeMadni came to the United States in 1966 whenhe was a teenager because he believed that “thiswas the place where science and technologyhad its basis and its future.” He attendedUCLA, where he earned his B.S. and M.S.degrees in electrical engineering. At CaliforniaCoast University he earned his Ph.D. inelectrical engineering and he graduated fromthe MIT Sloan School of Managementprogram for the senior executives. In 1975, hejoined Systron Donner Corporation, where heheld senior technical and executive positionsfor 18 years, eventually becoming chairman,president and CEO. Over the years, he saw thequickening pace of competition — withcompanies scrambling over each other to befirst on the market with new technologies. Hesays it’s not about to let up. “Students will needevery advantage they can get to compete,” theTrojan Dad says. “They’ll be judged on thebreadth and depth of knowledge they have inengineering, as well as on the experiencethey’ve gained working in industry.”

But Madni isn’t about to let up, either. Tosupport USC, his company donated equipment

to several departments in the School. In 2004,the Robotic Embedded Systems Lab (RESL)received a full inertial navigation system andangular rate sensors — “the best around,” sayslab director Gaurav Sukhatme — to developa robotic helicopter and a new hopping,self-balancing robot.

Last fall, Madni’s interests led to somecompany-sponsored research. After meetingwith researchers to learn about their areasof specialization, he seized on some verypromising work in the development of next-generation miniaturized silicon gyroscopes,and then decided to sponsor the work. “Thefaculty is accomplished and they work outside-of-the-box,” Madni says. “I was very impressedwith the research, because it’s practical anddown-to-earth, focusing on technologies thathave an obvious impact on society.”

New R&D ParadigmMadni believes research and development willbe driven by a new paradigm in years to come,one in which speed to commercializationbecomes the hallmark of success.“Commercializing products in a timely andcost-effective way will be the key,” he says.“Universities and industry will have to partnerto stay competitive in the future.” Fortunately,he says, Viterbi School faculty are “refreshinglyopen and conducive” to industry partnerships.That attitude will serve students well, “becausethey’ll get some exposure to industry problemsand issues rather than becoming isolated intheir ivory towers.”

He adds that parents of engineering stu-dents should get involved with Viterbi Schoolevents and networking opportunities, especiallyif they work in the industry, so that they canhelp support the school’s goals. “We need tobuild many more partnerships with businessand by doing that, we will be able to createmore internships for our students, moreopportunities for research collaboration, andmore networking opportunities for students.We have the best of all worlds at USC to makethat happen,” he says. “Open-minded faculty,brilliant new faculty coming on board, verybright students and one of the most strategiclocations in the world for technologicalinnovation.”

USC ENGINEER 43

pparent rofile

Asad M. Madni, President and COO, BEI Technologies, Inc.

Asad M. Madni

44 USC ENGINEER

palumni rofile

be completed in 14 months, including landclearing, design and construction. Nothing likeit had been attempted before. Rivers had to becreated, a railway built. For example, it was thefirst time a paddle wheel steamboat had beenmounted on a rail; no one had ever had to parkthat many cars before; and on and on.Everything was new and innovative. And theburden of professional responsibility wasalmost overwhelming — my seal and signaturewere on the plans!”

“My final inspection was one week beforethe park’s official opening in July, 1955,”Dorman recalls. “We made it — but it took tenyears before I could bring myself to set footthere again, this time with my family.”

Disneyland opened to enormous fanfare,and Dorman returned home. But he made thedecision not to talk about his involvement withthe project. “I just wanted to raise my kids ina small town,” he explains. “I didn’t wantpotential clients in the Central Valley to thinktheir projects would be too small for me. Asimportantly, I wanted to be fully identified withthe community and my neighbors.” So hequietly resumed his private practice. He alsoserved as city engineer for two of the threecities in Kings County, and designed projectsthat ranged from schools to subdivisions. In hisspare time, he was a partner in farming 800acres and was deeply involved in communityactivities.

“I’ve been a student of one sort or anotherall my life,” Dorman says. “As an engineerworking with architects, it appeared to methat they were the ones making the majordesign decisions, which the engineers thenimplemented. So I decided to train myself tobe an architect, and became licensed in thatfield also. I then found out it was the ownerwho was making what I thought were theultimate decisions, and I decided to learnwhat owners faced. I became involved as anowner in residential, commercial and industrialproperties.

“After all that, I discovered that it was thelenders who made the decisions: the kinds ofprojects they would finance, and how muchthey would lend. I helped found a savings andloan association in Hanford and served as its

chairman so I could learn about lenders’criteria. Incidentally, that S&L was acquired byone of the largest institutions in the U.S., andI was privileged to serve on its board ofdirectors.”

Dorman’s professional career as anengineer has been equally astute. In 1965,Dorman’s Hanford civil engineering firm,by then good-sized, was acquired by thearchitecture/engineering firm Daniel, Mann,Johnson & Mendenhall of Los Angeles, two ofwhose principals — Phil Daniel and KenJohnson — were also USC alumni. Dormanwas asked to serve as an engineering projectdirector of DMJM, and within ten yearshe became chief operating officer, thenpresident/CEO and finally chairman/CEO.

Dorman continued to run DMJM afterit was acquired by Ashland Oil in 1984, andmanaged the resulting Ashland subsidiary,which soon acquired other engineering andarchitectural firms. Six years later, all thesecompanies were bought back from Ashland,creating AECOM Technology Corporation,which went on to become the parent companyof many of the nation’s oldest and mostdistinguished engineering, architecture andprogram management firms.

Dorman’s vision for AECOM was to createan almost invisible parent company, where eachoperating company would excel in its ownfield, under its own name, with independentstaff that was given credit for their company’ssuccess. “I had never met a Marine who said,‘I’m a DOD guy,’” Dorman explains. “Theywere always a Marine. You can’t truly identifywith too large an entity.”

It’s a principle that has worked well:AECOM now ranks among the top five inthe world in its fields. Its numerous majorconsulting firms, 100 subsidiaries and 18,000employees currently generate more than $1.8billion in revenue annually for its employee-owners. “I’m pleased that AECOM has beenable to create some financially secure people,”Dorman says with typical modesty.

He notes with pleasure that the lateJames H. Zumberge, USC’s ninth president,served as a special consultant to one of theAECOM companies, which held a ten-year

contract to support all U.S. scientific researchfacilities in Antarctica. “Jim was an internation-ally acclaimed geologist, and had importantgeologic features in Antarctica named afterhim,” Doman explains. “A wonderful man, andwe were glad to have him helping us.” Dormanis also pleased that USC’s current president is

an engineer, adding that “Dr. [Steven] Sampleand I were classmates in the National Academyof Engineering. He has done a simply out-standing job at USC.”

Dorman voluntarily retired as chair andCEO of AECOM in 1992, after he turned 65.“I would have enjoyed being there forever,” hemuses. “But I don’t believe that young, dynamicpeople in any organization should be leftwondering what their future could be. Ireminded myself what it would be like if I werea young Al Dorman, 40 or 50 years old, and thetop person gave no indication of retiring. Youhave to create an upward draft, with opportuni-ties for lots of people to grow, if you’re going tobe fair to your people and the company.”

Al Dorman carried the Olympic torch onits journey through Los Angeles for the1984 Olympic Games. “In retrospect, it wassymbolic of my efforts to ‘pass the torch’ tothe next generation,” he says.

Dorman continued from page 39

continued on next page

palumni rofile

USC ENGINEER 45

of the nation’s military aircraft with pilot-less planes by 2010.

So the testing goes on, but not with-out a disaster here or there. When thathappens, Balakrishnan is usually one ofthe experts called upon to evaluate specificproblems. He consulted with industry repson some of the issues arising from thecrash of a Helios prototype aircraft, aremotely piloted, propeller-driven wingedaircraft that plunged into the PacificOcean in 2003 a few minutes after launch.The accident raised a lot of concern aboutflight safety and how aviation expertscould make unmanned aircraft as safe tofly as piloted airplanes.

Balakrishnan has been working withthe NASA-Dryden test facility since the1970s to develop flight test data reductiontechniques and to help bring NASA andthe research community into closer collab-oration. In 1986, his efforts were rewardedwhen he received NASA’s Public ServiceMedal for his “exceptional continuous the-oretical and administrative contributionsin establishing the UCLA-NASA FlightSystems Research Center.” In 2001, hereceived the Richard E. Bellman ControlHeritage Award — the highest profession-al achievement award given to control sys-tems engineers and scientists — for hiscontributions to the theory and applica-tion of automatic control. Last April,Balakrishnan received the USC ViterbiSchool’s Distinguished Alumni Award inAcademia.

If that is not enough, he keeps hishand in industry too, working as a consult-ant for Optimization Software, Inc. Amonghis professional memberships,Balakrishnan is a lifetime Fellow of IEEEand a member of the InternationalScientific Radio Union. He is also theauthor of ten books, more than 200 scien-tific papers and has earned dozens moreawards. All the while, he never lets any of itinterfere with his daily game of badminton— ever the lover of aerodynamics!

Balakrishnan continued from page 40Dorman continued from page 44

“My successor — Richard G. Newman, acolleague for 14 years — has done wonderfullycarrying the company forward,” Dorman adds.“I believe he is largely responsible for AECOM’sgrowth and success.” The company continues toprovide Dorman an office and support, in hisrole as founding chairman.

Dorman reflects thoughtfully on his longcareer. “I’ve practiced in California for one-third of the state’s history,” he notes. “It’s beenan exciting time. The population has tripled —from less than 10 million to more than30 million — and civil engineers created muchof California’s infrastructure, building freeways,water supplies, airports and much else we takefor granted. I think California owes a great dealto its civil engineers. Parenthetically, abouthalf the state’s civil engineers are in publicemployment. That’s very significant for ourprofession, and for society, and I’d like to seecivil engineers be recognized more widely fortheir contributions.”

Dorman believes firmly that engineersshould participate at all levels in a variety ofactivities, to make their particular expertiseavailable not just within the profession, butthroughout society. In his case, he has acceptedleadership roles with numerous civic andnon-profit institutions that range from theCalifornia Chamber of Commerce to theNational Foundation for the Advancement ofthe Arts, and he has also served on the board ofdirectors of three publicly traded companies.

Making a difference has always been adriving force for Dorman. “My family has atradition of giving back to the community andsharing,” he says. “Some environmentalists saywe should ‘leave no footprint behind.’ I fullyconcur for wilderness areas. But I’d like to thinkthat my life has been devoted to the opposite:creating ‘footprints’ that improve the qualityof life through such tangibles as safe drinkingwater, waste disposal, better health care,economic development, education and safertransportation for us and our children.”

Future generations are indeed very muchon Dorman’s mind. He endowed the AlbertDorman Honors College at the New JerseyInstitute of Technology to enable bright but

Balakrishnan and his wife, Sophia, in hisUCLA office.

Balakrishnan monitors flight test data at theNASA-Dryden Flight Research Center inLancaster, Calif.

Andrew Viterbi presented Balakrishnan witha distinguished alumnus award last spring.

continued on page 46

46 USC ENGINEER

palumni rofile

Lopez continued from page 42

campuses up north.” Then she attended aMESA (Mathematics, Engineering, ScienceAssociation) college orientation program,where she met Larry Lim, director ofpre-college programs at the USC ViterbiSchool, and that clenched the deal.

“USC was right, I just knew it,” Lopezasserts. “I didn’t fitinto the culture ofsome of the otherschools, but Iknew I would likeUSC. I knew thatLos Angeles wasgoing to be verydiverse.”

She enteredthe USC civilengineeringprogram in 1994and moved intoFluor Tower, acampus dorm.Each floor of thedorm had a differentcultural theme; Lopezlived on a Latino floorand wanted to createan extended familyenvironment. She gotinvolved with the Latinostudent assembly andco-founded a Latinasorority, Nuestra AlmaLatina, which means “ourLatin soul,” during herfreshman year. “That’sone of the reasons I’m soexcited to be back on campus,” she says.“We are celebrating our 10th year this year.”

Lopez attributes much of her success inengineering to USC’s diversity and nurturingenvironment. “I learned valuable leadershipskills at USC and that’s really important forwomen in this field,” she says. “There aren’t thatmany women who graduate in engineering andthere are even fewer Latina women. They getlost. So we wanted to help everybody out andlet them know that they weren’t alone. Wewanted to make everybody a leader.”

And lead she did, “on two hours of sleepa night,” she laughs. “I still have my classschedules, where I would write in my 15-minute naps between classes. It was non-stop.”

Lopez interned at IBM during her secondyear at USC. Then Parsons, a large civilengineering firm based in Pasadena, California,

recruited her andshe worked nearlyfull-time whilestill taking classes.Her naturalleadershipqualities did notgo unnoticed;she was awardedan El CentroChicano StudentLeadership awardin both her juniorand senior years,and was asked tospeak at her ownUSC graduation

ceremony in 1999.After graduation,

Parsons offered Lopez anopportunity to be a fieldengineer on a construc-tion project at Merck’s, apharmaceutical companyin Elkton, Virginia. Shespent three months help-ing to upgrade some ofthe company’s facilities.

Turner Construction,a leader in high-riseconstruction, caught her

attention shortly thereafter and she moved intoproject management in California. Since joiningTurner, she has been a project manager on anInternet-hosting facility in Marina Del Rey andworked on a baggage screening security systemupgrade at Los Angeles International Airport.

“I think that all of my assignments all overthe country and my background really helpedme move up faster in engineering andconstruction at this firm,” Lopez says, “but myleadership training at USC is probably the bestthing that ever happened to me.”

Aimee Lopez (center, seated on right) with herLatina sorority sisters.

Aimee Lopez at her 1999 graduation.

disadvantaged students primarily from north-ern New Jersey’s industrial neighborhoods topursue rigorous yet nurturing engineeringprograms. “I talk to the students every year,”Dorman says. “They share their dreams, andI share my experience. It always renews my faithin the future.”

Dorman also serves as a longtime trusteeof the J. David Gladstone Institutes, whichfor three decades has underwritten ground-breaking, life-saving biomedical research inaffiliation with the University of California-SanFrancisco.

He recently completed what may becomehis most lasting legacy for all Americans. From2001 to 2003, Dorman served as chair of aNational Research Council Committee chargedwith reviewing policies and practices relating toall Federal Government facilities — 3.3 billionsquare feet of space worldwide, valued at morethan $300 billion. Each year the governmentspends more than $25 billion in tax dollarsmaintaining, renovating and acquiring thesefacilities, many of which have becomeunder-utilized or obsolete. Dorman’scommittee identified principles thatbest-practice organizations use to managefacilities. Their report, Investments in FederalFacilities: Asset Management Strategies for the21st Century, offers what the U.S. GovernmentAccountability Office calls “a comprehensive,integrated transformation strategy” for invest-ing in and managing all federal facilities — astrategy that could potentially save billions offuture tax dollars.

“It was intellectually perhaps the mostcomplex program I’ve ever addressed,” Dormanadmits. “Although I have no illusions about thedifficulties of reaching consensus and thenimplementing change in the political process,we have received some encouraging feedback.Perhaps unrelatedly, the President has issued anExecutive Order that will advance some of ourrecommendations. If only a 5% improvementoccurs, I will consider the committee’s efforts tohave been worthwhile.”

Al Dorman’s efforts throughout his careerhave not only been worthwhile, but they areworth praise, and they will no doubt leave theirfootprints on this world.

Dorman continued from page 45

USC ENGINEER 47

ssnap hots

,,

An Evening at theHollywood BowlOn August 14 the Viterbi School hosted itssecond annual “Evening at the HollywoodBowl.” Seventy alumni and friends of theSchool gathered for a reception and dinnerprior to the concert at the Bowl’s MuseumGarden. They were also treated to a fascinatingpresentation by Craig Hodgetts of Hodgetts &Fung, the architectural design firm responsiblefor the re-design of thefamous HollywoodBowl shell. Followingthe dinner, the groupenjoyed the“TchaikovskySpectacular” withfireworks and a briefperformance by theTrojan Marching Band.

Parent’s Move-In DayReceptionThe Viterbi School hosted a reception forincoming freshman parents on move-in day,Wednesday, August 18. Over 200 parents andfamily members attended to meet otherparents and Dean Nikias. Along with the dean,current parents Carole and Robert Fergusonspoke about their experience as Viterbi Schoolparents and offered advice on what students

and parentscould expect inthe comingdays, monthsand years.

BCA Classic WeekendDean Nikias traveled to the Washington, D.C.area for the Black Coaches Association (BCA)Classic on Saturday, August 28. More than90,000 fans and a national audience watchedUSC defeat the Hokies of Virginia Tech,24-13, at FedEx Field in Landover, MD.Highlights of the weekend for Viterbi alumniand friends included the Friday night pep rallyat the Wardman Park Hotel and a dinner foralumni and friends hosted by the dean at theCosmos Club.

Craig Hodgetts explaining the Hollywood Bowlshell re-design.

Trojan spirit was everywhere at FED EX Field for theVirginia Tech game.

Carole and Robert Ferguson speaking to other parentsat the move-in day reception.

snapshotsUSC Viterbi School of Engineering Events Summer & Fall 2004

Mary and George (BS ’69) Crane at the Hollywood Bowl event.

s

48 USC ENGINEER

snap hots

Annual WeekenderReceptionThe Viterbi weekender reception was held onSeptember 24, the evening before the USC vs.Stanford game which resulted in a suspensefulTrojan victory, 31-28, over the Cardinal. TheFriday evening reception for alumni andfriends was held at the historic home ofChristina and Kelly Porter. Our generous hostsentertained guests with an impressive tour ofStonebrook, their newly restored, 1914 EnglishTudor manor. Dean Nikias gave remarks inthe manor’s 2,000 sq. ft. ballroom andpresented Christina and Kelly with USC giftsfor their children.

Daniel J. Epstein ChairDedicationOn October 6 the Daniel J. EpsteinDepartment of Industrial and SystemsEngineering installed Dr. Sheldon Ross as thefirst chair holder of the Epstein EndowedChair in Industrial and Systems Engineering.The endowed chair is a generous gift by USCtrustee and Viterbi School board of councilormember Dan Epstein (BSISE ’62). Thededication and installation followed anintimate dinner at Hoose Library at USC,which featured remarks byPresident Steven B. Sampleand Dean Nikias. At theend of the evening, Epsteinwas inducted into theRussian Academy ofScience, a very specialhonor bestowed by Viterbiprofessor and alumnus,George Chilingar.

Trojan Family WeekendBreakfast ReceptionOn Friday, October 15 the Viterbi Schoolhosted a breakfast reception held inconjunction with Trojan Family Weekend.Over 150 family members had an opportunityto meet with faculty and staff of the ViterbiSchool. In addition, Viterbi studentambassadors led parents though laboratorytours of the Integrated Media System Center,Dryden Wind Tunnel and the AMI MedicalDevices Lab.

Stonebrook, a 1914 English Tudor manor, and site of the2004 Viterbi weekender reception.

Chairholder Sheldon Ross and Trustee Dan Epsteinwith their “chairs” at the dedication.

Parents and students learning more about the ViterbiSchool a the Trojan Family Weekend reception.

Dean Nikias, Sheldon Ross, Dan Epstein and President Sample at theEpstein Chair Dedication.

Kelly and Christina Porter in thehistoric ballroom at Stonebrook.

1985 Barry Tilton (BSEE) is preparing to leave

the Air Force after 20 years. His last position

was as the chief of Air and Space ISR

Engineering for the National Geospatial

Intelligence Agency. He expects to be taking a

job in the Washington, D.C. area next summer.

1992Keith Kelly (BSME) grew up in the inner

city of Detroit, has traveled and lived all over

the world and now works for the State

Department.

1995Alex Soriano (BSME) obtained an MBA

from the University of Michigan in 2003 and

then went on to work in marketing for Merck

& Co. He has now accepted a manager

position in marketing with St. Jude Medical.

1997Christina Smolke (BSChE) joined the

Caltech chemical engineering faculty in

October 2003 as an assistant professor. She

received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 2001

and also served as a National Institute of

Health postdoctoral fellow at Berkeley for

two years.

2000Erin Kettwig (BSEE) is working as a

product manager for the firm Cypress

Semiconductor.

2001Lauren O. Baum (BSBE) recently resigned

her position as a product designer at Sandel

Medical Industries, L.L.C. and returned to

USC to obtain her master’s degree.

2003Kevin Helm (BSAE) is working as a

designer for the Northrop Grumman

Corporation.

2004 Stanley Jones (CSCI) was recently hired

by Microsoft as an associate consultant.

Faculty & StaffNewsChristopher Stoy(MPA ’73, Ph. D. ’83),

CEO of External

Relations at the Viterbi

School, and his wife

Cynthia (BACAAS ’91),

celebrated the birth of

their first child, Taliana

Irene Stoy on Monday,

September 20 at 12:15

p.m. They are “thrilled

and overwhelmed” with

their beautiful little girl,

and the Viterbi School

extends to them our

warmest congratulations

and a happy welcome to

this new member of the

Trojan Family.

Sylvia Adams is the

new assistant in the office of corporate

and foundations relations.

Rebecca Coleman has recently joined the

Viterbi School as director of major gifts. She

joins us from Whittier College, where she also

served as a director of development.

Cynthia Harrison was recently promoted

to executive assistant to Dean Nikias. She

formerly served as an executive assistant

in the external relations office at the

Viterbi School.

Cami Lee-Shono(BACAAS ’96), marketing

specialist at DEN, gave

birth to a baby girl on

September 28. Her name is

Madeline Mei Young

Kimiko Shono. She was

born 5 lbs, 18 inches.

Isadora Gullov-Singhwas promoted to director

of corporate and

foundations relations

effective July 1. She

formally held the position

of associate director in this

area and served as interim

director during a six-

month search.

Kirstin Strickland has

joined the Viterbi School

as the new associate

director of corporate and

foundations relations. She was formerly

with the USC Alumni Association.

notes�Alumni

newsSummer and Fall 2004

nclass otes

USC ENGINEER 49

Please keep us informed of your personal and professional progress, as well as changes in your contact information

by visiting www.usc.edu/engineering and clicking on Alumni. Or by writing to the Alumni Relations Office at the

USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Olin Hall 300, Los Angeles, California 90089-1454

Taliana Irene

Christopher with little TalianaIrene, minutes old.

Kenneth Dahlberg (MSEE ’69) is president and CEO of San Diego-based Science

Applications International Corporation (SAIC), the world’s largest employee-owned

research and engineering company. He received a bachelor’s degree in electrical

engineering from Drexel University in Philadelphia in 1967, a master’s degree in

electrical engineering from USC in 1969 (studying under Engineering Dean Zohrab

Kaprielian), and attended the University of California business school for advanced

education for executives. He is a director of the National Defense Industrial

Association, and a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers,

the Surface Navy Association, the Association of the United States Army, and a lifetime

member of the United States Navy League. See complete profile on Ken Dahlberg in the

Spring 2004 issue of USC Engineer.

Vinod K. Dham is co-founder and managing member of NewPath Ventures LLC,

a hybrid Indo-U.S. venture fund. Prior to this, Dham was the chairman, president and

CEO of Silicon Spice Inc., a start up involved in developing VOIP solutions for the

communications market. Silicon Spice was acquired by Broadcom Corporation, where

Dham served as vice president and general manager. Acclaimed as the “father of the

Pentium processor,” Dham was vice president and general manager of the

microprocessor products group at Intel Corporation where he managed the Pentium,

486 and 386 Microprocessors products, generating multi-billion dollar businesses. He

has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Delhi University in India and

master’s degree in electrical engineering from University of Cincinnati.

Albert A. Dorman (MSCE ’62) is retired, founding chairman of AECOM, one of

the world’s largest architecture and engineering firms. See complete profile of Albert A.

Dorman on page 39 of this issue.

John C. Johnson (MSSM ’74) is the vice president of Sector Advanced Development

Programs in the systems development and technology division for electronic systems

at Northrop Grumman. His responsibilities include managing over 300 advanced

technology programs and applying discriminating technologies and innovative system

solutions across all Department of Defense mission applications. Johnson received both

his undergraduate and graduate degrees from USC. He holds a master of science

degree in engineering with an emphasis in systems management, and has conducted

Ph.D. studies at USC as well. Johnson also attended Air Staff College and Industrial

College of the Armed Forces.

Bonnie Optekman is the vice president of NBC News Production Systems in New

York City. She handles the information technology services for NBC News operations

worldwide and is responsible for ensuring computer technology meets news broadcast

requirements in daily news coverage, special events planning and acquisitions.

Optekman received her bachelor’s degree from Hofstra University, graduating magna

cum laude. She majored in journalism and served as the news editor for the “Hofstra

Chronicle. She also holds a graduate certificate in computer programming from

New York University.

Darlene Solomon is vice president and director of Agilent Laboratories. Her

responsibilities include developing the company’s long-term technology strategy and

overseeing the alignment of Agilent’s objectives with its centralized research-and-devel-

opment activities. Prior to Agilent, Solomon worked at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories

as a member of the technical staff, subsequently holding a variety of research and man-

agement positions including R&D manager for the chemical and biological systems

department. She received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Stanford University

and a doctorate in inorganic chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

New Board of Councilors MembersMichael B. Pursley (Ph.D. EE ’74)

received the Edward Howard Armstrong

Achievement Award from the IEEE

Communications Society for “seminal

contributions to spread-spectrum

communications and adaptive protocols

for mobile wireless communications

networks.”

Michael received a bachelor’s degree

with highest distinction in 1967 and a

master’s in

1968, both in

electrical

engineering

from Purdue

University.

He received

a Ph.D. in

electrical

engineering

from USC in

1974. He has

several years

of industrial

experience,

primarily with the Space and

Communications Group of the Hughes

Aircraft Company. While at USC, he was

a Hughes doctoral fellow and a research

assistant in the electrical engineering

department. He also served on the

faculty at the University of Illinois

for almost 20 years, and he has held

visiting faculty positions at UCLA

and CalTech.

Michael is currently the Holcombe

Professor of electrical and computer

engineering at Clemson University in

South Carolina. His research is in the

general area of communications and

information theory with emphasis on

spread-spectrum communications,

communication over fading channels,

applications of error-control coding,

protocols for packet radio networks

and mobile communications systems

and networks.

Alumni Recognition

n

50 USC ENGINEER

class otes

In MemoriamRobert E. Kalaba Professor of Biomedical Engineeringand of Economics

Robert E. Kalaba, anapplied mathemati-cian associated withUSC for almost half acentury, renownedinternationally for hisanalytical and compu-tational solutions toproblems in physics,engineering, opera-

tions analysis and biology, died September 29following a brief illness. He was 78.

A professor of biomedical engineering,electrical engineering and of economics,Kalaba was an engineering lecturer at USCfrom 1956 to 1971. He became a researchassociate in biomathematics in 1966 and avisiting professor of electrical engineering inthe biomedical engineering program in 1969.In 1974, he became a full professor at USCwith appointments in biomedical engineer-ing, electrical engineering and economics.

“Thus, he was truly one of the foundingfathers of BME here,” says Michael Khoo,professor and chair of the department ofbiomedical engineering. “Computationalprograms that he helped prepare are in usein coronary care units to aid in theoptimization of drug regimens.”

Before coming to USC, Kalaba was amathematician at the RAND Corporation inSanta Monica from 1951 to 1969. He was afounding editor of Applied Mathematics andComputation. He was also a consultant atHughes Aircraft Company, Esso ProductionResearch Corporation, the Jet PropulsionLaboratory and the Service Bureau Corp.

Kalaba continued to work from his hospitaluntil a few days before his death. In additionto his prolific research, he was known as anexcellent teacher who could simplify complexmathematical problems for his students.

Born in Mount Vernon, New York, Kalabaearned his B.S. in 1948 and his Ph.D. in 1958from New York University. He served as anelectronics technician in the U.S. Navy at theend of World War II.

A resident of Pacific Palisades, California, heis survived by his wife Wilma, two daughters

and two sons. Funeral services were heldOctober 9 at the Corpus Christi CatholicChurch in Pacific Palisades.

Lyman HandyFormer Chair of PetroleumEngineering, Passes Away at 85

Lyman Handy, emeritus professor of

petroleum engineering who chaired the

USC Viterbi School’s department of

petroleum engineering for over two decades,

passed away September 14 in Fullerton,

California. He was 85.

Handy joined

the USC

faculty in the

late 1950’s as

a part-time

lecturer and

became chair

of petroleum

engineering in

1966. Under

his leadership, the department became

internationally known.

Handy was an influential contributor in thefield of petroleum engineering and knownworldwide as an experimentalist with anuncanny sense of the mechanics of flow inporous media. His papers continue to becited and used today. Among the manyhonors he received was the DistinguishedService Award from the Society of PetroleumEngineers, an organization in which heserved in several national level positions.

In 1942, Handy graduated from theUniversity of Washington with a B.S. degreein Chemistry. He served in the U.S. Navyduring World War II and was stationed offthe coast of Italy. In 1950, he earned his Ph.D.in physical chemistry from the University ofWashington and he worked at ChevronOilfield Research in La Habra as a researchchemist from 1952 to 1966.

Melvin Wheeler Jackson (BSCE ’43)

was born July 19, 1917, in Nashville,

Tennessee, to Kathryn Nance and James Wat

Jackson. He died on October 26, 2003 at the

age of 86, surrounded by his beloved trees

near his home.

The ninth of ten children, when Melvin was

five years old his family moved to Los

Angeles, California. He attended night school

at USC, majoring in civil engineering. During

his college years, he worked full-time and still

managed to graduate in 1943 as valedictorian

of his engineering class. He went on to

complete his master’s of science degree and

Ph.D. from University of

Illinois in 1946.

It was during this time

that he met his beautiful

wife, Mary Alice Pfeiffer,

and they were married

in 1946.

Melvin taught at the

University of Illinois, the

Georgia Institute of

Technology in Atlanta and University of

Colorado in Boulder, Colorado. He retired

from Argonne West National Lab as senior

plant engineer in 1983, and he held licenses as

a registered professional engineer in 21 states.

Melvin had a full life, having gained the

friendship of many during his extensive

travels with his wife. His many endeavors

included stamp collecting, rock hunting,

collecting antique farm implements and

attending auctions. Mel had a passion for

history, particularly of the west and Native

Americans. He had an artistic penchant and

a special talent for creating folk art items.

He always looked forward to his weekly

appointment at the blacksmith. His greatest

enjoyment was working among the many

trees he planted. He strictly abided by the

philosophy that “you are never too old to

plant a tree.” He is survived by his wife, Mary;

sons, Stephen F. Jackson (Jeanie) and Thomas

J. Jackson (Sherrie); and daughter Sarah C.

Jackson (Jeff Hampsten); and many nieces

and nephews. Memorials in Melvin’s name

may be given to Bannock County

Historical Museum, P.O Box 253, Pocatello,

Idaho 83204.

J. Alan Higgins (MSME ’68) passed away

on March 19, 1997 after a 19 year struggle

with multiple sclerosis.

Sunnie Chung, a master’s degree student

in the USC Viterbi School department of

computer science, died in a traffic accident on

July 11 in a single-vehicle accident on the I-

15 near Baker, California. Two other USC

Viterbi School computer science students

were injured in the same accident. They were

Keun Lee, a doctoral student, and Kyung

Hwan Yoo, a master’s student.

nclass otes

USC ENGINEER 51

Recognizing the need to graphically convey the School’snew stature, an internal branding group embarked on theprocess of selecting and hiring a firm to develop the newbrand last April. Their mandate was to develop a visual brandand guidelines that would consistently communicate the manyattributes of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering toaudiences ranging from students, faculty and alumni, to theSchool’s many supporters around the world. The new brandalso had to fit into the university’s extensive graphic identitysystem. “USC” is a strong brand that is already knownworldwide.

After several months of internalresearch, the branding group selected PraxisAdvertising and Design. Praxis is currentlyputting the finishing touches on a dynamicnew visual identity for the School that will beformally unveiled in mid-December.

The new Viterbi branding system offersdesign templates, a vibrant color palette,a new signature and identifying mark,specifically designed with the flexibility toaddress the varied needs and complexities ofthe School, while providing a high degree ofconsistency. The system communicatesimportant core Viterbi attributes such asinnovation, a pioneering entrepreneurialspirit, global reach, nimbleness anddynamism.

When successfully implemented, thenew brand will be consistently applied to all electronic andprinted communications. Every piece will speak with a singleclear voice and integrally reinforce the School’s positioning tothe pinnacle of America’s foremost schools of engineering.

Look for the exciting new Viterbi brand on communica-tions that you receive after the first of the year and in the nextissue of USC Engineer.

A Brand New Name

52 USC ENGINEER

notebook

A strong coherent visual identity is a critical component in establishing the USC Andrew and Erna Viterbi School

of Engineering as one of the nation’s pre-eminent engineering schools. Adding the prestigious Viterbi name was

an important step in this journey, and a significant opportunity for the School to seize upon.

Pho

to o

fVit

erbi

ban

ner

by

Bri

an M

orri

an

d st

ude

nt

phot

o by

Lee

Sal

em

Bob Calverley, executive director, communications,Dean Nikias, Praxis President David Schwartz(standing) and Praxis Vice President Craig Rettig,examine USC Viterbi brand designs.

Viterbi students celebrating the School’snew name in March.

Shimmick Construction � Raytheon � Microsoft � Micron Technology �Lockheed Martin � City of Los Angeles, Bureau of Sanitation � Xerox �Trane � Cypress Semiconductor � City of Los Angeles, Bureau of

Engineering � Xyntek, Inc. � Northrop Grumman Space & Technology �Magma Design Automation � Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

� City of Los Angeles-Dept.of Building & Safety �Citicorp Development Center � ChevronTexaco �Agilent � The Aerospace Corporation � Supertex, Inc.

� Simpson Gumpartz and Heger Inc. � SanDisk

Corporation � Motorola Inc. � HR Textron � Exeter Group �Disneyland Resort � Denali Software, Inc. � County Sanitation Districts of

Los Angeles � BAE Systems � Kiewit Pacific Co. � Edwards Air Force

Base, Civilian Personnel � The Boeing Company � US Army Corps of

Engineers � United Parcel Service (UPS) � Swinerton Builders � Space

Explorations Technologies � Skyworks � Rockwell Science Center �Quantum Design Inc. � Qualcomm � Pulte Homes � PCL Construction

Services, Inc. � Orbital Sciences Corporation � Northrop Grumman �NextEngine, Inc. � NCR � Maxim Integrated Products � KPFF �Consulting Engineers � Intel Corporation � IBM � Hewlett Packard �Heil Construction, Inc. � The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) �Environ International Corporation � Electronic Arts � EDO � Dynamics

Technology, Inc. � Conexant � Aramark � Riverside County Flood

Control � PPG Industries, Inc. � Morley Builders � Los Angeles County

Dept. of Public Works � Lawrence Livermore National Labs � JCE

Structural Engineering Group � ExxonMobil � Epic Systems Corporation

� E*Trade Financial � E&J Gallo Winery � CH2M HILL � Veritas

Software � US Air Force � Tallan � Synopsys � Spacient Technologies,

Ins. � Ryland Homes � Rudolph and Sletten Construction � Northrop

Grumman Space Systems � Missile Defense Agency � Minerals

Management Service-US Dept of Interior � McCarthy Building Companies

� Fuscoe Engineering, Inc. � Fair Isaac Corporation � F.H.

Paschen/Westcoast Nielson � DIRECTV, Inc. � Deloitte Consulting �Dassault Systemes of America � Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

HIRE THE BEST!

Outstanding companies

deserve outstanding

employees.

The Office of Engineering Career Services

can help you target, identify and interview

outstanding USC Engineers.

Contact us now to get started!

Engineering Career Servicesengcs@usc.edu213/740-4530

www.usc.edu/engcs

Non-ProfitOrganizationUS Postage

PAIDUniversity of

SouthernCalifornia

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