Electrical and Computer Engineering Alumni News ECE Alum ni As so ci a tion newsletter University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

New Illinois institute focuses Spring 2005 Volume XXXIX expertise on “trust”

By Jamie Hutchinson member, who repre sent ed ITI at a homeland Inside this issue security conference on campus last spring. One of the newest interdisciplinary initia- According to Nicol, a massive failure of U. DEPARTMENT HEAD’S tives at the University of Illinois addresses S. fi nancial computer networks—whether MES SAGE the threats of a networked world—from caused by mali cious at tack, faulty internal 2 spyware and automated computer attacks, design, or a combi na tion of factors—could to identity theft and information warfare, to have horrifi c eff ects on the economy. The ERROR CORRECTING CODES power blackouts, and more. And like so many same goes for the power grid and national RE SEARCH other such en ter pris es on campus, this one defense, both of which rely heavi ly on big, puts ECE facul ty, students, and facilities at com plex computer networks. (ECE power 4 the center of the action. engineering facul ty Pete Sauer and Tom New Illinois institute, continued on page 30 VERMILION RIVER Engineering Dean David Daniel estab - OBSERVATORY lished the Information Trust Institute (ITI) in 2004 and appointed ECE Professor Bill 6 Sanders as director. Seventeen ECE faculty are listed among the 40 ITI faculty and senior research ers. The institute brings together under one banner such diverse areas of Il- linois engi neer ing expertise as information protec tion; authen ti ca tion protocols; secure compil er technol o gies; intrusion-tolerant middleware; reliability, security, and depend- ability assess ment; vali da tion technologies; TV-B-GONE and security policy analysis. ITI also draws 15 on security- and systems-related expertise in campus units such as fi nance, econom- ics, geography, and agri cul ture, as well as industry partnerships. Put it all together, and you have a notion of “trust” that encompasses a lot more than simply protecting computers from hackers. “Trust” encompasses information correct- BARDEEN QUAD ness and sur viv abil i ty, system reliability and 17 availabil i ty, privacy, and, most importantly, Would you trust this man? Boeing does. Bill general public confi dence. Needless to say, Sanders, director of the Information Trust Institute, the stakes are high, as noted by ECE Profes- and his students will help the aerospace giant sor David Nicol, an ITI steering committee develop trustworthy software systems. ECE Alumni News

Department head’s message ECE Alumni Association It seems quite certain that this is engi neer ing offi cers and board the fi rst time our ECE Department jobs are being President Head’s message was written in created domes- Sherel Horsley (2004-2007) Asia. The pressures of my job are tically at the Vice Presidents such that the only way this letter same rate. Midwest Kenneth Smolik (2003-2006) West Richard Williams (2003-2006) can make the publication dead line Howev er East Craig Stunkel (2002-2005) is to write on the road and send it one sees this, Treasurer in electron i cal ly. And write on the most would Jennifer Sterling (2002-2005) road means to write it on the trip agree that our Board Members to Taiwan, Korea, and Hong Kong. engi neer ing Vishwani Agrawal (2002-2005) Writ ing this letter is yet another task grad u ates Rajesh Bansal (2002-2005) in a busy schedule, yet I wel come should know much more about the Todd Beanblossom (2004-2007) world econo my and the cultures of the Mark Bohr (2003-2006) it because it creates an opening to Ram Chillarege (2003-2006) dis cuss an important topic: the top ic world. Our College of Engi neering has Shirley Drazba (2004-2007) of global iza tion and international in place an ex cel lent study-abroad pro- Mike Henneman (2002-2005) de part men tal relations. gram. Our under grad u ates can spend a Kurt Hollenbeck (2002-2005) Globalization is inevitable and semester or summer abroad, often tak- Franklin Kuo (2003-2006) Dirk Meyer (2004-2007) un stop pa ble. Although, as in all ing the same courses out of the same Theodore Spanos (2004-2007) such large social changes, there books that we use here. Exchange pro- James Stapleton (2002-2005) may be some negative consequenc- grams are available in countries such Michael Winberg (2004-2007) es, there are also many posi tive as Korea, Taiwan, Swe den, Singapore, Dennis Wilkie (2004-2007) John Woythal (2003-2006) consequences. I choose here to Australia, and many other coun tries. Past President focus on the rich opportunities to I believe that this is an oppor - Douglas Criner (2004-2007) enrich our de part ment’s mission of tu ni ty to learn the elements of a new Ex Offi cio Members teaching, re search, and service. language or to practice one already Faculty Coordinator The conventional view is that en gi - known, to ex pe ri ence a new culture, or James J. Coleman (2004-2005) neering jobs are now being ex port ed, to un der stand how business is done in Alternate Faculty Coordinator mostly to Asia. At the same time, how- another country. This semester abroad William Sanders (2004-2005) ever, many experts claim that other will change the student’s outlook, and Secretary will enable our graduates to make their Emma Marshall (2004-2005) engineering decisions in the context of Undergraduate Representative Avon Fernandes (2004-2005) a world market. Graduate Student Representative Becky Westendorf (2004-2005) ECE graduate program #4 in survey ECE Alumni News is published twice The Illinois electrical engineering and computer engineering programs yearly by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Electrical & ranked fourth in the latest U.S. News & World Report survey released in Computer Engineering Department April. According to U.S. News, en gi neering departmental rankings are and the ECE Alumni Association. Your based on input from engineering depart ment heads na tionwide. feedback is welcome. Please send comments to Editor Laura Schmitt Electrical engineering Computer engineering ([email protected]). 1. MIT and Berkeley (tie) 1. MIT 3. Stanford 2. Stanford and Berkeley (tie) 4. Illinois 4. Illinois and Carnegie Mellon (tie)

2 May 2005

Symposium brings MRI into focus

By Jamie Hutchinson Between its new Department of Bio- engineer ing, its Institute for Genomic Biol o gy under construc tion on the south cam pus, and doz ens of bio-savvy faculty hires in de part ments cam pus-wide, it’s clear Illinois admin is tra tors see big op- por tu ni ties for research and ed u ca tion in the growing fi eld of bio tech nol o gy. Within that fi eld, U of I is partic u lar ly well posi tioned as a hub of cutting-edge bioimaging tech nol o gies. A recent symposium at the Beckman Insti tute for Advanced Science and Tech- nol o gy underscored U of I’s strength in imaging research by gathering a select group of imaging experts from campus Photo by Jamie Hutchinson by Photo and beyond in order to celebrate Pro- ECE graduate student Nitin Agarwal (left) and his advisor Yoram Bresler displayed research fes sor Paul Lauterbur’s 2003 Nobel Prize results at the MRI symposium poster session. Agarwal's dissertation work explores sampling in Physiology or Medicine, awarded for methods that can enhance the kinds of parallel imaging done with multiple MRI receiver coils. his contribution to the development "The symposium gave me a sense of the breadth of research by scholars all around this fi eld," of magnet ic resonance imaging (MRI), said Agarwal. and to discuss promising directions for namic MRI. Webb gave an invit ed talk on Lauterbur’s work. “Paul has done so future research in MRI and other imaging his work toward more eff ective contrast much for science and for medi cine, and tech niques. agents, microcoils for mass-limit ed MRI, the social impact that goes with that,” ECE Professors Zhi-Pei Liang, a long- and combining MRI with other imaging he said. “Also, this is a way for us to time student and colleague of Laut- modalities such as near infrared imag- showcase what we have at Illinois. We’ve erbur, and Bruce Wheeler, who also ing. gathered the pio neers and the leaders serves as head of the Department of Webb’s new approaches to MRI from in the fi eld; let them see what we have Bioengineer ing, played major roles in the physical angle often require new here.” planning the symposium. At the poster ap proach es from the signal processing In his opening remarks at the sym- session, several of Liang’s students in angle, creating opportunities for col- po sium, Beckman Institute Director the Computational Bioimaging Group laboration among ECE research groups. Pierre Wiltzius acknowledged Illinois at Beckman pre sent ed results of their “I’m always looking for ways that we can ul tra sound pi o neers William Frye and research. ECE students also presented apply image processing and the kind of Floyd Dunn, both of ECE. College of posters of work done under the direc- math that we do to imaging problems,” Engi neer ing Dean David Daniel, in his tion of Professors Steve Boppart, Yoram said Bresler. “It's good to see that there re marks, looked to the future by shar- Bresler, Doug Jones, Farzad Kamalabadi, are more and more such problems where ing his inter ac tions with high school Bill O’Brien, and Andrew Webb. Bresler we can contribute.” students consid er ing majors in engi- gave an invited talk on new ad vanc es in Liang said organizing the conference neering. “I al ways tell them that you signal processing that can increase the was easy because of the widespread speed and resolution of real-time, dy- en thu si asm for the idea of cel e brat ing

3 ECE Alumni News

Professor’s work may fi x many of life’s glitches By Greg Kline, News-Gazette staff writer

The signal is extremely The problem is that transmitting in- weak after its long jour- for ma tion multiple times involves a lot ney and diffi cult to pick of overhead and it’s slow. So scientists out of the radio spec- have developed mathematically based trum. Ra dio operators, in strat e gies for sending as little redundant their eff orts to overcome material as possible to catch mistakes at the limi ta tion, use “er- an accept able level. ror-cor rect ing codes,” For a long time, doing that has cen- math e mat i cal for mu las tered on the Reed-Solomon codes laid designed to sepa rate the out by University of Southern California signals from the back- Profes sor Irving Reed and the late Gus- ground “noise.” tave Solomon in the 1960s. While bouncing signals “They are probably the most used off the moon may be a codes out there in the real world,” said nifty appli ca tion of them, Koetter, who related a story about being Princeton Uni ver si ty Professor Joe error-correct ing codes are every where awed when as a student he met Solomon Taylor’s field is physics—he won the in, and a linchpin of, our digital world. at a conference. Nobel Prize in 1993—but the passion They fac tor out smudges on a CD that In the 1990s, researchers showed he engag es in for fun is bouncing radio might other wise turn a sympho ny into that the Reed-Solomon codes could be signals off the moon. a screech. They account for problems on tweaked to catch more errors than had Illinois ECE Professor Ralk Koetter and less-than-perfect computer disks that been widely accepted as possible almost former Illinois colleague Alexander Vardy could render our fi les unusable. They since their creation. If the number of er- have made the pastime even more fun over come in ter fer ence on telephone rors exceeded the limit, the assumption for Taylor and other ama teur radio op- lines to get our faxes through and make was the information—a weak radio sig- erators. In the process, they may aff ect our high-speed Internet connec tions nal from the moon, for example—would the rest of us in myriad ways—from our work, and in space to get digital TV be lost. CD and DVD players and the hard drives pictures and photos from Mars across, But the improvements suggested in our computers to the pic tures we see among other things. by Madhu Sudan, an MIT computer on the television screen and of Saturn “Really everybody uses them con- scien tist, and his then-graduate student and its moons—although we’re likely to stantly, and they’re somewhat hidden Venkatesan Guruswami, were intended re main largely unaware of it. away,” Koetter said. for proof of concept, not practical appli - Amateur radio operators bounce One of the simplest ways to check cation. signals off the moon to vastly extend the for errors is to transmit the information The research opened up an avenue range of their transmissions and make three times. That way, if one trans- for improvement that would be practi- contact with peers around the globe. mis sion arrives diff erently, you have, in cal, howev er, and Koetter and colleague Fed er al rules limit the power of the units, essence, a two-to-one majority vote on Vardy, who originally brought Koetter often referred to as ham radios, making the correct confi guration, said Koetter, to Illi nois as a post-doctoral researcher, it barely possible to send a signal to the a Coor di nat ed Sciences Lab professor headed down it. Vardy is now a profes- moon and back, Tay lor said re cent ly. whose specialty is methods for coding sor at the Univer si ty of California, San “It’s kind of the black belt of amateur in for ma tion to trans mit it as effi ciently radio to be able to do it,” he said. Koetter, continued on page 20 as possi ble.

4 May 2005

A century later, HKN still nurtures By Janet Krenn

A recurring theme in W. J. “Jerry” Sand- ers’s keynote address at the Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) Centennial Leadership Con- fer ence was, “People fi rst. Products and profi ts will follow.” Sanders (BSEE ’58), who is a co found er of Advanced Micro De vic es, em pha sized that good leaders respect their staff and understand the importance of their staff in the produc- tion process. Creat ing good leaders is what this conference was all about. Part of the mission of this centen- nial conference, held October 22-24, courtesyPhoto of HKN 2004, on cam pus, was to explore the ECE students and HKN members take a break for lunch during the centennial conference in October. Included here are centennial organizers Grace Wang (far left), Alex Spektor (mid foundation of HKN and ways to ensure it right), and Gary Yen (far right). remains rele vant within the engineering fi eld. The confer ence focused on teach- where, and what to provide to your team guest speak ers were Steve Watkins, ECE ing HKN board members how to improve with respect to ethical background,” pro fes sor at the University of Missouri- their leadership skills, how to build orga- said panelist Richard J. Gowen, eminent Rolla and Nick Triantos, chief software nizations, and how to use their technical mem ber of HKN and former HKN na- skills to develop technol o gy and create tional direc tor (1994-1996). new business oppor tu ni ties. More than 100 students attended the Share your memories HKN was founded on the Illinois cam- conference, representing HKN chapters of ECE pus in 1904. The brainchild of Maurice from as far away as Miami, Berkeley, ECE alumni are invited to L. Carr, HKN was originally envisioned and New York City. ECE alumni Bradley submit memories of their time as an engineering society to promote McCredie (BSCE ’86, MSEE ’87, PhD ’91) on campus, which we will share job placement for students. A few years and David Lemson (BSCE ’94) also par- with all our alumni through the later the orga ni za tion was changed to ticipated in panel discussions. A team ECE Alumni Web site. Please an electrical engi neer ing honor society. of Illinois HKN students organized the visit www.ece.uiuc.edu/alumni/ HKN chapters are now found on hun- conference. “We hope that the students remember/index.html to learn dreds of campuses across the nation. who came here got something out of more. One conference panel addressed it. We hope they can go back to their “From Learner to Leader: Applying chapters with some new ideas on how Your Skills to Any Discipline.” The panel to do things,” said ECE student Scott Han- discussed leader ship and emphasized nan (BSEE ’04), HKN centen ni al planning ethics in the workplace. In light of re- chair. cent high-profile corpo rate scandals, Other conference activities included the panel ists felt strong ly that lead ers a chapter design competition, campus should keep their teams moti vat ed and tours, and the induction of three new honest. eminent members, including alumnus “As a leader, you need to know when, Sanders. Among the other distinguished

5 The Vermilion River Observatory Two decades of radio astronomy in ECE By Jamie Hutchinson

On a brilliant Sunday after noon last Oc- to ber, ECE faculty, staff , and their fami lies gathered for a picnic amid the fall colors of a University of Illinois-owned natural area near the banks of the Ver mil ion River just southeast of Danville, IL. Chil- dren and adults ate, hiked, so cial ized, and learned about U of I ecological re- search at the site. Entomology students delighted youngsters with butterfly displays, giant hissing cockroach es, even a tarantula. “Facilities like this are what put Illi nois on the map,” remarked picnicker Na- rayana Rao, ECE’s associate de part ment head. But Rao wasn’t referring to current studies of West Nile Virus, or tree phys i - olo gy, or wasp breeding going on at the Vermilion River site. The work that put Illinois on the map was itself a map—a map of the universe. The Illinois 400-foot radio telescope. Cut by nature, polished by man. For over two decades, ECE Professor Emeritus George Swenson oversaw radio loves nothing more than to recount the as tron o mers and electrical en gi neers, astron o my research at the site, still called ad ven tures of re search es past. On this and the state of Illinois already had an the Vermilion River Ob ser va to ry (VRO) day, he was reunit ed with old astron o my important place in the history of the new though its tele scopes were dismantled colleagues Arno Schriefer Jr., the VRO site science. Bell Labs engineer Karl Jansky, long ago. Swenson supervised the build- manag er, and U of I astron o my profes- investigating short-wave transat lan tic ing of two major radio telescopes at VRO. sors John and Helene Dickel. So af ter a communication in 1932, discov ered a One instrument cataloged over 1,000 meal of barbe cue sandwich es, Swenson periodic source of ra dio noise, which he discrete radio sources beyond the Milky pulled out a few slides and made him- was able to identi fy with the nucleus of Way, helping astronomers understand self comfortable in the main room of the Milky Way. But it was Grote Reber the geom e try of an expanding universe. a humble building, dubbed infor mal ly of Wheaton, IL, an oth er radio engi neer, The other, smaller instrument worked by its new deni zens as “Swenson Hall,” who dur ing the late 1930s and early in co or di na tion with ra dio telescopes where decades ago he spent much of his 1940s adopt ed that noise as his signal, world wide in per form ing high-resolu- life. As he projected the slides onto a wall build ing the fi rst radio telescope and tion obser va tions of cosmic sources, once hidden by racks full of electron ics conducting the fi rst system at ic survey of and outfi t ted with a microwave spec- for pro cess ing cosmic sig nals, Swenson the ra dio sky—all during his spare time trometer it was ideal for ana lyz ing the told the story of the Vermil ion River in the back yard of his suburban home. molecular makeup of interstellar gas in Ob ser va to ry. Following World War II, radio astron o my the Milky Way. emerged full-fl edged as a “big science,” No wonder, then, that the picnic’s Radio astronomy returns to Il li nois cap i tal iz ing on wartime ad vanc es in fea ture presentation was delivered by As early as 1954, ECE Depart ment Head radar and com mu ni ca tions. The major George Swenson. Now 82 and retired Edward C. Jordan and De part ment of obser va to ries, however, were located in from radio as tron o my, Swenson still Astronomy Head G. C. McVittie were England, France, the Netherlands, and advises gradu ate students and conducts discussing building a radio astronomy Austra lia, and a more complete map research in more earthly subjects like program at Illinois. Radio astronomy of the radio universe began emerging acoustics and wildlife telemetry. And he called out for collaborations between from re searchers in these countries, not

6 the United States. During the 1950s, radio telescope U.S. scien tists, academics, and govern- “The cheapest building ma te ri al is earth,” ment offi cials began reversing the trend com ment ed Swenson on the most ob- with increased invest ments in radio vi ous problem pre sent ed by the design: as tron o my. how to build a 400 by 600 foot refl ector. In 1956, Swenson was an electrical Still, scoop ing a parabolic cylinder that engi neer ing professor at Michigan State size out of the earth would have required special iz ing in radio science. During a moving about 150,000 cubic yards of visit to the Illinois campus, he met with dirt—no mean feat, to say nothing of Jordan and told him of antenna engi- the drainage problem left over from the neering work he had done in Alaska for task. Swenson wagered that somewhere an iono spher ic research program that nearby, nature likely had done much of used decame ter radio waves from the that work for him already. Sure enough, Milky Way as a reference signal, thus an aerial survey of the Vermilion River combining radio astronomy with geo- system revealed a stream bed of the physics. Jordan and McVittie had run proper dimensions and north-south into dead ends with first a physicist, orientation, about 45 miles east of cam- then an astronomer, heading up their Arno Schriefer still keeps a model he built of pus, five miles southeast of Danville. radio astronomy eff orts. They decided the backup structure for the 120-foot dish. The university bought the land, and The model was used for a stress analysis that construction began in September 1959. to give an engineer a shot at the job, was performed to enhance the telescope’s off ering Swenson a joint appoint ment range of reception to the south. (Adjoining parcels were purchased in in astronomy and electrical engineer- subsequent years.) Crews cleared the ing with much more opportunity (and fi rst major telescope to be built at VRO, ravine of trees and brush, graded the re spon si bil i ty) for research than he the Il li nois 400-foot radio telescope slopes, built a dam upstream to guard enjoyed at Michigan State. The engineer (see photo on p.6). The new instrument against flash floods, and dug a new would not disappoint them. would improve on the sensitivity and sec tion of the stream channel centered McVittie, like other cosmologists, resolution of other radio telescopes by pre cise ly on the meridian and on the depend ed on accurate, complete cata- in cor po rat ing a huge collecting area, or center line of the parabolic cylinder. The logs of cosmic radio sources in order to refl ector—a par a bol ic cylinder 600 feet entire refl ector was sealed with asphalt develop descriptions of the structure long and 400 feet in diameter. It would liner, then covered with a galvanized and evo lu tion of the universe. The best- reduce the con fu sion of radio sources in- wire mesh, which would bounce incom- known cata logs at the time, published by herent in other instru ments by reducing ing waves to the focal line 153 feet above researchers at Cambridge, England, and the sidelobes of its beam, or directivity the center line. Along the focal line, feed Sydney, Aus tra lia, disagreed in their ac- pattern. It would oper ate at a higher fre- elements were arrayed underneath a counts of partic u lar sources and regions quency, 610 megahertz (49 centimeters truss support ed by four 153-foot towers of the sky, and the instruments at these wavelength), in order to gather useful made of Douglas fi r. sites were in ca pa ble of resolving the dis- spectral data. And to compen sate for Swenson also found a homegrown crepancies. In 1957, McVittie dispatched the noise inherent in broadband ampli- so lu tion to the problem of steering this Swenson on a grand tour of these and fi ers, it would rely on state-of-the-art, giant, stationary receiver. Whereas a tele- other prominent radio observatories. low-noise receiving equip ment. scope intended for sustaining lengthy He and Jordan charged Swenson with These design constraints posed sig- obser va tions of a fi xed source requires developing the conceptual design of a nifi cant engineering problems, to which an axis of motion parallel to that of Earth new telescope at Illinois that would best Swenson and colleagues took fresh yet in order to compensate for the planet’s complement those used elsewhere in determined approaches. Their solutions rota tion, an instrument intended for the radio astronomy community. were quintessentially “Illinois.” the more sweeping, survey-type obser- After the trip, and much study and vations of cosmic cataloging requires consul ta tion, Swenson designed the Cataloging the sky: The Il li nois 400-foot no such com pen sa to ry motion. Earth’s Continued on next page 7 rotation alone is suffi cient to provide the east-west motion of such a “merid- ian transit” instrument. Never the less, capturing more than a narrow swath of sky requires steering the instru ment in the north-south direction on the sky, called declination. During his grand tour, Swenson had studied merid i an transit systems in which declination steerability was provided not by tilting the refl ector (obvi ous ly impossible in this case) but by manipulating the phasing of the feed el e ments in the focal line. Re search ers in France and the U.S. had achieved some success at declination steering via phase adjustment of dipole and helical feed el- e ments. Swenson sought to outdo these schemes, and for help he turned to ECE’s famed Antenna Laboratory. The Antenna Lab had developed pow er ful new broadband antennas during these years by exploiting the log periodic prin ci ple. (See p. 8 of last Kwang-Shi Yang (left), assisted by Kenneth Sieb (MSEE’63) (right), designed the system of receivers and recording equipment for the 400-foot telescope. Later, Yang would design and summer's Alumni News for a fuller story build the electronics and motor drives of the 120-foot telescope, in addition to the computer about U of I broadband antennas.) The used to control the instrument. Lab’s Profes sor John Dyson (MSEE '50, PhD '57) had devel oped a logarithmic change the decli na tion of the telescope’s suitable. Zenith Radio Cor po ra tion, for conical spiral anten na that fi t the bill recep tion beam, enabling the instrument example, donated low-noise electron- for the 400-foot telescope not only to observe a 60-degree-wide band of sky beam parametric amplifi ers. because of its broadband characteristic, over a period of years. The original dam proved insuffi cient but also because its ra di a tion pattern Swenson and senior research engineer on two occasions during the summers was suitable and because the phase of Kwang-Shi Yang teamed up to design the of 1961 and 1962, when flash floods its output signal was a linear func tion transmission-line system between the destroyed sections of the reflector of azimuth about its axis of symme try. feed elements and the reception and surface, requiring a bigger dam to be The focal line array, con sist ing of 276 recording electronics. This aspect of the built fur ther upstream. And for two or of Dyson's an ten nas, was de signed by design proved surprisingly diffi cult, with three weeks every summer throughout the late Professor Y. T. Lo of the Antenna most components having to be built the life of the tele scope, Schriefer su- Lab. Lo's array em ployed an unusual, from scratch to meet the special needs of pervised a team of students in battling non uni form spacing among el e ments, low loss, high bandwidth, and phase ad- the subtler, erosive forces of nature that which re duced the total number of ele- justability. Lo pitched in by fi guring out a distorted the refl ector. Equipped with ments need ed and simpli fi ed the daily branching scheme for the lines that elim- rakes, hoes, shovels, and a tar ket tle, operation of the instru ment. And with i nat ed a spurious lobe in the re cep tion students repaired and smoothed the the aid of the original ILLIAC com put er, pattern. Yang and Kenneth Seib (MSEE surface, ensuring that ev ery point on the Lo created a schedule ac cord ing to '63) designed and built the receiv ers and refl ecting area was within about an inch which each feed ele ment was manu al ly recording system, for which off -the-shelf of the specifi ed fi gure. Tedious as that phase-adjust ed (ro tat ed) once a day to commercial components proved more may seem, the facility’s mainte nance Continued on next page

8 budget, about two percent of the capital invest ment, was equal to or less than those of other major radio telescopes. Other obstacles to be surmounted were man made. As early as 50 years ago, radio astronomers were alerted to the problem of noise pollution in the radio spectrum. Swenson discovered that VRO, despite its sparsely populated surround- Photo by Arno Schriefer by Photo ings, was subject to interference from (1) transmitters of other services, as well as radio-frequency noise from road traffi c, electric fences, and other sources. The 400-foot telescope was built with the expectation that an eff ort on the part of the scientifi c community to secure band- width for re search would even tu al ly succeed. That lengthy, world wide, legal and political eff ort— “a story all by itself,” Photo by Arno Schriefer by Photo

according to Swenson—did succeed in Arno Schriefer by Photo (4) set ting aside television channel 37 (608- (2) 614 megahertz) for radio astron o my. The Illinois 400-foot tele scope cat a - logued the sky from 1959 to 1970, with the fi rst published account of its fi nd- ings coming in the PhD disser ta tion of John MacLeod (PhD 1964). John Dickel over saw the mapping of extra-galactic sourc es within 30 degrees of the zenith, as well as many distant sources within

the galaxy. Astron o my Professor John Arno Schriefer by Photo C. Webber and ECE Professor Harold (3) Webb also mapped regions of the Milky Way. Perhaps the most famous discov- Construction of the 120-foot telescope. (1): While the parabolic dish is still on the ground, ery made by VRO was the source “VRO its mesh is installed using a pivoted template 42.22.01,” the pro to type of a class of ac- to gauge the surface. (2) and (3): The dish tive galactic nuclei. Swenson also points is hoisted atop its mounting pedestal with a (5) with pride to two previously unknown 200-ton stationary guy derrick borrowed from supernova rem nants dis covered by VRO, the government. (4) The load blocks hanging from the derrick boom handled 9000 feet of as well as new maps of the Milky Way's cable. (5) The underside of the dish as seen Cygnus X region and many ionized hy- from the base of the mounting. The dark arc drogen regions within the galaxy. is the track of the chain drive for lateral, or By 1970, steady erosion had caused hour angle, motion, allowing the instrument to the telescope's focal length to increase follow a fi xed celestial body for fi ve hours of beyond any adjustment that could be Earth’s rotation. made to the focal line array, fi xed as it Continued on next page

9 ECE Alumni News

"aperture synthesis," by which two small, inexpensive antennas could emulate a single, giant, expensive one with its high angular resolution. The technique was now practiced successfully with telescopes separated by thousands of miles, and was the driving idea behind the VLA. Construction proceeded on the fi rst 120-foot telescope at VRO with as much in ge nu ity as had been demonstrated in building the 400-foot telescope. Schriefer oversaw the detailed design, including a stress analysis that ac- counted for 100-mile-per-hour winds. Because of the tight budget, staff and students performed the labor and built the telescope from scratch, using materi- als and equipment from mil i tary surplus. For example, they fashioned the travers- ing mechanism for the feed antenna at The Illinois 120-foot radio telescope. Built from scratch by staff and students. the dish’s focus from the gun turret of a World War II bomber. They built their was at 153 feet. What’s more, interest in Focusing in: The Illinois 120-foot radio own shop and equipped it. They learned the astronomy community had shifted telescope the skills of machinist, millwright, car- away from source cataloging to more Swenson hoped his grant from NSF in penter, welder, surveyor, and rigger in detailed in ves ti ga tions of individual 1967 was only the initial installment order to make the components of the sources. The staggering vari ety of those of support for a radio interferometry telescope. Then they borrowed a crane, sources became ever more apparent, array comprising three 120-foot-diam- bull doz er, trucks, hoists, and a 200-ton along with the need for instru ments eter para bol ic telescopes that would be der rick from the government, and they and observations that would help dis- movable along two intersecting lengths put the components together (see photo criminate among the variety of sources. of railroad track—one a mile long and se quence on p.9). McVittie had retired, and Swenson had oriented east-west, the other a half-mile The new instrument was mounted expanded his horizons as chairman long and ori ent ed north-south. The main equatorially, meaning that, unlike the of the conceptual development team idea behind applying interferometry to 400-foot telescope, it could compensate for the Very Large Array, a huge radio radio as trono my was to achieve the high for Earth’s rotation and sustain observa- interferometry project of the National angular resolution available through tion of a discrete source for fi ve hours. Radio Astronomy Observatory. He had optical tele scopes, but without hav- It could operate at the 49-centimeter also secured Nation al Science Foun- ing to construct the gigantic refl ectors wavelength of the old telescope, in dation funding for the fi rst stage of a called for by long radio wavelengths. addition to 18 cen ti me ters, with the radio interferometry facil i ty at VRO. The Better angular reso lu tion would allow capability to accom mo date more wave- Illinois 400-foot telescope had served radio astronomers to accurately match lengths in the future. And it was highly well through rain, snow, ice, and even newly discovered radio sources to their automated. An operator could control an earthquake. But it was time to retire corresponding optical sourc es. In the the telescope interactively via computer the venerable instrument and move on 1950s Martin Ryle of Cam bridge Uni- either at the site or from a remote loca- to new projects. versity had pioneered the technique of tion, or stored computer programs could run the system au to mat i cal ly. Perhaps Continued on next page 10 May 2005

most importantly, the telescope was ment equipment. On another occasion, research at the site, and since then it has equipped with a 50-channel, fre quen cy- vandals entered the VRO by night on been used for classes in plant and animal fi lter spectrometer, designed by Yang horseback, climbed into the 120-foot biology, integrative biology, forestry, and Webber, which permitted its use dish, and seriously damaged the refl ect- and en to mol o gy. The Illinois Natural His- in spectrographic investigations of our ing surface, putting the obser va to ry out tory Survey has conducted biodiversity galaxy’s chemical makeup. of commission for almost a year. The surveys at the site, which is considered As it happens, spectroscopy—not university footed the bill for repairs, important as a western outpost of the inter fer om e try—would be the primary but the telescope never recovered its Eastern deciduous forest ecology; cross oc cu pa tion of the Illinois 120-foot tele- former precision. And so VRO was closed the Vermilion River to the west, and you scope, at least in the early years of its life. in 1981. fi nd prairie ecology. In addition to such In the midst of construction of the fi rst research, VRO has been used as a training dish, Swenson learned that it would be A sentimental attachment site by the U of I Fire Service Institute, the last—NSF would not fund two more. ECE still retains custody of VRO and U of I Police Bomb Squad, and Danville So when the telescope began operations benefi ts from the revenue of crops har- National Guard. in 1970, it was used productively as a vest ed on portions of the 420-acre site. Radio astronomy research at Illinois spectrom e ter by Astronomy Professor Ecological research at the site dates back is nowadays conducted through a uni- Lewis Snyder, who measured the spectra to 1970 with the master's thesis of Leon- ver si ty consortium called the Berkeley- of hydrox yl molecules in star-forming ard Smock, a zoologist who surveyed Illinois-Maryland Association (BIMA), as regions of the Milky Way. In 1974, a the mammals, birds, fi sh, amphibians, well as at observatories operated by the terminal was built that permitted the and reptiles living at VRO. Beginning in National Radio Astronomy Observatory 120-foot tele scope to perform interfero- 1996, the U of I Committee on Natural and other U.S. and foreign agencies. Il- metric observations in coordination with Areas began coordinating ecological other, far-fl ung instru ments engaged in very long baseline in ter fer om e try (VLBI). Using the VLBI technique, telescopes around the world were connected elec- tronically in order to carry out extremely high-resolution image synthesis. From 1974 to 1981, the VRO dish contributed significantly to many VLBI observing campaigns of galac tic and extragalactic sources. “It was a temporary instrument for a specifi c job,” recalled Swenson of the 120-foot telescope. And by 1981 it was clear that job was done. Government funding for the project continued to decline. In creas ing ly, astronomers at Illinois and elsewhere preferred to use government facil i ties such as the VLA. And certain misfortunes, while not debilitating, had also disrupted work at VRO. Lightning struck the shop building, burning it down and destroying all the equipment. The university paid for a Doing engineering the old fashioned way. George Swenson helps with construction of the 120- foot telescope. new, smaller building and some replace-

11 ECE Alumni News

Etched in stone

By Doug Peterson

John Tucker remem bers walking into the arrays will be CARMA, or the Com bined laboratories at the California In sti tute of Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave Technology in the early 1980s, carry ing Astronomy, which will be located in the with him a box loaded with computer eastern Sierra Nevadas. Scientists and cards. “Well, why didn’t you just bring oth er dig ni tar ies, including rep re sen t- stone tablets?” joked one professor atives from the Univer si ty of Illinois, good-naturedly after spotting Tucker’s broke ground on CARMA in early 2004. comput er cards, which by then were as But exactly how did Tucker’s theory out of style as disco music and mood make powerful radio telescope arrays rings. such as ALMA and CARMA possible? To The irony is that perhaps Tucker’s answer this question, it’s necessary to cards actually should have been etched revis it the world of radio astronomy in in stone, for they turned out to be a the 1970s, as well as the years leading

landmark. Those cards, which Tucker Photography Thompson-McClellan by Photo up to that point. was trans fer ring to Caltech’s comput- ECE Professor John Tucker’s theory laid the As the name implies, radio telescopes ers at the time, carried the program for groundwork for superconductor-insulator- pick up radio waves coming from deep superconductor (SIS) mixers, which made it a theory that helped to transform the space. Radio waves can penetrate gas possible for radio telescope arrays to pick up world of radio astronomy. weak signals coming from deep space without and dust in space signifi cantly better His theory laid the groundwork for su- any loss. These SIS mixers revolutionized than can light waves; what’s more, the perconductor-insulator-super con duc tor radio astronomy. “radio-maps” created from these signals (SIS) mixers, which made it possible for others underscore the signifi cance of can peer deeper into space and further radio telescope arrays to pick up weak his research. back in time than is possible with optical signals coming from deep space without “John’s theory was indispensable to the telescopes. any loss. These SIS mixers revolutionized development of millimeter and submil - Physicist Karl Jansky fi rst detected ra- radio astronomy. lime ter astron o my,” said Fred Lo, former dio noise coming from the center of the With 2004 being a landmark year for chair of the Depart ment of Astronomy Milky Way Galaxy as early as 1932, but it radio astronomy, it is only fi tting to re- at Illi nois and current direc tor of the wasn’t until the 1950s and 60s that “the vis it the work of Tucker, who has been an Nation al Radio Astron o my Obser va to ry, real activity in radio astronomy started,” ECE professor since 1981, when he was which is respon si ble for the North Amer- said Lo. Beginning in the 50s, as tech- recruit ed by the two-time Nobel prize i can part of the construction and op- nol o gy progressed, radio as tron o mers win ner John Bardeen. er a tion of ALMA. In fact, Lo said Tuck er’s steadily moved from detecting radio Within the span of just six months, work is almost direct ly respon si ble for signals with long wavelengths and low there have been groundbreaking cere - mak ing ALMA possi ble. frequencies to shorter wavelengths and monies for two major radio telescopes: ALMA, or the Atacama Large Mil li me ter higher frequen cies. However, by the ALMA, which will eventually become the Array, is an international eff ort involv ing 1970s, as astronomers tried to detect sig- largest radio telescope array in the world; North America and Europe, and the nals in the millimeter range, Lo said they and CARMA, a smaller-scale project that result will be a fi tting companion to the came up against a big limi ta tion—the will put into place the largest array in the better-known Hubble Telescope. The de tec tor. northern hemisphere. Neither project European Union and U. S. National Sci- “We needed very sensitive receivers would have come to pass without the ence Foundation have committed $600 so you could fish out from the noise work of Tucker. million for its construction, but ALMA the weak signal coming from space,” he Tucker remains characteristically is not scheduled to be fully operational said. mod est about his accomplishment, but until 2012. Until then, one of the largest Unfortunately, the detectors being 12 May 2005

used in the 1970s were not nearly sen- sitive enough in the millimeter wave- length range. Noise coming from the receiver over whelmed the weak radio signals, mak ing it impossible for the sig- nals to be “fi shed out” and analyzed. But the SIS mixers, devel oped in the wake of Tucker’s theory, changed all of that. Tucker’s theory shattered the com- mon belief that “you had to lose at least half of a signal’s power in a mixer,” said Ed Sutton, a professor of astronomy at Il li nois. In fact, ac cord ing to Tucker’s theory, by using quantum tunnel ing between super con duc tors in the signal

mixer, “you not only don’t have to lose Photo by European Southern Ob ser ry va to any signal, but in theory you can actually An artist’s conception of the antennas for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA). Up to 64 gain signal,” Sutton added. “This was an 12-meter antennas will be placed on the Chajnantor site, a high plateau at an altitude of more than 16,000 ft. among the Andean mountains in Chile. unex pect ed result and an exciting one because in astron o my we’re always deal- above the atmo sphere,” Tucker pointed radio tele scopes have re vealed that a lot ing with such weak signals.” out. is going on in this vast blanket of space, “The magic was that you can actually Today, telescope arrays are scattered once thought to be devoid of activity. ampli fy the signal without adding any all around the world at high elevations. For example, stars and galaxies are noise to it,” said Tucker. In other words, CARMA will be built at 7,200 feet, while born in inter stel lar space. By peering he had discov ered that SIS mixers could ALMA is being built at a stagger ing deep in space, you ac tu al ly look further reach the quantum limit—the funda - 16,500 feet at Ll ano de Chajnantor in back in time and can observe the pro- men tal limit—of sen si tiv i ty. Chile—an elevation that can cause brain cesses that went into creating the fi rst “It sent astronomers to the top of the damage in short order, unless special stars and galax ies. It’s a window back world,” he said. pre cau tions are taken, said Sutton. in time. When telescope receivers were less With an unprecedented 64 telescopes According to Lo, ALMA will allow sensi tive, it didn’t always pay to mount linked togeth er in the ALMA array, sci- them to “peer into the beginnings of the arrays at the highest altitudes because en tists will be able to “see back in time Universe, galaxies, stars and planets and the increase in signal strength wasn’t and far away, to where the earli est and perhaps life it self.” signifi cant in pro por tion to the receiver most distant galaxies were forming,” As radio astronomy takes this giant noise. But when SIS re ceiv ers increased said Wayne van Citters of the U.S. Na- leap forward, Tucker continues to ex- sensitivity by ten-fold, it suddenly paid tion al Science Foun da tion at the ALMA plore the mysterious properties of quan- off to get that extra boost in sensitiv- groundbreaking. tum theo ry as it applies to electron ics. ity by mounting telescopes in higher As Lo explained, the millimeter and Howev er, instead of looking outward altitudes, where the at mo sphere would sub mil li me ter range of the elec tro - into space, his current work looks inward de grade the signal less. magnet ic spectrum yields a wealth of to the micro cos mic world of nanotech- “Once they had receivers that ap- in for ma tion from the “cold universe”— nology. He’s studying the uses of quan- proached the quantum limit in sensi - the space between stars known as the tum tunnel ing in creating atom-scale tiv i ty, it made a huge diff erence to get up inter stel lar medium. Over the years, devices and faster tran sis tors. Meanwhile, the result of his earliest13 su per con duc tor work remains solid and con tin ues to have signifi cant implica- ECE Alumni News

Sparking a power electronics revolution By Laura

During the last decade, ECE Professor Phil Krein (MSEE ’80, PhD ’82) has super vised several student team projects, including national collegiate solar and hybrid car competitions and a worldwide design challenge to reduce residential ener gy consumption. While the projects pri- ma ri ly gave students valuable practi- cal engineering experience, they also re sulted in some innovative technology devel op ments. In January 2004, Krein, fellow ECE fac ul ty member Patrick Chapman, and ECE Research Engineer Jonathan Kim-

ball (MSEE ’96) launched a com pa ny to Thompson-McClellan by Photo cap i tal ize on some of these tech nol o gies and other power electronics discov er ies from their labs. Located in the Univer si ty of Illinois Research Park, SmartSpark En er gy Systems is de vel op ing power electron ics technologies and products Photo by Heather Coit Reproduced by permission of The Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette Champaign-Urbana The permission of by Reproduced Heather Coit by Photo that use energy more effectively and ECE Professor Phil Krein (seated), displays batteries from SmartSpark Energy Systems in effi ciently. the company’s lab at Enterprise Works in Champaign in 2004. Other SmartSpark employees According to Krein, SmartSpark are, from left, ECE Assistant Professor Patrick Chapman, vice president and chief technology is in tro duc ing revolutionary “energy offi cer; Brian Kuhn, senior engineer; Interim CEO Neil Kane; and Jonathan Kimball, vice middleware” products to meet 21st- president of engineering. cen tu ry electricity needs. Their technolo- gies address elec tric i ty conversion and batter ies don’t al ways meet their ex pec - le giate competition to design and build control between ener gy sources—such ta tions is because it’s diffi cult to manage a low-cost fuel-cell component. as fuel cells, batteries, so lar panels, the charg ing process. These batteries are A third technology is a control meth- wind systems, and even the electri cal ac tu al ly a string of in di vid u al batteries. od that optimizes energy fl ows auto - grid system—and energy uses—such “You’re trying to charge them as a single mati cal ly in a circuit. Called RipCord™, as computers, cell phones, hybrid cars, unit, sort of hoping that they’ll take care it can run an electric motor at optimal battery packs, electron i cal ly controlled of matching by themselves,” said Krein. effi ciency, squeeze the most possible motors, appliances, security systems, or “What we have is an active electronic energy out of a solar panel, or tune a home theater prod ucts. method that keeps the batteries bal- power supply auto mati cal ly for the maxi- BattEQ™, a battery manage ment anced as they charge or discharge.” mum effi ciency. RipCord was developed tech nol o gy, can ex tend the life of bat- PulseLink™, another SmartSpark during the na tion al Sunrayce ’95 and ter ies used in high-voltage applications de vel op ment, is an energy conversion ’97 projects, colle giate cross-country such as elec tric scooters and golf carts. tech nol o gy that is more reliable, has solar car compe ti tions sponsored by the BattEQ, which is close to production, fewer parts, and costs less than exist- De part ment of Energy. orig i nat ed from ECE students’ work on ing con ver sion tech nol o gies. PulseLink According to Kimball, vice president the FutureCar project, a national colle- could be used to convert energy from of engineering, PulseLink and RipCord giate competition to convert a regu lar solar panels or fuel cells to ac form. may combine to make residential solar car into a hybrid electric vehicle. PulseLink originated from students’ energy affordable and viable. Smart- work on the 2001 Future Energy Chal- According to Krein, one reason these SmartSpark, continued on page 20 lenge project, which was a national col-

14 May 2005

TV or not TV? If that is the question, Mitch Altman may have the answer By Tom Moone

time I had to talk with a ven dor to buy parts for a consult ing project, they asked me, ‘What’s your compa ny name?’ And this seemed appro pri ate,” said Altman. Though he worked for a few com pa - nies as an employee, Altman found that he pre ferred the lifestyle that consulting off ered him. “I could design these really cool projects, work really hard at it to make it into a reality, and then take a bunch of time to travel or hang out or do other things that I enjoy,” said Altman. His con sult ing was primarily in the area of em bed ded systems, writing the fi rmware for microcomputers. Altman was also a founding member of 3ware, a company started in 1997

Photo by Peter DeSilva Peter by Photo that developed high-capacity computer Mitch Altman (BSEE ‘80, MSEE ‘84) came up with the idea for the TV-B-Gone universal remote storage solutions. Applied Micro Circuits control 12 years ago while eating at a restaurant with friends. Corporation bought 3ware in 2004. Mitch Altman (BSEE ’80, MSEE ’84) de- up and enjoy each other’s company. Though by that time Altman’s stake in scribes his lat est venture as “a personal There, a TV in the corner was a continual the company was relatively small, the project and a dream of mine that came distrac tion. “We kept paying attention sale did provide him with half the funds to fruition. It was a conscious choice to to it rather than to each other,” recalled needed to develop and produce the TV- fo cus on what I really love.” Altman. One particular annoyance of the B-Gone remote controls. The rest was What is this venture Altman speaks TV was that no one in the restaurant was made up from his personal savings. of? Well, Altman is the inventor of the watching it. It was simply on. It took two years of work to bring the TV-B-Gone universal remote control, “We started talking about the power idea of the TV-B-Gone remote controls to which will turn off virtually any TV in of the medium,” said Altman. Eventually frui tion. Much of the fi rst year was spent the United States and Europe. Since the someone mentioned how great it would trying to acquire a database of the power product was fi rst announced in October be if someone could make something codes for all U.S. and European tele vi sion 2004, Altman has sold more than 25,000 that would turn off any TV wherever models. After many labor-inten sive units. Not bad for someone who origi- you are that was distracting you. “And I hours trying to develop this database on nally thought that he would be lucky to said, ‘Well, you can,’” said Altman. “That’s his own, Altman discovered that he could sell enough to may be break even. where the idea was born.” license a workable database from one of The TV-B-Gone remote control had its The idea kicked around in Altman’s his vendors. Even with this database, Alt- origins 12 years ago when Altman was head for 10 years before he acted on man had to painstakingly go through the visiting some friends in Palo Alto, CA. it. During this time, Altman continued database to eliminate any duplicates. If Since they hadn’t seen each other in a running his own consulting business, there were duplicates, explained Altman, while, they went to a restaurant to catch Corn field Elec tron ics, which Altman TV or not TV?, continued on page 21 started while living in Ur ba na. “The fi rst

15 ECE Alumni News

Connexions shares educational materials By Erin Lukehart

Richard Baraniuk (PhD ’92) has always Jones sees Connexions as an oppor - strived to look at the big picture. His tu ni ty to serve a larger community. “We ex po sure to interdisciplinary endeav ors are after all a public university, and so I at the University of Illinois through the think as an employee of the state, part Coordinated Science Lab o ra to ry and of my job is service,” says Jones. “Con- Beckman Institute helped to cultivate nexions is a useful service that we can that “big picture” thinking, says Baraniuk, provide to the state, the community, the Victor E. Cameron professor of elec- and the world.”

trical and computer engineering at Rice tions and Information la of Mediace Re Connexions is similar to MIT’s well- Uni ver si ty. That interdisciplinary spirit in known OpenCourseWare initiative, but is part inspired Baraniuk to create Connex- broader in scope. Where MIT only posts ions (http://cnx.rice.edu), an open-ac- their own courses for use, Connexions cess Web site that allows both educators allows any instructor to post modules. Photo by Rice Offi University by Photo and learn ers to access course materials Rice University Professor Richard Baraniuk These modules—small informational on ev ery thing from signal processing to (PhD ‘92) is director of the Connexions com po nents that can be pulled together ele men ta ry music edu ca tion. project, a Web-based, collaborative approach to form courses—are textbook-quality to sharing and advancing knowledge for the As an instructor in signal pro cess ing, in their appearance, so that a user could benefi t of the global educational community. Baraniuk was frustrated by the diffi culty print off the information and have clean, in fi nding published materials demon - Around the same time that Baraniuk high-quali ty copies for personal use or strating to students the interconnect- was fi rst developing Connexions, ECE distri bu tion. edness between theory and everyday Professor Doug Jones was also contem - Connexions operates under an open- applications. plating publishing ECE course materials content license from Creative Commons “The best way to write a book of on the Web. Jones had been Baraniuk’s (http://creativecommons.org), which this sort is to enlist communities to get PhD advisor, and the two kept in touch allows users to distribute or modify the in volved, and that was really hard. That regu lar ly after graduation. course information, as long as proper was in 1999— there were all kinds of Baraniuk recalls of his advisor, “He at tri bu tion is given. great Web sites but it was still very hard re al ly challenged me to broaden myself While instructors fi nd the site useful to be able to get people to work together and be more than just a student writ ing in developing curricula or mining for in a way that was globally distributed,” a thesis. He pushed me to become a new ideas in their lessons, Baraniuk said he ex plained. schol ar.” a grow ing number of the site’s visitors Baraniuk aimed to create a Web site Jones was excited to hear about the are industry professionals who need to that was free, easy to use, and global idea for Connexions and was eager to brush up on their knowledge. Rather in scope, so that anyone interested in partic i pate. He has since posted course than spend hours at the library trying to access ing the courses could learn some- mate ri als for ECE 420 (Digital Signal Pro- fi nd the infor ma tion, engineers can just thing new or adapt the material for their cess ing Lab) on the site, and is pre par ing search the site to fi nd whatever informa- own use. to add ECE 551 (Digital Signal Processing tion they need. Along with a group of Rice University II) with the assistance of Pierre Moulin In some cases, students use the site colleagues, Baraniuk began to piece to- and Andrew Singer. Jones remem bers simply because their textbooks are too geth er the site in 1999. By 2001 they Baraniuk as a hard-working student and costly. “I’ve had feedback from people had begun posting material, and then is proud of how far he has taken Connex- in Pakistan and India who say they’re the site offi cially launched in February ions. “We had a big vision of what could taking a class and they couldn’t aff ord 2004 for public use. be done with this,” says Jones. “He really Connexions, continued on page 22 went out and made it happen.” 16 May 2005

Bardeen Quadrangle and Garden dedicated By Rick Kubetz, College of Engineering writer

Although the morning began gray and Creek, and a fountain. blustery, the sun emerged and shown A newly landscaped brightly as Dean David Daniel and Pro- garden outside the fes sor Nick Holonyak Jr. unveiled the north entrance to bronze plaque offi cially dedicating the Engi neer ing Hall has John Bardeen Quadrangle and Memo- also been named in rial Garden on the north campus of the Bardeen’s honor. Uni ver si ty of Illinois. The project was Theoretical physicist John Bardeen made possi ble by was the fi rst person to win two Nobel The Grainger Foun- Prizes in the same fi eld—for the inven- da tion, and the dedi - tion of the transistor (1956) and the cation was held in explanation of superconductivity (1972). con junc tion with the Photo is duced pro re by per mis sion of The ba na Champaign-Ur News-Gazette Over 100 peo ple gathered on Thursday, annual meeting of October 14, 2004, to honor the late the Univer si ty of Illi - professor of phys ics and electrical and nois Foun da tion. The computer en gi neer ing, and share their Grainger Founda tion, memories of one of the 20th century’s a private founda tion great minds. es tab lished by elec- The dedication ceremony included tri cal en gi neer ing remarks from Illinois President James alum nus Wil l iam Wal- Electri cal Engineering Department deal- Stukel, Trustee Marjorie Sodeman, lace Grainger (B.S. ’19) and headed by his ing with both ex per i men tal and theo - Chan cel lor Richard Herman, University son, David, made the gift to create the reti cal aspects of semiconductors, and of Il li nois Foundation President Sidney en gi neer ing quad and gar den. one in the De part ment of Phys ics which Micek, College of Engineering Dean Da- John Bardeen was born in Madison, dealt with the o ret i cal as pects of mac ro - vid Daniel, and Professor Nick Holonyak Wisconsin, on May 23, 1908. He re ceived scopic quantum systems, particularly Jr., the John Bardeen Endowed Chair in his PhD in physics from Princeton Uni- su per con duc tiv i ty and quan tum liquids. Electrical and Computer Engi neer ing ver si ty, which was followed by several The micro scop ic theory of superconduc- and Physics, and Bardeen’s fi rst graduate postdoctoral and teaching assignments. tivity, developed in col lab o ra tion with student. More than a dozen members In the fall of 1945, he joined the newly L.N. Cooper and J.R. Schrieff er in 1956 of the Bardeen family also at tend ed the formed research group in solid state and 1957, has had profound implications cer e mo ny. physics at the Bell Telephone Labora- for nearly every field of physics from The Bardeen Quadrangle is located in tories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was ele men ta ry particle to nuclear and the the heart of the Engineering campus— there that he became interested in helium liq uids to neutron stars. Bardeen bounded by the Grainger Engineering semiconductors, and with W.H. Brat- received his second Nobel Prize in phys- Library on the north, the Mechanical tain, invented the transis tor in late 1947. ics in 1972 for this work. Engineering Laboratory on the east, In 1951, he left Bell Labs to become a During his 60-year scientifi c career, he Engi neer ing Hall on the south, and professor of Physics and Electrical Engi- made sig nifi cant contributions to almost Talbot Laboratory on the west. Site im- neering at Illinois. He re ceived his fi rst every aspect of condensed matter phys- prove ments include new concrete walks, Nobel Prize in physics in 1956 for the ics from his early work on the electronic deco ra tive plaza pavements, bicycle invention. be hav ior of metals, the surface proper- parking, service courtyards, dry-laid At Illinois, Bardeen established two ties of semicon duc tors and the theory of stone re tain ing walls along the Boneyard major research programs, one in the diff usion of atoms in crystals, to his most 17 ECE Alumni News

EM course is gateway to many career paths By Erin Lukehart

Consider- detail in class; this allows stu dents to ing the course’s see how these con cepts apply in the real em pha sis on world,” said Cangellaris. math e mat ics Although ECE 350 is not required, and theo ret i cal Cangellaris noted it is in many ways a con cepts, you’d “gateway” course, essen tial to any stu- be hard-pressed dents wishing to pursue a career in fi elds to fi nd a student such as commu ni ca tions, micro wave who would de- en gi neer ing, or solid-state elec tron ics. scribe ECE 350 Cangellaris sug gest ed the course as easy. “The could also be relevant to students pur- course re quires su ing dig i tal circuit design. “Many of the very good skills concepts described in this course are in math e mat ics, ex treme ly use ful to understanding how especially calcu- the millions of transistors in high speed lus and vector CPUs—the chips that Intel makes for calculus, and in our com put ers—transmit information addi tion requires between each other,” he said. “They also the willingness explain how sometimes undesirable of the student to noise generated by these transistors intu itive ly think causes all sorts of inter fer ence problems about the physi- that may actually prevent the processor Developed more than 50 years ago with cal phenom e na from work ing at its best.” the advent of electrical communication that govern the inter ac tion of electro - Like many other alumni, Tony Zuc- and high frequency electronics, ECE 350 magnet ic waves with matter,” said cur- carino (BSEE ’83), Entrepreneur in (recently changed to 450)—Lines, Fields, rent course direc tor Profes sor Andreas Residence at Benchmark Capital, said and Waves—has been a longstanding Cangellaris, who has been teaching the concepts he learned from ECE 350 sta ple of the department and continues the class off and on for the past seven proved valuable after graduation. “[This to challenge and inspire the students years. course] defi nitely was of high practical who take it. The aim of ECE 350 is to present value in my very fi rst engineering job Associate Department Head N. students with the application of electro - out of school,” explained Zuccarino. Narayana Rao taught the course reg- magnet ic theory and electromagnetic “Most of my time has been spent in u lar ly from his arrival to the depart- fi elds. For their homework, students use com mu ni ca tions and networking, and ment in 1965 through the 1980s, and com put er-based visualization aids de- so under stand ing of lines, fi elds, and infrequently later on. “This course was signed by Professor Umberto Ravaioli, waves proved absolutely fundamental developed as a funda men tal subject who also teaches ECE 350. to under stand ing the technical land- for electrical engi neers,” said Rao, the “We use the applets so students can scape.” Edward C. Jordan Pro fes sor of ECE. “It is probe a bit further into some of the John Cioffi (BSEE ’78), Hitachi Ameri ca still fundamental because all electrical ap pli ca tion- and design-driven quan ti - Professor of Engineering at Stanford engineering has become very broad ta tive manipulation of elec tro mag net ic University, has returned to princi ples now. All courses having to do with fi eld equations and concepts that we learned from ECE 350 in his work with wave phenomena branch off from this don’t have time to work through in course.” EM course, continued on page 22

18 May 2005

Former head Trick retires By Laura Schmitt

Tim Trick came to the Univer si ty of Il- some University of li nois in the fall of 1965 thinking the California, Berke- Ur ba na campus might be the fi rst stop ley faculty, who in his career. “But after I got here I could invited Trick to see that the research ac tiv i ty was much spend the 1973-74 stronger than at many of the other Big 10 academic year on uni ver si ties,” said Trick, who com plet ed sabbatical there. his master’s degree and PhD at Purdue. At Berke ley, Trick “I quickly learned that I had made the worked with some right career choice.” of the pio neers Hired by Professor Mac Van Valken- of IC design, in- burg—who was acting head while EE clud ing Don Ped- Head Ed Jordan was on sabbatical—Trick erson, Paul Gray, was among the faculty brought in to and Dav id Hodges. strengthen the systems re search area. He also taught a “The thing that appealed to me at the comput er-aided time was being able to work with Mac design course and fund ing to campus. Van Valkenburg,” recalled Trick. “I always sat in on all the integrated circuit courses All of this activity made Trick’s job was very impressed with the books that he could. When he returned to Illinois, of recruiting facul ty much easier. “We Mac wrote on network analysis and syn- Trick developed some new cours es in were so far ahead of other campuses thesis of fi lters. I felt it was really a great IC analysis and design, and he wrote in terms of facilities—in struc tion al and honor to come to Illinois and interview the textbook, “Intro duc tion to Circuit research—that just about every one I and meet him.” Analysis.” made an off er to that visited our campus During the next 39 years, Trick would In 1983, Trick took on administrative wanted to come here,” Trick said. “They conduct research on integrated circuits duties at the Coor di nat ed Science Lab wanted to be part of the ex cite ment. and computer-aided circuit analysis on campus when the lab’s director, There was a lot of outstand ing research and design, supervising the master’s Robert Chien, became ill. Two years and the facilities to make that feasible, and doc tor al theses of more than 60 later, he be came ECE depart ment head and of course high quality students. I students; serve as department head for at the begin ning of a new era of excit- found re cruit ing was not a tough sell at a decade; and play a key role in using ing building and research projects on that point.” technology to enhance engineering the engineering campus—all providing Looking back on his 10 years as de- education. benefits to ECE faculty and students. part ment head, Trick is pleased with Trick’s early research included col- Between 1985 and 1992, the Beckman sev er al major accomplishments in lab o ra tion with the department’s famed Institute, Mi cro elec tron ics Lab o ra to ry, faculty recruit ment, curriculum revi- An ten na Laboratory faculty, who were and new Co or di nat ed Sci ence Labora- sion, and instruc tion al lab renewal. “We try ing to design broadband microwave tory were construct ed and opened. The had a 40% turnover of faculty during am pli fi ers without the benefi t of good Na tion al Center for Supercomputing Ap- my 10 years as department head,” Trick design methodologies. Trick and one of pli ca tions (NCSA), Center for Com pound said. “With support from the College his doctor al students developed com- Semicon duc tor Micro elec tron ics, and and faculty par tic i pa tion we were able puter-aided analysis techniques for their the Center for Supercomputing Research to recruit outstand ing new faculty to circuits. and Devel op ment were estab lished, maintain excellence in our traditional This work drew the attention of bring ing mil lions of dollars in research Trick retires, continued on page 22

19 ECE Alumni News

Koetter, continued from page 4 Diego. fi ed the math underlying the method highlight ed by the National Science Error-correcting systems based on to make it orders of magnitude faster Foundation, which funded part of it. The Reed-Solomon codes basically decide and, hence, useful in real-world applica- two have formed a company to promote what pieces of data are most likely to be tions. its use, and Koetter said they’re in talks correct and discard the rest as probably One of the first people to contact with several potential commercial us- being in error. them was Taylor, who said their al- ers. Koetter, who gleefully described his gorithm is probably in use now by a Koetter said its applications could, for work as solving puzzles, and Vardy found few hundred amateur radio operators instance, lead to faster, larger and less they could use the discarded probabili- around the world. expen sive disks by allowing cheaper ties to identify the most likely error pat- The radio operators aren’t the only ma te ri als to be used in manufacturing terns and catch errors more effi ciently ones interested. The IEEE recently and improv ing yields since the method as a re sult. In eff ect, their method can select ed Koetter’s and Vardy’s paper makes errors less of a concern. In com- handle substantially more noise and still out lin ing the method as the top publi- mu ni ca tions, it could allow more infor- get the message. cation in infor ma tion theory during the mation to be moved at higher speed and Moreover, they refi ned and simpli- past two years. The work also has been

SmartSpark, continued from page 14 Spark envisions simple units that use RipCord could cut energy consumption as vice presi dent and chief technology RipCord to extract maximum power of existing and new motors by about offi cer. Interim CEO Neil Kane, an Illinois from the solar panels and use PulseLink 15 percent on average. “Since motors me chan i cal engineering graduate, works to simplify con nec tion to the electric use about two-thirds of all electricity, part time for SmartSpark; he is the en tre - outlets in a home. Solar modules that the poten tial savings is 10 percent of all preneur in residence for Illinois Ventures, just hook into a 110 volt wall outlet elec tric i ty con sump tion,” Krein said. a university program that provides fund- would eliminate ex pen sive professional Although most motors simply plug ing, business expertise, and other as- installation issues. into an ac wall source, many new motors sistance for faculty start-up companies. Currently, conventional electricity are moving toward electronic controls. SmartSpark plans to hire two or three sourc es are signifi cantly less expensive For example, new refrigerators and air engineers dur ing the coming year. than solar energy panels on homes. condi tion ers use electronic controls. Becoming entrepreneurs has helped “[Solar] is something you might do if you SmartSpark aims to partner with manu - Krein and Chapman be better teach- have a cabin way out in the woods and fac tur ers of motors and motor controllers ers and researchers. “I’ve made a lot there’s no power to it or if you really want so RipCord can be implemented as part of indus try contacts and gained some to be a green consumer,” explained Krein. of the control software in appliances and really valuable experience as to what is “We’re trying to make it to the point that other systems. important to them,” said Chapman, who it’s feasi ble economically.” RipCord may be the technology fur- also has learned a lot about intellectual “There’s a lot of work on covering a thest from production, but Krein predicts property through the licensing agree- whole commercial building with solar it may be the most lucrative product for ments between SmartSpark and the panels,” said Kimball. “But nobody is re- the com pa ny. “It’s going to take a long university. “I reg u lar ly cite examples from al ly tar get ing the small modular system time to get there because it’s a lot dif- the company when I teach now, to show to make it affordable to the average fer ent than what other people do, but problems we face in taking theoretical home own er. We’re working on a modu- in the very long run I think it will make a concepts from the classroom and get lar approach so you can get into it for big diff erence.” them to work in practice.” a few hundred dollars. Then whenever SmartSpark currently has one full- Added Krein: “In power electronics, you have a few hundred dollars you put time employee—Senior Engineer Brian and there’s no question about it, aca - up another panel and you expand your Kuhn, who helped co-found the com- dem ic work has very limited value until system. This way a lot more people can pany last year. Kuhn is a former research you’re actually making stuff and imple- get into solar power.” engineer from Purdue University. Krein menting it [because] you’re not really RipCord’s applications go beyond is the compa ny’s president and Chap- solving the engineering problems. I think res i dential solar power. Krein estimates man, an ECE assistant professor, serves over the years, we’ve been trying very 20 May 2005

TV or not TV?, continued from page 15

“the fi rst one transmitted will turn the startup company. Originally planning TV off , and the next one will turn it back to simply work out of his San Francisco on again. That wouldn’t be cool, would apartment, Altman found that he had it? The in tent is to turn it off and it stays to rent offi ce space. Recently he hired off .” someone to take on the role of company Altman discovered during the stages president and they have been more for- of manufacturing, package design, and mal setting up contracts and clarifying a host of other small details, that his job descriptions. “It’s still not your typical friends were among his greatest busi- busi ness,” said Altman. “But it’s getting ness assets. “Lucki ly for me,” said Altman, closer to that and not so much an organic “I have a small number of very talented an ar chic blob, as it has been.” friends in dispar ate fi elds with disparate Though TV-B-Gone has added more realms of what they’re great at creatively. pressure to his life than he’s experienced And it just came together perfectly.” A Mitch Altman sells versions of the TV-B-Gone in quite a while, Altman still maintains graphic artist friend created the pack- universal remote control that can be used to other important aspects of his life. “I turn off virtually any television in either North age design, which is also used for the still do a lot of volunteer work,” he said. America or Europe. Web site. Another friend with industrial “That’s an important part of my life.” He design experience helped design the onslaught of pop u lar i ty.” con tin ues to do phone counseling for plastic case. Other friends helped with The article on Wired.com led to more people with HIV, and he repairs old, do- needed technical drawings for injection media attention. That same afternoon, nated comput ers and gives them away molds and with Web programming. Altman was interviewed on National free to nonprofi t organizations. October 2004 was when things re- Public Radio’s All Things Considered. Altman is quick to point out that his ally became exciting and when Altman Also, by that time he had an appoint - TV-B-Gone remote controls are not part found his life greatly changing. Through ment to meet a photographer from the of some radical plan to eliminate all tele- a friend of a friend, Altman met a re- Asso ci at ed Press. Once the article was vi sion viewing in public places. “I don’t porter who wanted to write an article on the news wire, the rest, as the cliché go around turning TVs off when people on TV-B-Gone remote controls for Wired. goes, is history. Altman has been inter- are choosing to watch it,” he said. “But com. Given less than a day's notice, Alt- viewed in segments on the CBS Evening there are so many situations in public, man learned the article would appear on News and Fox News, and articles about like Laundromats and restaurants, where Wired.com’s Web site early on Tuesday, him and TV-B-Gone remote controls peo ple don’t go there to watch TV. If October 19. “I fi gured I should get my have appeared in a host of newspapers they’re looking at it at all, they’re being Web site ready to actually accept orders,” and maga zines. distracted by it. Now people have a little said Altman. “I spent all night, literally. It Over the past months, after selling power over that situation, over the media was just like being in school fi nishing a more than 25,000 units, Altman still in our lives.” project.” finds himself scrambling at times to You can fi nd out more about TV-B- The Wired.com article was posted at keep up with the continuing demand. Gone remote controls and Cornfield 2:00 a.m. Altman fi nished work on his And it has changed the way Altman Elec tronics at www.tvbgone.com. Web page around 5:00 a.m. Within an views himself. “I’ve never looked at hour, he had 30 orders. By 2:00 p.m., myself as a business man,” he said. “Sud- there were 1,200 orders. At that point, denly I’ve had to play businessman, said Altman, “the Web site was so over- president, CTO, plus engi neer. This is whelmed, it shut down due to too much all-consuming.” What had started out traffi c. I was not prepared for this kind of as a personal project that was, in many respects, just for fun had turned into a

21 ECE Alumni News

Connexions, EM course, Trick retires, continued from page 16 continued from page 18 continued from page19 the books,” explains Baraniuk. “But they DSL technology, a fi eld that he helped areas in the department as well as to found Connexions and it helped them to to pioneer and has been working in for expand and strengthen the faculty in the learn the material.” There has also been 25 years. higher growth areas of computer, signal an in ter est in translating the material “[DSL] uses twisted pair telephone processing, and VLSI en gineer ing.” into other languages, such as Chinese, lines to send high-speed digital data He oversaw a major curriculum change Japanese, Thai, and Spanish. to the normal home at the end of the in the early 1990s. He also pushed for a Baraniuk’s approach to Connexions is tele phone line. You need to be able to new introductory engineering course interdisciplinary, and he hopes in turn to model what the telephone line looks that would, for the first time, allow cultivate a sense of interconnectedness like, and that type of modeling is what freshman students to discover what between subject areas through the site. was taught in Professor Rao’s class,” electrical and computer engineering This type of approach is not new to Ba- Cioffi said. were all about. raniuk, whose graduate research fused Not only is the course itself woven into The ECE 110 course that Trick helped engineering with applied mathematics. ECE tradition, so is the course’s text book. develop has become very popular and Under Professor Jones, he worked in “Elements of Engineering Electromag- has been copied on many other cam- time-frequency analysis. netics,” authored by Rao and fi rst pub- puses nation wide. ECE Professor Ricardo “In time-frequency analysis, the idea lished in 1977, has been used as the ECE Uribe developed the lab portion of the is try to build mathematical tools that 350 textbook for many years. The book course. allow you to look at signals in the same is also utilized for ECE 229, Introduction “I didn’t want 110 to be an easy sem- way that a musical score lets you look to Electromagnetic Fields, which is a re- i nar course where students just attend at music,” he explains. “We built math- quired course and a pre req ui site for ECE and maybe read some stuff and write ematical representations for other kinds 350. Rao’s textbook recent ly reached its a re port,” said Trick. “I wanted to really of signals that have that same kind of sixth edition, and has the distinc tion of teach students about electrical devices, visual charac ter. And they get used being the fi rst book to kick off the new circuits, and the systems in which they all the time in every thing from speech Illinois ECE Series for Prentice-Hall. are used.” processing and speech recognition to Cioffi took ECE 350 when Rao had Students learn concepts in circuits, cell phones, sonar, and radar.” just fi nished the fi rst edition of his text- electromagnetics, electronics, control, Through Connexions, Baraniuk ul ti - book. “I remember him passing it out and digital systems during lectures. In mate ly dreams of creating a global com- [as] hand-typed notes in the class,” Cioffi the lab, they design and build the cir- mu ni ty of authors—a free intellectual recalled. “It was a diffi cult subject, but cuitry neces sary to transform an electric ex change of information between con- pret ty easy to take given the level of care chassis into an autonomous vehicle that trib u tors and learners. Baraniuk happily that he put into it.” can follow a path on a track. notes that 96 percent of the site’s traffi c ECE 350 is a course known for its Another accomplishment was the comes from outside of Rice University. great challenges, but it also reaps many re de sign/renovation of ECE’s 20 in- “Currently we get over 300,000 hits on rewards. “While it is oftentimes chal- struction al labs in the early 1990s. our server per day,” he says. “We’d like to leng ing for the students to combine the Working with ECE Associate Head Na- be up to about 3 million hits next year.” rigor ous math with the intuitive physical rayana Rao, Trick invited the faculty to Connexions currently hosts more thinking about waves and fi elds,” said submit pro pos als showing how they’d than 2,500 modules and 50 courses, and modernize their teaching labs. With it only con tin ues to grow. “It wasn’t just industry booming, Trick presented the pie-in-the-sky educational technology department’s wish list to the university for its own sake, and I think that’s one liaisons at various companies. The result: of the reasons why it’s been a success,” the department received more than $10 says Baraniuk. “It actually tries to solve real problems.”

22 May 2005

Faculty news

Ilesanmi Adesida has been Award from the IEEE Anten- named a Fellow of AVS for nas and Propagation Soci- contributions to nanofab- ety for their paper “Analysis rication technologies and and Design of Broad-band advances in high-speed Single-Layer Rectangular compound semiconduc- U-slot Microstrip Patch tor devices. He also has Antennas.” The award was been elected Fellow of the presented at the IEEE In- Optical Society of America ternational Symposium on for contributions to high Antennas and Propagation sensitivity optoelectronic in Monterey, CA, in June devices and integrated 2004. circuits and the methods for their fabrication. In April, Stephen Boppart has been Adesida was named interim awarded an NSF CAREER dean of the College of En- Award for a project entitled gineering. He will replace “Functional Optical Co- David Daniel, who is leaving her ence Tomography for in May to become president Neural Imaging.” of the University of Texas at Jack Kilby best student contributions to the devel - Dallas. Richard Blahut was an- paper award for their paper op ment of semiconductor nounced as the Shannon pub lished at ISSCC 2004. vertical-cavity surface-emit- Tamer Basar has been Award winner at the 2004 The award was presented at ting laser diodes. selected to receive the ISIT Conference in Chicago. ISSCC 2005 in San Fran cisco, prestigious Giorgio Quazza This is the highest honor ac- CA. Jim Coleman received the Medal, awarded by the corded by the IEEE Informa- 2004 Heinrich Welker Award International Federation of tion Theory Society. He will Shun-Lien Chuang received for the demon stra tion Automatic Control (IFAC). present his Shannon Lec- the 2004 En gi neering Excel- of reliable strained-layer This international award is ture at the 2005 ISIT Confer- lence Award from the Opti- lasers leading to 980-nm given only once every three ence in Adelaide, Australia. cal Society of America at Er fi ber pumps. The award, years and will be presented In July 2004, Blahut received the OSA Frontiers in Optics which honors outstanding to Basar at the 2005 IFAC the title of honorary profes- annual meeting on October research in the area of III-V World Congress in Prague, sor of electrical engineering 12, 2004, in Rochester, NY. com pound semiconductors, Czech Republic. at the National Chiao-Tung Chuang was also selekted was presented at the 31st University. for the IEEE Lasers and Elec- Inter na tion al Symposium Jennifer Bernhard and her tro-Optics Society (LEOS) on Compound Semicon- students Steven Weigand Andreas Cangellaris has Dis tin guished Lecture ductors in Seoul, Korea, in (now at WJ Commu ni c- been elected to receive the Award for Year 2004-2005. Sep tem ber. a tions), Gregory Huff (a Alexander von Humboldt The lecture will cover the current PhD student) and Award for Senior U.S. Scien- physics of quantum-well Steve Franke has been Helen Pan (now at Maxim tists from Germany. and quantum-dot lasers. elected an IEEE Fellow Integrated Products) re- for contributions to wave ceived the H.A. Wheeler Yun Chiu and co-authors, Kent Choquette was named propagation, atmospheric Ap pli ca tions Prize Paper Paul Gray and Bora Nikolic, a 2004 Fellow of the Opti- sensing, and to engineering have been awarded the cal Society of America for education. 23 ECE Alumni News

Liege, in Belgium on Octo- Nick Holonyak Jr. received ber 23, 2004. Farewell reception the 2004 Von Hippel Award from the Materials Research Zhi-Pei Liang has been Society at its meeting in appointed for a three-year Boston in December. He has term to chair the technical also been elected laureate committee on medical im- of The Lincoln Academy of aging and image process ing Illinois. He received the Or- of the IEEE Engineering in der of Lincoln, Illinois’ high- Medicine & Biology Society. est award for achievement, on April 30, at a ceremony Michael Loui has been on the Southern Illinois Uni- elected to another three- versity campus. In the nearly year term on the Board 40 years of its existence, of Gov er nors of the IEEE ECE Professor Mark Kushner talks with a col league more than 200 distin- Society on Social Impli ca - at the College of En gi neer ing reception in his honor guished people have been tions of Technology. He has De cem ber 17, 2004. An Illinois faculty member since elected laureates, including also been appointed to the 1986, Kushner became dean of en gi neer ing at Iowa leaders in all branches of the Editorial Board of College State Uni ver si ty on January 1, 2005. He is also the arts, scien tists, physicians, Teaching, a scholarly journal inaugural holder of the James L. and Katherine S. Melsa Professorship there. An expert in the study of lawyers, jurists, government that provides an in ter dis c- plas mas, laser physics, and spec tros co py, Kushner held offi cials, fi n an ciers, indus- i pli nary forum on issues various ad min is tra tive roles at Illinois, including College trialists, and masters in the related to teaching at the of Engineering as sis tant dean of academic programs many fi elds of communica- under grad u ate and gradu- and interim associate dean of administrative aff airs; tion and tech nol o gy. Three ate levels. ECE interim head; and interim head of chemical and biomolecular engineering. other laureates have ties to ECE: the late John Bardeen, Pierre Moulin was elected Donald Bitzer, and Paul Laut- to the Signal Processing Innovation for creation, the annual Instructional erbur. Society Board of Governors development, and techno- Awards banquet. as a member-at-large for a logical transfer of the power Philip Krein has been ap- three-year term. system visu al iza tion soft- Nitin Vaidya has been pointed an IEEE Power ware known as PowerWorld. invited to serve as the next Electronics Society Dis tin - David Nicol and Michael Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE guished Lecturer. He is one Liljenstam (post-doctoral M.A. Pai, professor emer i tus, Trans ac tions on Mobile of fi ve new appointees this research associate) received has published a new book, Computing. year. the Best Paper Award in “Small Signal Analysis of June at the 2004 Internal Power Systems,” which he Ben Wah and computer sci- Jean-Pierre Leburton Con fer ence on Advances in cowrote with Sen Gupta ence graduate students Yix- received the 2004 Quan- Internet Processing, Sys- and K.R. Padiyar. It was pub- in Chen and Chih-Wei Hsu tum Device Award by the tems, and Interdisciplinary lished by Narosa Publishing won two prizes for their ISCS for his outstanding Research for their paper House in New Delhi, India. SGPlan integrated planner achievements in the area of “Models of Active Worm at the 4th In ter na tion al com pound semiconductor Defense.” Ricardo Uribe received Con fer ence on Automated research. He also received a campus Excellence in Planning and Scheduling a Gold Medal for scientifi c Tom Overbye was awarded Undergraduate Teaching in June 2004: 1st prize for achievement from his alma the fi rst Alexander Schwarz- award for instructional staff the suboptimal temporal mater, the University of kopf Prize for Technological members April 26, 2004, at metric track and 2nd prize

24 May 2005

ECE welcomes new faculty members By Tom Moone and Laura

In the past seven months, That was a very good expe- The project is a 12-bit, 500 the ECE department has rience that has provided me megasample per second welcomed four new faculty a lot of fi rst-hand experi- pipeline analog-to-digital members, strengthening ence on the practical side of converter. Additional new its expertise in circuits, circuit design.” projects that he would like bioMEMs, remote sensing In 1999 Chiu returned to to initiate here at Illinois and ultrasound imaging. graduate school at Berke- include digital predistor- ley. His doctoral research tion generalization of radio involved investigating the frequency power amplifi ers. impact of CMOS scaling on Another project would be ’86, MSEE ’87, PhD ’90), who high-performance base- interleaved parallel analog- joined the ECE department band switched-capacitor to-digital converter banks in the summer 2004 as an circuits. In particular, he fo- with digital postprocessing associate profes sor, is the cused on analog and digital categorization. chief technology offi cer at calibration techniques for This semester Chiu is SRU Biosystems near Bos- low-power, high-resolution teach ing ECE 483 (An a log ton. Cunningham founded analog-to-digital convert- In te grat ed Cir cuit De sign), the company in 2000 to ers. a senior-lev el course that develop optical methods A native of China, Yun Chiu Following on his gradu- in tro duc es an a log cir cuit for biodetection that would comes to Illinois from the ate work, Chiu has expand- de sign using bipolar and be more sensitive, faster, University of California, ed his research interests to CMOS technologies. For and less expensive than the Berkeley, having completed cover the broader topic of the Fall 2005 semester, he prevailing approach es used his dissertation last year. enhanc ing the performance would like to create a new, in phar ma ceu ti cal research. Chiu fi rst came to the Unit- of precision analog, mixed graduate-level course to Today, SRU employs 40 ed States for the master’s signal, and even radio cover advanced topics in in Woburn, MA, and the electrical engi neer ing frequency circuits using analog IC design, includ- company man u fac tures program at UCLA, which novel adaptive digital signal ing switched-ca pac i tor plastic optical biosensors he completed in 1997. He processing techniques. fi l ters and data con vert ers. and associated readout joined CondorVision Tech- “Building ‘intelligence’ into Next spring, he may create instrumentation used by nology Inc., a Silicon Valley high-performance CMOS another new graduate class pharmaceutical companies startup company, where, as analog integrated circuits on radio frequency CMOS to discover and test new the head of a development is the focus of my research integrated circuits. drugs. team, he was in charge of for the next few years,” he The sensor utilizes a developing data converters said. “This is in line with the Brian Cunningham (BSEE photonic crystal that, when for CMOS digital imaging technology scaling trend of illuminated with white light, products. the semiconductor indus- refl ects back only a single “I wanted to take a short try, commonly known as wavelength. The crystal is break before I continued for Moore’s law.” designed to interact with the PhD,” he said. “To really Curently, he is still col- a biological test sample so be in the practical, multidis- lab o rat ing with one of his when a molecule, cell, or ciplinary fi eld of engineer- professors from Berkeley protein comes into contact ing, you need to have some on a project he initiated with the sensor surface, seasoning from industry. more than two years ago. Continued on page 26

25 ECE Alumni News

new faculty members, continued from page 25 it shifts the color of the scale devices. tion that seemed promising group. He was there as a refl ected light. The readout “Imagine having a to me at the time. I was Na tion al Re search Coun- instrument then measures process that can make very fortunate to have the cil research associate. His the changes in the refl ected high sen si tiv i ty gyroscopes opportunity to work under research focused on optical peak. out of continuous sheets the guidance of a mentor and radio remote sensing of “One of the key things of plastic fi lm,” he said. with his experience.” the ionosphere, the region is that the sensor struc- “Or, being able to design Cunningham decided to 300 km above the earth, ture can be manufactured nanostructures that can join the Illinois ECE depart- which contains ionized from plastic material on be programmed to alter ment for three reasons: he plasma. He looks at optical a contin u ous roll that is the color of fabrics at will.” wanted to teach, establish a signatures that originate in thousands of meters long,” In addition to making a new research program, and this area. He works on the Cunning- fashion statement, color- raise his two children near areas in the mid-latitudes ham said, “I believe this is changing fabric may have his and his wife’s extended and near the equator. the only biosensor that is utility as adaptable camou - family. He is currently working man u fac tured on a square fl age for soldiers who move “I don’t think there is any with some colleagues at yardage basis. The sensors from one environment to other school that I would NRL to perform computer are incorporated into con- another. go to,” he said. “Illinois is sim u la tions of irregularities ven tion al single-use dispos- In the fall, Cunning- one of the top one or two that occur in the iono- able microplates that are ham taught a junior-level electrical and computer sphere over the magnetic used in every life science electromagnetics class engineering programs in equator. These irregularities research laboratory.” He was [ECE 329, formerly known the country, so having the bring about the loss of a awarded a National Science as ECE 229], and he plans opportunity to come here is satellite signal. Makela and Founda tion research grant to develop new courses on really quite an honor.” his colleagues are trying to to push the resolution of biosensors and nanotech- develop an understanding label-free biosensors to nology for future semesters. of when these irregularities the level of a single protein Before founding SRU Bio- occur and what eff ects they molecule. systems, Cunningham was have on the signals. He has As a faculty member, Cun- the manager of biomed i cal also started working on ningham is exploring other technology at Draper Labo- similar phe nom e na at mid- facets of biosensor technol- ratory in Cambridge, MA. latitudes over the Carib- ogy. For example, he is con- He earned his PhD degree bean and the United States. ducting research to detect in 1990 under the supervi- Makela’s research fo- the interaction of proteins sion of the late Illinois ECE cuses on communication with other agents such as Professor Gregory Stillman. and nav i ga tion systems. bacteria, which would be “Greg had the most Jonathan Makela, who re- One system he works useful for detecting anthrax in fl u ence on my career ceived his PhD from Cornell with is WAAS (Wide Area spores or other kinds of among the faculty that University in 2003, comes Augmentation System), dangerous pathogens. Cun- I worked with and took to Illinois from the Naval a system of satellites and ningham is also working to classes from while I was a Research Laboratory (NRL) ground stations that pro- create new devices using student,” Cunningham said. in Washington, DC, where vide GPS signal cor rec tions, the same fabrication meth- “Greg was a very patient he worked in the Ther mo - providing better position ods that he developed for advisor, who enabled me to spheric and Iono spher ic accuracy. One use of this making plastic nanom e ter- choose the research direc- Re search and Ap pli ca tions system is for improved air-

26 May 2005

plane navigation, with use ul tra sound.” He will also developing an acoustic of WAAS enabling planes to examine the use of ultra- engineering laboratory get within a few hundred sound for sonoporation in course. feet of the runway. which the per me abil i ty of Oelze enjoys some other “Over the past year, there cellular membranes can aspects of U of I life. “I’m have been events when the No stranger to the U of I, be changed to allow drugs very excited about the Il- WAAS system was knocked Michael Oelze has spent or other substanc es to be linois basketball team,” he out by an ionospheric the last four years doing delivered to the cell. One said. “It makes winter go storm,” said Makela. “So, postdoctoral research work possible area of future a bit more quickly here.” we need to understand in the Bioacoustics Research de vel op ment for this type He also participates in the when those occur so that Lab located in the Beckman of research would be the annual ECE Basketball Jam. the WAAS system is better Institute prior to being of- devel op ment of probes that In 2004, his team came in prepared to deal with those fered a faculty position. His could perform a minimally second, losing by only two type of eff ects.” did his graduate work at the invasive proce dure. points. This year, his team As could be guessed by National Center for Physical He has also been in- fi nished with a respectable Makela’s research interests, Acoustics at the University volved in research at the 2-1 record in the tour na - there is a lot of travel to re- of Mississippi, receiving his U of I on the propagation ment. mote locations to set up op- PhD from there in 2000. of sound through soils for tical and radio equipment The projects he has been the purposes of detect- to study the ionosphere. involved in include work ing buried objects. Such This semester Makela will in very high frequency tis- research has potential use be teaching ECE 450 (Lines, sue characterization using for fi nding archeological Fields, and Waves). In the fu- ultrasound backscatter. artifacts or land mines, as ture he would like to devel- He received an individual well as agricultural uses for op a course on the Global fellowship from the Na- deter min ing the condition Stay in touch Positioning System, not just tional Institutes of Health of soil. “It’s another nonin- Your fellow alums on the user side, but more to continue this backscatter vasive means of testing soil would like to on signal structure, receiver work. His work has included rapidly, assessing their state know what you hardware—a course that is eff orts to distinguish diff er- acousti cal ly,” said Oelze. are doing. Visit more engi neer ing, systems- ent kinds of tumors using “So that is another interest www.ece.uiuc.edu/ based approach rather than ultrasound, as well as distin- that I have.” He has been alumni/alumnews.html just a “how to use it” course. guishing between normal collaborating with faculty to send us news about “I’m happy to be at Il- and cancerous tissues. He members in the agricultural your job, your family, linois,” said Makela. “Every- completed that fel low ship engineering department on honors or awards one’s been very nice and this year and was off ered a this research. you’ve won, or any wel com ing. Illinois’ reputa- faculty position in ECE. This semester Oelze will be interesting activities tion precedes itself, and this “I’ll also be looking teaching ECE 329 (Intro - you are involved in. research group is fantastic.” at very high frequency duc tion to Electromagnetic ul tra sound for detection Fields). In the past, he has of things like apoptosis also taught ECE 473 (Fun- [programmed cell death] damentals of En gi neer ing and cellular necrosis, and Acoustics). In the future treatment monitoring using he would like to look into

27 ECE Alumni News

Fab Lab course pioneer Anner dies By Erin Luke- eff orts resulted in donations from Texas for his vivid, color ful stories. He certainly Instruments, Motorola, Delco, and Har- had unique experiences—growing up in ris, but most signifi cantly from National China, then moving to Massa chu setts Semiconductor. and Virginia as a young adult, and trav- Hughes, who fi rst encountered Anner el ing all over the world. as a student in the late 1970s, recalled, Anner received his bache lor’s degree “He had a very stern demeanor; he was in physics from the College of William a re al ly hardcore professor-type.” He and Mary in 1938, and then completed a added, “He was pretty demanding as mas ter’s in electrical engineering at Har- a professor but he certainly was a very vard. He taught at New York Univer si ty in warm-hearted guy as soon as you got 1940 but then was called to ac tive duty to know him in any capacity outside of in the Marine Corps in 1941. During his the classroom.” Colleagues have also years of service, Anner estab lished and described Anner as a humble man who served as offi cer in charge of the Marine was modest about his achievements. Corps Ra dar School, then served two Hughes remem bers Anner as a pro- tours of duty in the Pacifi c Theatre. fes sor who placed empha sis on teaching He fi nally re turned to teaching at NYU over re search. Indeed, Anner won the in 1946. In 1952, Anner was chosen to George Anner Everitt Award for Excellence in Under- represent the Univer si ty of Il li nois in a George Anner, ECE Professor Emeri tus, graduate Teaching in 1972 and 1980, two-year ap point ment as vis it ing pro- died May 11, 2004. He was 86. Anner left and the Cam pus Award for Excellence fes sor at the In di an Institute of Technol- a lasting mark in ECE as a forward-think- in Under grad u ate teaching in 1975. ogy in Kharagpur, In dia. ing professor who helped to devel op Hughes fi rst met Anner as a student More recently, Anner was chairman ECE 344 Theory and Fabrication of In te - in his electrical engineering classes, and of the board of the National Electronics grated Circuit Devices in the late 1960s then came to know him later as a col- Confer ence in 1995 and was a member and early 1970s. league and close friend. In 1980 Hughes of two panels of the Television Allocation Anner’s push for the department to took over supervision of the solid-state Study Organization. move into solid-state electronics in the teach ing lab and the hybrid circuits lab. Anner’s infl uence on the department 1960s was seen as visionary. “George As they began working together, Hughes is far-reaching. The ECE 344 “Fab Lab” was one to recognize that he had to dis cov ered that Anner had a ritual of get- that he helped to develop has become move with the times,” said John Hughes, ting an ice cream cone at the Illini Union recog nized as one of the best under- principal research engineer for the Micro every day after lunch. Hughes remem- graduate instructional facilities in the and Nanotechnology Laboratory on bers fondly how one day Anner invited country, and remains a staple of the ECE campus. Working with research ers him along and they soon began going curriculum. More importantly, he will be Robert Pierret, Ben Streetman, Frank to geth er every day. Even after retiring remem bered as a superlative teacher Hielscher (PhD ’66), and Leo Yau (PhD in 1983, Anner shared an office with ’69), Anner helped to devel op one of Hughes and continued the tradition. the fi rst un der grad u ate semi con duc tor Hughes and his wife also established the fabri ca tion labo ra to ry courses in the tradition of eat ing out with Anner and coun try. his wife every Thursday. “It wasn’t long As the laboratory director from 1968- before they were like family,” he said. 1982, Anner focused on obtaining lab In addition to his many professional equipment do na tions from industry. His achievements, Anner was well-known

28 May 2005

Early woman graduate fondly recalls student days

Like most new hit it off and began dat ing. Out side of magazines and she displayed her prod- stu dents com ing class, they cheered on the Illini bas- ucts at doll shows up and down the to the university, ket ball team at Huff Hall, went to dances, West Coast. The business thrived until Tressa (Kimble) and met friends at the new Illini Union. the ear ly 1990s when she and George Mabry was a bit During her senior year, she opted moved to the high desert city of Hesperia ap pre hen sive to specialize in illu mi na tion under the to continue to en joy their re tire ment. when she arrived direc tion of Professor John Kraehen- She said she occa sion al ly still receives on campus to buehl. She grad u at ed in the spring of letters from people asking if T.E.M. is still study electrical 1948—the fi rst member of her family in business. en gi neer ing. A to graduate from college—and married According to Mabry, the T.E.M. mail- transfer stu dent from Kansas City Junior George Mabry that fall in Kansas City. order business was very fulfilling be- College, she applied to Illi nois based She was the second woman to gradu- cause it enabled her to exercise her on the recom men da tions of some of ate from the Depart ment of Electrical design skills. Perhaps more importantly, her classmates and instructors. She at- Engi neer ing. though, were the therapeutic benefi ts tended Illinois because it was the only She applied for work with Kansas City her custom ers enjoyed from making the school that accepted her. Power & Light but was politely told that dolls and their clothing. “I received so “They wrote me a nice note saying the company didn’t need her. “In those many letters from ladies who had been they couldn’t accept a girl in their en- days…it was hard for a woman to do depressed, in the hospi tal, or whatever, gi neer ing school, Mabry said about the anything like that,” Mabry said. “Most of saying how much these helped them other university she had applied to. “I those boys in the illu mi na tion option recover. It was a thing for them to do and was so naïve I threw it [the letter] away prob a bly went to Gen er al Electric, and they just really enjoyed it.” and was embarrassed.” they had to go back East. Of course, I Mabry has fond memo ries of her two It was September 1946 when Kimble didn’t want to do that at that time.” years at Illinois, where she was the only stepped off the Illinois Central train in The Mabrys moved to South ern Cal- woman in her class, and by her own Champaign with her mother. She and i for nia in 1952, where George went to rec ol lec tion one of only two women in her mother went to see Fred Turner, work in the aerospace industry. the college. campus dean of students, who found Although she never practiced en gi - “All the fellows were very nice to me,” her a place to live at the Medea House, neering, she used the problem-solving she said about her student days in elec- a large three-story stone house on west skills she learned in engineering at home tri cal engi neer ing. “I remember the fi rst Green Street. raising her three children and as a vol- class I went to was with Professor Fett, “I didn’t know a soul,” she said. “When un teer in her church and at the children’s who was a charac ter. He said, ‘Now class, my mother left, schools. we’re going to have to change our little I felt completely In the 1970s, she indulged her hobby jokes with Miss Kimble in here.’” alone. It was very for dolls by design ing and making a She added: “My two years at the Uni- scary.” series of cloth dolls. She designed the Her lone- ward robes, too, creating many patterns li ness didn’t last based on 19th centu ry fashions. She too long. She soon started T.E.M. of California to mar ket and met George Mabry sell her dolls and patterns. She named (BSEE ’47)—he sat the patterns after her mother Nettie, next to her in an who taught her to sew when she was electron ics class. a girl. The two of them She advertised in McCalls and other

29 ECE Alumni News

New Illinois Institute, continued from page 1 Alumni Association Board president’s message Overbye are affi liated with ITI.) I am honored to have been select ed ITI has already turned a lot of heads in its short life. Last De- president of your ECE Alumni Board. cember, the institute sponsored a workshop on depend abil i ty The board has commit ted itself to and secu ri ty that brought industry and academic experts from working with the ECE department around the world to Urbana. Earlier in the fall, Illinois signed to help achieve its goal of being the a deal with Boeing that will bring millions in research dollars best in its class of Electri cal and Com- to the university, with Sanders and ITI heading up work on put er En gi neer ing de part ments. air port security, logistics, and other applications of “trusted” At our fall meeting the board focused software. That deal put U of I in the media limelight of Chicago, on three areas of near-term endeav or home to the Boeing headquarters. And locally, Sanders has and estab lished task forces to ad- been interviewed by radio station WILL in Urbana. dress the issues. First and foremost, What distinguishes ITI from other security-focused re search we want to look at ways to improve centers is its holistic approach to solving problems. “The key the com pet i tive ness of the Il li nois ECE de part ment. Our grad- is to look at the entire network—the computer system as a u ate and under grad u ate programs are consis tent ly rated in whole,” said Sanders on WILL. “Even if the pieces fail, how do the top 5 among U.S. univer si ties and we want to look at ways you de sign a system to op er ate in spite of those things? So fi re- to improve on that outstanding perfor mance. walls, intru sion detection systems, monitoring software—all Second, we are looking at con cepts for better preparing our these are key elements. But we focus on the whole.” engineers to face the realities of a global economy. Finally, we Nicol’s research involves modeling computer networks with have revised the Alumni Association by-laws to assure that we an eye toward improving the fi rewalls within them. “When a are structured to provide value to the ECE department and its network is complicated, you have what’s called ‘defense in lead er ship. We eval u at ed the task forces’ progress at our spring depth’—the fi rewall becomes a system, gets very complicated, meeting in March, and generated further actions to pursue and is easy to misconfi gure,” said Nicol. He cited a recent study pri or to our fall meeting in September. If any of our read ers showing that almost all such systems are misconfi gured. “What have ideas and inputs on the above top ics, please send them that means is, the people who defi ne the security policy are to me at [email protected]. not seeing it implemented by the system. There’s a mismatch Finally, congratulations to ECE senior Jack Ingram and his be tween the policy and the execution because the system is so Fighting Illini teammates for giving us an awesome basketball complex, people give it the wrong instructions.” By modeling season. a network, Nicol can identify such mismatches and evaluate the network’s fi rewall. Know an exceptional fellow alum? ITI’s mission also includes an educational component. The Nominate him or her for an ECE award In sti tute off ers short courses on cyber trust and cyber secu- rity, as well as ITI-approved certifi cate programs that draw on The ECE Distinguished Alumni Award honors graduates who have made professional and technical contributions ex ist ing U of I course off erings in several departments. The ITI that bring distinction to the department and the university. web site is at www.iti.uiuc.edu. This award is presented each year to four or fi ve exceptional alumni at the fall banquet on campus. There are more than 19,000 ECE alumni worldwide. The ECE Young Alumni Achievement Award recognizes alumni younger than 40 years old who have made outstanding professional contributions to their fi eld. This award is also presented at the annual fall banquet on campus. See www.ece.uiuc.edu/alumni/index.html for more information on the nomination process and the awards.

30 May 2005

Featured alumni careers

Sterling credits ECE faculty for shaping her career By Erin Luke-

Jennifer Sterling (BSEE ’89, for future years to defi ne takes place each summer MSEE ’90) credits where what transmis sion enhance - before the fall semester. she is today to the excel- ments need to be made to Sterling and her volunteers lent advis ing she received ensure the reliability of the call newly enrolled ECE as an ECE student. When system,” Ster ling explains. stu dents to welcome them she initially expressed an “Basically, we’re analyzing into the department and to interest in pow er engineer- the load growth and the ad dress their questions. ing, her advisor encour aged system changes to make “We want to make sure her to meet with Profes- sure our system is able to they know there’s alumni sor Peter Sauer. Sauer han dle and serve our cus- try ing to reach out to them became Sterling’s second tom ers reliably.” and trying to make them under grad u ate advisor, and Jennifer Sterling Sterling says her ECE feel welcome to the univer- Profes sor Emeritus Man- Edison, and its parent ed u ca tion has proved sity,” she explains. Recalling galore Pai advised her as a company Exelon, ever since. in valu able through out her her initial feelings of ap pre - graduate student. Her fi rst position at Com- career. “Right out of school, hen sion about attending “Both of them re- mon wealth Edison was in espe cial ly when I was heav- a large university, Sterling ally shaped my career,” says system planning. “I did a ily into analysis, the prin- said she hopes to ease the Ster ling, now director of little bit of analysis work,” ciples of pow er en gi neering new students’ fears and to trans mis sion planning for she recalls, “and then the that I learned in school show how the department Exelon ener gy delivery. anal y sis work lead to a simi- were really important,” she is a supportive community. “They were very enthusias- lar position at our opera- recalls. “I had such a positive tic about the subject mat- tions center.” Even the basic problem- ex pe ri ence at the U of I and ter, very knowledge able, While working at the solv ing skills she learned I really wanted to stay con- and very down to earth.” oper a tions center, Sterling in ECE have remained nect ed to the department Sterling’s academic in- had the opportunity to important to her work, and lend my skills into help- ter est in power engi neering become involved with the adds Sterling. “To approach ing the current students in was cultivated at a summer power compa ny’s eff orts in problems from a log i cal job with her hometown’s opening up to third party point of view and work utility compa ny—Cincin- access. Ster ling also spent through them, those are nati Gas and Electric. The a little over four years in the skills I think stay with you hands-on experience also regulatory side, ad min is - and serve you no matter helped to shape her career ter ing the company’s open what you’re do ing.” arc. “I really specialized in access transmission tariff as Sterling remains con- power engi neer ing,” said well as being respon si ble nect ed to the department Sterling, “so then it made for the analysis required to as an active member of the sense that I started with support transmission rates. Alumni Association Board. Commonwealth Edison Then in December 2003 she She is current ly serving as right out of school.” returned to the planning treasurer and also coor - Sterling has remained side as the director. di nates the annual fresh- with Commonwealth “We analyze the system man calling program, which

31 ECE Alumni News

Distinguished alumni honored at banquet By Janet Krenn

“I know I’ve said other eve- Javelin missile system. As nings are special eve nings, chief scientist for the Army, and if I say it again, I’m Andrews was in charge of afraid you’ll start to doubt that service’s entire research my word. But this really and technology programs is the most special of the at 21 laboratories and cen- special evenings,” joked ECE ters with 9,000 engineers Department Head Richard and scien tists, and a $2 Blahut to the guests at the billion budget. 2004 Dis tin guished Alumni Brown (BSEE ’63, MSEE Awards banquet September ’64, PhD ’67), the Bradley 24 at the Grainger Library. Dis tin guished Professor of The ECE department paid Electromagnetics at Virginia tribute at the banquet to Chuck Mercer by Photo Polytechnic Institute and ECE Distinguished Alumni recipients (left to right) John Hayes, Carl seven alumni who have State University, was recog- C.T. Wang, Gary Brown, and A. Michael Andrews II were honored made signifi cant technical nized for his con tri bu tions September 24, 2004, on campus. contributions to their fi eld. to the basic theory of the for impacting engineer- nized for his con tri bu tions A. Michael Andrews scattering of elec tro mag - ing education worldwide to vitreoretinal surgery in II, Gary S. Brown, John P. net ic waves from random through his textbooks. the United States and China Hayes, and Carl C.T. Wang media and rough surfaces. Hayes conducts research in and for his teaching and received Distinguished His theory has helped the the general area of com- humanitarian eff orts. Wang Alumni Awards—the high- Navy and Air Force under - puter science and engineer- has developed micro- est honor the depart ment stand the interaction of ing, with specifi c interests in surgical instru men ta tion bestows on its grad u ates. radar signals with the ocean computer hardware design, for ophthalmic surgery. Thomas M. Conte and surface. His work on the quantum computing, com- His contributions to eye Bradford Gliner received back-scattered power of puter-aided design, testing, surgery are seminal, with Young Alumni Achieve- downward-pointing radar and verifi cation of digital his innovations forming the ment Awards, presented to has been used to estimate systems, VLSI design, and basic platform for vitreous alumni less than 40 years wind velocity that causes fault-tolerant and embed- surgery; modifi cations of old. roughness over an ocean ded computer systems. his designs are used world- Andrews (PhD ’71), chief surface. Consequently, Hayes has written several wide for treating retinal technology offi cer for remotely sensed data from textbooks including, detach ment, trauma, and L-3 Communications in Ar- satellites can be used to “Computer Architecture eye infections. Each year ling ton, VA, was rec og nized estimate wind velocity close and Organization,” “Layout Wang travels to China with for his pioneering advances to the earth’s surface. Minimization for CMOS physicians to teach vitreo- in military infrared imaging Hayes (MSEE ’67, PhD Cells,” and “Introduction to retinal surgery. systems, and for his lead- ’70), the Claude Shannon Digital Logic Design.” Conte (MSEE ’88, PhD er ship in directing the R&D Professor of Engineering Wang (BSEE ’58, MSEE ’92), professor of electrical eff orts of the U.S. Army. Science at the University ’59, PhD ’64), president of and computer engineer- While at Rockwell he helped of Michigan, is recognized Medical Instruments Devel- ing at North Carolina State develop a focal-plane IR im- for his pioneering contribu- opment Laboratory in San University, was honored for aging technique, which was tions to the designing and Leandro, CA, was recog- his technical and leadership used in the precursor to the testing of logic circuits and

32 May 2005

Alumni class notes

PhD), president of Medical 1954 Instruments Development Edward Johanson (BSEE) and Laboratory in San Leandro, CA, Porter Womeldorff (BSEE) presented an ECE seminar on attended the College of Engi- artifi cial vision in Everitt Labo- neering’s banquet on campus ratory on September 23, 2004. October 29, 2004, where they His talk introduced a number received their 50th anniversary of vision prosthesis programs diplomas. aimed at helping the visually impaired. 1955 Joseph Killpatrick (BSEE), 1969 retired chief scientist with Samuel Green (MSEE ’66, PhD) Honeywell, presented an ECE was selected as a Boeing Tech- graduate seminar October 20, nical Fellow in 2004. 2004, at Everitt Lab. Killpatrick pioneered major develop- ments in the ring laser gyro- Photo by Chuck Mercer by Photo 1971 ECE Young Alumni Achievement Award winners Thomas Conte (left) scope, an inertial navigation Dennis Parker (BSEE) retired in device that helps guide, steer, and Bradford Gliner received their awards at the September 24, 2004, February 2003 from profes- and stabilize airplanes. sional fl ying after 32 years as banquet. a pilot fi rst with the United contributions to the fi eld automatic external defi bril- States Air Force, and more re- 1963 cently, as a pilot with American of computer microarchi- lator (AED). In 1992, Gliner Mayer Sasson (BSEE ’61, MSEE) Airlines. While in the Air Force, tecture. A leading expert co-founded Heartstream became a Life Fellow of the he fl ew F-4 jets. As a commer- IEEE in January 2004—one of in very long instruction Inc., where he led the semi- cial pilot, he fl ew 727, DC-10, only 1,779 people elevated to and 777 aircraft. word (VLIW) microarchi- nal work to develop the this distinguished status. In tectures, Conte is director low-energy biphasic wave- June, he was among 10 promi- of the Center for Embed- form that was critical to nent Colombians to receive the 1972 Colombian Abroad Excellence Archie Clemins (BSEE ’66, ded Systems Re search at the portable AED. In 1999, Award at a banquet in Miami, MSEE), owner and president NCSU. His contributions Gliner joined Northstar FL. Sasson is a senior project of Caribou Technologies, will to mi cro pro ces sor design Neuroscience, a medical de- manager in the Energy Markets receive an honorary doctorate Policy Group at Consolidated from the University of Illinois at include a highly regarded vice company developing Edison of New York. the May 2005 com mence ment. solution to the problem of innovative medical technol- A retired four-star admiral and VLIW code compatibility, ogies that restore function former commander of the 1964 Pacifi c Fleet, Clemins brought seminal work on instruc- and quality of life for people J.K. Aggarwal (MSEE ’61, PhD U.S. Naval operations into the tion fetch mecha nisms, and suff ering from neurologi- ’64) received the 2004 biennial electronic age. King-Sun Fu Prize at the Inter- industry-infl uencing work cal diseases and disorders. national Conference on Pattern on hardware performance Gliner is leading the R&D Recognition in Cambridge, 1975 counter design. His work team developing cortical UK. He was recognized for pio- Kim Boyer (MSEE ’75) and Con- has been adopted by Intel, stim u la tion technologies for neering contributions toward nie Vernon es tab lish ing the fundamentals Granston TI, and IBM. stroke recovery and other of structure and motion from were mar- Gliner (BSEE ’87), director neu ro log i cal applications. image sequences and their ap- ried March of research and program Also at the banquet, the plications to robot vision and 20, 2004, human motion. Aggarwal is in Seattle. manager at Northstar Neu- department presented the the Cullen Professor of ECE and The Boyers roscience Inc. in Seattle, WA, Marcia Peterman Award to director of the Computer and reside in was honored for contribu- Larry F. Altenbaumer (BSEE Vision Research Center at the Kirkland, University of Texas at Austin. WA. Alum tions to the development ’70) for dedicated service to Courtney of the world’s fi rst portable Carl Wang (BSEE ’58, MSEE ’59, 33 ECE Alumni News

Krehbiel (BSEE ’73, MSEE ’94) ’85) became dean of engineer- diagnostic algorithms for was among the guests. ing at the University of Illinois automobiles. He received GM’s 1992 Tom Conte (MSEE ’88, PhD) Chicago campus in August Boss Kettering Award in 2004, was elected an IEEE Fellow for 2004. He had been chairman of the company’s top technical contributions to computer 1977 the ECE de part ment at North- honor. He lives in Troy, MI, with architecture, compiler code John Orr (BSEE ’69, PhD) was western Univer si ty. his wife and two daugh ters. elected an IEEE Fellow for generation and performance contributions to engineer- evaluation. ing education in 2002. More 1986 1988 recently, he received the Wei Jeang (BSCE) is a regis- David Helman (BSEE) fi nished Ioannis Kanellakopoulos (MSEE Leadership and Service Award tered patent attorney with a fellowship in cardiac surgery ’89, PhD), of Iperasys Inc. in from the national ECE Depart- Haynes and Boone LLP in at Massachusetts General Cupertino, CA, was elected an ment Heads Association. He is Plano, TX. She is also a director Hospital in Boston in the fall. In IEEE Fellow in January 2005 a professor and former ECE de- of the Dallas Bar Association’s January 2004, he started at the for contributions to the theory partment head at the Worces- Intellectual Property Section. Cleveland Clinic. and practice of adaptive non- ter Polytechnic Institute. linear control.

1987 1989 Joy Laskar (MSEE ’89, PhD), a 1978 Steven Castillo (MSEE ’84, Krista Schwartz (BSCE) prac- faculty member at the Georgia Richard Landuyt (BSEE) is PhD) was appointed dean of tices intellectual property law Institute of Technology, was involved with his fourth the College of Engineering with Jones Day in Chicago. elected an IEEE Fellow in high-tech start-up company. at New Mexico State Univer- January 2005 for contributions RF Ideas, which is located in sity, where he has served as to the modeling and de vel - Arlington Heights, IL, manufac- a faculty member since 1987. 1990 Upamanyu Madhow (MSEE op ment of high-frequency tures desktop RFID proximity Since 1999, Castillo had been communication modules. card readers for building and head of NMSU’s Klipsch School ’87, PhD), a faculty member computer security. of Electrical & Computer Engi- at the University of California, neering. Santa Barbara, was elected an 1993 IEEE Fellow in January 2005 for Lisa Hackbart Snyder (BSEE) 1981 David Lindner (BSEE) joined contributions to adaptive mul- was promoted to director of Tim Chou (MSEE ’78, PhD), the law fi rm of Brinks Hofer tiuser detection for wireless business process and in tel - president of Oracle On Gilson & Lione, an intellectual communications theory. ligence services in August 2003 Demand, helped initiate an property fi rm in Chicago, as at Barton Inc. in Chicago. She information technology event an associate in October 2004. Jo Major (BSEE ’85, MSEE is responsible for all Web sites, in Chicago that gave the uni- Lindner had been a senior ’86, PhD) became president business intelligence services, versity and business commu- systems engineer at Motorola. and CEO of Avanex Corp. in project offi ce, and business nity an opportunity to listen He earned his law degree from August 2004. The Fremont, CA, processes. to Larry Ellison, chief executive DePaul University. company is a global provider offi cer of Oracle Corporation, of Intelligent Photonic Solu- discuss the security and pri- Sanjay Srivastava (MSEE), tions™, meeting the needs of 1994 Derek Taubert (BSEE), a vacy challenges in IT, overseas president, CEO, and cofounder fi ber-optic commu ni ca tions software engineer with Cisco outsourcing, how universities of Denali Software in Palo Alto, networks. Previously, Major Systems in San Jose, CA, was can cooperate with business CA, was named to the nine- had been senior vice president awarded a patent in April 2004. to advance technology, and member Electronic Design and general manager of the Taubert developed a method more. Automation Consortium Board Components Business Group for improving network com- of Directors in November 2004. at JDS Uniphase. pat i bil i ty. 1984 This consortium represents Thanh Tran (BSEE) is a senior more than 100 companies in 1991 member of the technical staff the multi-billion dollar EDA Rob Palandech (BSEE ’89, 1997 at Texas Instruments, where industry. MSEE) works for Anadigics, Mark Laufenberg (BSEE ’92, he leads a system application where he develops new prod- MSEE ’93, PhD), president of team to assist customers devel- Thomas Ting (BSEE ’82, MSEE ucts—900 MHz, 2 and 6 GHz PowerWorld Corp. in Cham- oping products using the latest ’84, PhD) has been working wireless transmitter blocks. paign, received the 2004 IEEE TI OMAP Dual-Core processors. for General Motors in R&D The company is located in the Power Engineering Society’s Planning for the last 10 years. Atlanta area. Walter Fee Out stand ing Young His work has focused on Engineer Award. This award 1985 developing on-board engine is presented each year to Prith Banerjee (MSEE ’83, PhD engineers who are 35 years 34 May 2005

or younger for outstanding Flyod M. Cassidy (BSEE ’48), 80, 31, 2004. He worked for Harris contributions in the leadership died May 7, 2004. He worked Government Systems, which Joseph Ye (MSEE ’57, PhD ’62) of technical society activities. for Honeywell for 40 years be- became Intersil, in Florida. He died September 14, 2004. fore retiring. He also served in held 13 patents. 2000 the Army during World War II. Jong Hwang (BSEE) is an Arthur T. Tiedemann (BSEE ’46, electrical engineer with CB&I in Kenneth A. Dippel (BSEE MSEE ’51) died October 24, the Chicago area. He designs ’48), 77, died July 1, 2004. He 2004. He was 78. A member power, heating, lighting, and worked for Commonwealth of the Navy’s V-12 program control systems for chemical Edison from 1949 to 1984. Mr. as an undergraduate student, import terminals and storage Dippel served in the US Navy. he served on a mine-sweeper facilities. off the California coast during Robert Feik (BSEE ’41) died World War II. He earned his June 15, 2004. He was 85. A PhD in electrical engineer- 2001 research scientist for the Air ing from the University of Dima Moussa (BSEE) is working Force, he developed radar Wis con sin in 1958 and became for the law fi rm of McAndrews, systems that are still in use a professor that same year, Held & Malloy Ltd. as she today. Mr. Feik served in the retiring in 1989. He was known attends law school at DePaul Army during WWII and the for teaching the 7:45 a.m. University in Chicago. Korean War. introductory courses.

Joseph Wei Fong (MSEE ’57, 2002 PhD ’62) died September 14, Mike Kramer (BSEE ’92, MSEE 2004. He was 79. He had a long Semiconwest conference ’95, PhD) presented an ECE un- career at MITRE in Bedford, dergraduate seminar on digital MA, working in the Common signal processing for binaural User Communications Systems hearing aid ap pli ca tions at department. He also taught Everitt Lab in October 2004. mathematics in the Ashland Kramer works for Phonak, a public schools. hearing aid man u fac tur er. William Kessler Sr. (MSEE ’54) 2003 died April 5, 2004, at the age of Stephen Chu (MSEE ’99, PhD) 77. Before retiring in 1993, he appeared in the Scientifi c worked for Sangamon Electric American Frontiers program Company in Spring fi eld; he “Cars that Think,” which aired transferred with the company on PBS stations January 26, to Sarasota, FL, in 1978. He was 2005. A researcher at IBM’s a Navy veteran, serving in the Pacifi c during World War II. Industry Solutions Lab in Haw- Left to right: Richard Williams (BSEE ’80), president and thorn, NY, spoke about audio- CEO/CTO of Advanced Analogic Technologies Inc., ECE visual speech recognition. Edward D. Loukota (BSEE ’68) died in September 2004. He Professor Ilesanmi Adesida, and ECE Head Richard Blahut were Daniel Roth (BSEE) married was 59. among those attending an ECE reception at the Semiconwest Christina Strong April 17, 2004. conference in San Francisco on July 13, 2004. Williams hosted He is an electrical engineer Calvin May (BSEE ’42) died the alumni event. Blahut, Adesida and ECE Professor Jim with Schweitzer Engineering October 31, 2003, in St. Louis, Coleman presented talks at the reception. If you want to host an Labs. MO. The WWII veteran held ECE alumni event, contact Emma Marshall at 217-333-5817. engineering positions in St. Louis for many years before his Obituary retirement. Richard Bernstein (MSEE ’66) died in December 2004. Frank Osuna (BSEE ’84) died December 12, 2003.

James Snell (BSEE ’68) died July

35 ECE Alumni News

Proud alumnus shared good fortune with new generation ECE alumni to lead two National By Erin Luke- Academies When he passed away in May The Council of the National Academy of Sciences an- 2002, Burton J. “Jim” Wilson (BSEE nounced in December 2004 that Ralph Cicerone (MSEE ’43, MSEE ’47) left behind a lasting ’67, PhD ’70), chancellor of the University of California, legacy for his beloved alma mater. Irvine campus, will become president of the National Wilson was not only a proud alum- Acad e my of Sciences July 1, 2005. Together, the NAS, nus, but also had been an instruc- National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, tor in EE from 1946 to 1952, and and Na tional Research Council constitute the National he hoped to aid future students Acad e mies, which bring together experts to address in their own endeavors by estab - critical national issues and give advice to the federal lish ing a scholarship fund. government and the public. In the fall of 2001, Wilson and his An atmospheric chemist, Cicerone has conducted wife Betty drove from their home re search on the plasma physics of Earth’s ionosphere, in Maryland to Champaign-Urbana, the chemistry of the ozone layer, radiative forcing of enjoying brilliant fall foliage along the trek. “I’ll never forget climate change, and sources of atmospheric methane the trip,” said Betty. “During my 28 years in California, I had and of meth yl halide gases. He was elected a member not enjoyed changing seasons so it was particularly enjoy- of the NAS in 1990. able to me.” She recalls how proud her husband was to show ECE alumnus William Wulf (MSEE ’63) has served as her the campus and the engineering facilities. president of the National Academy of Engineering since During that trip, Wilson met with a number of ECE faculty 1997, marking one of the few times in Academy history members as well as offi cers from the U of I Foundation to when both NAS and NAE presidents are alumni of the talk about setting up a scholar ship fund. The fund was to be same university—let alone the same department. Wulf used for either an ECE or Phys ics student who demon strat ed and Cicerone are recipients of the ECE Dis tin guished an interest in studying electrical ener gy/pow er produc tion, Alumni Award. conver sion, utili za tion or conser va tion. Upon their return to Mary land, Wilson and his wife met with attorneys and tackled the required paper work. Unfor - ing courses in power machinery and power electronics. tu nate ly, Wilson fell ill in early 2002 and passed away in May. Betty was excited to have received a touching thank-you Betty knew that the scholarship fund had been extremely letter from the scholarship’s fi rst recipient, physics student important to her husband, and proceeded to sign the docu - Benjamin Sibley. “He must be an exceptional young man,” ments on his behalf to make sure his wishes were met. she said. The scholarship had been important to him, she said, Although they had been friends for several decades, because he felt indebted to the school for the great ex pe - Betty and Burton Wilson did not marry until later in life. ri ences he’d had, and looked back fondly on his years at When he passed away, they had been married only three Illinois. “When you go to a school, you have certain strong years. “I am absolutely thrilled to have been in his life and feelings about that school. What you got out of it you want able to carry out his wishes.” so much for someone else to experience, too,” she said. After his six years of teaching in ECE, Wilson went on to a distinguished 30-year career at the Naval Research Lab o - ra to ry. From 1952 to 1982 he served as a research electrical engineer, a branch head, and a consultant. More recently, from 1982 to 1997 Wilson was a lecturer in electrical engi - neering at the University of Maryland, College Park, teach-

36 May 2005

ECE donors’ generosity helps department maintain its excellence ECE extends its appreciation to those graduates and friends who have generously supported the department in the last year through gifts and donations. This list is sorted by the graduation dates within each gift level—the date of the fi rst degree appears for alumni with more than one degree. Contributions were made between January 1, 2004, and December 31, 2004. If we have inadvertently omitted your name, please notify Emma Marshall at (217) 333-5817 or [email protected].

GIFTS OF $500 OR Paul M. Erickson Meeker Timothy N. Trick James C. Chow Edward W. Ernst James J. Mikulski Paul R. and Karleen Z. Michael J. Chu MORE Turner Bob and Jan Ackmann Robert E. and Bette E. John G. Miller George M. Cleveland Finnigan Clarence E. Van Slyck Lowell E. Ackmann John S. Moore Daniel P. Connors James Y. Fujitani Daryl Farley Varney J. K. 'Jake' and Shanti Thomas O. Mueller David H. Cowling Aggarwal Merle Gilmore Fredric G. and Elizabeth H. Robert P. Wiegand Paul R. Davis John J. Allemong Marvin C. Greer Nearing Jan L. Yang Gary M. and Judy Daymon Larry F. Altenbaumer Melvin D. and Anne Louise Gary W. Nelson Richard F. H. and Jean Gary L. DeGregorio Hassebrock Yang C. P. Bates Leon A. Newman William F. Denny Aran Hegarty Nicholas and Rosemary Charles W. Beall Burks Oakley II Charles A. DeVries Joan K. Henderson Yaru Gale and Todd Vincent E. O'Brien W. Michael Diekman Beanblossom John J. and Joan R. Ronald S. Owdom Henderson Phillip H. Doppelt Edward F. Bell Henry C. and Deborah Richard S. Hill GIFTS OF $100-$499 Edward T. Doris Richard W. Benfer Y. Pao Seth Abraham Neil S. and Beth C. Peter E. Doris Frank A. Bernatowicz Timothy P. Pauletti Randy J. Aksamit Hirshman James W. Duncan Morley M. and Kay Blouke David R. Pesavento Alan P. Alvarez Se June Hong Floyd and Elsa Dunn Mark T. Bohr William Chapman Joseph H. Alwan William R. Hunter Peterson Wendell R. Dunning David Edward and Mary John W. Isberner Arne D. Anderson McCarthy Borth Mary A. Plano Austin A. R. Dyson Robert M. Janowiak Arthur L. Anderson John E. Bourgoin Jordan Plofsky and Jo-Ann Emad S. Ebbini Carl J. and Margot A. Moretti Robert B. Arbetman Gary S. Brown Bradley D. Eisenmann Johnson R. A. Read Mahmud and Joyce E. John H. Bruning Assar Win H. Emert Robert E. Jordan Roger Rhodes Kay N. Burns Kwang-Hyun Baek Edith R. Emery David H. Julifs and Roxann Anthony L. Richards Robert J. and Rosalie J. M. Marumoto Dennis L. Balzarini Barbara A. Ernst Paul A. Rodwick Camillone Robert Jung and Lisa Chan Bruce T. Bauman Walton L. Fehr Jack L. Saltich Herbert Y. Chang Lee Olaniyi Kareem Robert W. Beck Pete Fenoglio Milton M. T. and Rosalind Steven B. and Kathryn Jeff rey F. Ferrara Robert G. and Cynthia M. Brunkow Sample William S. and Cheryl S. P. Chang Kennedy Bennett Larry A. Finch Ta-Chung Chang Dilip V. and Sandhya D. Kyekyoon Kim Sarwate John S. Benway and Jose R. Flores Michael R. and Caroline G. Martin Korn Beverley N. Great Thomas P. Fontana Chicoine Peter W. and Sylvia L. An-Yu Kuo Sauer Leland Berkwits Michael L. Freie Raymond Chin Soon-Bog Kwon William C. Schindler David G. and Zoe A. Berry John M. Friedrichsmeyer April Chou Richard W. and Susan Joseph W. and Carole L. Judy Bitman Stephen H. Frishauf Joe H. and Doris W. Chow Landon Semmer Donald L. and Maryann Dennis E. Fuoss John M. Cioffi D. Bitzer Russell Landreth Glenn H. Sherman Oscar L. Gaddy Mary L. Cipriano Thomas S. Blazeck Mark J. Laufenberg Allen L. and Jeanette A. Amy M. Galbraith Paul L. Cochran Short William A. Bridge Shung-Wu Lee Dwight J. Garrison Daniel L. and Paula Zilka Edward G. Silagi and Barry D. Briggs Laurence D. Lewicki August J. Gartner Colbert Katherine Mathews Richard L. Brown Thomas Y. Lo Ruth B. George James J. and Teresa A. Marwan and Rita Simaan Newton A. Campbell Coleman Dale L. Lomelino Sorab K. and Cecilia B. Kenneth F. and Anita C. Jerome T. and Ellen Cheng Teresa Pytosh Covington Jo S. Major Jr. and Diann Smolik Ghandhi M. Major Chen Douglas E. Criner Peter W. Sognefest Brion C. Gilbert Richard E. Malaise Wai-Kai and Shirley S. Jim deHaan Alan L. Stahl Chen Timothy E. Graff Gerald and Michelle Frank W. Grebner Jr. Daniel P. Dietzler Marcyk Jennifer T. Sterling Jerome J. Chesnul Philip B. Green J. Gary Eden Donald J. and Gabrielle B. Jerry A. Tanaka Vivekanand Chickermane Caroline W. Egbert-Jordan Michael G. Tomasic Janice Chiu-Kikta Samuel I. Green

37 ECE Alumni News

Adam J. Gudat William L. and Sara J. Monte Ross James D. and Amelia S. Frances S. Grodzinsky Robert B. Hall Phillips Mac Adam Brian R. and Mary C. M. Weber Joseph R. Gromala Kenneth B. Hallman Patrick F. Manning Rotsch G. Bruce Welbourne William H. Guggina Richard M. Harper Steven A. and Michele M. Gregory N. Ruff ner Ronald L. Wenda John B. Halla Maranowski Daniel N. Harres Gilbert F. Sacco Robert M. and Linda J. Robert N. Hargis Gerald E. Martin West Harold H. Heeren Virgal L. Schad Jr. Lawrence H. Hart Mark L. Martina Steven R. Whealon Robert G. Heeren John W. Schmidt Matthew A. Hartman Robert J. Mazawa Richard K. Williams Mark C. Hersam Ross A. Schmitt Stephen R. Herbener R. Vincent McGrath Porter J. Womeldorff Alfred K. Higashi Erwin E. Schulze Jr. John M. Herman III Timothy F. Mentkowski Theodore O. Wright William E. Higgins John W. Schumaker Harris Honickman Michael G. Meyer Richard J. Wytmar III Norman A. Hilgendorf and Everett W. Schwarm Albert Huey-You Jr. Matthew C. Miller David W. Yen Carol A. Ruda Alison P. Schwartz Robert C. Jablonski Samir G. and Sundari S. Douglas A. Young Dale E. Hocevar Donald R. Scifres John L. Jones Jr. Mitra Yeqi Zhang Kurt S. and Anne M. Gerald T. and Joy Craig W. Jorgensen Hollenbeck Mark A. Mlynski Sekimura Liping J. Zhu and Eddie Jung John F. Howard Robert W. Moore Paul J. Sereiko Zhonghui A. Wang Jeff ry W. Jurs Dennis R. Howland Kenneth F. Morman Joseph G. Sestrich Timothy P. Kaeding Richard L. Huitema Andrea Mravca Nisarg R. Shah GIFTS UP TO $99 Zia-Ul Karim Charles F. Iffl and Vernon C. Mueller John P. Sheehan Andrew Adrian Henry P. Karwan Jeff rey C. Isbell Charles R. Musick Jr. Peter M. Shemroske Arthur W. Aldridge Jr. Hassan K. Khalil John T. James Gabriel K. Ng Richard R. Shively Eugene E. Alt Charles B. Klomp Chet F. Jankowski Spencer W. Ng Gene Sipinski Margaret L. Andersen Raymond P. Klump Donald R. Jeschke JeanAnn Nichols William B. Smale Jr. Thomas J. Aprille Steven S. Konrad Christopher L. Johnson Jeff rey A. Niehaus Carl W. Smedberg Jr. John E. Baldauf Michael R. Krames David W. Johnson Larry S. Nixon Kevin J. Smith James R. Basso Moon H. Lee Christopher S. and Barbara John R. and Patricia K. James F. Solari Noonan Mark C. Beldon Randall E. Lehmann J. Jones Jeff rey L. Sorenson Walter R. Nordquist Mark Bielat Charles C. Liu Robert W. Kafka William C. Spelman Jason A. Ohnemus David S. Bien Gerald J. Marinello Neil T. Kamikawa Mandyam D. Srinath Walter J. Okon Jr. W. Richard Birkey Robert W. Hecht J. Stephenson Kerr Merle Stauff er James L. Oldani Elizabeth J. Brauer Robert Meneghini Thomas M. Kinter Albert F. Steck John A. Orr Douglas A. Brown Craig J. Mohan George M. Kirkpatrick Donald E. Steeper Sheryl S. Owdom James L. Burright Joe S. Montgomery Douglas E. Klaus R. E. Steinfort John F. Paschke Ted and Eileen M. Bushell H. Sterling and Nancy C. Karen A. Klump William J. Stenzel George M. Peponides Stephen F. Bushman Morton David A. Kochan James R. Stigall Nell C. Percival John R. Cantrell Robert W. and Elizabeth H. Karl E. Kohlrus James W. Stroming Mowery John S. Perry Shawn T. Carolan Harold and Anne Korb William Andrew Struzinski Viet Q. Nguyen Kathryn A. Peterson San Chung Frank S. Korona Carl F. Stubenrauch David L. Olsen William J. Podl Jacqueline A. Crone John B. and Vivienne M. Martin D. Suddeth Keundo Park Kreer Duane R. Polson Gregory E. Curtis Alan D. Swim Edward V. Phillips Philip T. Krein Stuart D. Pompian Joseph A. Darrow Mark M. Tashima Kathlina M. Phillips Dirk Krueger William L. Porter Robert S. Degenford James E. and Deloris Tate Glenn C. Pieters Mary A. Kuhlman Daniel M. Printz David B. Dickinson Jr. and Russell J. Todd Marsha M. Dickinson Howard Keith Ray Donna C. Lamore Milton E. and Shirley Theodore Tolish John J. Dupuis Thomas A. Resman Helen O. Landreth Radant Dominic M. Tolli Kevin S. and Lisa A. Ehlert Woogeun Rhee Fe C. Langdon Chithra Rajagopalan Jerry L. Trahan William T. Ellis Frank E. Ritter Robert L. Laursen W. T. Reace Jr. and Eleanor H. Reace Tim A. Tremain T. P. Ellsworth Paul B. Rosenbaum Jean-Pierre Leburton Roger and Mary Michael T. Trick Larry W. Epp Daniel M. Saban Edwin C. Lennox III Reithmeier Philip K. Trimble Seth A. Erlebacher Thomas L. and Karla L. Richard A. and Jean M. John B. Resman Schroeder Lerche Doug Varney Peter H. Fong Arthur W. Reynolds Chris W. Schwarz Erhong Li Harry J. Venema Elijah N. Gallaway Juris Riekstins David J. Serdar Hock-Beng Lim Daniel R. Vissers David P. Geschwind John A. Ritzert Sharad C. Seth Richard M. Lober William Voegtli Jr. Michael A. Glatz Ronald R. and Nancy E. Kevin A. Shack Brian E. Longhenry Rohr Michael E. Walker Barry H. Gold Glenn A. Lorig John Romanelli William H. and Shirley A. Jeff rey S. Gomberg Continued on next page Walker John R. Grebliunas

38 May 2005

Paul G. Shapin Corporation Motorola Foundation Science Foundation Yuval A. and Anat C. Carl J. and Margot A. Nanoink Inc. United Technologies Shimony Johnson Foundation National City Bank of Research Center Gary S. Slutsky Caterpillar Foundation Pennsylvania UNOVA Foundation Andrew B. Slutter World Reach/Cisco National Semiconductor Videojet Technologies Inc. Thomas E. Stasaitis Foundation Matching Corporation World Reach Inc. DBA The Program Jack M. and Eva L. Steger Northrop Grumman Charity Giving Station City of Springfi eld, Illinois David E. Stephens Northrop Grumman Xerox Foundation City Water, Light and Foundation Richard S. Stockton Power Xindium Technologies Inc. Novellus Systems Inc. Allen D. Sypherd Community Foundation ZIN Technologies Nvidia Corporation Karim H. and Carol Casada Silicon Valley Tadros Conexant System Inc. Optimal Corporation Javin M. Taylor Crowe, Chizek and Organization Fund of the Company LLC University of Illinois at Satish M. Thatte Urbana-Champaign Delphi Corporation Meng Chi Tsen Patrick Engineering Inc. Eastman Kodak Company Irwin E. Tuckman Peoples Energy Electrical Manufacturing Corporation Kurtis D. Vanarsdall and Coil Winding Jonathon C. Veihl Association Inc. Phonak Communications Charles Wintergerst Emcore Corporation Power Systems Engineering Research Robert S. Wiseman EpiWorks Inc. Center Elden H. Witte Exelon PowerWorld Corporation Thomas J. Wojcik ExxonMobil Corporation PricewaterhouseCoopers Junjie Xu ExxonMobil Foundation LLP Scott A. Yenerich Fidelity Charitable Gift Procter & Gamble Brent D. Zeman Fund Company Thant Zin GE Foundation Procter & Gamble Fund Robert J. Zurawski General Motors Raytheon Company Corporation Adam M. Zysk Richard Lounsbery Giving made easier Hanson Professional Foundation Inc. Services Inc. Rockwell Collins The generosity of ECE’s alumni and COMPANIES AND Horizon Hobby Inc. Rockwell International friends makes a signifi cant diff erence Institute of Electrical and Corporation Trust FOUNDATIONS Electronics Engineers as the department works to keep its Abbott Laboratories Fund Rosalind and Milton Foundation Chang Foundation facilities and programs among the best Ackmann Family Intel Corporation Foundation S&C Foundation in the world. Intel Foundation ADC Foundation Salutron Inc. International Business SBC Foundation ECE has made it easier for you to Advanced Micro Devices Machines Corporation Inc. Schad Family Trust contribute by establishing an online Invensys Building Systems Agilent Technologies Inc. Inc. The Schwab Fund for giving site. The secure site can be Charitable Giving Ameren J & H Resources Ltd. accessed at http://my.ece.uiuc.edu/ Science Applications American Electric Power Kernco Inc. Company International Corporation apps/ecegift/gift.htm. You can make your Kimberly-Clark American Heart Semiconductor Research contribution with any of the four major Foundation Inc. Corporation Association credit cards. If your employer has a Kirkland and Ellis Seoul National University American Institute of Foundation Ultrasound in Medicine SRC Education Alliance matching gift program, you can indicate Language Acquisition APL Engineered Materials Consultants SRU Biosystems LLC this at the site, doubling or even tripling Inc. Lockheed Martin Sun Microsystems your gift. APNA Consultancy LLC Corporation Foundation Foundation Inc. AT&T Foundation Maytag Corporation Sun Microsystems Inc. Your gift will help the department in a Ball Corporation Foundation Synopsys Foundation variety of productive ways—from funding Belden Wire & Cable Micron Technology T & M Antennas student scholarships to supporting Company Foundation Inc. Texas Instruments faculty and student recruitment, to Biotronics Inc. Microsoft Corporation Texas Instruments Boeing Gift Matching MidAmerican Energy Foundation supporting alumni and other special Program Company Exelon Commonwealth events. BP Foundation Inc. Morgan Hill Properties Ltd. Edison Company CambridgeSoft Motorola Inc. United States Binational

39 ECE Alumni News May 2005

ECE alumni elected to National Academy of

de vel op ing, and im ple ment ing a man- systems based on the global posi- u fac tur a ble CMO/BiCMOS technology tioning system. He is a Fellow of the for mi cro pro ces sor and logic products. Institute of Nav i ga tion and the IEEE. Bohr joined Intel in 1978 and has been The NAE was established in 1964 involved in in te grat ed circuit process under a charter from the National development on a wide variety of Acad e my of Sciences as a parallel tech nol o gies for dynamic random or ga ni za tion of outstanding engineers. access memory (RAM), static RAM, and It is a private, independent, nonprofi t mi cro pro ces sor products. He holds 21 in sti tu tion that advises the federal gov- patents in the area of in te grat ed circuit ernment and conducts independent ECE alum ni Mark T. Bohr (MSEE ’78) pro cess ing. studies that investigate and provide a and Per Kristian Enge (MSEE ’79, PhD Enge, a professor of aero nau tics and forum for some of the most important ’83) were among the 74 new mem- astro nau tics and the Kleiner Perkins, topics in en gi neer ing and technology. bers elected to the National Acad e my Mayfi eld, Sequoia Capital Professor in This latest election brings the total of Engineering, one of the highest the School of En gi neer ing at Stanford U.S. membership in NAE to 2,195 and pro fes sion al dis tinc tions accorded an University, was elected for leadership the number of foreign associates to engineer. NAE announced the elec- in the de vel op ment of aug men ta tions 178. tions February 11, 2005. to marine and aviation global po si - Bohr, a senior fellow and director of tion ing systems that have become Process Ar chi tec ture and Integration worldwide standards. At Stanford, he in the Technology and Man u fac tur ing directs the GPS Research Lab o ra to ry, Group at Intel Corp. in Hillsboro, OR, which develops satellite navigation was elected for leadership in defi ning,

University of Illinois Non-profi t org. ECE Alumni News U.S. postage Electrical & Computer Engineering Department PAID Bardeen Quadrangle Permit no. 75 1406 W. Green Street Champaign, IL 61820 Urbana, IL 61801 (217) 333-5817

40