Will Robots Help End the Crisis of Concussions In

Home , Jack Kilby

QUANTUM DOTS: THE FUTURE OF THE DARK SIDE OF JACK KILBY’s CANCER KILLERS? THE SUPERCAR LED STREETLIGHTS OTHER INVENTION Shining a light on Acura’s NSX shows Losing sleep over After the IC, malignant tumors the way forward “ghostly” bluish lights a decade-long dream P. 26 P. 32 P. 44 P. 50

FOR THE TECHNOLOGY INSIDER | 10.16

bash Will robots me help end the crisis of concussions if you in American football? can P. 38

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38 THE HARD- KNOCKS BOT

Engineering students at Dartmouth College wanted to make tackling practice safer for American football players. So they invented a mobile robot to take the hits. by elliot kastner Fighting Cancer 26 With Quantum Dots Tiny chunks of semiconducting material could help extend lives. By Imad Naasani Supercar 2.0 32 The Acura NSX combines electric and gasoline propulsion to do things never before possible. By Lawrence Ulrich The Early-Adopter 44 Blues LED streetlights have riled residents and disturbed wildlife. Now, cities are taking a second look. By Jeff Hecht The Little-Known 50 History of Jack Kilby’s Misadventure in Solar Power

In his post-TI career, the coinventor of the integrated circuit toiled for years to bring solar energy to homes. By Cyrus C.M. Mody

On the cover and above Photographs for IEEE Spectrum by Nathaniel Welch

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | OCT 2016 | 01

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081909 Online News Resources Opinion Spectrum.ieee.org Wind Battles Coal for Access Integrated Circuits Are STEM Crisis? What About Controversy Over to China’s Grid for Wimps the STS Crisis? Pacemaker Hack Coal interests oppose technolo- James Newman built his own Scientists and engineers bear A cybersecurity firm claims to have gies and rules that would prevent CPU—out of 42,300 hand- responsibility for the technical hacked cardiac devices made the waste of pollution-free power. soldered transistors. futures they are creating. by St. Jude Medical to prove that By Peter Fairley By Stephen Cass By Susan Hassler they’re riddled with vulnerabilities, and predicts that class-action 11 The Next High-Performance 21 Careers: Finding and 04 Back Story lawsuits could cost the company Transistor Retaining Minority Engineers 06 Contributors US $6.4 billion. But medical device 12 The Internet of Fewer Things 22 Hands On: A New Musical 24 Numbers Don’t Lie: The Success- security expert Kevin Fu says 14 Lidar for the Rest of Us Instrument Is Born ful Failure That Is Nuclear Energy the evidence isn’t strong. See 16 The Big Picture: Bot-Built 72 Past Forward: Nuking 25 Technically Speaking: his takedown at http://spectrum. Superstructure on Display Sandwiches, Circa 1946 The Language of IoT ieee.org/pacemaker1016

additional resources

Tech Insider / Webinars The Institute Available at spectrum.ieee.org/webinar Available at theinstitute.ieee.org

Simulation of Planar Magnetic Components—Possible or SOciaL ENGINEERING Hackers don’t always have to rely on their Impossible?—4 October computer skills to break into a system—some simply ask victims the right Simulation of RF Interference in Electronics—13 October questions to gather personal information. Researchers used this tactic to hoto p

k check for security vulnerabilities in one of the largest telecommunication c

to Ma ster Bond Resource Library companies in Croatia. S http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/master-bond-resource-library N ew Product Release Library PROTECTING WHISTLEBLOWERS When software engineers find a ewman; i ewman;

N http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/new-product-release-library security flaw in a system or device, they shouldn’t have to think twice about W hite Papers bringing it to the developer’s attention. But they often face a legal dilemma. http://spectrum.ieee.org/whitepapers es; James James es;

g FILLING A GAP Many computer science students aren’t being trained ma I in cybersecurity. That’s why IEEE Member Roy Wattanasin helped create a cybersecurity and policy program at Brandeis University, in Waltham, Mass.

IEEE SPECTRUM (ISSN 0018-9235) is published monthly by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. All rights reserved. © 2016 by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., 3 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10016-5997, U.S.A. Volume No. 53, issue No. 10, North American edition. The editorial content of IEEE Spectrum magazine does not represent official positions of the IEEE or its organizational units. Canadian Post International Publications Mail (Canadian Distribution) Sales Agreement No. 40013087. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Circulation Department, IEEE Spectrum, Box 1051, Fort Erie, ON L2A 6C7. Cable address: ITRIPLEE. Fax: +1 212 419 7570. INTERNET: [email protected]. ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTIONS: IEEE Members: $21.40 included in dues. Libraries/institutions: $399. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to IEEE Spectrum, c/o Coding Department, IEEE Service Center, 445 Hoes Lane, Box 1331, Piscataway, NJ 08855. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Canadian STG #125634188. Printed at 120 Donnelley Dr., Glasgow, KY 42141-1060, U.S.A. IEEE Spectrum circulation is audited by BPA Worldwide. IEEE Spectrum is a member of the Association of Business Information & Media Companies, the

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SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | OCT 2016 | 03

10.Contents.NA.indd 3 9/13/16 4:35 PM BACK STORY_

Editor in chief Susan Hassler, [email protected]

Executive Editor Glenn Zorpette, [email protected]

Editorial Director, Digital Harry Goldstein, [email protected]

Managing Editor Elizabeth A. Bretz, [email protected]

Senior Art Director Mark Montgomery, [email protected]

Senior Editors Stephen Cass (Resources), [email protected] Erico Guizzo (Digital), [email protected] Jean Kumagai, [email protected] Samuel K. Moore (News), [email protected] Tekla S. Perry, [email protected] Philip E. Ross, [email protected] David Schneider, [email protected]

Deputy Art Director Brandon Palacio, [email protected] Photography director Randi Klett, [email protected] A ssociate Art Director Erik Vrielink, [email protected] Photography Assistant Yuki Mizuma, [email protected] The Old College Try Senior Associate Editors Rachel Courtland, [email protected] Eliza Strickland, [email protected] A ssociate Editors t’s not very often that an engineer gets thrust into the Celia Gorman (Multimedia), [email protected] white-hot spotlight of American late-night TV. But that’s exactly Willie D. Jones (News), [email protected] Amy Nordrum, [email protected] what happened to Elliot Kastner on 8 October 2015. Kastner (at video producer Kristen Clark, [email protected] left in photo) was then not quite a year and a half past earning an Senior Copy Editor Joseph N. Levine, [email protected] C opy Editor Michele Kogon, [email protected] engineering degree at Dartmouth College, where he had turned Editorial Researcher Alan Gardner, [email protected]

his senior-year project into a business building tackling robots Administrative Assistant intended to help American football teams train more safely. Ramona L. Foster, [email protected] His early prototype robots, or “dummies,” attracted plenty Contributing Editors I Evan Ackerman, Mark Anderson, John Blau, Robert N. of media attention. But it was still a shock to get a call on Tuesday, Charette, Peter Fairley, Tam Harbert, Mark Harris, David Kushner, Robert W. Lucky, Paul McFedries, Prachi Patel, 6 October—the middle of the Ivy League football season—asking if Kastner Richard Stevenson, Lawrence Ulrich, Paul Wallich

and Dartmouth football coach Eugene F. “Buddy” Teevens could appear Director, Periodicals Production Services Peter Tuohy on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” In New York City. In two days. Editorial & Web Production Manager Roy Carubia Senior Electronic Layout specialist Bonnie Nani They could. “It was amazing,” Kastner says. “We flew out on a private product manager, digital Shannan Brown jet and brought the dummies with us on the jet.” After arriving in Web Production Coordinator Jacqueline L. Parker Manhattan, “it was kind of interesting unloading the dummies on the Multimedia Production Specialist Michael Spector Editorial Advisory Board sidewalk outside the studio, with bouncers and rails to keep people Susan Hassler, Chair; David Brock, Jason Cong*, Sudhir Dixit, back, away from the stars.” The dummies then rolled down the same Limor Fried, Robert Hebner, Joseph J. Helble, Grant Jacoby, Leah Jamieson, Deepa Kundur, Norberto Lerendegui, Steve Mann, pathway trod by stars of stage and screen, past a minimob of paparazzi. Allison March, Jacob Østergaard, Umit Ozguner, Thrasos Pappas, Then came a rehearsal session, which was “almost comical.” The John Rogers, Jonathan Rothberg, Umar Saif, Takao Someya, Yu Zheng, Kun Zhou, Edward Zyszkowski plan was for host Colbert to tackle the robot. But Colbert wasn’t at the * Chinese-language edition

rehearsal. Instead “there were all these safety people there trying to Editorial / Advertising Correspondence make sure that Colbert wouldn’t get injured. They made us promise to IEEE Spectrum 3 Park Ave., 17th Floor drive [the robot] a certain way.” But all that went out the window during New York, NY 10016-5997 the taping, in which it transpired that Colbert, wearing a Dartmouth Editorial Department T el: +1 212 419 7555 Fax: +1 212 419 7570 football helmet, had his own ideas. “He wanted it to come from a Bureau Palo Alto, Calif.; Tekla S. Perry +1 650 752 6661 different direction, so he could get the angle he wanted,” Kastner says. Advertising Department +1 212 705 8939 Responsibility for the substance of articles rests upon With the tackle accomplished, it was time for Kastner to head back the authors, not IEEE, its organizational units, or its members.

to New Hampshire and his fledgling company. For more on the ups Articles do not represent official positions of IEEE. Reader S B C

comments will be posted online, or published in print as space / and downs of the tackling-dummy business, read Kastner’s story, allows, and may be excerpted for publication. The publisher t ber “The Hard-Knocks Bot,” in this issue. ■ reserves the right to reject any advertising. l Reprint Permission / Libraries Articles may be photocopied for private use of patrons. A per-copy fee must be paid to the Copyright ephen Co ephen Clearance Center, 29 Congress St., Salem, MA 01970. For other t h S h

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04 | OCT 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

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CONTRIBUTORS_ |

OCT 2016

N ort h Ame rican “The Early-Adopter Blues”[p. 44],photographer To capture the LEDstreetlights describedin Auto journalist Ulrich travels the globe to test cars, cars, Ulrich travelsglobe to test journalist Auto the Adopter Blues”[p. 44]. figure outhow to make them water soluble. He from the Formula One racecourse atBelgium’s Circuit for for featured in this issue. freaks have long worried that greens andgovernment O’Connor University, looking for details onintegrated-circuit who frequently covers light initsmany forms. He working onquantum dots that could beused to treat through pretty clearly that this is what he’d rather be that telescope, andhe’s now a freelance writer 10-year-oldtelescope, which the used to track that you can’t backup,” O’Connor quips. After an to be well lit.Sometimes, hemade the pilot take a took him to the California desert, where the hybrid Seca, Calif. The Acura NSX [see “Supercar 2.0,” p.32] Naasani ischief technology officer, life sciences, Maastricht University, in the Netherlands. A few years Mody LED streetlights when his town installed them Hecht got hisfirstglimpseinto the wonders of He chosehisroute basedonGooglesatellite Jeff Hecht optics when his father gave hima1-inchrefractor electric supercar left Ulrich feeling optimistic. “Speed phase of Kilby’s life in this issue[p. 50]. pioneer Jack Kilby’s work on government committees began questioning the early rollout of blue-rich hour, he’d shot roughly 600photos, oneof which is may well be their savior instead.” mandates for electric propulsion would make fast de Spa-Francorchamps to the raceway inLaguna quantum dots was when he was asked to help a maker of quantum dots. His first exposure to ago, hedidarchival research atSouthernMethodist cars obsolete, illegal,or both,” hesays. “But electricity spending his time on,” Mody says. He chronicles that stars from hisbackyard. Decadeslater, hestillhas second pass:“Thechallenge with helicopters is some life-threatening conditions, ashe writes about succeeded, andquantum dots are now used widely involvement with solar energy research. “Itcomes in hislater years. He was struckby Kilby’s deep in 2014,anordeal hedescribesin“TheEarly- images, which revealed denseneighborhoodslikely in “Fighting Cancer With Quantum Dots” [p. 26]. in biomedicine.Naasani andhiscolleagues are now Cyrus C.M. Mody Imad Naasani Bob O’Connor Lawrence Ulrich |

Nanoco Technologies, inManchester, England, SP isahistorian of science and technology at E CTRU chartered ahelicopter outsideBoston. M .I EEE .ORG

10.16 +1 7325625504,[email protected]

[email protected] +1 7325623964,[email protected] +1 7325623820,[email protected] Tel: +1732981 0060Fax: +1732981 1721 445 Hoes Lane,Box 1331,Piscataway, NJ08854-1331U.S.A. Leung Tsang, Stephanie M. White, Steve Yurkovich Gaurav Sharma, Curtis A. Siller, David Tian, Ravi Todi, H. Joel Trussell, Sorel Reisman, Tariq Samad,Fred Schindler, Gianluca Setti, Paolo Montuschi, Thrasos Pappas, Michael Pecht, Michael Polis, Christofer Hierold, James M.Irvine, Hulya Kirkici,CarmenS.Menoni, Jean-Luc Gaudiot, Ron B.Goldfarb, GlennGulak, Lawrence Hall, Herbert S.Bennett, Jennifer T. Bernhard, Sheila Hemami, Chair E [email protected] +1 7325623928 ans Gyimah Nicole Ruchika Anand, Blanche McGurr, [email protected] Michael Buryk,[email protected] Marion Delaney, [email protected] [email protected], A. +1 7325626843, [email protected] Antonio C.Ferreira (9);Ramakrishna Kappagantu Witold M. Kinsner (7);Costas M.Stasopoulos (8); Robert C.Parro (4);Francis B.Grosz Jr. (5); Thomas Coughlin (6); Ronald A. Tabroff (1); Timothy P. Kurzweg (2); W. Walz (VIII);Ray Liu(I W. Moses Harold (IV); Alan C.Rotz (VII); Javid RobJohn (V); Reilly (VI); Maciej Ogorzalek (I);Hirofumi Akagi (II);Celia L.Desmond(III); William E M.F.Association; JoseMoura, Technical Peter Activities; Alan & Geographic Activities; Bruce P. Kraemer, President, Standards Services &Products; Wai-Choong “Lawrence” Wong, Member S.K. Ramesh, +1 2025308349,[email protected] +1 7325626330,[email protected] +1 7325626343,[email protected] +1 7325025400,[email protected] +1 7325623998,[email protected] +1 7325625514,[email protected] +1 7325623850,[email protected] +1 7325626399,[email protected] Mana S IEEE IEEE Manag Te C Educat Ge Standard H mem C ch Publ C e or IEEE Di Pr Vi Pa tr b Pr IEEE A se Re m S se m R Mark Lis ieee ieee B Re Ass IEEE M Pr Re Di A A x or e dv dv dv h h ck u EP ileen M.Lach,+12127058990,[email protected] u ark ark c r v chn e s n n n cru cru g e n esi esi si ie ie ie m t e isi e stein, President, I a t Pr cut oc R e e e i i i i p e

an or or or ct on f f f Infor n b Ope me me Publ Staff s i rt rt rt I orat ral al cat g e e e on d d NT e Fi m ess oard of ur e i E i i i t t t i i cal e e r & g & r t t at esi Res d d d isi isi isi i A i ark ng ng nanc m Di Di esi v es i i i v onal

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10a.p7.NA [P].indd 7 9/7/16 2:14 PM SPECTRAL LINES_ 10.16

construct ideas of goodness first, and then innovation and discovery follow that trajectory. STS programs try to bridge the gap between technological innovation and social outcomes. But many science and engineering students still view these programs as liberal arts havens for athletes and English majors trying to complete their undergraduate science requirements without actually running into any science or engineering. Or they’re seen as time sinks, not something essential and useful. Something is getting lost in translation. Perhaps the fact that many of these departments are situated in the liberal STEM Crisis? What About the STS Crisis? arts colleges of universities reinforces STS programs will become more effective if they’re the idea that technological policy issues embraced by scientists and engineers are someone else’s problem. Perhaps these departments are focused away from the central disciplines of science ate last summer I spoke with Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer and engineering, like math and computer science, Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard when they should be leaning into them. Kennedy School, about her latest book, The Ethics of Invention: But there’s no shortage of creative STS program Technology and the Human Future (W.W. Norton & Co., 2016). developments. For example, the University of Vir- A science, technology, and society program pioneer, founder ginia’s program is completely embedded in the of Cornell University’s prestigious STS department, J a s a n o ff engineering school, and every UVA engineering has made her lifework the exploration of the relationship student has to have an STS component in his or L between science and technology and the law, politics, and her thesis. Another noteworthy example is the government policy. program at Stanford University, where STS under- I had a lot of questions. Historically, scientists and engineers have graduates must achieve a solid understanding of distanced themselves from the social implications or unintended out- the fundamentals of an area of engineering or sci- comes of their work. Can this mind-set be changed? Will it ever be ence to complete the major. possible to get out in front of the unintended consequences of new Oddly enough, Jasanoff’s home institution, technologies, or are we doomed to a hamster wheel of innovation, Harvard, has no stand-alone Ph.D. degree pro- disaster, and remediation? Why is it so unusual for engineers and scien- gram in STS. Perhaps Harvard could try embed- tists to weigh in on the potential problems associated with their inven- ding one in the School of Engineering and Applied tions or discoveries in advance of their widespread dissemination? Sciences. The John A. Paulson school is awash in Well, as Jasanoff pointed out, an enormous amount of human thought inventions and innovations with potentially enor- and energy in the two centuries since the Enlightenment has gone mous social, economic, and political impact. An into creating and sustaining the idea that scientific discovery and STS program positioned in the midst of all that technological innovation are in and of themselves “value neutral.” fast-paced work might be able to achieve some It then stands to reason that if you incorporate values into science remarkable good indeed. and technology, you have corrupted the process. Extraordinary ben- In the 20th century it was possible for scientists efits have resulted from this value-neutral approach to science and and engineers to plead ignorance. In many ways we

engineering. But it has also produced problems, sometimes big ones. really didn’t understand the impact of the inven- es g Most STS scholars will tell you that a lot of science and technology tions we made until we saw them in action. But is value laden at the outset. Jasanoff goes a step further: She says that now, deep into the 21st century, there can be no on: Getty Ima Getty on: technology can never be neutral because it is always informed by a excuse for failure on the part of technologists to i desired future that does not come from within the technology itself but imagine—and take responsibility for—the futures

from societal ideas about what “the good” is. According to Jasanoff, we they are creating for us all. —Susan Hassler Illustrat

08 | Oct 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

10.SpectralLines.INT - 10.SpectralLines.NA [P]{NA}.indd 8 9/13/16 3:43 PM Wind Battles Coal for Access to China’s Grid Coal interests oppose technologies and rules that would prevent the waste of pollution- free power

The 16th of October marks Mongolia, Liaoning, and Xinjiang, will Slow-wind winter: This Inner Mongolia the start of heating season in offset only a little coal. But their real wind farm was built to serve populations to the east. But in winter, wind power is curtailed in northern China. Traditionally raison d’être is to demonstrate a stra- favor of coal power, which provides heat as well. that means firing up coal boilers and tegic sink for northern China’s massive pumping excess heat from big coal-fired wind farms, whose output is increas- first half of 2016, according to China’s electric plants to residences and busi- ingly being crowded out of the electric National Energy Administration (NEA). nesses. This year, another heat source power market by coal-fired turbines and Solar farms also face rising curtailment; will join the mix: wind power. District has nowhere else to go. 10 percent of their output went unused heating systems across northern China China’s selective shutdowns of wind last year. es

g are preparing to use small injections of power hit record levels last year, and Experts say wind-to-heat and other ma I heat from electric boilers that will be the country is likely to smash those technical solutions are ready to reverse soaking up power generated from the records in 2016. Curtailment of wind China’s curtailment trend, but Beijing region’s robust overnight winter winds. farms squandered 15 percent of China’s and regional governments have yet to Wind-to-heat demonstration projects, wind energy potential in 2015, and those implement the policy changes required

China Photos/Getty Photos/Getty China including installations in Hebei, Inner losses surged to 21 percent during the to support them—policies that would

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | OCT 2016 | 09

10.News.NA.indd 9 9/16/16 9:36 AM DATA BYTE

by subsidies and one-off deals between Terawatt-hours of energy squandered in China in 2015 heating plants and wind generators. because the nation’s world-beating wind power projects have yet to dislodge King Coal from its preeminence in Such is the case for a district heating 33.9 meeting China’s electricity demand expansion that recently broke ground in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia’s capital. It will ultimately use two 25-megawatt boil- significantly hurt coal-fired genera- The Lantau Group, a Hong Kong–based ers running on overnight wind power tors. “Curtailment has not been solved consultancy tracking China’s transmis- to provide a fraction of its 1,422‑MW yet,” says Ranping Song, a China energy sion program, concluded recently that heat supply. expert with the World Resources Insti- renewables curtailment “probably will The hang-up to gigawatt-scale imple- tute (WRI), in Washington, D.C. get worse before getting better.” mentation, says Zhang, is inflexible Leaders in Beijing have committed A more certain curtailment rem- power pricing and cheap coal. For to cap coal consumption and promote edy is the electric boiler, according to most wind-heavy power grids, such as renewable energy as a way to clean up Ning Zhang, a power systems expert at those in Texas and Denmark, markets smog-choked cities and cut carbon emis- Beijing’s Tsinghua University. In 2015, adjust prices hourly based on supply sions. They have vowed to push nonfossil Zhang and colleagues studied Inner and demand, making abundant over- sources up from today’s 12 percent share Mongolia’s western grid, where the terri- night wind power available at low prices. of China’s energy mix to 15 percent by torial government anticipates a doubling But according to Zhang, China’s heating 2020. Song says that in order to meet of wind power capacity in the next five plants must purchase overnight wind those goals, China must continue years. They projected that electric boil- power at a fixed retail price, making the installing wind and solar power at its ers drawing surplus wind power would switch from coal to wind power costly. world-leading pace and “make sure that be an economic slam dunk. And China’s grid controllers add other generation from the installed capacity Zhang determined that electric boil- impediments to fixing curtailment, says gets consumed.” ers drawing 6.19 gigawatts could pro- Zhang. Grid operators set generation But here’s the rub: Construction vide 30 percent of the projected 2020 and transmission schedules up to one of coal-fired power plants continues, heat demand; that would offset enough month in advance, and they program coal expanding King Coal’s capacity by coal consumption to save consumers power plants to operate continuously for 7.8 percent last year. As the growth of US $5.2 billion over the boilers’ oper- a week or longer. This limits their ability China’s power demand slows—edging ating lives. That is a large payback on to accommodate hourly or daily fluctua- up just 0.5 percent last year—generators the equipment’s $1.4 billion installation tions in renewable output. Flexibility is must jockey for access to the power grid. cost. Additional health and productivity further limited by utilization quotas that The tussle is especially fierce across benefits would accrue from reductions guarantee coal plants a certain number northern China, where the nation’s big- in air pollution. of operating hours per year. gest wind farms butt heads with com- But the electric boiler projects moving In Beijing, China’s leaders are still bined heat-and-power (CHP) plants, forward so far are modest demonstra- talking change. A year ago, President which deliver roughly two-fifths of the tions: megawatt-scale projects propelled Xi Jinping promised a “green dispatch” region’s space heating. The coal-fired policy that would give renewables prior- CHP plants must run in the winter, ity grid access. China’s NEA, meanwhile, just when northern winds are blow- has recently drafted several power mar- ing strongest. Curtailment in Inner ket reforms that would, for example, Mongolia—China’s leading wind power eliminate the utilization quotas. There region—doubled to 18 percent in 2015 and is also ongoing discussion about shift- leapt to 30 percent through June 2016. ing to market-based power pricing via Some relief is en route from ultrahigh- competitive bidding. voltage transmission projects that are Real change may be years in the mak-

designed to export northern power to ing, however. And meanwhile, political lamy A s/ pollution-choked eastern cities. How- pressure from coal interests is assured. r ever, it remains to be seen how quickly “There’s still turbulence in China’s tran-

Che ck it out: Workers inspect a turbine in on/Reute

demand for the power delivered by sition to clean energy,” says Song at WRI. c Gansu, China, in 2013. Wind farms in this region Ba

the lines will materialize, especially for “While the journey has clearly started, it is r have lost out to coal power, but proposed new e g

the wind power, which peaks at night. regulations might help. far from a done deal.” —Peter Fairley Ro

10 | OCT 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

10.News.NA.indd 10 9/16/16 9:36 AM Short stack: Imec constructed transistors from stacks of horizontal silicon nanowires (cross section of array shown here).

based in Leuven, Bel- gium, have constructed gate-all-around transistors from dense stacks of 8-nanometer-wide nanowires on a conventional silicon surface. Although engineering hur- dles remain, the coming years could see further improvements to this basic approach—and perhaps its introduction into mass manufacturing. The Next High- Gate-all-around devices can be made by orienting a nanowire made of semiconducting material in one of two ways: laterally, as today’s transistor channels Performance are arranged, or vertically, so that the nanowire stands on end, perpendicular to the plane of the chip. The Imec team, which presented its findings at Transistor the Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits, A potential FinFET successor is made held in June in Honolulu, took the lateral approach. from stacks of lateral nanowires They began by growing alternating layers of silicon and a silicon germanium mix. The team then etched away parallel trenches, leaving behind fins containing these alternating layers—a bit like pil- Five years ago, Intel introduced today’s high- lars of rock with different sedimentary strata. In performance transistor to the world. Dubbed the a later step, the team etched away the remaining FinFET, the device takes its name from its appearance: The silicon germanium, leaving behind two silicon transistor’s current-carrying channel sticks up vertically in nanowires in each erstwhile fin. the shape of a fin, and the gate that controls it drapes over To create a transistor, insulating material and the sides. The result is a much tighter control over the flow of then metal gates were added around each nanowire current, which in modern microprocessors can fairly easily to form the gate structure. And for each vertical sneak across the transistor when it’s supposed to be shut off. pair of nanowires, the source and drain regions— But well before the FinFET exploded onto the scene in 2011, the places where current originates and winds up— engineers and device physicists had already

been looking at the possibility of taking that Fin evolution: transistor geometry to its logical conclusion, Transistors made Gate Nanowires with a gate that completely surrounds the with stacks of horizontal current-carrying channel. Shifting to such a nanowires take a “gate-all-around” geometry would, in theory, page from the finlike

ielink devices used today.

r allow chip companies to produce shorter tran- The gate material ik V ik sistors that don’t leak copious amounts of cur- Er wraps around each rent, improving speed or power consumption channel to provide better control.

Bottom: Bottom: Insulator

; in the process.

c Stacking the me

I Now, Hans Mertens and colleagues from : nanowires boosts p

o Silicon T the nanoelectronics research firm Imec, current density.

news

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | OCT 2016 | 11

10.News.NA.indd 11 9/16/16 9:36 AM were connected so they would ing level. Because resistance become part of the same tran- increases as a channel nar- The Internet of sistor. Stacking the nanowires rows, a common concern has boosts the amount of current been that nanowires would Fewer Things that can pass through a given too strongly resist the flow of area of transistor—and thus current, Guillorn says. But the E arly predictions of 50 billion how much can pass through IBM group’s results suggest connected devices by 2020 are a given area on a chip. that is not the case. They also being scaled back The great advantage of this suggest that more ribbonlike approach, explains Imec nanowire structures—wide logic program manager Naoto and flat instead of square or If you follow discussions about the Inter- Horiguchi, is that the fabrica- round in cross section—could net of Things, you’ve probably heard this tion process is quite close to help improve performance. stunning prediction at least once: The that used to make the FinFET There is still plenty of work world will have 50 billion Internet-connected devices transistors in today’s high- to be done. One focus at Imec, by 2020. Ericsson’s former CEO, Hans Vestburg, was performance chips. “This is Mertens says, is on ways to among the first to toss out that number, when he kind of a natural extension better isolate the gate that gave a 2010 presentation to shareholders. The fol- from FinFET to the next gen- surrounds the channel of lowing year, Dave Evans, who worked for Cisco at the eration,” he says. the nanowire from the source time, published the same prediction in a white paper. Imec’s is the first demon- and drain regions. Because Today, that figure has arguably done more than any stration of stacked-nanowire the source and drain are other statistic to set sky-high expectations for poten- devices at such a small scale, so close to the gate in the tial IoT growth and profits. Remarkably, those pro- says Michael Guillorn of IBM’s small device, they tend to jections weren’t even close to the highest at that time. Thomas J. Watson Research exchange energy via capaci- A 2012 IBM forecast predicted 1 trillion connected Center in Yorktown Heights, tive coupling. devices by 2015. “The numbers were getting kind of N.Y. Guillorn has been Guillorn says researchers crazy,” recalls Bill Morelli, director of the IHS Markit involved with IBM’s gate-all- are, one by one, “knocking division that handles IoT and digital security. around device research pro- things off the list of reasons” Both Ericsson and Evans have since lowered gram since 2009. why nanowires might not be their expectations for 2020: Evans, a cofounder of IBM presented results at desirable. Assuming engi- Stringify, who now serves as its chief technology last year’s VLSI event that neers work out all the kinks officer, says he expects to see 30 billion connected explored the limits of per- in manufacturing and per- devices by then; Ericsson figures on 28 billion by formance for a single layer of formance, the devices could 2021. Other firms have adopted similar tones: IHS horizontal nanowires at an potentially enter chipmakers’ Markit projects 30.7 billion IoT devices for 2020; advanced chip manufactur- production lines in three to Gartner expects 20.8 billion by that time (exclud- six years, he says. The ing smartphones, tablets, and computers); and timing will hinge on International Data Corp. anticipates 28.1 billion how long companies (again, not counting those devices). “This is kind believe they can extend That’s likely because it’s the third quarter of 2016, the FinFET, the cadence and we’re nowhere near 1 trillion IoT devices— of a natural at which they decide to or even 50 billion for that matter. The true total extension introduce future gener- is somewhere between Gartner’s estimate of ations of chips, and how 6.4 billion (excluding smartphones, tablets, and from FinFET aggressive they want to be computers), and IHS Markit’s estimate of 17.6 billion to the next with the underlying tech- (with all such devices included). nology. “Early adoption of But the popular 50 billion figure continues to generation” gate-all-around,” Guillorn be widely cited. Even Evans is a bit surprised by —Naoto says, “is a great way for a its staying power. “I think people do tend to latch semiconductor company onto numbers that seem really hard to fathom,” he Horiguchi, to differentiate itself.” says. “Fifty billion is pretty staggering.” Imec —Rachel Courtland Peter Middleton, a research director at Gartner

12 | OCT 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

10.News.NA.indd 12 9/16/16 9:36 AM Some firms include prisingly, she found that “those who are other variables, such as marketing it and those whose bottom line industry growth rates is somehow impacted by enthusiastic pre- or the amount of money dictions are more likely to make them.” that companies spend At this point, even the strictest defi- annually on information nitions of IoT remain fuzzy because of technology. And some breathless hype, including attempts to conduct consumer and anticipate demand for devices that have business surveys to gauge yet to be invented or commercialized. But how devices are used, so Stringify’s Evans, one of the original IoT they’ll know how many optimists, is confident that entrepreneurs of the devices that are will find many millions of practical ways involved in the firm’s IoT forecasts, says sold and shipped actually wind up con- to serve customers through the IoT in due such projections are intended to create nected to the Internet. Morelli at IHS time. “I think technology needs to solve “market efficiency,” by helping compa- Markit estimates that 90 percent of com- real problems, and if it doesn’t…[it] will nies make smart choices about whether munications devices (including smart- die on the vine,” he says. they should enter a new area and inform- phones) are switched on, but perhaps only As the next 10 billion IoT devices come ing venture capitalists as they decide 50 percent of Internet-capable gadgets for online, the industry will face some for- where to place their investments. cars are ever connected. midable challenges, such as ensuring This is why the wild divergence in the Janna Anderson, an expert in emerging the security of its devices, powering bil- numbers is problematic. But Vernon technologies at Elon University, in North lions of sensors, and handling all the Turner, a senior IoT analyst at IDC, says Carolina, says there is a degree of self- resulting e-waste. Despite those issues, it’s more practical—at least at this stage interest at play in projections, too. In 2013, Evans isn’t bashful about anticipating of a nascent market—to think of the esti- she helped the Pew Internet Project sur- connected device ubiquity. “I could see mates as a signal, rather than to focus vey more than 1,600 experts about what trillions of connected things, ultimately,” on the specific numbers. the IoT might look like in 2025. Not sur- he says. —Amy Nordrum Bob Heile, standards director for the Wi-SUN Alliance and chair of the IEEE 802.15 WPAN effort (a working group for I oT in 2020 wireless personal area networks), says the Analysts’ original projections for the number of connected devices by 2020 [solid bars] varied by many billions. Some have ratcheted down expectations in newer forecasts [striped bars]. general trend that early IoT analysts pre- Conflicting definitions make it difficult to compare expectations. Some firms count smartphones, dicted has proven true. “What I do know, tablets, and laptops, while others (Gartner, International Data Corp.) do not. because the trend is absolutely undeni-

able, is more and more things are getting 50 * the ability to communicate and connect Ericsson Gartner to something else,” says Heile. Cisco International Data Corp.

But why isn’t there one plausible set of 40 IHS Markit Current projections numbers? Two reasons: arithmetic and * Ericsson projections are for 2021. avarice. To begin their analyses, many

firms collect annual sales data from 30 30 manufacturers that produce connected devices or components such as semicon-

ductors, as well as from companies that 20 20 sell and ship those products to custom- devices of Billions ers. Next, the firms subtract a percent-

age of devices to account for those that 10 10 will be replaced or thrown out each year, and then they add estimates from past years. The result of this arithmetic is the

hoto 0 0 p k c “install base,” or approximate number of Past and current projections Current estimates to S i connected devices in use at a given time. for 2020 for 2016

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SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | OCT 2016 | 13

10.News.NA.indd 13 9/16/16 9:36 AM news

be available to automotive original equip- Lidar That Will Make ment manufacturers in early 2017. Meanwhile, two startups are working on $100 automotive lidar systems Self-Driving Cars they both say will be released in 2018. Innoviz, in Israel, is promising a “high- Affordable definition solid-state lidar” with better resolution and a larger field of view than Cutting the cost of this sensor is the key to those in existing sensors. Innoluce, in a driverless-car future the Netherlands, is using a microelectro- mechanical mirror system to scan and steer a laser beam instead of the solid- Chances are you’ve never seen a 2.2 million data points in its field of view state approach; its engineers claim it fully autonomous self-driving car each second and can pinpoint the loca- will outperform optical phased arrays out on the street. But if you have, you prob- tion of objects up to 120 meters away in both range and resolution. ably couldn’t help but notice the distinc- with centimeter accuracy. But the sensor One of the most exciting recent devel- tive spinning sensor adorning its roof. itself weighs more than 13 kilograms and opments in lidar technology comes from It’s what helps an autonomous vehicle costs US $80,000. This year, Velodyne MIT. With funding from the U.S. Defense understand the world around it, but it’s announced the VLP-32A, which offers a Advanced Research Projects Agency’s also what’s keeping autonomous vehicles 200-meter range in a 600-gram package. Electronic-Photonic Heterogeneous Inte- from being affordable enough for the aver- With a target cost of $500 (at automotive gration program, MIT researchers have age consumer to buy. Lidar (light radar) scale production), the VLP-32A would leveraged silicon photonics to condense is complex and expensive right now, but a functional lidar system onto a single within the next few years, it’ll be cheaper 0.5- by 6-millimeter chip that can be fab- and more reliable—and everywhere. ricated in commercial CMOS foundries. Lidar is a sensing technology similar MIT’s prototype has a range of just a few to radar that detects objects with pulses meters, but there is a clear development of laser light. Though lidar has a shorter path toward a 100-meter range and a per- range than radar (tens to hundreds of chip cost of just $10. meters), the much shorter wavelengths The market for a small and cost-effective used by lidar result in a massive increase solid-state lidar system is immense. In in resolution. The uniquely reliable and August, Quanergy closed a $90 million

high-quality data that lidar provides Pixels and points: A Velodyne lidar funding round on a $1.59 billion valuation, has made it the sensor of choice for the produces a set of data points that show nearby while Ford and Chinese search giant Baidu majority of vehicle autonomy applica- cars. Makers of self-driving cars consider it jointly invested $150 million in Velodyne. essential tech. tions. In fact, many experts feel that lidar The goal of these investments is to make is a necessity for driverless cars. be two orders of magnitude cheaper a $100 automotive lidar sensor available “Lidar is a critical sensor for driver- than its predecessor but still too expen- within the next few years. less vehicles because it enables highly sive to be integrated into driverless cars While the automotive industry repre- precise and robust localization across intended for the consumer market. sents the largest near-term market for a wide range of conditions,” explains A substantial amount of recent academic low-cost lidar, the availability of small Karl Iagnemma, CEO of nuTonomy, and industry research has been focused and inexpensive lidar sensors will bene- a Cambridge, Mass., startup that is on making lidar sensors smaller, easier fit many other industries. Lidar in mobile currently testing self-driving cars in to manufacture, and cheaper. At the CES phones will enable high-resolution ges- Singapore. But Iagnemma points out that 2016 electronics show, Quanergy Systems, ture recognition. Robots with lidar in the size, complexity, and cost of the cur- in Sunnyvale, Calif., demonstrated a pro- their fingers will recognize and manipu- rent generation of lidar sensors are signif- totype solid-state lidar sensor designed for late objects with more confidence than icant obstacles to the commercialization driverless cars. It uses an optical phased ever before. And lidar will give drones of any technology that depends on them. array to steer laser pulses rather than a the data they need to avoid obstacles— Many autonomous cars have relied on rotating system of mirrors and lenses. necessary for safely performing tasks the HDL-64E lidar sensor from Silicon Quanergy projects that its sensor will cost like package delivery.

Valley–based Velodyne, which scans $250 in volume production, and it should —Evan Ackerman Velodyne

14 | OCT 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

10.News.NA.indd 14 9/16/16 9:36 AM MULTIPHYSICS FOR EVERYONE

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10a.p15.NA [P].indd 15 9/8/16 10:12 AM 16 | OCT 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG photograph by Victoria and Albert Museum

10.BigPicture.NA.indd 16 9/13/16 8:49 AM Bot the Builder

Words like artisan and handcrafted may soon become anachronisms if a new robotic production process catches on. The components of an outdoor pavilion erected at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London are based on the superstrong, lightweight filament shells that protect flying beetles. So although the glass-and-carbon-fiber canopy dreamed up by architects and engineers from the University of Stuttgart covers more than 200 square meters, it weighs less than 2.5 metric tons. Instead of hiring a team of human contractors to make the biomimetic pavilion’s hexagonal canopy and supports, they employed a robot to handle a special winding technique developed by the design team for this fabrication job.

THE BIG PICTURE news

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | OCT 2016 | 17

10.BigPicture.NA.indd 17 9/13/16 8:49 AM Make the Connection Find the simple way through complex EM systems with CST STUDIO SUITE

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10a.p18.NA [P].indd 18 9/7/16 2:16 PM The Megaprocessor The wondrous insanity of a CPU the size of a room

n James Newman’s living room is a monument to our kind of crazy. resources_GEEK LIFE I Seven 2-meter-tall panels are covered with circuit boards festooned with blinking lights. It is a complete working CPU, plus 256 bytes of RAM and an input/output interface, all built out of 42,300 hand-soldered discrete transistors. • It took Newman some four years and roughly £40,000 sterling (about US $52,500) to build and design the so-called Megaprocessor in his home in Cambridge, England. In some absinthe-tinged sense, the project is the logical end point of his software writing career. Newman explains that, over the years, he found himself doing increasingly low-level programming, and so became more and more interested in the underlying hardware. He says he began working on the Megaprocessor because he “wanted to build a processor to see how a real one worked.” • The end result is a surprisingly full-featured machine. It’s 16-bit, with 8-bit opcodes, and basic pipelining, where the next instruction is fetched as the first is executed. All 256 possible instructions are implemented, including ones for relatively advanced math functions. There are four general-purpose registers in addition to a program counter, stack pointer, n and status register. “I could have built a minimal processor, but I don’t know what that would have showed,” says Newman. He admits though that he did “get carried away a little bit. I quite liked investigating how to do multiply, divide, and square root.” • Subsections of the processor—such

James Newma James as binary adders—are built from custom-made printed circuit boards. Each logic gate indicates the state of its inputs and outputs with red

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | OCT 2016 | 19

10.Resources.NA.indd 19 9/8/16 8:50 AM RESOURCES_Geek Life

In part, the relative complexity of the processor was a trade-off intended to reduce the amount of effort required for the construction of the internal memory. You “don’t have the whole picture unless you show what is going on in the memory,” says Newman, “but I quickly realized that building the memory was going to be as painful as building the processor. That kind of pushed toward increasing the capability of the processor, so I didn’t need as much program data.” (The memory accounts for 64 percent of the Megaprocessor’s transistor count.) The biggest setback in building the Mega- processor came right at the end of the assembly. Newman ordered a last batch of about 4,000 transistors. “I ordered the right

FULL FRAME: The ones, and the packing list said they were the Megaprocessor is built ones I wanted, and they looked like the ones on seven frames [top]. I wanted. So I used them all.” But when New- Each frame holds a major subsystem [right] such as man began testing the completed boards, the arithmetic logic unit or nothing worked. “It took a while before I re- the instruction decoder. alized the full horror of what had happened,” Subsystems are built from custom-printed circuit he says: The final batch had been the wrong boards wired together. kind of transistor. “I wasted about a month of Transistors and LEDs are tedious soldering. It was bad enough having soldered into each board so that the inputs and to do that again, but it was worse because I outputs of each logic gate felt I’d finished the soldering,” says Newman. are indicated [center]. “Yes, we can laugh now, but it was a bad day.” Newman is currently in discussions about finding a permanent home for the Megapro- cessor, where the general public will be able LEDs, and every memory cell similarly uses an or the instruction decoder. The CPU clock to view it without requiring an invitation to LED to indicate its contents (driving the LEDs can be halted at any point or varied between his house. In the meantime, if you want to try is actually responsible for most of the approx- about 1 hertz and 8 kilohertz (fast enough to your hand at programming this masterpiece 3) imately 500 watts the Megaprocessor con- play Tetris), and an optional 32 kilobytes of of transistorized glory, you can download a ( n sumes). The boards are wired together on external memory (implemented using bor- simulator for the Windows operating system frames, with each frame making up a ma- ing old integrated circuits) is accessible via from http://www.megaprocessor.com.

jor system, such as the arithmetic logic unit the input/output interface. —Stephen Cass James Newma

20 | OCT 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

10.Resources.NA.indd 20 9/8/16 8:50 AM RESOURCES_Careers

The Right Way to Hire and Beasley says she’s tired of hearing companies saying it’s a “pipeline problem” because Retain Minority Engineers they can’t find qualified engineers and com- Don’t blame pipeline puter scientists to work for them. If companies small, medium, and large are competing to hire problems—instead, focus the same black and Hispanic STEM graduates on bottom-line benefits from Stanford, MIT, and other elite schools, of course they’re going to have trouble, she says. Every year, second- and third-tier institutions produce highly qualified graduates, but these schools aren’t even on recruit- ers’ radar. Some tech companies, including Google, have started recruiting at historically black colleges and universities. If companies keep going to the same well and finding it dry, Beasley says, they should look in a new well—such as professional groups and campus groups for underrepresented minorities. Companies successfully diversify when they ask their existing engineers and pro- grammers of color to recommend friends and colleagues for openings, says Karl W. Reid, executive director of the National So- ciety of Black Engineers. Also, recruiting cohorts of multiple underrepresented minorities improves hiring and retention rates, he says. When he was hired as a systems engineer at IBM in the late 1980s, Reid notes he United States is losing a So how can businesses hire and retain that he met other African Americans during T significant number of qualified more underrepresented minorities? Com- orientation and they developed a comradery minority engineers. Nonwhite and panies seeking to increase the diversity of that lasted after dispersing to their different non-Asian engineers are leaving the field at a their STEM workforce should create a plan departments. To boost retention, Reid says, higher rate than others, according to the Na- with clear, measurable goals, says Beas- first you have to have a critical mass of peo- tional Science Foundation. The NSF found ley. The plan should list specific activities ple of color, and then you have to have minori- that in 2013 (the latest year for which data that staff will undertake to reach the stated ties in leadership roles. are available), for those with graduate-level goals. And when talking to staff about the Another way to improve diversity is to ta ckle degrees, 10 percent of so-called under- company’s motivation for diversifying, fo- the attrition problem head-on. People leave represented minority men and 17 percent cus on the business case; don’t preach about jobs when they are undervalued and sidelined, of underrepresented minority women were the benefits of equality. Diversity training is so management should meet regularly with working in a job unrelated to engineering, a billion-dollar industry, Beasley says, but “it employees of color and listen to them, says compared to 8 percent of white men and turns out that diversity trainings are largely Joe Feagin, a sociology professor at Texas A&M 11 percent of white and Asian women. ineffective.” Unconscious-bias training also University and author of more than 50 books A diverse workforce has real benefits for doesn’t change minds and hearts, she says, on racism in the United States. And, he says, organizations: Studies show that compa- and it often backfires, by fueling resentment. rather than an annual seminar, racial aware- nies that are more diverse are more profit- Companies with few black or Hispanic staff ness programs must be long-term, involve able, says Maya Beasley, associate professor members face an extra challenge because the entire staff, and be woven into the culture. of sociology at the University of Connecti- nobody wants to be a token or work in an en- Leadership is essential. “If the person at cut. Beasley is also a cofounder of the T10 vironment without peers, adds Beasley. Such the top shows a strong commitment to these Group, a diversity consulting firm, and the companies that are transparent about staff changes, they’re much more likely to happen, es

g author of Opting Out: Losing the Potential diversity and demonstrate that they have a di- whether it’s a corporation, a small business, ma I

y y of America’s Young Black Elite (University of versity plan in place will find candidates more or a tech firm,” says Feagin. tt

Ge Chicago Press, 2011). willing to consider a job offer, she says. —e Th resa Sullivan Barger

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | OCT 2016 | 21

10.Resources.NA.indd 21 9/8/16 8:50 AM RESOURCES_HANDS ON

few months ago I modi- The “Air” Theremin A fied avintage Casio synthesizer so A high-precision that it could produce bizarre new sounds. At the same time, I built an interface range finder lets you that allowed an Arduino Mega microcon- build an instrument troller to control the keyboard. This was part of my scheme to use electronic assistance with infrared light to solve my ongoing problem of not actually being able to play any instrument. Initially I programmed the Mega simply to play a stored melody. I could have bought and retrofitted a MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) for such a task, but I used a Mega because I wanted greater flexibility. In particular, I wanted to be able to hook up different sensors and translate their readings into musical notes. So when the makers of the TeraRanger One—a US $140 range- finder sensor—sent me a sample unit, the wheels in my head started turning. I’d met some of the TeraRanger people last March at the CeBIT technology show. The sensor is actually a spin-off from the CERN nuclear research center, where an inexpensive, lightweight, and precise way to determine distances over a range of several meters was wanted for underground drone surveys. The TeraRanger One measures the time of flight of reflected infrared pulses; it can determine distances with 5-millimeter resolution up to 14 meters away indoors, with a refresh rate of 1 kilohertz. I realized that with this range and resolution I could build one musical instrument with two different modes of playing it. In the first mode—which I’ve dubbed Air Theremin—the instrument is played with a single hand. By placing my palm somewhere in a range of about a meter above the sensor, I can produce notes using the Casio keyboard. It’s a little like playing a theremin, but without the need for that device’s antenna. In the second mode—dubbed Air Big, after the 1988 film in which Tom Hanks plays a giant piano keyboard embedded into the floor of a toy store—I can play the instrument by putting my entire body in front of the sensor somewhere over the length of a room. Interfacing the TeraRanger One’s output to the Mega was straightforward. You can con- figure the sensor to encode a measurement range (in millimeters) as 2 bytes. I connect-

22 | OCT 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG photograph by Yuki Mizuma

10.Resources.NA.indd 22 9/8/16 8:50 AM ed the TeraRanger One’s still within spec) caused my transmit and receive lines board failures? No, but be- to two digital pins on the cause the IEEE isn’t going Mega and handled com- to let me expense a bunch munications using the of Megas just so I can fry SoftwareSerial Library. them in a set of tests, I’m My biggest problem going to take that answer was avoiding killing the and run, at least for now. Mega. I recently bought Mapping the range sen- a number of Megas from sor results onto the Casio’s Micro Center, a U.S. re- keyboard was also straight- tail store that sells its own forward: Placing my hand in line of Arduino clones un- the air above the sensor re- der its Inland brand. Their liably produced a note cor- Megas typically sell for responding to the distance $20 and can be found on sale for as little from the sensor. But the results were a lit- as $10, significantly cheaper than other tle boring to listen to. Even if I could play brands. I’ve used these boards before the piano, in the absence of visual refer- and had no complaints, but as I tested ence points, bringing my palm out of the my project, the Mega stopped respond- TeraRanger’s field of view and back in at ing. I replaced it, but then that board went the correct distance for a different desired belly-up, too. I chalked up the first failure note would be challenging. And this would to bad luck, but after the second identi- be even more difficult in Air Big mode. cal failure, I started poking around for a The solution was to realize that I wasn’t cause. Eventually, my attention turned to limited to the Casio’s conventional scale the generic wall wart I was using as an ex- arrangement of octaves and semitones. ternal power supply. Inspired by the Animoog iPad app, which Often, the 5 volts supplied via the USB allows support for many different on- connector is enough to run Arduino- screen keyboards and scale arrangements, based projects, but the TeraRanger One I mapped the TeraRanger results onto a requires 10 to 20 V, with 12 V as the pre- scale of C, D#, E, F, F#, G#, A, B. The re- ferred voltage. For the Mega, when it’s sult was much more melodious, even when running on external power, the recom- I moved my hand from note to note while mended range of input voltages is 7 to staying within the sensor’s field of view. 12 V, with 6 to 20 V tolerated. So I dug A single-note melody still sometimes through my pile of accumulated old wall sounded a little thin, so I programmed warts until I found one that listed its out- a lookup table of major chords for each put as 12 V and passed this external sup- note, and added a switch that would ply through to the TeraRanger One via the prompt the Mega to automatically play Mega’s Vin pin. But when I checked the these chords. I also added a potentiom- Vin voltage with a third Mega, I found it eter to adjust the range over which the was a little over 14 V under the load pre- Mega maps distances to notes. I then sented by the Mega and the TeraRanger. mounted the TeraRanger on a wooden

My setup just wasn’t drawing enough of conjuring up music: The new box with a hinged lid, which lets me flip ass (3) ass c a load to pull the wall wart’s voltage down instrument controls a modified Casio the sensor from pointing up to pointing n

he keyboard via an Arduino Mega–based p to its rated value. out, to go from Air Theremin to Air Big e interface [top]. Two control switches St So I extracted a 9 V wall wart from the and a potentiometer were added to a mode. Testing out the latter has pro- om: om:

tt pile, which actually provided a little un- board [second from top] connected to duced some entertaining gyrations from der 10 V under my setup’s load. This was the TeraRanger One sensor [second from my colleagues here at IEEE Spectrum , bottom]. The board and sensor were izuma; bo izuma; M acceptable to the TeraRanger One, and mounted in a box with a flip-top lid and a although it’s perhaps somewhat less uki uki

Y the Mega has been running fine too. Am I DE-9 connector [bottom]. musical than the Air Theremin mode. : p

To sure that the higher voltage (even though —Stephen Cass

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | OCT 2016 | 23

10.Resources.NA.indd 23 9/8/16 8:50 AM NUMBERS DON’T LIE_by VACLAV SMIL OPINION

ies. Meanwhile, nuclear propulsion would carry men to Mars. The project to generate electricity from fission stalled during the 1980s, as demand for electricity in affluent economies fell and problems with nuclear power plants multiplied. And three failures were worrisome: Accidents at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, in 1979; at Chernobyl in Ukraine, in 1986; and at Fukushima in Japan, in 2011, provided further evidence for those opposed to fission under any circumstances. Meanwhile, there have been cost overruns in the construction of nuclear plants and a frustrating inability to come up with an acceptable way to store spent nuclear fuel. Nor has there been much success in switching to reactors that might be safer and less expensive than the dominant design of pressurized water reactors, which are essentially beached versions of U.S. Navy subma- NUCLEAR ELECTRICITY: rine designs of the 1950s. As a result, the Western public remains A SUCCESSFUL FAILURE unconvinced, utilities are wary, Ger- many and Sweden are on the course of shutting down their entire industries, The age of commercial nuclear electricity generation and even France plans to cut back. In began on 17 October 1956, when Queen Elizabeth II switched on Calder August 2016, 61 reactors were under con- Hall, on the Cumberland coast of England. Sixty years is long enough to struction worldwide, too few to make up judge the technology, and I still cannot improve on my evaluation from for the capacity that will be lost as aging about 10 years ago: a “successful failure.” • The success part is well documented. reactors are shut down in coming years. After a slow start, reactor construction began to accelerate during the late 1960s, and The only leading economies with major by 1977 more than 10 percent of U.S. electricity came from fission, rising to 20 percent expansion plans are in Asia, led by China, by 1991. That was a faster penetration of the market than photovoltaics and wind tur- South Korea, and India, but even they bines have managed since the 1990s. • Today the world has 448 reactors, many with can’t do much to reverse the decline in capacity factors of better than 90 percent. That’s the share of the reactors’ potential the share of nuclear power in worldwide output that they averaged year-round, producing more than twice as much electricity electricity generation. That share peaked as PV cells and wind turbines combined. Nuclear power provided the highest share at nearly 18 percent in 1996, fell to 11 per- of electricity in France (77 percent), but Swiss reactors contributed 38 percent and cent in 2015, and is expected to bump up South Korea got 30 percent, as did Japan before Fukushima. The U.S. share remains at to just 12 percent by 2040, according to almost 20 percent. • The failure part has to do with unmet expectations. The claim the International Energy Agency. that nuclear electricity would be “too cheap to meter” is not apocryphal: That’s what There are many things we could do— Lewis L. Strauss, chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in 1954, told the above all, use better reactor designs and National Association of Science Writers in New York in September of that year. And act resolutely on waste storage—to gener- equally audacious claims were still to come. In 1971, Glenn Seaborg, a Nobelist and ate a significant share of electricity from chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission then, predicted that nuclear reactors nuclear fission and so limit carbon emis- would generate nearly all the world’s electricity by 2000. Seaborg envisioned giant sions. But that would require an unbi- coastal “nuplexes” desalinating sea water, geostationary satellites powered by com- ased examination of the facts and a truly pact nuclear reactors for broadcasting TV programs, nuclear-powered tankers, and long-range approach to global energy

nuclear explosives that would alter the flow of rivers and excavate underground cit- policy. I see no real signs of that. ■

24 | OCT 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG illustration by Chad Hagen

10.Numbers.INT - 10.Numbers.NA [P]{NA}.indd 24 9/8/16 12:54 PM technically speaking_BY PAUL McFEDRIES OPINION

Our cars, already jammed with thousands of sensors, will communicate not only with the mother ship (the manufacturer) to check for updates but also with each other (V2V, or vehicle-to-vehicle), with the driver (V2P, or vehicle-to- person), and with their surroundings (V2I, or vehicle-to-infrastructure), thus creating the Internet of Cars (or, more generally, the Internet of Vehicles). We’ll have our e-health monitored minutely, thanks to the army of external and internal physiological sensors that make up our own body-area network (BAN). This likely means that those IT departments that are only now getting comfort- able with the idea of BYOD (bring your own device) will soon have to gear up for BYOW (bring your own wearable). These The Internet of might have to be COPE (corporately owned, personally enabled) devices, Word-Things where the user controls the data but IT controls the security. What does it really mean to have all these devices connected to Allegedly smart TVs and refrigerators the Internet? Is there any real value involved? Just because you can, does it mean that you should? —Matt Cicciari are only a hint of things to come on the home front. Soon our residences will be bristling with domotics (domestic infor- Hang around the Web long enough and you’ll see more matics), including Internet-connected than your share of cartoons mocking the Internet of Things. (I refer, of security systems, automation systems, course, to the collection of uniquely identifiable devices that are con- robots, and more. We’ll also be in connected to the Internet and are capable of transmitting and receiving stant contact with the Social Web of data over that connection.) “We have to go out for dinner,” runs one typical caption. Things (SWoT), the social-network-aware “The refrigerator isn’t speaking to the stove.” It’s easy to poke fun at gadgets such component of IoT. Want to watch a TV as video-enabled toothbrushes and smart tampons, but don’t let these facepalm- show or go to a restaurant? Now you’ll worthy devices distract you from the serious side of IoT. Market research firm Gart- know which of your friends did the same ner predicts that over 6 billion IoT nodes will be connected this year, while a report thing and whether they liked it. This is a from DHL Trend Research and Cisco Consulting Services puts the number at 15 bil- subset of the larger idea of crowdsens- lion. That’s a lot of “things,” and the only trend everyone can agree on is that these ing, which refers to obtaining informa- numbers are going to get bigger. The good news for language watchers is that as tion about an environment by accessing the IoT grows, so does the lingo surrounding it. A full glossary of IoT-related terms the sensor data generated via the smart- would fill a year’s worth of columns, so I’ll just spend the rest of this column look- phones and other devices used by a large ing at a few noteworthy coinages. • A big chunk of the Internet of Things consists number of people in that environment. of wireless transceivers combined with sensors, which can reside in appliances, You can see where all this is going. devices, clothes, machinery, buildings—just about anything physical. Of course, the Eventually, we’ll end up with the Inter- phrase “wireless transceiver combined with sensors” is unwieldy, so such a node of net of Everything (IoE), which takes us the IoT is called a mote (short for remote). Every mote worthy of the name needs to beyond the M2M (machine-to-machine) have addressability, the condition of being not only uniquely identifiable but also nature of the Internet of Things to include findable. The system that manages addressability is called the Identity of Things people in the equation, making it M2P (IDoT). • IoT in an industrial setting is called IIo T (Industrial IoT), which often con- (machine-to-person). So now that our sists of cyberphysical systems that combine networks and mechanical components. toothbrushes and tampons are motes When the network in question is the cloud, the system that manages the delivery on the network, soon we will be, too. of services and data is called Things as a Service (TaaS). Welcome to the machine. ■

illustration by Luc Melanson SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | OCT 2016 | 25

10.TechSpeak.INT - 10.TechSpeaking.NA [P]{NA}.indd 25 9/8/16 1:00 PM fighting cancer with quantum dots

These semiconducting slivers could one day guide a surgeon’s hand, zap tumors, and deliver cancer drugs

By imad naasani

26 | oct 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG illustration by Jean-Luc Fortier

10.QuantumDots.NA.indd 26 9/12/16 8:59 AM 10.QuantumDots.NA.indd 27 9/12/16 8:59 AM The bits of semiconducting material Color my world: Researchers at Nanoco Technologies that are lately brightening the colors on television [opposite page] are working to perfect quantum dots that are free of cadmium and other toxic heavy metals in hopes that they can be screens hold a much greater promise—that they used in medical treatments. When illuminated with shortwave light, will extend lives. These tiny crystals are far too small to be different size quantum dots fluoresce with different colors. seen with the naked eye, measuring just one ten-thousandth the width of a human hair, which is one reason they’re called quantum dots. When you shine a suitable light on tures they create are particularly vivid, showing upwards such a dot, it becomes luminous, emitting a very pure color of 50 percent more color range than the average display. that is determined by its size. Their use in TVs also lowers power consumption, because My colleagues and I at Nanoco Technologies, in Manches- less of the backlight’s energy is absorbed by the color fil- ter, England, have been working with a team of research- ters in the LCD screen. ers led by Sandy MacRobert at University College London One hurdle for this technology has been that quantum dots to explore quantum-dot technology for various medical typically contain cadmium, a heavy metal that’s extremely treatments. While there are many exciting possibilities to toxic. Cadmium plays the role of a group II element here, be explored, the most important one we’re pursuing aims often being combined with the group VI element selenium. to help delineate malignant tumors and the pathways along Because of environmental concerns, more and more coun- which they spread, which could improve the safety and tries are outlawing the use of cadmium in electronic prod- effectiveness of cancer surgery. ucts, which spurred our company to devise quantum dots The quantum dots we’re discussing are engineered from that are free of this element as well as other toxic heavy a blend of elements drawn from groups III and V, or II and metals. Along the way, we realized that such cadmium-free VI, of the periodic table—elements like cadmium, lead, zinc, quantum dots might also have important uses in medicine. arsenic, indium, tellurium, selenium, sulfur, and phospho- Most exciting in this regard is that quantum dots have rus, which are used in pairs or as alloys. In that way quantum several advantages over the organic dyes now employed dots are similar to various optoelectronic devices. When during certain cancer surgeries. Of course, quantum dots exposed to a relatively shortwave light source, quantum also present some special challenges, which we’ve been dots absorb some of its energy and reemit light of a longer working hard to address. wavelength (which is to say, a different color), a process known as fluorescence. The size of the dots can be finely To understand how quantum dots might tuned so that they will give off any color of the spectrum help improve outcomes for some cancer patients, you might want: The bigger the dot, the longer the wave- you need to know a little about how surgeons treat length it emits. this disease. They typically remove both the malignant The most common commercial use of quantum dots by tumor and the surrounding lymphatic vessels and nodes, far has been in the backlights for LCD television screens, thus preventing them from carrying the cancer to distant

where they help produce two of the three colors needed. sites in the body. The more lymph nodes removed in sur- (2) ologies n Blue comes directly from an LED, which illuminates quan- gery, the lower the risk that the cancer will reach other tum dots that in turn produce red and green light. Because

organs. But the lymphatic vessels and nodes near the tumor oco Tech n

quantum dots emit very pure colors, the television pic- may be healthy, in which case their removal is certainly Na

28 | oct 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

10.QuantumDots.NA.indd 28 9/12/16 8:59 AM unnecessary and possibly harmful. So one of the challenges tain cancer, there is a strong likelihood that the cancer has in cancer surgery is to figure out exactly how much lym- not spread from the tumor site. This approach avoids hav- phatic tissue to cut out and how much to leave intact. ing to remove a large number of lymph nodes in the armpit, One strategy makes use of the fact that the membranes which often causes lymphedema (arm swelling), numbness, that surround cancerous cells are more penetrable and and restricted arm movement. reactive than healthy tissue. So surgeons inject the area So this seems like a smart strategy for treating breast of the primary tumor with dyes or radioisotopes. After a cancer, right? The question is how well it really works. The few minutes the surgeon can then determine which of the 2013 study found that 12.6 percent of the women got false- surrounding lymphatic tissues are likely to contain cancer negative results. That is, their sentinel nodes, as identified simply by noting the presence of the colored dye or iden- using both a blue dye and a radioactive tracer, showed no tifying them with a radiation detector. cancer, but cancer was, in fact, present in these women’s The main problem with this approach is that the dyes other armpit nodes. The study authors considered a false- that are normally used for this purpose (isosulfan blue or negative rate above 10 percent to be problematic. That methylene blue) migrate quickly from the site of injection doesn’t mean that the medical community should aban- through the cancer-containing lymph nodes and on to the don sentinel-lymph-node surgery—not at all. Physicians entire lymphatic system. So surgeons typically take a picture just need to figure out how to do it better. of the tumor and surrounding areas soon after injection of Here’s where quantum dots could really...well, shine. the dye, before it has migrated very far, and then operate Unlike organic dyes, quantum dots migrate relatively based on what that picture shows. As you can imagine, it’s slowly and can maintain their ability to fluoresce for many hard to be accurate when you have to refer to memory or hours. So the surgeon could perform the procedure based a picture to guide your actions. on what the dots reveal in real time. The surgical team Another issue doctors can run into when using organic would simply inject the quantum dots and then illuminate dyes is premature fading: The dyes bleach quickly under the strong lights used to illuminate them. Still another problem is that, even before any fading occurs, those blue organic dyes often cannot be seen through the skin or fatty tissue. There is a different organic dye—something called indo cyanine green—that does show through skin and fat because it fluoresces in the near infrared, which penetrates better through living tissue. Because the dye’s emissions are outside the visible range, though, the surgeon must use special imaging equipment to see where the tracer has gone. When a radioactive tracer is employed for such surgery, it’s typically a metastable form of technetium that emits gamma rays when it decays and has a half-life of about 6 hours. So time is not such a factor. But like dyes, it may migrate too quickly. In any event, pinpointing where the technetium has moved is hard to do with a handheld gamma probe. As a result, radioactive tracers give a very coarse picture of how cells shed from a tumor might travel through the patient’s lymphatic system. It’s evident that current methods need improvement, as shown by a 2013 clinical trial intended to determine the effectiveness of a technique calledsentinel-l ymph-node surgery for women with a particular kind of breast cancer. Normally, 10 or more lymph nodes in the woman’s armpit would be removed and analyzed for cancer. With sentinel- lymph-node surgery, however, a dye or radioactive tracer (or both) is injected at the site of the tumor, which can lead the surgeon to the first few armpit nodes along the line of lymphatic drainage. If those “sentinel” nodes do not con-

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | oct 2016 | 29

10.QuantumDots.NA.indd 29 9/12/16 8:59 AM the area with either ultraviolet or blue light. The quantum dots would fluoresce brightly and could do so for the duration of the operation. They could be engineered to emit light at whatever wavelength the surgeon desired, be it one that can be seen directly or one that emits in the infrared, allowing its light to pass through skin and fatty tissue. The surgeon could take as much time as needed to determine the locations of sentinel nodes, which would presumably make such procedures more accurate.

What exactly are these magical quantum dots? Quantum dots are made up of tiny chunks of semiconducting material, which typically measure between 2 and 10 nanometers across. Because they are so small, their electronic and optical properties are distinct from those normally associated with whatever material they are made of. They straddle an odd middle ground between molecules and bulk material, a fact that becomes most evident when you consider how they fluoresce, absorbing a broad range of wavelengths and then reemitting that energy as light of a very specific wavelength— an ultrapure color. The beauty of quantum dots is that you can tailor their optical properties simply by changing their size: The larger the dot, the redder (longer wavelength) its optical emissions. For most semiconductors, you have to change their composition to change their optical properties. No wonder the engineers making displays are keen to take advantage of quantum dots. Beginning in the mid-1990s, scientists began devising various ways to produce these tiny crystals in quantity. In 2001,

Nanoco was spun off from Paul O’Brien’s research group in N O

S the School of Chemistry at the University of Manchester to o PL commercialize a process for quantum-dot synthesis called elle/ H

molecular seeding, which allows very good consistency and n ario

reproducibility. The challenge for us then became making M quantum dots that don’t cause any ill effects. You certainly

wouldn’t want to use the typical kinds of quantum dots that ologies; n have been created in the past: The cadmium they contain is

a huge threat to human health. You wouldn’t want to allow Tech oco n Na

that cadmium to be released into the environment, much ;

less be injected into a patient. CMIR N / Anticipating that this issue can be overcome, medical n

researchers around the globe have been investigating the llisma E

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O f Mice and molecules: Quantum dots have long been used breast-cancer tumors in mice, for example, scientists have nd

to label proteins. The red and green dots in this micrograph of found that, unlike conventional dyes, quantum dots are less a ck mouse intestine [top] do just that. (The blue is an organic dye.) Red n and green quantum dots from Nanoco were used to mark polymer likely to migrate through the lymphatic system beyond the beads, standing in for cells [middle]. Quantum dots have also been regional lymph nodes around the tumor. used experimentally in mice to trace flow within the lymphatic Soon after Nanoco was established, it began engineer- system [bottom]. Panel A is before injection; panels B and C are 5 minutes after injection in the forepaw [arrow]. (In C, the injection ing a new type of quantum dot that is free of cadmium and

site is blocked from the imager.) other toxic heavy metals. Other companies quickly followed Deeri Thomas Top: From

30 | oct 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG ↗ Post your comments at http://spectrum.ieee.org/quantumdot1016

10.QuantumDots.NA.indd 30 9/12/16 8:59 AM suit. These cadmium-free quantum dots are attractive for Cancer treatment is just one of many making displays, because they help them conform to vari- promising applications for quantum dots in medi- ous environmental regulations. The first TV sets to use cine, but the question that is holding back all this cadmium-free quantum dots, such as S amsung’s SUHD TV, research is whether it’s safe to use them inside a human have just recently appeared on store shelves. But there’s being. Injecting substances into the body is never without an even greater payoff coming: While definitive tests have risk, and quantum dots have long been a worry in that yet to be done, my colleagues and I believe that modified regard. But the elimination of toxic heavy metals and the versions of these cadmium-free quantum dots are likely to use of biocompatible coatings should go a long way in alle- be safe for clinical use inside the human body. viating concerns. In addition to eliminating the heavy metals, researchers The most likely problem posed by the quantum dots my at our company have developed a special polymer coat- colleagues and I have been investigating is allergic reaction, ing to render the dots biocompatible, meaning that they an all-too-common phenomenon in medicine. Indeed, an are not likely to engender inflammation or any other sort organic dye commonly used now for cancer surgery elicits of immunological response. Nanoco’s research partners dangerous allergic responses in 1 to 3 percent of patients. at University College London have used these dots suc- We won’t know how allergenic our quantum dots are until cessfully in surgery to remove tumors and surrounding we conduct human trials, which are probably two to three tissue from mice, with no detectable toxic side effects in years away yet. But if all goes as we hope, the new dots won’t the animals. prove any worse in this regard than today’s organic dyes. If Of course, even if these quantum dots prove perfectly so, nontoxic quantum dots could begin helping to extend safe, it will take a long time to determine just how much the lives of cancer patients perhaps just a few short years of an advance they represent over conventional dyes and after that. It will be a triumph well worth remembering while radioactive tracers. It seems reasonable to suppose that enjoying the especially vivid picture on the television you they will improve outcomes in cancer surgery, but clinical have at home, where the same fundamental technology will trials will have to be carried out to determine whether sur- by that time probably be at work. ■ geons actually remove more cancerous tissue with quantum dots guiding their decisions, whether that lowers the risk that the cancer will spread, and whether there will be less need for repeat surgeries. In addition to delineating tumors, the quantum dots may have other important uses in cancer treatment. In particular, physicians may someday be able to use quantum dots to destroy cancerous tumors in place. That’s because tumors typically absorb and accumulate nanoparticles faster than do normal healthy tissues, a phenomenon called enhanced permeability and retention. So quantum dots could, in principle, also be used as an integral part of chemotherapeutic drugs that are preferentially absorbed by a tumor. Another exciting possibility involves the application of quantum dots to something called photodynamic therapy, which can be used instead of surgery to treat cancer by killing malignant cells through exposure to light. For this, physicians first inject special sensitizing drugs, which are preferentially taken up by cancerous tissues. When light is

shone on the tumor, the sensitizing molecules absorb energy sphereS of influence: Quantum dots are composed of from the light and cause a toxic form of oxygen to be pro- at least two types of atoms [red and blue], typically arranged duced, which then kills the surrounding cancerous cells. in a face-centered cubic lattice, where each atom’s nearest neighbors are four atoms of the opposite type positioned Special quantum dots could be created to help with such at the vertices of a regular tetrahedron. The most common procedures. The dots would serve to transfer energy from form of quantum dot is composed of cadmium and selenium, the light to attached sensitizing molecules, thus enhanc- but concern over toxic effects has prompted researchers to replace those with more benign elements. For medical use in ing the ability of traditional photodynamic-therapy drugs the body, quantum dots must also be given a biocompatible to kill malignant cells. coating [pale yellow].

illustration by David Schneider SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | oct 2016 | 31

10.QuantumDots.NA.indd 31 9/12/16 8:59 AM Supercar 2.0 Can a hybrid take on the legendary speedsters of the past decade? The 2017 Acura NSX leaves no doubt By Lawrence Ulrich

32 | oct 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

10.AcuraNSX.INT - 10.AcuraNSX.NA [P]{NA}.indd 32 9/12/16 4:38 PM One. Two. Whoosh. By the time I count to three, the Acura NSX’s automated launch control leaps from a standstill to 60 miles per hour. But there’s not a trace of wheel spin and smoking rubber, the usual hallmarks of a neck-snapping drag-strip run here at the track in Thermal, Calif. Oh, there is drama, only it’s largely confined to what’s happening under the Acura’s swoopy skin. This Acura is a plug-in hybrid, part of an electron- pumping vanguard that’s changing the very definition of a performance car. From showrooms to race pad- docks, the clock is ticking for fuel-slurping gasoline engines. Battery-boosted cars, whether hybrid or full electric, are rushing to fill the gap. In our highly regu- lated future, these may be the only kinds of sports cars you’ll be able to buy, and the trippy journey to such Supercar 2.0 a world seems to be taking place at warp speed. ��

10.AcuraNSX.INT - 10.AcuraNSX.NA [P]{NA}.indd 33 SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | oct 2016 | 9/12/1633 4:38 PM Back in 1990, the original Acura HUNKERED DOWN: The new NSX challenged every notion of Acura NSX has a twin‑turbo, what a supercar was supposed 500-horsepower V-6 engine [left], which is to be. Coming from Honda, the mounted longitudinally in manufacturer of the Acura lux- the midsection for optimal ury brand and a company known handling. A 75-degree angle between the cylinder banks for safe, affordable, and ultrareli- lets the engine hunker down, able cars, the NSX wedded those giving it the lowest center of practical virtues to a gorgeous gravity in its class. Behind the seats [right], a T-shaped lightweight body designed by lithium-ion battery packs Italy’s Pininfarina. Smack at its about 1 kilowatt-hour center rested a modest 3-liter for three electric motors, including a pair to power V-6, capable of 200 kilowatts and steer the front wheels. (270 horsepower). Packing more Below, Ted Klaus, head of lightweight aluminum than any- NSX development, takes a whirl in his baby. thing from Ferrari, Lamborghini, or Porsche, the Acura defied expectations again with a shock- ing US $60,000 price, a fraction the cost rather than Japan—knew that electricity $845,000. The 2017 NSX that I’m testing of its highfalutin rivals. In a final coup, was the answer, not just to power the car near Palm Springs costs $157,800. Brazilian Formula One superstar Ayrton but to perform handling magic as well. And unlike the Porsche, which has just Senna, then driving for McLaren-Honda, “We had been working for years to come one electric motor to power both front helped tune the NSX’s suspension and up with drive force that could help turn wheels, the Acura has two electric tricks performance prior to its release. the car right and left,” Klaus recalls. “We up its sleeves: the so-called Twin Motor

Ferrari and Co. were instantly forced asked ourselves: What if we could marry Unit. This dizzyingly complex electric duo, acura Images: all out of their complacency on technology emerging hybrid e-drive technology with mediated through a planetary and quality alike. The NSX topped the yaw-control tech [that is, steering]? Would gear set, cranks out up to 27 kW Ferrari 348, and most every other com- it be possible?” (36 hp) and 73 newton meters petitor, in handling and daily drivability. The answer was yes. But the tight-knit (54 foot-pounds) of torque to So when Honda found itself developing NSX team was facing three more years— either wheel, divvying it up as a reborn NSX in 2011, the new car had mas- and an increasingly skeptical media and needed. This is true torque vec- sive shoes to fill. Oddly, Honda’s engineers fan base—to create that ambitious design toring, able to independently originally planned to power their new from scratch: a hybrid supercar that con- speed up or slow down either roadster with a prosaic V-6 derived from verts electricity into mechanical com- wheel, helping the Acura dive an Odyssey minivan. No wonder that proj- mands, not just for explosive, efficient into turns and dig out the ect was aborted midstream. To deserve the propulsion and regenerative braking but other side. Discreetly nestled storied name, any Son of NSX would have also to steer and stabilize the car. behind pilot and passenger, to be an “everyday supercar” while again As it happens, Porsche was develop- the roughly 1-kilowatt-hour moving the needle on technology. Ted ing an all-wheel-drive hybrid with sim- lithium-ion battery is designed Klaus, chosen to head up the NSX’s global ilar characteristics, the 918 Spyder; it to rapidly charge and discharge R&D team—which is now run out of Ohio, would arrive priced at a mind-boggling for generous squirts of perfor-

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10.AcuraNSX.INT - 10.AcuraNSX.NA [P]{NA}.indd 34 9/12/16 4:38 PM mance. A larger battery might have con- The electric motors can still help propel through Sport Plus to Track mode, which tributed more all-electric driving range, the car at up to 200 kilometers per hour transformed the car into the howling, but it would have come at the expense of (124 miles per hour) and assist in turning road-clawing beast you’d expect at this weight and ultimate performance. right up to the car’s 300-km/h top speed. price. The car’s driver-selectable per- The instant the driver rotates the steer- To provide shove at the rear wheels, a formance modes, four in all, can vary ing wheel, sensors sample the car’s con- 3.5-L racing V-6 shares nary a bolt with engine sound by as much as 25 decibels, trols, and then software processes the any production Honda engine ever built with natural frequencies pumped into the data in just 10 to 20 milliseconds. The before. A 75-degree angle between its cyl- cabin via tubes behind passengers’ heads. time it takes the electrical system to con- inder banks lowers the center of gravity, in This yin-yang quality pervades the vert that input into steering response, unique contrast to the industry’s typical Acura. You could argue that it tries too Klaus says, is on the order of 50 ms. Yes, 60-degree V-6s. And it churns up 373 kW hard to be an everyday Honda, to dis- that’s fast. Front-axle motors deliver their (500 hp) and 550 nm (406 foot-pounds) guise the seriously heroic stuff under its full monty of instantaneous torque at of torque. A third electric traction motor, skin. Since when do supercar owners, the every possible engine speed between with 35 kW and 148 nm of torque, sand- flamboyant types who drop six figures 0 and 2,000 rpm; 2,000 rpm is the point wiches between the engine’s crankshaft on a howling Lamborghini, prefer to fly at which the gas engine rouses itself to and nine-speed, dual-clutch automated below the radar? take over the majority of propulsion. gearbox. The motors even help smooth Indeed, my first experience here in the gear changes, adding power as engine Honda has me questioning its supercar speeds fall during shifts. bona fides. There’s plenty of tire grip, but Add it up and the NSX sends 427 kW the steering feels a bit robotic. The tur- (573 hp) and 633 nm (476 ft.-lbs.) to the bos emit a discreet whoosh, but the V-6 wheels, on par with gas-only supercars itself sounds meek and wholly unthreat- like the Audi R8 V-10 that have more cyl- ening. And while the speedometer says inders and consume much more fuel. we’re making good time, the Acura feels sneaky fast, not freaky fast. So how does it drive? To find out, I Whether the subject is street cars or the chased Indy driver Graham Rahal pinnacle of motor sports in Formula One— around the Thermal Club’s snaking road and its offshoot, the all-electric Formula E course. This was definitely the time to series—the purists’ complaints have been dial the NSX up from its Quiet setting, as loud as the cars are quiet: Electricity the S unday-church mode that priori- will silence the shriek and dull the visceral tizes electric propulsion and highlights sensations that have thrilled drivers and those smooth Honda manners. I moved spectators for more than a century.

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | oct 2016 | 35

10.AcuraNSX.INT - 10.AcuraNSX.NA [P]{NA}.indd 35 9/12/16 4:38 PM clane -sheet design: Honda’s Ohio Performance Manufacturing Center is all new, like the NSX it makes. Ablation casting uses water to blast sand from molds, quickly cooling the molten aluminum for a stronger microstructure and superior crash performance. Eight robots apply 860 welds to the aluminum space frame. Wireless torque wrenches record tension settings for every bolt. The low-volume factory requires only 100 technicians to assemble, paint, and monitor quality for the NSX.

“I would say that’s a hot topic, the emo- 11.2 liters per 100 kilometers (21 miles per and turn according to the tional attributes of an electric car,” Klaus gallon), commendable for a supercar that driver’s desires, but ensure acknowledges. “I like the idea that elec- can hang with a Ferrari 458, Lamborghini that nothing uncontrolled tric propulsion can stir your soul, with- Huracán, or Porsche 911 Turbo. would happen to a driver or out constantly shaking you up.” This being Honda, the NSX team set those around them in case And even professional racers, he argues, itself another lofty goal, creating what of an electrical or mechani- don’t like a car that’s always on the edge, they believe is the world’s safest super- cal failure.” requiring constant correction and mental car. Klaus and his team say the NSX is and physical strain. “That kind of car uses measurably more crashworthy than its Despite all the integrated so much of your human bandwidth that rivals. Maybe that’s not sexy, but it might systems and all the electronic you can’t extract maximum performance,” save a driver’s life in a car designed for oversight, the Acura must still feel like a he says. “We’ve electrified a supercar that pushing the envelope. natural, involving sports car. The bra- gives you a wide range of emotional expe- The team also developed numerous vura brake-force simulator is a shining riences, from quiet cruising to unleash- fail-safes to ensure consistent, trustwor- example: All supercars go, but the NSX ing the beast at the track.” thy performance. is special for how it stops. Cars like the Acura may never wail like a “It took a couple of years to harden the The problem is that any hybrid car that V-10 Lamborghini, at least not without the system to our high reliability standards, wants to save fuel must brake regenera- artificially synthesized sound of cars like so that if someone puts in an unusual tively: Those electric motors must also the BMW i8, the autosport equivalent to or unskilled input, the vehicle’s safety be able to function as generators dur- lip-synching. But nor does the Acura slurp performance is in line with an Accord or ing braking, turning kinetic energy into premium unleaded as shamelessly as a Civic,” says Klaus. “At up to 300 km/h electricity that is shunted to the battery ’60s muscle car. The U.S. Environmental or pulling over 1 g (in handling force), for reuse. But that tends to give brakes a Protection Agency credits the NSX with we had to make it accelerate, brake, nonlinear, mashed-potatoes feel.

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10.AcuraNSX.INT - 10.AcuraNSX.NA [P]{NA}.indd 36 9/12/16 4:38 PM “We needed a breakthrough in man- sand, which has the virtue of quickly cool- a naturally aspirated V-8 was roaring machine engineering,” Klaus says. “How ing the newly solidified metal. That creates behind your head. much force do drivers want to feel, and a stronger microstructure, which allows The Acura corners with near-Italian how do we link that to deceleration value?” lighter, thinner castings with superior crash brio, its variable-ratio steering finely The answer was a system that simu- absorption. The largely aluminum space- weighted, though the steering is not espe- lates natural brake-pedal feel via a sepa- frame chassis, with a carbon-fiber floor cially good at transmitting information on rate hydraulic circuit. Pushing the brakes and mixed-materials body (mostly alumi- the road surface into your hands. That’s triggers an electric motor that varies the num and sheet-molded composite) feels as surely due to the filtering effect of its elec- amount of resistance felt in the pedal, but indomitable as anything in the class. Acura tric systems. Ultrawide-range magnetic none of that hydraulic fluid is actually claims the chassis is much more rigid than dampers stiffen or soothe the car at all stopping the car. Your foot’s commands those of its rivals, with the lowest center of four corners, pancaking the NSX to the are actually electronically translated to gravity—a boon to handling. road with extra syrup. Maybe this Acura activate brakes on a separate hydraulic In Anna, Ohio, at Honda’s largest engine has a heart after all, beneath that sleek circuit. The result is perhaps the most plant, technicians hand-assemble the aluminum skin and layers of technology. natural, linear-feeling hybrid brakes yet, NSX’s novel V-6 and mate it to the gearbox whether used around town or at the track. and rear-drive electric motor. Honda will So what do cars like the NSX mean for “Those brakes felt horrible at the begin- complete only about eight NSX engines the future of performance and, more spe- ning of development,” Klaus says. “There per day, but its technology can now trickle cifically, for electric propulsion? were a lot of sleepless nights on how that down to the company’s other cars. Ele- Despite giveaway fuel prices in the system didn’t feel natural.” ments of the NSX’s all-wheel-drive hybrid United States, a sales explosion for SUVs Honda’s customary no-stone-unturned technology, Klaus notes, are already around the world, and an ice-cold mar- approach extended to manufacturing. found in affordable models including the ket for electric cars not named Tesla, In Ohio, where Honda built its first MDX crossover and RLX sedan. automakers big and small continue to American Accord in 1982, the NSX has For type A drivers, the effort all comes pour resources into hybrids. Compa- begun rolling off the line at a showpiece together with a few toggles of the perfor- nies as different as GM and McLaren are plant called the Performance Manufac- mance dial. Cranked up to its Track mode focused on fun-to-drive performance, turing Center, or PMC. on the road course at Thermal Club, the not just efficiency. NSX palpably transforms from benign Tesla has something to do with that. In Jekyll to murderous Hyde, bounding into 2008, its Roadster overturned the stereo- corners and wagging its exotic tail on the type of EVs as glorified golf carts. Just as way out. That electric umbilical cord is important are new emissions and fuel- severed and forgotten, and the Acura is economy regulations, which are compel- suddenly an Italian-baiting supercar but ling carmakers to electrify their fleets. undoubtedly more rock-solid reliable, BMW may have blinked, abruptly just like the original NSX. changing the course of its high-profile I depart the track for a run to the i Division: Electric cars are out, autono- town of Idyllwild, then a fantasy two- mous cars are in. For its next all-new EV, lane descent from the San Jacinto Moun- the iNext, slated for 2021, BMW is sud- tains. The Acura slingshots from curve denly touting autonomous function as to fate-tempting curve. I’m driving as much as its electric power train. quickly as I dare on public roads, let- Yet Ferrari has pledged that every new ting those front wheels electrify their model will be a hybrid, turbocharged, or Clement D’Souza, the engineer who led way into and out of every corner. The both. McLaren’s Track 22 project targets development of the PMC, said that Honda threesome of electric motors fills every 2022 to electrify half its models, includ- visited about two dozen other factories, power gap in the turbocharged engines, ing a potential all-electric version of its including those at Ferrari, McLaren, and with surges of juice making up for turbo fearsome P1 hypercar. Porsche has an Porsche, to benchmark manufacturing lag and smoothing gear changes. The electric sedan in the works, based on its processes, tailoring its approach to that of NSX actually gets to 100 km/h fastest stunning Mission E concept. Formula One teams. On its meticulous, low- in Sport Plus, the mode in which the The jury is still out on whether electric- volume assembly line, NSX is treated to a computers let the motors suck more ity will entirely displace old-school inter- dozen patent-pending processes, including battery power than usual, knowing it’ll nal combustion in performance cars. But the world’s first use of ablation casting in be instantly recovered via the frequent Klaus is convinced that electricity will an automobile: Sand molds for parts of the regeneration inherent to street driving. soon be an unstoppable force. “Electric aluminum space frame are ablated, using With such consistent power, and all the propulsion has a bright future,“ he says. water to dissolve the binder and blast away piped-in sounds, you’d almost swear “There’s no two ways about it.” ■

↗ Post your comments at http://spectrum.ieee.org/acuransx1016 SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | oct 2016 | 37

10.AcuraNSX.INT - 10.AcuraNSX.NA [P]{NA}.indd 37 9/12/16 4:38 PM The Hard- Knocks Bot Toc prote t American football players from concussions, this robot takes the hits By Elliot Kastner Photography by Nathaniel Welch

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10.FootballRobot.NA.indd 38 9/8/16 1:49 PM graduating with honors: The Mobile Virtual Player started as a class project for Dartmouth College engineering students. Now it’s for sale to NFL teams.

10.FootballRobot.NA.indd 39 9/8/16 1:49 PM uring practices, American football coaches typically stay on the sidelines, grim-faced, as they order their players through drills. But during an afternoon this past May, in the cavernous training facility for the Pittsburgh Steelers, head D coach Mike Tomlin couldn’t resist getting in on the action. As a human-size robot sped over the artificial turf, the grinning coach ran onto the field and tackled it. The MVP, or Mobile Virtual Player, was designed to take precisely this kind of hit—the sort of jarring blow that, inflicted repeatedly, can injure the brains of human players. American football has been rocked by controversy over the last decade, as it has become clear that the repeated collisions inherent to the sport are giving players concussions and sometimes causing debilitating and permanent brain trauma. In response, the U.S. National Football League (NFL) has altered rules and contributed millions to medical research. Meanwhile, the same head-injury concerns have found even greater resonance in college and youth football. Doctors, politicians, and parents are asking an urgent question: If these smashing impacts begin when players are young, what will be the cumulative effect after many years? In 2013, I was part of a team of undergraduate engineering students at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, N.H., that sought a technological solution to this prob- we’re experimenting with ways to make them more autonomous. lem. We wanted to invent a robotic tackling dummy that We can even imagine a futuristic football practice in which players could move like a real player and take the hits during jog onto the field and find an entire robotic team waiting for them practice sessions. By serving as a realistic stand-in, we on the line of scrimmage. figured, a robot would reduce player-on-player impacts during tackling drills, when many head injuries occur. “I love the game of football, but I love my players more,” said We aimed to build a zippy padded robot that could be Eugene “Buddy” Teevens, coach of the Dartmouth football team, knocked down by a powerful linebacker and immedi- while testifying this past May at a U.S. congressional hearing on ately pop back up, ready for the next player’s charge. concussions in youth athletics. Despite increased attention on the The path from a college lab to an NFL gym wasn’t issue, a recent study found that concussions are still on the rise smooth. But after years of hard work, I’m now director among adolescents and young adults in the United States. Teevens, of R&D for a tech startup, also called MVP, that’s fur- a leading voice for player safety, went before the committee to ther developing the bot. We’ve partnered with a sports describe his radical response to this crisis. equipment company to manufacture commercial units, Dartmouth has a storied tradition of football dating back to 1876, and our first batch rolled off the line in August. Over the and its team has won 18 Ivy League championships. So Teevens past few months we distributed those robots to custom- shocked the football world at the start of the 2011 season when he ers on our waiting list, which included NFL teams and announced a complete ban on tackling at practice. Players could some of the top college football teams in the country. hit padded tackling sleds, but not each other. To put it bluntly, the For that visit in May to the Steelers’ training facility we players, fans, and other coaches all thought he was crazy. brought a beta version of the MVP. I’m proud to say that They don’t anymore. Dartmouth has had winning football sea- after a two-week tryout, it made the cut: The Steelers took sons every year since Teevens instituted the ban. But the coach two of our new production units, at US $8,000 apiece. kept wishing that he could safely approximate game conditions As we’ve watched how coaches use our robots, we’ve in practice sessions, allowing his defensive players to chase and realized that the MVP can be more than just a tackling tackle elusive runners. So in 2013 he brought a challenge to Dart- target. With more development, it could stand in for mouth’s Thayer School of Engineering. Could students come up any player and take part in complicated plays. And with a technology that would let players practice their tackling though each MVP is now steered by remote control, skills without injuring each other?

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10.FootballRobot.NA.indd 40 9/8/16 1:49 PM Coa ch in control: Dartmouth football coach Eugene Teevens [left] steers the robot through maneuvers so players can practice tackling. The controller [below] has a trigger and a wheel to manage forward propulsion and direction.

I was well positioned to help out. I’d been a defensive lineman a shape with the right center of gravity, ending up with under Teevens since arriving at Dartmouth in 2009 to study engi- something resembling a Weeble, the roly-poly children’s neering, and I’d experienced the bruising toll of live practice drills. toy. We poured green foam into a mold to get the form So I joined forces with Quinn Connell, now MVP’s director of engi- we wanted—a human-height cone with a rounded base— neering, and two other students, and we made Teevens’s challenge and added big chunks of steel as ballast. Unfortunately, our senior-year project. We aimed to build a fast-moving robot that those additions made it too heavy to drive. could realistically simulate a football player and withstand repeated As the 2013 academic year came to a close, we rushed tackles, and we promised to deliver it to the coach in six months. to finish our assignment. We added an off-the-shelf radio That goal, we soon discovered, was a bit too ambitious. communications system to steer the bot via remote con- Our original idea was to build a robot that would roll on a central trol, and we hooked in jumper cables to power the robot ball so it could move quickly in any direction, mimicking a human with the car battery taken from Connell’s Subaru. The player’s unpredictable runs. To keep our bot upright while in motion, robot technically fulfilled its design specifications, but we considered copying “ballbots” that use sensors and software to we had to admit that we’d failed to build a truly func- balance themselves. But we soon saw a problem with that approach. tional prototype. Players were supposed to knock down our dummy, and they shouldn’t be fighting a robot that’s actively trying to stay upright. So we sim- Our dummy spent the next year getting kicked from ply added passive stabilizers, ringing the base with steel tubing that one storage space to another. In the fall semester of 2014, lightly skimmed over the ground while the robot rolled along. I began a master’s program in biomedical engineering at We did build several prototypes using ball drives, but they brought Dartmouth, while my classmate Connell left the United other problems. We had trouble generating the right amount of States for a job. We still believed in our project, but we traction in two places: between the ball and the small internal had no time to work on it. I stashed the prototype in drivetrain wheels that controlled its spin, and also between the various lab spaces in the engineering building before ball and the ground. While we scratched our heads, we looked at finally moving it to my former fraternity house, where the next engineering challenge. I parked it in a closet next to a stack of empty beer kegs. It was a tricky one. For the robot to be truly useful at a drill ses- Then, in May 2015, I got a phone call from my girlfriend. sion it had to immediately pop up after each tackle, ready to be She was parking her car near the frat house and spot- taken down by the next player. We used computer models to find ted our big green dummy sticking out of a dumpster.

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | oct 2016 | 41

10.FootballRobot.NA.indd 41 9/8/16 1:49 PM I raced over to rescue it, and as we heaved the rusty It was time for something radical. So we gave up on the idea of thing into her car I remembered how Connell and I had having a perfectly omnidirectional robot and abandoned the ball promised Coach Teevens a working device. I called Con- drive, deciding to try wheels instead. Connell spent one long night nell, who was then teaching at an outdoor education with a computer-aided-design program to make a new model, and company in Colombia, and we decided to spend the sum- then we hit the machine shop. We took apart old tackling dummies mer working full time on the project. We launched a Kick- to salvage their foam and roughed out a shape, then hastily installed starter campaign to raise the modest sum of $5,000, and an electric motor and the electronics. When we had everything a handful of generous alumni matched that amount. If put together, at the end of a late-night work session in mid-August, we didn’t have a working prototype by the summer’s end, we took the robot for a spin around the deserted lab. We found to we agreed, we’d put the project to rest once and for all. our surprise that it moved well—really well. Connell came back to campus, and we got to work. We loaded the dummy into the back of a truck, and during our Though we’d both studied mechanical engineering, we drive to the football field we crossed paths with a Dartmouth didn’t need EE degrees to recognize that a lead-acid car rugby player who volunteered to help out with the first test. While battery was a poor fit for our project. We needed some- Connell remotely steered the speedy robot in loops and zigzags thing lightweight with enough juice to move a human- around the field, our expert tackler repeatedly ran after the bot size dummy quickly around the field. For inspiration, we and took it down. We were delighted to see it pop up after each looked to the U.S. TV show “BattleBots,” where contes- hit, ready for more action. tants build powerful yet compact robots. We tried many Later that day, our rugby friend tweeted a 30-second video different batteries and setups, with plenty of failures: of the test run, and something amazing happened: It went viral. More than once we left the football field with smoking Within 24 hours the video had been viewed 1 million times, and wreckage when a drive system burned through wires or coaches and players were clamoring to buy the bot. When our damaged the batteries. Eventually, though, we found heads stopped spinning, we realized that our robot could be much a lithium battery that suited our robot. more than a school project. Our biggest goal that summer was to improve the ball drive. We tried many different air-filled balls, and On opening day of Dartmouth’s 2015 football camp, two proto- we turned out dozens of intricate components on the type MVPs joined the burly players in their first tackling drill. Con- engineering school’s 3D printer as we tried to get better nell and I watched as huge defensive linemen took turns smashing traction between the drivetrain wheels and the ball. We into our padded robots, wondering if the electronics would hold eventually developed a housing mechanism where the up to this abuse. We had cause for concern: About 3 minutes into ball was held in place with sprung casters, which kept the drill, an MVP popped up from a hit with one wheel running it tensioned against the drive wheels. But those casters continuously at full speed, making the robot spin around in tight gave the dummy less clearance, limiting it to hard sur- circles. I hustled it off the field, and when we pulled it apart we faces or smooth turf. discovered that a battery lead had been jarred loose and, astound- By August, we had a robot that we could drive slowly ingly, connected itself directly to a motor lead, entirely bypassing straight down the field, but it still had lousy traction on the electronics platform controlling the voltage. After that incident grass and tended to drift rather than turn sharply. The we installed robust fuses, connectors, and fail-safes to prevent pressure was on: Dartmouth’s football training camp glitches that could cause robots to go rogue. was only weeks away, and we were also running out of The rest of the 2015 season came and went. Every day of prac- budget. We were working around the clock and living tice the Dartmouth football team put the MVPs through their on ramen noodles, but we still didn’t have a prototype paces, and every night our team replaced bolts and repaired that could meet Coach Teevens’s expectations. broken parts. Our final prototype weighed about 70 kilograms

CONCUSSIONS SUSTAINED CONCUSSIONS SUSTAINED BY NFL PLAYERS TOTAL NUMBER OF AMERICAN FOOTBALL PLAYERS BY NFL PLAYERS IN 2015 DURING REGULAR SEASON GAMES AT YOUTH, HIGH SCHOOL, AND COLLEGIATE LEVELS 300

Estimated number of 250 261 271 players who sustain at least one concussion annually 229 200 206 YOUTH: 3 MILLION 150 HIGH SCHOOL: 100 CAUSED BY PLAYER 1.1 MILLION ONPLAYER IMPACT: 140 COLLEGE: 100,000 50

0 2012 2013 2014 2015 TOTAL SUSTAINED: 182 99,000 79,640 3,905

Sources: 2015 Injury Data, NFL, 2016 (left and center); “Incidence of Concussion During Practice and Games in Youth, High School, and Collegiate American Football Players,” JAMA Pediatrics , 2015 (right)

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10.FootballRobot.NA.indd 42 9/8/16 1:49 PM Engineers and entrepreneurs: The author [left] and his MVP cofounder, Quinn Connell, turned their senior-year engineering project into a startup after a video of their tackling robot went viral.

It took a while to find the best remote control system for the robot. Coach Teevens had originally imagined steering a dummy with a joystick, and we tried that method, adapting off-the-shelf gear to our purposes. When that mechanism proved awkward, we tried two thumb controllers to manage the throttle and steering separately. This system was better, but the coaches still didn’t get the hang of it right away. We settled finally on a better two-part control system: a trigger that the user pulls to power the bot forward and a steering wheel to control its direction. I’d like to reveal more technical details about the final design. But as a startup entering the competitive sports equipment industry with a novel new product, our company must protect its intellectual property. In August 2016 we distributed our first limited-release batch of commercial MVPs. We sold 25 of those (150 pounds) and had a top speed of 32 kilometers units to high school, college, and NFL teams, and we’re plan- per hour (20 miles per hour), which is fast enough to ning a full release for January 2017. mimic a human player. It could rotate in place, turn on the proverbial dime, and weave between obstacles. Our challenge now is to make our dummies smarter. The cur- We were pretty proud of it. rent MVP is steered by someone on the sidelines, but coaches have Still, turning a prototype into a commercial product asked if future robots can be programmed to move independently seemed daunting. So we established a partnership with along their routes. For that kind of autonomy, the MVP will need Rogers Athletic Co., a leading manufacturer of football an onboard operating system that uses localization and mapping equipment based in Clare, Mich., and the company built to establish its position on the field. The OS could also support a six beta units that we brought to spring training camps local-area network that lets MVPs communicate with each other— in 2016. We visited NFL teams such as the Steelers and potentially enabling us to field an entire robotic team, with MVPs the Ravens, top college teams like Michigan State, and working in concert to execute plays. a variety of high school teams. Some NFL and college coaches also want an MVP that logs data That tour taught us plenty about the machine. While about tackles or running routes. While it would be relatively easy the robot rolled easily across artificial turf and well- to add sensors to our robot, these extra electronics could make it manicured grass, rougher playing surfaces caused too expensive for youth-level football programs with tight budgets. problems. At multipurpose high school fields, our That’s a real concern for us, as our overarching goal is to protect all MVP had trouble moving smoothly over the dirt in the players and reduce the number of hits they take over their entire baseball diamond’s running paths, particularly when football careers. We’re now thinking of building different models the ground was muddy. We’re now addressing this to cater to different markets. traction challenge. We also worked through critical The need is greater than ever. American football is in jeopardy choices on materials for our components, switching of losing a generation of participants because many parents have out one Teflon-like material when we realized it was concluded that the game is too dangerous for their kids. But like expanding in the heat of a practice session in Florida. Coach Teevens, many still love the sport and appreciate the life American football is a tough sport, and its robotic play- lessons it can teach. If the MVP allows young players to put on ers must be tough, too—the MVP should work through their helmets and take the field with a lot less risk, it will earn its snow, ice, mud, rain, or scorching heat. title as most valuable player. ■

↗ Post your comments at http://spectrum.ieee.org/footballrobot1016 SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | oct 2016 | 43

10.FootballRobot.NA.indd 43 9/8/16 1:49 PM You may have noticed them going up in 30 percent of all the energy used to generate electricity for your town’s streets and parking lots: a new generation outdoor lighting. Another 60 percent goes toward light- of pole-mounted lights that pour down a cool torrent of ing parking lots and garages, and much of that energy is lumens from an array of light-emitting diodes. Like me, still produced by fossil-fired power plants. Consultants you might have welcomed this development. LEDs are, at the firm Navigant, in Chicago, have estimated that after all, the most energy-efficient lighting option on the the United States could save 662 trillion British thermal market. They can last twice as long as ordinary sodium- units—the energy needed to power 5.8 million typical vapor streetlights, and their prices have dropped to U.S. homes for one year—by converting all remaining within range of the competition. non-LED outdoor lighting to LEDs. If the switch to LEDs had needed any more support, it Armed with statistics like these, and a mandate to cut came from growing evidence about climate change. In energy use wherever they can, municipalities across the United States, street lighting accounts for a whopping the United States have installed more than 5.7 million

44 | oct 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG oes here oes g Gutter credit credit Gutter

10.OutdoorLEDLighting.INT - 10.OutdoorLEDLighting.NA [P]{NA}.indd 44 9/13/16 3:20 PM outdoor LED street and area lights. Other towns and to disrupt people’s sleep patterns and harm nocturnal cities in Canada, Europe, and Asia have added millions animals. And these concerns have been heaped on the more over the past decade. Amid this rush to adopt complaints of astronomers, who as far back as 2009 outdoor LEDs, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) have criticized the new lights. That’s the year the Inter- stressed energy efficiency as the biggest advantage national Dark-Sky Association, a coalition that opposes of the new technology while cautioning cities to also light pollution, started worrying that blue-rich LEDs consider light output and color quality. But now that could be “a disaster for dark skies and the environment,” ordinary folks have got an eyeful of those new lights, says Chris Monrad, a director of IDA and a lighting con- some municipalities are coming down with a case of sultant in Tucson. the early-adopter blues. When my city of Newton, Mass., announced plans to For some, those first LED lights have been a fiasco. The install LED streetlights in 2014, I was optimistic. I’m all harsh glare of certain blue-rich designs is now thought for energy conservation, and I was happy with the LED oes here oes g Gutter credit credit Gutter

10.OutdoorLEDLighting.INT - 10.OutdoorLEDLighting.NA [P]{NA}.indd 45 9/13/16 3:20 PM bulbs in my home office. But months later, returning from arly innovations in street lighting were a week’s vacation in rural Maine, I was shocked to find my largely driven by brightness and conve- neighborhood lit by a stark bluish blaze that washed out E nience. The ancient Greeks and Romans lit almost all of the stars in the night sky. terra-cotta oil lamps to illuminate their Lately, lighting companies have introduced LED street- streets. Candles and oil lanterns brightened lights with a warmer-hued output, and municipalities have preindustrial cities, with some 3,000 streetlamps said to begun to adopt them. Some communities, too, are using be used in Paris in 1669. In the early 1800s, whale-oil lamps smart lighting controls to minimize light pollution. They and lanterns began to give way to relatively inexpensive are welcome changes, but they’re happening none too soon: gas streetlights, which were first installed throughout An estimated 10 percent of all outdoor lighting in the United London, Paris, and St. Petersburg, Russia. States was switched over to an earlier generation of LEDs, Not until the 20th century did engineers start worrying which included those problematic blue-rich varieties, at a about efficiency. Brilliant arc lamps were the original electric potential cost of billions of dollars. streetlights in the late 1800s, but it took more practical incan- The episode invites a few questions: How did an energy- descent bulbs to persuade most cities to replace gas street- saving technology that looked so promising wind up irritat- lights with electric ones. These were gradually phased out ing so many people? Why has it taken so long for the impacts for even higher-efficiency successors: mercury-vapor lamps of blue-rich lighting to become widely known? And why did starting in 1948, and then high-pressure sodium in 1970. blue-rich LEDs so captivate municipal lighting engineers The bluish LEDs were a stark counterpart to the orangish long before better options reached the market? high-pressure sodium lights that came before them. Switch-

46 | oct 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

10.OutdoorLEDLighting.INT - 10.OutdoorLEDLighting.NA [P]{NA}.indd 46 9/13/16 3:20 PM A GLARING MISTAKE? Jeff Hecht stands on his stoop in the for 4,000-K LEDs, and avoid 1,240 metric tons of carbon city of Newton, Mass., which installed 4,000-K LED streetlights dioxide emissions annually. Los Angeles anticipates saving in 2014 [far left]. One of the new lights shines through Hecht’s kitchen window [top]. Another casts ghostly shadows onto a $8 million a year after installing more than 150,000 LED second-floor wall from across the street [bottom]. streetlights, while New York City hopes to recover $14 million a year by replacing the city’s 250,000 streetlights with LEDs. ing from the warm sodium lights to those LEDs was like Outdoor LEDs also illuminate streets more efficiently than going from a subtropical sunset to high noon at the equator. sodium not so much because of their superior lumens per The difference in color comes from the inner workings of watt but because they are highly directional, meaning that a white LED. Individual LEDs are nearly monochromatic, they focus light mostly in one direction. Sodium lamps are which means they emit light of only one particular color, gas-filled bulbs that emit in all directions. More than half and in a very narrow band of wavelengths. The cheapest of that light must be redirected downward by reflectors or and most efficient way to make white light from an LED is lenses, reducing the lamps’ illumination efficiency. to shine light from one or more powerful blue LEDs onto A much trickier factor to quantify for street lighting is compounds called phosphors that absorb blue light and how the difference in color temperature between LEDs emit yellow light. This light combines with the remaining and high-pressure sodium affects the way we see at night. blue light from the LED to appear white to the eye. Our ability to see in a range of environments comes from The resulting shade of white depends on the blend of blue two sets of sensors: a group of receptors known as cones from the LED and yellow from the phosphor. It’s measured that show us color in daylight, and night-time sensors on the color-temperature scale, which corresponds to the called rods that are very sensitive to bluish light but are temperature (in kelvins) of a “black body,” which is an object less sensitive to red. that absorbs all the electromagnetic radiation it encounters Our visual sensitivity shifts as light grows dim because and emits a similar mixture of colors. Early “white” LEDs rods and cones respond most strongly to waves of different developed in 1997 at Nichia Chemical Industries, in Japan, lengths. The collective response of cones makes the human (now known as Nichia Corp.) were quite blue: They emitted eye most sensitive in daytime to wavelengths of green-yellow more than 45 percent blue light, corresponding to 8,000 K. light in the middle of the visible spectrum. Rods have a peak That’s even bluer than the color temperature of summer response to shorter blue-green wavelengths. Blue-sensitive daylight, and it looks harsh to the eye. cones, which are greatly outnumbered by other types of Adding more and redder phosphors to a white LED makes cones but are thought to play a role in sensing brightness at its light look warmer and more agreeable to the eye—but at night, peak at wavelengths that produce indigo light. the cost of reduced efficiency. That’s because energy is lost The result is that at night the blue-rich light from an LED in converting high-energy blue photons to lower-energy streetlamp looks brighter to the eye than the orangish light yellow and red photons. At home, though, people are sen- from a high-pressure sodium lamp—even if the two emit the sitive to the color of lighting, so for indoor use many people same number of lumens, which are measured on a scale choose LEDs of 2,700 to 3,000 K, close to the hue of ordi- based on the eyes’ daytime response. nary incandescent bulbs. Given these facts, some experts touted bluer light for LEDs, Indoor LEDs reign supreme among light sources based on noting that the relatively high color temperatures could the savings they deliver: They are about five times as efficient enhance visibility at night. Some suggested, that the use of as incandescents and up to 10 percent more efficient than bluish LEDs would let us see so much better at night that compact fluorescents. They are rated to last anywhere from we could turn down the intensity of the lighting. 2 to 50 times as long as competing bulbs. Though they’ve Yet Ron Gibbins, director of the Center for Infrastructure- been screwed into only about 3 percent of indoor sockets in based Safety Systems at the Virginia Tech Transportation the United States, their rate of adoption is growing. Institute, says his experiments don’t support that idea. He Outdoor lighting is a different matter, though, because has found that drivers’ eyes do not fully adapt to the dark, it’s bought by municipal engineers charged with provid- and thus would benefit little from the higher sensitivity of ing functional lighting at minimum cost. The cost-saving rods to blue light. potential of LEDs appealed greatly to them, so they looked Other peer-reviewed studies have found that portions of for the highest-efficiency bulbs. In June 2008, the DOE cor- the retina can adapt to different light levels at the same time. rectly noted that the most efficient white LEDs of the time This suggests that rods focused on a road’s periphery may were those with a color temperature of 4,500 to 6,500 K. be better adapted to lower light levels, and therefore stand The agency also recommended matching color temperature to benefit more from blue-rich lighting than those focused to the bulb’s intended application. on the center line. Whatever their faults were, those blue-rich LED lights do Meanwhile, evidence has been mounting that increasing save energy and money. My city of Newton, Mass., which the blue content of outdoor lighting can worsen its biological has about 80,000 residents, expects to save US $3 million impact on both humans and wildlife, leading some to question over 20 years after swapping its 8,406 sodium streetlights the wisdom of putting LED streetlights in their neighborhoods.

↗ Post your comments at http://spectrum.ieee.org/outdoorled1016 SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | oct 2016 | 47

10.OutdoorLEDLighting.INT - 10.OutdoorLEDLighting.NA [P]{NA}.indd 47 9/13/16 3:20 PM e have long been adding light to the outdoor Biggr ht Ni ht: The city of Boston installed LED streetlights environment. But only in the past decade or to replace mercury-vapor lamps and high-pressure sodium bulbs in the South End neighborhood. Older lights along W two have experts become aware of the con- I-93, in the upper right, are maintained by the Massachusetts sequences for wildlife, human health, and Department of Transportation. residents’ view of the night sky, says Chris Luginbuhl, a retired astronomer active in the Flagstaff Dark Skies Coalition, in Arizona. Blue light at the wrong time can disrupt sleep by suppress- In 2014, Luginbuhl and his colleagues showed that because ing production of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin. air molecules scatter blue light more strongly than yellow You might have noticed, a couple of years ago, the news that and orange, some blue streetlights can contribute much looking at your smartphone or other LED-lit screen before more to the nighttime sky glow than sodium lamps of the bedtime was a bad idea. Much the same is true of blue-rich same intensity if those LEDs are not carefully directed. outdoor LEDs: Their impact on the circadian rhythms asso- Worse, John Bullough, director of the transportation and ciated with sleep is estimated to be five times greater than safety lighting programs at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, that from conventional streetlamps. in Troy, N.Y., found that the impact of “discomfort glare”— Ecologists have also long known that the color and inten- which may make it hard for the eye to focus on objects— sity of nighttime illumination can affect such wildly diverse peaks in the blue part of the spectrum that was abundant creatures as bugs, bats, and birds. Robin Somers-Yeates at the in early LEDs. University of Exeter, in England, found in 2013 that blue light- It’s more than an inconvenience. Research over the past ing attracts nocturnal moths, which creates a fluttering buffet 15 years has shown that humans and other animals have for bats. And an important group of slow-flying bats, named nonvisual receptors in their eyes containing a pigment Myotis and known as mouse-eared bats, instinctively avoids called melanopsin that senses blue light. Our bodies use the light because other, faster-moving bats prey on them, that response to control our diurnal cycles, waking in the says Gareth Jones of the University of Bristol, in England. morning as light increases, peaking in activity at midday One of the best-understood, and most serious, impacts of when it is most intense, and winding down for sleep at dusk. bluish lighting is on endangered sea turtles. They evolved to Though the overall amount of light in a person’s environ- scurry toward the moonlit sea when they hatch, but bluish lights ment has the greatest impact on circadian rhythms, this at coastal resorts draw them inland, to be stranded or caught by blue light response is an important factor. waiting predators. Electric lights can | continued on page 57

48 | oct 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

10.OutdoorLEDLighting.INT - 10.OutdoorLEDLighting.NA [P]{NA}.indd 48 9/13/16 3:20 PM The Journal of RFID CALL FOR PAPERS

This call for papers solicits • Modeling, simulation, implementation SUBMISSION GUIDELINES contributions for the IEEE • Electromagnetic field theory and measurements Authors are encouraged to submit original, unpublished Journal of Radio Frequency • Standards and communication protocols work on RFID. We consider both brief (5-page) and Identification (RFID), or J-RFID. • Antenna design regular-length articles. Acceptance shall be based on IEEE J-RFID will publish peer- • Modulation schemes the peer reviews from the editors and the selected reviewed manuscripts addressing • Energy harvesting for RFID reviewers. The journal is published quarterly with the various aspects of RFID systems. The articles describe • Multi-frequency and broadband tags first issue scheduled to appear March 2017. This advances in theory, algorithms, design techniques, • Near field communications journal is sponsored by the IEEE Council on RFID implementations, and applications of RFID systems. • Smart and programmable tags (CRFID), comprising 15 member IEEE societies. Once RFID involves multidisciplinary areas of research and • Mixed RFID/sensing devices published, the journal will be available in IEEE’s digital development, composed of a broad spectrum of • Manufacturing processes library Xplore®. For more information, please refer to science and engineering expertise. The emerging and • Applications the CRFID website: ongoing research, commercial trends and applications • Internet of Things www.ieee-rfid.org/the-ieee-journal-of-rfid/. in the rapidly evolving field of RFID are covered. • Security Applications span a wide range of fields including • RFID positioning, localization, and real-time Editor in Chief, Dr. Larry Zhang healthcare, asset and people monitoring, security, locating systems Nvidia finance, energy, communications, and transport. • Coordination and scheduling of RFID networks • Emerging techniques: chipless RFIDs, Conductive Ink… For more information on IEEE Journal of RFID, TOPICS INCLUDE please contact us at: [email protected] : • RFID in health care, biometrics, information systems, • RFID circuit and system design finance and many other fields of applications • RFID architecture s: hardware, firmware, middleware, and software applications CRFID MEMBER SOCIETIES :

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10a.p49.NA [P].indd 49 9/13/16 9:45 AM Burnt by the Sun

n the summer of 1958, a new employee at Texas Instruments, Jack St. Clair Kilby, had not yet accrued enough time off to take a company-wide vacation. Alone in the lab, Kilby pondered the then-current “tyranny of numbers” problem: the time-consuming and imperfect process of soldering connections between very large numbers of discrete solid- state components. Within a few short weeks, Kilby came up with a solution—the integrated circuit. This revolutionary invention, for which Kilby usually shares credit with Robert Noyce, launched the entire field of modern microelectronics and more than a half century I of staggering technological progress.

Kilby’s integrated circuit helped lutionary and society changing By leaving TI, Kilby gained the make his employer a dominant as the integrated circuit, and he time and autonomy to become a chip manufacturer for much of worked for a decade to make it classic American inventor. And the Cold War era. And over the happen. To Kilby’s great disap- he did in fact file a string of pat- years, Texas Instruments has pointment, his technology didn’t ent applications through the 1970s, worked hard—quite justifiably— catch on. Kilby is rightly better though none came near the inven- to associate Kilby with the firm remembered for the integrated tiveness or commercial success of and to use his invention and sub- circuit—but that doesn’t mean we the integrated circuit—or the later sequent honors to enhance TI’s should forget his deep involve- work he did before leaving TI on reputation for high-tech innova- ment in an equally important and the handheld calculator. Kilby’s tion. As a result, however, few challenging technology. inventions in his first independent people are aware that Kilby was years included a reliable flashlight, a full-time employee of TI for just W hen Kilby left TI, he didn’t com- a theft-proof cash register, and an 12 years. In 1970, he took a leave pletely cut ties. He still received electronic checkwriter. of absence to become a consul- a generous retainer, in return for He also invested significant tant and independent inventor. which he represented the com- energy, time, and money in devel- Kilby’s post-TI career resulted pany on various national com- oping a personalized, interactive in a number of inventions. But mittees and filed monthly reports electronic teaching machine. it was defined by one project: a on industry developments and Although he attempted to sell household solar-energy and fuel- his own projects. Formally, TI the idea to numerous compa- cell system that could generate had right of first refusal to license nies, including McGraw-Hill, Sony, electricity around the clock. Kilby Kilby’s inventions. Informally, he Westinghouse, and Xerox, as well had high hopes for his idea; he remained a frequent and gener- as TI, nobody agreed to commer- believed it would be just as revo- ally beloved visitor to his old firm. cialize it. Interestingly, his device

The The li ttlittle-knownle-known hishistoryory of of Jack Jack K ilby’sKilby’s misadven misadventureture in insolar solar power power

50 | oct 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

10.KilbySolar.INT - 10.KirbySolar.NA [P]{NA}.indd 50 9/13/16 3:12 PM B y Cyrus The The li ttlittle-knownle-known hishistoryory of of Jack Jack K ilby’sKilby’s misadven misadventureture in insolar solar power power C.M. Mody

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | oct 2016 | 51

10.KilbySolar.INT - 10.KirbySolar.NA [P]{NA}.indd 51 9/13/16 3:12 PM bears strong similarities in aesthetics, rator, A&M’s W. Arthur “Skip” Porter, ufacturer, and defense supplier, had operation, and objectives to TI’s later, and the three came up with a basic idea roots in all three of those industries. wildly successful Speak & Spell line of for a residential solar energy system. Kilby’s system differed from most computers for children. But while the At its core, it consisted of a set of very other solar technologies in that it Speak & Spell broke new ground in dig- shallow tubes partially filled with fluid— answered the eternal question, What ital signal processing and electronic hydrogen bromide in most of the con- do you do when the sun’s not shining? voice synthesis, Kilby’s machine did not. figurations they discussed. Lining the Because the system stored the chemi- Kilby was also interested in higher bottom of each tube were thousands of cal constituents separately and com- education. Throughout the 1970s, silicon spheres the size of BB-gun pel- bined them on demand, the moment he worked with electrical engineers lets, embedded in a translucent matrix. when photons struck could be tem- at Texas A&M University and with Solar photons would strike those silicon porally separated from the moment Jay Lathrop, a former TI colleague at pellets and knock off electrons, creating when the system created electricity. Clemson University, in South Carolina, an electric potential that would break Kilby and his colleagues also believed to develop new ways to teach under- down the fluid around them into hydro- that their system would be consider- graduates the practice of integrated cir- gen and bromine. These constituents ably easier to manufacture than other cuit design and fabrication would be siphoned off silicon-based solar energy schemes. so as to better ready them and stored until elec- At the time, fabricating large sheets for industry. tricity was needed, of single-crystal silicon for photovol- In late 1973, however, at which point they taic cells was difficult and expensive. Kilby and Lathrop’s cor- would be recombined But Kilby’s liquid-fuel system used respondence suddenly in a fuel cell and then silicon pellets with less-exacting quali- turned away from discus- circulated back into ties. The tiny spheres could be pro- sions of syllabi, textbooks, the tubes. duced using a method invented in and course requirements. Kilby, Lathrop, and the late 18th century to make shot- The Organization of Arab Porter weren’t alone gun pellets. In this fiendishly simple Petroleum Exporting Coun- in entering the solar technique, molten lead (or silicon) is

tries embargo on oil exports Cells of Silicon: The field in the wake of poured from the top of a “shot tower,” and soaring oil prices dom- heart of the solar genera- the oil embargo. The forming spherical droplets that cool inated the headlines, and tion system that Kilby and 1970s saw a boom in and solidify as they fall. his colleagues developed Kilby proposed that he and consisted of small pieces solar energy. From Lathrop think about how of silicon embedded in 1974 to 1979, federal y the spring of 1975, Kilby was ready to apply their expertise in translucent material. funding for renew- to present the idea to TI. For silicon to lessen the world able energy devel- B once, he got a positive response. economy’s dependence on oil. (At the opment rose from US $32 million per TI agreed to shepherd Kilby, Lathrop, time, the United States used oil not year to $1.36 billion. Private-sector and Porter’s invention through the only to heat homes and to refine into interest mirrored this growth. By 1976, U.S. patent office and to seek patents y

gasoline but also to generate a sizable Solar Engineering Magazine listed 88 in dozens of other countries, too. The t s records/ s

fraction of its electricity.) Lathrop read- companies with some involvement firm also provided Kilby and his col- t niversi U

ily agreed. In taking this detour, the in solar energy that were traded on leagues with generous research fund- t rumen two men displayed a remarkable spirit the New York Stock Exchange. Those ing, and it formed its own development t ns hodis I t e

for reinvention: They both jumped large companies were joined by small team, code-named Project Illinois after M

into new careers and would reinvent firms, academic laboratories, and ama- Kilby’s alma mater. As the use of a code hern t ou

themselves as students—and eventu- teur enthusiasts. Oil, electronics, and name implies, TI wasn’t yet ready to go S ally experts—in the physics, chemistry, military-industrial firms were all heav- public with the project. This way, the ibrary/ and economics of solar energy. ily involved in solar in the 1970s. Texas firm could take advantage of Kilby’s L Instruments, as an oil-field instrumen- Within a few months Kilby and leave of absence. He could attend solar olyer G e

Lathrop had acquired a third collabo- tation company, semiconductor man- power conferences and approach fed- Texas above: and Page Previous D

1958 1967 1970 1973 1973 Jack Kilby starts Kilby and TI Kilby takes a Kilby proposes that he and Jay President Richard Nixon at Texas Instru- colleagues file leave of absence Lathrop, a former TI colleague, announces Project Inde- ments (TI) and a patent for the from TI to work as begin thinking about ways to pendence, an ambitious develops a world’s first an independent lessen the dependence on oil. plan to make the United prototype inte- handheld inventor. They soon acquire a third States energy indepen- grated circuit. calculator. collaborator, W. Arthur “Skip” Porter. dent by 1980.

52 | oct 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

10.KilbySolar.INT - 10.KirbySolar.NA [P]{NA}.indd 52 9/13/16 3:12 PM Closed-Loop Solar Energy Conversion System

H2 (gas) Electrical Hydrogen storage converter

HBr Thermal panels (liquid)

Br2 + HBr (liquid)

Electric Fuel-cell power utility converter Household Water electricity

Heat and energy: This diagram, based on a Heat exchanger sketch in a Texas Instruments report, shows how a TI solar energy system might be used to generate heat, hot water, and electricity for a eral funding agencies under his own Heat pump home. To generate electricity, hydrogen bromide name without revealing that he was (HBr) would be broken down by solar cells into hydrogen (H ) and bromine (Br ). The hydrogen also acting on TI’s behalf. Water tank 2 2 could be stored separately and then recombined TI was cautious in part because Proj- on demand with bromine to create electricity. ect Illinois was an unproven technology with significant risks. It was unclear how efficient the system would be. What’s more, hydrogen bromide is If only there was some entity with eral partners who would help the com- extremely toxic and corrosive—a rather very deep pockets that could subsi- pany bring solar energy to the masses. mages; mages; I unlikely chemical for homeowners to dize development of the technology TI executives and Kilby began look- y y tt e keep on their roofs in large volumes. or provide a captive market to help ing up old friends in government to see G mages I And one of the key components of the drive down the cost of deployment—or who might contribute to Project Illinois. y y mann/ tt e tt

G both. Of course, such an entity existed: The answer turned out to be the newly e system was a fuel cell, a notoriously B s; s; ion/

t finicky technology. the government. Indeed, the U.S. mili- formed Department of Energy (DOE). t A more fundamental problem, how- tary had already played that role in the In January 1978, after several years of ollec rumen C t development and commercialization of small-scale research, George Heilmeier, ns ever, lay in the project’s business model. I mages mages

I TI expected it would first need to sell TI’s integrated circuits. a TI vice president who had recently

LIFE the system at high cost to very wealthy Conveniently, the U.S. government led the Defense Advanced Research homeowners in order to generate was investing heavily in renewable Projects Agency (DARPA), sat down lackwell/Texas lackwell/Texas off/The off/The B G enough revenue, knowledge, and econ- energy. In 1973, President Richard with John Deutch, the DOE’s director en en ike ike K M

: omies of scale to bring the price down Nixon had announced Project Inde- of energy research, to talk about Proj- s; s; t t for the middle-class market. But there pendence, an “Apollo program” for ect Illinois. In a memo, Heilmeier later rumen

t was little evidence that high-end home- energy that aimed to make the United reported that Deutch said the DOE’s ns I

om, from lef from om, owners would embrace costly and argu- States energy self-sufficient by 1980.T I expertise in solar energy was limited, tt o Texas Texas B ably ugly solar panels on their property. executives believed they could find fed- and that he would therefore be will-

1975 1979 1980 1983 Kilby presents the idea for a residential Texas Instruments enters into a Oil prices Texas Instruments solar system to TI. The company takes four-year, US $18 million agreement begin to discontinues the on the project, first calling it by the with the U.S. Department of Energy, drop. TISES program. code name Project Illinois and then which allows Kilby and colleagues later the Texas Instruments Solar to begin work on a prototype solar Energy System (TISES). energy system.

Illustration by McKibillo SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | North American | oct 2016 | 53

10.KilbySolar.INT - 10.KirbySolar.NA [P]{NA}.indd 53 9/13/16 3:12 PM photon power: These photos show the front and back of a TISES prototype. According to a document in the Southern Methodist University archive, this system is the “TISES ‘C’ Prototype Module.”

ing to fund the project. Not long after, war–gaming tech- Kilby’s blanket reply TI entered a four-year, $18 million cost- nique called scenario was, “All of the peo- sharing arrangement with the DOE to planning. Drawing on ple who have been accelerate development of what was military-industrial involved with the solar now more openly being called the practices made sense, program should go…. Texas Instruments Solar Energy Sys- of course, since TI In general it is my tem (TISES). With that funding, Kilby had a great deal of feeling that the level and colleagues built a prototype sys- experience with the of competence of the tem, boosted the efficiency of the solar- military. Moreover, people within DoE is electric conversion process, increased the company’s suc- a couple of notches the capacity of the fuel cells, and cess with integrated below those in DoD.” extended the lifetime of the components. circuits showed that Instead, Kilby it could, quite prof- small silicon spheres: The size sought out military ilby and TI still had to find a mar- itably, spin off large of the silicon spheres in the solar colleagues. In late ket and customers for the sys- civilian markets from energy scheme evolved over time. 1978, for instance, he These measure roughly a quarter of K tem. Here they were optimistic its military work. a millimeter in diameter. pushed for Richard because the federal government and But that approach D. Alberts, the U.S. some states had started offering tax had a less salutary feature: a reluctance Air Force grant officer who funded TI y

credits for the adoption of residential to trust solar power experts who did not work on integrated circuits, to take over t solar equipment. But they made some have strong ties to the military. Despite the DOE’s photovoltaic section. A year niversi U

critical missteps. Deutch’s claim, the DOE actually had later he asked Alberts to introduce him t From the start of Project Illinois, TI a fair number of people working on to someone in the Air Force who would hodis t e

had borrowed R&D templates from the solar energy. In fact, it had an entire consider adopting TISES as the energy M military-industrial complex. Kilby and Solar Energy Research Institute (now source used at MX missile silos. That hern hern t

his colleagues relied on networks of the National Renewable Energy Lab- application never panned out, but Kil- ou S contacts who moved freely between oratory), headed by Earth Day orga- by’s preference for military experts over ibrary/ the military and its suppliers. TI nizer Denis Hayes. But Kilby and his civilian solar energy advocates such as L insisted that its contract with the DOE TI colleagues found little traction for Hayes is telling. olyer olyer G e

contain intellectual-pr operty language their idea among the group, and they Ironically, because of their military- D lifted from TI’s Pentagon contracts, were dismissive of points raised by SERI industrial bias, Kilby and TI were look- and Deutch explicitly modeled the TI personnel in turn. When Ronald Rea- ing for allies for TISES among a group s records/ s grant on the high-risk, high-reward gan’s presidential transition team wrote of people who were unlikely to support t rumen

funding approach favored by DARPA. to Kilby after the 1980 election to ask it. At the time, the U.S. national secu- t ns TI even tried to figure out its strategy which DOE solar energy officials should rity establishment’s imagined energy I

for developing TISES using a nuclear be kept on by the new administration, future emphasized nuclear power Texas

54 | oct 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

10.KilbySolar.INT - 10.KirbySolar.NA [P]{NA}.indd 54 9/13/16 3:12 PM rather than solar, which was considered an immature technology redolent NEW VERSION! of the counterculture. There’s no trace in Kilby’s papers that he ever considered partnering with those “counter- cultural” solar advocates, who might have been able champions for TISES. One thing such advocates might have offered was a persuasive environmental or social vision in which TISES would play an important part. Lacking that, Kilby and TI were left to argue for the system on narrow economic and national security grounds. Those grounds were persuasive so long as the Middle East was in turmoil and the price of oil was high and rising. But in 1980, the price of oil began to drop. Soon after, the Reagan administration pulled back on federal support of solar energy. In the new political and economic environment of the 1980s, TI’s opti- mism about TISES waned. In late 1982 or early 1983, the program was put on probation. TI told Kilby and program manager E.L. “Pete” Johnson that the company would stop funding the project, but that they could continue developing the technology if they could find a partner to foot the bill. TI’s decision sprang from two sources. The company was recovering from a failed effort to transform itself into the leading personal computer manufacturer and had decided to focus on things it was already good at. Upper management now frowned on expensive gambles in new markets. New cost projections also reinforced the idea that TISES was too big to chew. By late 1982, the team was projecting a small revenue stream against significant costs to build manufacturing plants, with the project forecast to consume $275 million to Over 100 new features & Over 500,000 registered users $400 million from 1983 through 1990 improvements in Origin 2016! worldwide in: (around $600 million to $900 million ◾ 6,000+ Companies including today). Most of that investment would FOR A FREE 60-DAY EVALUATION, 120+ Fortune Global 500 GO TO ORIGINLAB.COM/DEMO ◾ 6,500+ Colleges & Universities be pure loss for almost a decade. AND ENTER CODE: 8547 Kilby wasn’t quite ready to give up. ◾ 3,000+ Government Agencies For the next nine months or so, he and & Research Labs Johnson—sometimes accompanied by Heilmeier—made the rounds of potential corporate partners: oil and chemi- 20+ years serving the scientific & engineering community

10.KilbySolar.INT - 10.KirbySolar.NA [P]{NA}.indd 55 9/13/16 3:12 PM cal companies, electric utilities and High tech, especially in the United equipment suppliers, building materi- States, often proceeds in booms and als firms, and even—according to John- busts that can inhibit development over son—tobacco companies. But the timing the longer term. Surviving those busts was bad; other microelectronics firms, depends on a long-range vision and such as RCA, were selling off their solar significant investment. But Kilby and energy divisions to oil companies, usu- TI’s arguments for Project Illinois were ally for cut-rate prices. Kilby and com- grounded in the economic climate of pany couldn’t find a partner for TISES. the moment, and that justification fal- By September 1983, TI’s patience and tered when the price of oil dropped. It money had run out, and the program didn’t help that they pitched the proj- was canceled. ect to the national security community, which was more receptive toward ilby was crushed. According to Kil- nuclear energy. A more long-range by’s friend and biographer Ed vision, motivated perhaps by a con- K Millis, the cancellation of TISES cern for the environment or the desire “was a tough blow,” especially as it fol- to build a more diverse and thus resil- lowed not long after the death of his ient portfolio of energy sources, might mother in 1980 and his wife in 1981: have resulted in slower development “The steady stream of inventions that but more stable support from both pub- he logged in his notebooks had ceased lic and private sources. during the latter part of the solar It may also be that microelectronics energy program, and never started is a poor analogy for other technolo- again” after TISES was canceled. Kilby gies. Kilby and TI believed that their quit TI for good and settled down to expertise in manufacturing chips from serve on boards and committees and silicon would translate easily to manu- to collect awards: “Jack the Giant Killer facturing power systems that relied on Inventor,” Millis wrote, “seemed to be silicon. They believed that their expe- content to hang up his slide rule.” rience with the Department of Energy With that, Project Illinois disap- would be just as collegial and produc- peared. Today, it’s an almost-forgotten tive as it had been with the Department coda to the career of a legendary engi- of Defense. And they believed that their neer. The basic idea behind the tech- experience with consumer markets for nology does still come up from time calculators and pedagogical toys would to time. In fact, while researching this translate to selling durable goods for article I was contacted by a team at a homes. None of those ideas proved major technological institute because valid. That’s not to say that people who they noticed we had both been looking know something about integrated cir- at the Kilby papers at Southern Meth- cuits can’t or shouldn’t reinvent them- odist University, in Dallas—myself as a selves as experts in solar power. But it historian, they as technologists looking does show that reinvention is tough. to revive the system. The prospects for solar power look What should we make of Kilby’s great much better now than they did in 1983. disappointment? Does it tell us any- Solar cell efficiencies are higher, and thing about alternative energy or high costs are much lower. Enthusiasm for technology in general? Maybe. It’s pos- solar is today buoyed by widespread sible that the TISES system had flaws anxieties about sustainability and that justified its cancellation. But plenty climate change. History won’t repeat of other solar energy projects were can- itself here—solar’s future will be dif- celed at the same time. It seems likely ferent from its past. But we can use that the solar bust of the early ’80s stories like Kilby’s to help us plot the killed at least some technologies that, best path forward over the long term— with further development, could be whether solar’s short-term outlook is competitive today. cloudy or bright. ■

↗st Po your comments at http://spectrum.ieee.org/kilbysolar1016

10.KilbySolar.INT - 10.KirbySolar.NA [P]{NA}.indd 56 9/13/16 3:12 PM the early-adopter blues continued from page 48

even lure them back to land once they that could generate the same number reach the water. To protect the turtles, of lumens per watt as 4,000-K LEDs the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conser (modern sodium lights have a color vation Commission now limits outdoor temperature of 2,100 to 2,300 K). lighting visible from sea turtle nesting Cree’s breakthrough involved adding zones to amber, orange, and red wave- a new high-efficiency red-emitting LED lengths longer than 560 nanometers. to the standard blue LED with yellow LEDs are fine, but only if they follow phosphors. As it turns out, producing this wavelength restriction. red light directly from the new LEDs A European Union–funded consor- generates more lumens per watt than tium called the Loss of the Night Net- adding red-emitting phosphors to the work is supporting research on the standard yellow-emitting ones in a biological impact of LEDs and other white-light LED. outdoor lighting. But well-controlled Erik Milz, Cree’s vice president of ecological studies can take years of product marketing for outdoor lighting, painstaking observations, and at says the reddish LEDs give the warm the moment there is precious little appearance of high-pressure sodium SAVE TIME. research on the impact of different lamps, but with the long lifetime and color spectra on wildlife. high efficiency of LEDs. This technique DESIGN MORE. In the meantime, human beings are does not eliminate the blue but reduces making their own displeasure known it; the DOE calculates that the output of MagNet v7 2D/3D based on health, environmental, and 3,000-K LED lamps is about 20 percent electromagnetic quality-of-life concerns. Some residents blue, compared with 30 percent for celd simulation of Brooklyn, S eattle, and Houston have 4,000-K LEDs and 10 percent for high- software. For designing: joined the International Dark-Sky Asso- pressure sodium bulbs. ciation (IDA) in fighting installations of “Communities like the warmer light,”  Transformers blue-rich LED street lighting. And in says Patrick Roche, energy coordina-  Actuators Canada, public outcry over the city of tor for the Boston-based Metropolitan  Sensors/NDT Montreal’s $84 million plan to replace Area Planning Council. And 3,000 K is  Magnetic Levitation existing streetlights with LEDs centered good news for the IDA, which, along Electric Machines on light pollution and health impacts. with the Loss of the Night Network in  In response to questions that I posed Europe and the American Medical  More to the DOE about the early rollout of Association, recommends that color MotorSolve v5 Electric blue-rich LEDs, the agency says it does temperature as the maximum. Machine Design Software not recommend specific color temper- The city of Tucson, with about a atures for LED street lighting and that billion dollars’ worth of research  All types of Brushless DC it provides information about energy telescopes within 75 miles, is now  Induction Machine efficiency ratings and color temper- installing 3,000-K LEDs. And for South-  Switched Reluctance atures only to allow buyers to make ern California, Monrad’s consulting informed choices. Unfortunately, the firm is working on a regional street-  Brushed right choice is not always clear—just lighting plan for a dozen communities  Thermal/Cooling months after the city of Davis, Calif., near the Palomar Observatory. The Considerations installed 4,000-K LED streetlights upper limit for that project is 3,000 K, in 2014, a high volume of complaints but he is pushing for LEDs with a color prompted officials to spend $350,000 temperature of 2,700 K, a typical color to replace 650 of those new lights with for an incandescent bulb. less-efficient 2,700-K LEDs. Monrad has another design trick: mixing LEDs of different colors in the ED lighting manufac- same fixture. He combined amber turers have taken LEDs with 3,000-K LEDs for a school L notice of the public in southern Arizona. The white LEDs rumblings about blue- switch off after workers go home, and rich LEDs. This year the amber lights switch on to provide Cree, one of the top U.S. makers of LED security with minimal impact on lighting, began offering 3,000-K LEDs astronomers and wildlife. 866 416-4400 Infolytica.com

10.OutdoorLEDLighting.INT - 10.OutdoorLEDLighting.NA [P]{NA}.indd 57 9/13/16 3:20 PM Earn PDHs by attending Similarly, Cambridge, Mass., has a Webinar! installed a wireless control system to dim its new LED streetlights after most The brightest minds traffic stops. In addition to reducing discussing the lighting during the wee hours, the con- biggest topics. trols let city workers dim lights when residents complain. Adaptive headlights, used on some European cars but not legal in the United States, could further reduce the need New Webinars in October for street lighting by letting drivers use high beams more often to see farther at 4 Oct Simulation of Planar Magnetic Components – night. These systems detect oncoming Possible or Impossible? cars and dim the part of the high beam aimed in their direction while leaving In this webinar, ANSYS will describe breakthrough techniques enabling the simulation of complicated planar magnetic the rest of the road fully illuminated. “It components. http://spectrum.ieee.org/webinar/simulation- could change how we determine what of-planar-magnetic-components-possible-or-impossible we need in road lighting,” says Rensse- laer’s Bullough. Another promising approach is devel- 5 Oct Xilinx Webinar Series – oping optical systems that reduce the Vision with Precision: Video Surveillance intensity of light from the LED device In this Webinar, Xilinx will present critical challenges facing before directing it toward the street. A developers of advanced surveillance systems with emphasis Cree offering called WaveMax uses trans- on when to localize real time image processing at the edge parent waveguides to collect light from or in the cloud. http://spectrum.ieee.org/webinar/xilinx- LEDs and deliver it to ports that diffuse webinar-series-vision-with-precision-video-surveillance the emitted light. The effect is similar to that of a frosted incandescent bulb, 13 Oct Simulation of RF Interference in Electronics which spreads light from the bright fila- In the rst part of this webinar, we will demonstrate how ment across the bulb’s surface. a full wave 3D simulation can be used to analyze the coupling The challenge with LEDs, as with so between di erent RF systems, antennas and digital signal lines. much other energy-saving technology, is http://spectrum.ieee.org/webinar to improve energy efficiency without creating more problems for humans and the 20 Oct Signal Integrity and Radiated Emission nonhuman environment. Fortunately, of Flexible Printed Circuits LED technology is extraordinarily flexi- In this webinar we demonstrate a work ow that can generate ble. Its wide range of colors, and the ease 3-dimensional PCB models from planar layouts that can be used of using adaptive techniques, will let us in simulations to study the e ect of the bending on the PCB develop street lighting that illuminates performance. http://spectrum.ieee.org/webinar a neighborhood with minimal impact on wildlife and residents. In retrospect, government agencies On-Demand Webinar such as the U.S. Department of Energy and many municipalities pushed a Maximum Load: the Wrong Speci cation for Pulsed Power wholesale shift to the first generation Attend this webinar to nd out how Vicor power components allow developers of outdoor LEDs more aggressively than to use power averaging to signi cantly reduce the cost and size of power systems they should have. But they were hardly for pulsed loads. http://spectrum.ieee.org/webinar/maximum-load-the- alone. Most of us who grew up with wrong-speci cation-for-pulsed-power streetlights tended to think of them as uninteresting utilitarian objects, when we thought of them at all. The turbulent Sponsors early years of LED lighting have forced us to take another look at what nighttime lighting could—and should—be. Because Sign up today! of that, the future looks brighter, and it www.spectrum.ieee.org/webinar will also be much easier on the eye. n

10.OutdoorLEDLighting.INT - 10.OutdoorLEDLighting.NA [P]{NA}.indd 58 9/13/16 3:20 PM CRIME FORECASTING CHALLENGE INNOVATIONS IN FORECASTING HAVE THE POWER TO MAKE COMMUNITIES SAFER. We’re looking for the brightest minds in data science to advance place-based crime forecasting. Are you up for the challenge? Enter your forecasts for a chance to win prizes totaling $1.2 MILLION.

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10a.p59.NA [P].indd 59 9/7/16 2:18 PM

Autonomy and Machine Learning Career Opportunities

The Information Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is looking for outstanding researchers to address cutting-edge problems in autonomous systems and machine learning vital to the nation’s security. AFRL is a basic and applied research laboratory that has explored and advanced science and technology for the US Air Force for more than 60 years. The AFRL Information Directorate employs approximately 750 scientists and engineers, and is the Air Force’s center of expertise for R&D of command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, and (C4I) technologies. Work is conducted across a broad spectrum of information technologies in areas such as signal processing and information fusion, next generation communication systems, high performance computing, human-machine decision support systems, cyber security, and data mining and pattern analysis for intelligence information systems. Emphasis areas for open technical staff positions include artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data mining (including but not limited to deep learning, reinforcement learning, computer vision, search, and planning for intelligent systems, time-series analysis, and large graph mining). Additional experience in multi-agent systems, optimization, modeling & simulation, learning systems and tools, robotics and sensor systems is desired as well as strong abilities in software development. MS, and PhD degree holders in these fields are sought. AFRL Information Directorate staff members have been at the forefront of information science and technology developments. Staff members work on multi-disciplinary in-house teams and have the opportunity to work with leading researchers across academia and industry on cutting edge technologies. The successful candidate will be able to demonstrate depth in advanced autonomous systems, via self-motivation IEEEand collaborative Spectrum efforts. size: 1/4 page Located in upstate New York near (3.25” Syracuse, x the4.75”) AFRL Information Directorate offers a suburban, four-season environment, superior grade and high schools, and several nearby collaborating universities with outstanding academic reputations. We offer stable employment, a competitive salary, excellent government issueemployee: benefits, Oct and a world-class professional working environment. For an overview see http://www.wpafb.af.mil/Portals/60/ documents/afrl/ri/afrl-ri-overview.pdf?ver=2016-07-13-142035-373 US citizenship required. Must be eligible for a security clearance. AFRL is an equal opportunity employer. Please respond to: [email protected] and michael. [email protected]

Assistant or Associate Professor Position in Electrical and Computer Engineering

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at San Diego State University (SDSU) invites applications for a tenure track appointment ASSISTANT PROFESSOR at the rank of Assistant or Associate Professor Department of Electrical Engineering with an anticipated start date of August 2017.

The Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Colorado Applicants must hold an earned Ph.D. in Electrical or Computer Engineering or Denver invites applications for multiple tenure track positions at the Assistant Professor level. Exceptional candidates at higher levels will closely-related discipline with a research focus on implantable and wearable be considered. Candidates are being sought in the areas of electro- bioinstrumentation, sensor design, sensor integration, and microelectronics for magnetics (including plasmonics, metamaterials, advanced antennas, detection, diagnosis, rehabilitation, and intervention. All these topics offer a broad bioelectromagnetics, RF circuits and systems), communications (in- range of cooperation opportunities within our faculty. The faculty hired into this cluding scalable and efficient IOT communication, massive MIMO, ve- position will join the newly established area of excellence in Smart Health and hicular networks, wireless communication or emerging technologies), work closely with faculty from various disciplines participating in the Smart Health and power (including power systems, renewable energies, power Institute. electronics, smart grids). Other related areas will also be considered. Candidates should have a PhD in Electrical Engineering or a related The successful candidate should strengthen one or more research focuses of the field by the employment start date in August 2017. Candidates should faculty, especially wireless health, wearable computing, cognitive health systems, have a strong academic record and have demonstrated an excellent wireless power transfer and implantable brain computer interfaces. Opportunities potential to establish a funded research program and direct MS and for collaboration with other faculties of the university and with industry are a plus. PhD student research. Candidates should have a commitment to teach both undergraduate and graduate courses in Electrical Engineering. The department is one of the four departments in the College of Engineering at The University of Colorado Denver downtown campus is located in SDSU and is strongly committed to excellence in research and teaching. Our the heart of Denver minutes from the Denver tech center, which is faculty members are involved in various government and industry-funded research the fastest growing technology economy in North America. The new projects. The department participates in a number of centers and institutes’, University of Colorado Denver Anschutz Medical Campus is minutes from downtown and is a major research center that involves research including NSF Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering faculty from all colleges and departments across the University. and DOE GATE Center for Electric Drive Transportation. All applications must be submitted at http://www.cu.edu/cu-careers Review of applications will begin on November 1, 2016 and will continue until the (refer to job #06538). position is filled. Complete description and application information can be found at The University of Colorado Denver is committed to diversity and equal- https://apply.interfolio.com/36882. ity in education and employment. Members of ethnic minorities, wom- SDSU is a Title IX, equal opportunity employer. en and other underrepresented groups are encouraged to apply.

60 | Oct 2016 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

10ap60.NA [P].indd 60 9/13/16 9:10 AM WOMEN in STEM at the NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

I wanted to ... ‘Change the World with Science’

The opportunity to redesign the processing and computer infrastructure at the National Security Agency doesn’t come around every day. But for Janelle Weidner Romano, this was right in her wheelhouse.

Working on hard problems was something she had enjoyed since childhood. Growing up, Janelle loved puzzles and math because “it was hard, I liked building and designing things, and I wanted to change the world with science.”

Little did she know, those skills would one day help her as the Director of the Laboratory for Telecommunication Sciences. Janelle is one of many women who has put her personal stamp on the technical achievements of NSA.

With a graduate degree in electrical engineering, for which she received tuition assistance from NSA, Janelle says she works with the most talented technical women in the workforce. Together, they have “pushed the realm of the possible” to help the agency become the elite institution it is today.

“We understand that we are much, much stronger as a team than we are alone,” Janelle Weidner Romano she says. Director of the Laboratory for Telecommunication Sciences NSA offers technical professionals: • Tuition assistance • Professional training and development • Leadership opportunities • A friendly environment that fosters innovation • The time to enjoy family and friends • An opportunity to contribute to the good of the nation Apply today for the following STEM fields: Computer/Electrical Engineering Computer Science Cybersecurity Data Science Information Assurance Search NSA to Download Mathematics Cryptanalysis Signals Analysis U.S. citizenship is required for all applicants. NSA is an Equal Opportunity Employer and abides by Security & Counterintelligence applicable employment laws and regulations. All applicants for employment are considered without regard to age, color, disability, genetic information, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, Paid Internships, Scholarships & Co-op marital status, or status as a parent.

16CNS-03_7.875x10.5_73560-5.indd 1 9/8/16 2:45 PM 10a.p61.NA [P].indd 61 9/9/16 9:37 AM The Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Division of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor invites applications for junior or senior faculty positions, especially from women and underrepresented The George Mason University Department of Bioengineering invites minorities. Successful candidates will have a relevant doctorate or applications for the position of Department Chair and Professor. The equivalent experience and an outstanding record of achievement department is seeking a highly accomplished leader who has a vision and impactful research in academics, industry, and/or at national for leading a dynamic and rapidly growing department in achieving continued excellence and national recognition in research and education. laboratories. They will have a strong record or commitment to teaching at undergraduate and graduate levels, to providing service The Department of Bioengineering at Mason (http://bioengineering. to the university and profession, and to broadening the intellectual gmu.edu/) was established in 2010, and has rapidly grown to 13 full-time diversity of the ECE Division. The division invites candidates across all faculty. Current focus areas are biomedical imaging, neuroengineering and computational neuroscience, biomechanics, and nanoscale research areas relevant to ECE to apply. bioengineering. Faculty conduct research funded by a number of federal The highly ranked ECE Division (www.ece.umich.edu) prides itself on agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National the mentoring of junior faculty toward successful careers. Ann Arbor is Science Foundation, Department of Defense, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, with over $16 million in active research funding. Faculty often rated as a family friendly best-place-to-live. have active collaborations with local healthcare institutions including Please see application instructions at www.eecs.umich.edu/ eecs/jobs Inova, Children’s National Medical Center, National Rehabilitation Hospital, government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, as Applications will be considered as they are received. However, for full well as federal laboratories such as the Naval Research Laboratory, NIH consideration applications must be received by December 9, 2016. Clinical Center, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The department has a thriving ABET-accredited undergraduate program The University of Michigan is an Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity with enrollment over 200 students, a new rapidly growing Ph.D. program Employer with an Active Dual-Career Assistance Program. The College of that started in 2015, and an M.S. program launching in 2017. Continuing Engineering is especially interested in candidates who contribute, through growth in student enrollment and strategic recruitment of faculty in new their research, teaching, and/or service, to the diversity and excellence of the and emerging areas in bioengineering and healthcare will be priorities for academic community. the next Department Chair. The Chair will be expected to leverage university-level strategic priorities in biomedical and translational research to lead transformative growth of the department, and to further encourage and foster new and existing collaborations with academic, clinical, and governmental institutions in the greater Washington D.C. area. The Chair will oversee the growth of high-quality academic programs, facilitate interdisciplinary research initiatives, broaden the scope and focus areas of research in the department, and manage the departmental operations. Preston M. Green Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering Candidates must have an earned doctorate in bioengineering, biomedical Tenured/Tenure-Track Faculty engineering, or a related field, and be eligible for a tenured appointment at the rank of full professor. The successful candidate should have an The Preston M. Green Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering at outstanding research and publication record, as well as a commitment Washington University in St. Louis invites applications for faculty positions at all to excellence in both graduate and undergraduate education. The levels, for fall 2017. The Electrical & Systems Engineering department enjoys a new building, Preston M. Green Hall, with state-of-the-art facilities. Candidates incumbent should have significant leadership and administrative should be exceptionally strong, possess novel and creative visions of research, experience, including fostering interdisciplinary research/education and and commit gladly to teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. They mentoring students, faculty and staff. should have an earned doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Applied Physics, Systems Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, Operations Mason is the largest public research university in Virginia, with an Research or related fields. enrollment of approximately 34,000 students and over 200 degree Technical areas of interest include, but are not limited to, applied physics, integrated programs. Mason was classified as an R1 research institution in 2016 circuits, nano devices, device packaging, cyber-physical systems, control systems, by the Carnegie Classifications of Institutes of Higher Education, and operations research, optimization, applied mathematics, and applied statistics. was ranked number one in the 2013 U.S. News and World Report “Up- Applications include biomedicine, robotics, financial engineering, and modeling of and-Coming” list of national universities. Mason is in close proximity physical and complex systems. Successful candidates are expected to conduct to a number of federal agencies, national laboratories, biotechnology high-quality research and teaching, publish in peer-reviewed journals, and participate in department and university service. companies and biomedical research institutions. Recently, Mason launched a $40 million, 75,000-square-foot Institute for Biomedical Applications will be accepted immediately, and interviews will begin after January 1, Innovation and a strategic partnership focused on personalized health 2017. Applications received by December 1, 2016, will receive full consideration. The details of the application process and necessary documents are found at the following with Inova, the largest health system in northern Virginia. site: http://ese.wustl.edu/aboutthedepartment/Pages/faculty-openings.aspx For full consideration, applicants must apply for position number F9261z Washington University in St. Louis is a medium-size private university, which is at http://jobs.gmu.edu by November 15, 2016. Review of applications 15th in U.S. News & World Report’s national university ranking. will continue until the position is filled. Questions regarding the position Washington University in St. Louis is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action should be directed to Professor Brian L. Mark, Acting Chair, Department employer, and invites applications from all qualified candidates. Employment of Bioengineering, at [email protected]. EO/AA/Vet/Disabled Employer eligibility verification required upon employment.

62 | Oct 2016 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

10ap62.NA [P].indd 62 9/8/16 12:00 PM ece.ncsu.edu FACULTY POSITIONS

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at NC State University is seeking to ﬁll multiple faculty positions beginning in August 2017 or earlier. InclusivenessInclusiveness an andd didiversityversity a arere i integralntegral to N NCC St State’sate’s commcommitmentitment t too excellence i inn reresearch,search, enengagement,gagement, and education.education. WeWe are paparticularlyrticularly iinterestednterested in ccandidatesandidates who hahaveve ddemonstratedemonstrated experiexperienceence eengagingngaging with ddiversityiversity througthroughh acactivitiestivities ssuchuch as ffosteringostering aann inclinclusiveusive enenvironment,vironment, wworkingorking wwithith students ffromrom didiverseverse babackgrounds,ckgrounds, oorr incorporatingincorporating diversediverse perspectivesperspectives inin research.research. CandidatesCandidates mustmust possess a Ph.D. or equivalentequivalent in electricalelectrical or computercomputer enengineeringgineering or a rrelatedelated ddisciplineiscipline at tthehe ttimeime of aappointment,ppointment, and must hhaveave demonstrateddemonstrated tthehe ppotentialotential ttoo buildbuild a strongstrong r researchesearch prograprogramm and an e excellentxcellent t teachingeaching record. Applications w willill be r reviewedeviewed as t theyhey ar aree re received.ceived. Applicants ccanan aapplypply oonlinenline at jobs.ncsu.edjobs.ncsu.eduu, and are expected ttoo include a cover leletter,tter, cucurriculumrriculum vvitae,itae, researresearchch statement, t teachingeaching statement, a andnd n namesames a andnd c completeomplete cocontactntact in informationformation of f fourour references, including email addresses and phphoneone numbers.

Faculty Positions in Computing, Networking, and Low Power development efforts with NNF to produce the next generation Sensors & Systems engineers to support industry. The ECE Department working with PowerAmerica and the FREEDM Systems Center will We are seeking outstanding candidates for tenure-track or provide a dynamic environment to pursue fundamental tenured faculty positions at all levels in the broad areas of research, teaching and other scholarly efforts. This position computing and networking. All areas of computer architecture, will report administratively to the Dean of the College of systems, and networking are of interest. The department seeks Engineering or the Dean’s designee, and must qualify for the candidates who apply their disciplines to emerging areas, rank of tenured full professor in the Department of Electrical including but not limited to: autonomous systems, application and Computer Engineering with a strong research interest in specific computing, big data, internet-of-things, cyberspace advancing semiconductor device technologies. security, software-defined networking, embedded systems, Apply at jobs.ncsu.edu/postings/74635 architectures for machine learning, and emerging computing paradigms. Candidates are also being sought in support of the NSF Advanced Self-powered Systems of Integrated Sensors and Faculty Positions in Wide Bandgap Electronics Technologies (ASSIST) Nanosystems Engineering Research Center (assist.ncsu.edu) which is focused on health monitoring We are seeking exceptional tenure track faculty candidates at platforms through nano-enabled low power devices, energy the Assistant / Associate level for multiple positions beginning harvesting devices and systems, ultra-low power sensors and in August 2017 or earlier if possible. The intent of these hires is low power circuits. to enhance NC State’s multidisciplinary activities to accelerate Apply at jobs.ncsu.edu/postings/74632 the adoption of wide bandgap semiconductors into a wide variety of energy saving, high performance systems that Director of NC State University Nanofabrication Facility, cross-cut 21st century life. The ECE Department working with PowerAmerica Liaison PowerAmerica and the FREEDM Systems Center (freedm.ncsu.edu) will provide a dynamic environment to We are seeking exceptional candidates for Director of the North pursue fundamental research, teach and pursue other Carolina Nanofabrication (NNF) Facility (nnf.ncsu.edu), scholarly efforts as well as opportunities to work with industry. beginning in August 2017 or earlier if possible. The NNF with PowerAmerica is part of the National Network of approximately 8000 sq ft of class 100 and 1000 cleanrooms is Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI) and with its wide variety of part of the Research Triangle Nanotechnology Network (RTNN), industrial and academic partners is focused on the transition an innovation hub for transformative nanotechnology research, of research to applications via advanced manufacturing by discovery, education, commercialization, and workforce working across the supply chain from device design and development. The RTNN offers unprecedented access to fabrication to demonstration of state-of-the-art power nanotechnology facilities in the Research Triangle area for electronic systems. Depending on the candidate’s area of researchers from across the nation. The RTNN is one of 16 sites expertise, the candidate will be expected to work with in the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure PowerAmerica’s industry members in areas connected to SiC (NNCI) supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The and GaN device design/fabrication/packaging with industry Director will also work closely with PowerAmerica: The Next foundry partners, or with industry members on wide bandgap Generation Power Electronics Manufacturing Innovation power electronic applications in renewable energy, electric Institute (poweramericainstitute.org), to further increase NNF transportation, motor control, or the power grid or related capabilities to accelerate the adoption of wide bandgap areas. For application areas where size, weight reduction and semiconductors in power electronics through innovative power system level advantages are coupled, the increased energy electronic device design and fabrication. This includes up to 2 efficiency provided by wide bandgap semiconductors is years of research funding to facilitate projects to work with expected to have large societal benefits. PowerAmerica will industry and academia in areas connected to SiC and GaN provide up to 2 years of research funding, as well as education device design/fabrication/packaging. SiC and GaN power device and workforce development funding to facilitate these markets are anticipated to grow at 33% per year and projects and to advance the candidate’s career in wide PowerAmerica will also support Education and Workforce bandgap semiconductor power electronics. For more information, visit go.ncsu.edu/PowerAmericaECE

Candidates can obtain information about the department and its research programs, as well as more detail about the positions advertised at ece.ncsu.edu Inquiries may be sent via email to the Faculty Search Committee Chair, at [email protected]

AA/EOE – for ADA accommodations: 919-515-3148

10a.p63.NA [P].indd 63 9/9/16 9:39 AM Professor/Associate Professor/Assistant Professorship in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, South University of Science and Technology of China The University The South University of Science and Technology (SUSTC) is a public institution funded by the municipal of Shenzhen, a special economic zone city in China. Shenzhen is a major city located in Southern China, situated immediately north of Hong Kong. Shenzhen is China’s fast- growing city in the past two decades. The city is the high-tech and manufacturing hub of southern China. Shenzhen is also a popular tourist destination and was named one of the world’s 31 must-see tourist destinations in 2010 by The New York Times. SUSTC is a pioneer in higher education reform in China. The mission of the University is to become a globally recognized institution which emphasizes academic excellence and promotes innovation, creativity and entrepreneur- ship. The teaching language at SUSTC is bilingual, English or Putonghua. Call for Application SUSTC now invites applications for the faculty position in Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. SUSTC adopts the tenure track system, which offers the recruited faculty members a clearly defined career path. Candidates should have demonstrated excellence in research and a strong commitment to teaching. A doctoral degree is required at the time of appointment. Candidates for senior positions must have an established record of research, and a track-record in securing external funding as PI. To apply, please send curriculum vitae, description of research interests, statement on teaching and at least three letters of recommendation to [email protected]. SUSTC offers competitive salaries and fringe benefits, which are among the best in China. More information can be found at http://www.sustc.edu.cn/en.

TENURE-TRACK AND TENURED POSITIONS IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE The newly launched ShanghaiTech University is built as a world-class research university, which locates in Zhangjiang High-Tech Park. We invite highly qualified candidates to fill tenure-track/tenured faculty positions as its core team in the School of Information Science and Technology (SIST). Candidates should have exceptional academic records or demonstrate strong potential in cutting-edge research areas of information science and technology. They must be fluent in English. Overseas academic connection or background is highly desired. Academic Disciplines: We seek candidates in all cutting edge areas of information science and technology. Our recruitment focus includes, but is not limited to: computer architecture and technologies, nano-scale electronics, high speed and RF circuits, intelligent and integrated signal processing systems, computational foundations, big data, data mining, visualization, computer vision, bio-computing, smart energy/power devices and systems, next-generation networking, as well as inter-disciplinary areas involving information science and technology. Compensation and Benefits: Salary and startup funds are highly competitive, commensurate with experience and academic accomplishment. We also offer a comprehensive benefit package to employees and eligible dependents, including housing benefits. All regular ShanghaiTech faculty members will be within its new tenure-track system commensurate with international practice for performance evaluation and promotion. Qualifications: - A detailed research plan and demonstrated record/potentials; - Ph.D. (Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field); - A minimum relevant research experience of 4 years. Applications: Submit (in English, PDF version) a cover letter, a 2-page research plan, a CV plus copies of 3 most significant publications, and names of three referees to: [email protected] (until positions are filled). For more information, please visit Job Opportunities on http://sist.shanghaitech.edu.cn/ Deadline: October 31st. 2016

64 | Oct 2016 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

10ap64.NA [P].indd 64 9/8/16 12:03 PM University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign invites applications for full-time faculty positions at all levels and in all areas of electrical and computer engineering, with particular emphasis in the areas of bio-electronics, bio-computation, bio-informatics and engineering; network science & communications; data science, machine learning and its applications; control, optimization, and decision science; robotics; nanoscale circuits and systems; microelectronics and nanotechnology; electromagnetics, radio frequency, and terahertz systems; power electronics, machines, and systems; reliable and secure computing; networked and distributed computing; high-performance, energy-efficient, and scientific computing; data center and storage systems. Applications are encouraged from candidates whose research programs are in core as well as interdisciplinary areas of electrical and computer engineering.

Applicants for positions at the assistant professor level must have an earned Ph.D. or equivalent degree, excellent academic credentials, and an outstanding ability to teach effectively at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Successful candidates will be expected to initiate and carry out independent research and to perform academic duties associated with our B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. programs.

Senior level appointments with tenure are available for persons of international stature. Qualified senior candidates may also be considered for tenured full Professor positions as part of the Grainger Engineering Breakthroughs Initiative (http://graingerinitiative.engineering.illinois.edu), which is backed by a $100-million gift from the Grainger Foundation. Faculty in the department carry out research in a broad spectrum of areas and are supported by worldclass interdisciplinary research facilities, including the Coordinated Science Laboratory, the Information Trust Institute, the Parallel Computing Institute, the Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory, the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, as well as several industrial centers and programs that foster international collaborations. The department has one of the very top programs in the United States, granting approximately 450 B.S. degrees, 100 M.S. degrees, and 75 Ph.D. degrees annually. The ECE Department has recently settled into its new 235,000 sq. ft. net-zero energy design building, which is a major campus addition with minimal carbon footprint.

In order to ensure full consideration by the Search Committee, applications must be received by December 15, 2016. Applications will be reviewed until suitable candidates are identified. Interviews and offers may take place before the deadline but all applications received by the deadline would receive full consideration. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications. Preferred starting date is August 16, 2017, but is negotiable. Applications can be submitted by going to http://jobs.illinois.edu and uploading a cover letter, CV, research statement, and teaching statement, along with names of three references. For inquiry, please call 217-333-2302 or email [email protected]. The University of Illinois conducts criminal background checks on all job candidates upon acceptance of a contingent offer.

Illinois is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, sex, age, status as a protected veteran, or status as a qualified individual with a disability. Illinois welcomes individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and ideas who embrace and value diversity and inclusivity (www.inclusiveillinois.illinois.edu).

We have an active and successful dual-career partner placement program and a strong commitment to work-life balance and family-friendly programs for faculty and staff (http://provost.illinois.edu/worklife/index.html).

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | Oct 2016 | 65

10a.p65.NA [P].indd 65 9/9/16 1:57 PM ZJU-UIUC Institute Zhejiang University / University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Institute

ZJU-UIUC Institute Zhejiang University / University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Institute

Tenure-Track Faculty Positions in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

The newly launched Zhejiang University/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • Assistant professor candidates must have an earned doctorate and at least Institute (the ZJU-UIUC Institute) invites highly qualified candidates for multiple two years of post-degree experience, excellent academic credentials, strong tenure-track faculty positions at all levels and in areas of engineering and science research plans, and an outstanding ability to teach effectively. that match its multidisciplinary mission. Candidates should have exceptional • Mid-career candidates must be established leaders in their field; exhibit strong academic record or demonstrate strong potential in the cutting-edge research areas records of teaching, publication, and funded research; and demonstrate of engineering and science multidisciplinary technologies. participation in interdisciplinary collaborations. • Senior appointments are available for persons of international stature seeking Academic Disciplines to build substantial interdisciplinary research and teaching programs. The ZJU-UIUC Institute is a new engineering college on the new Zhejiang University Faculty report to the ZJU-UIUC Institute, and will serve as Joint Institute Fellows on (ZJU) International Campus in Haining, China, about 120 km southwest of Shanghai. the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) campus for one year prior to The ZJU-UIUC Institute is built up a world-class research institute, it conducts teaching work in China. and research in the broad areas of engineering and system sciences; information and data sciences; and energy, environment, and infrastructure sciences. Undergraduate Applications and graduate degrees are offered in civil and environmental engineering, computer The search process will continue until positions are filled or through July 30, 2017. engineering, electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and mechanical Salary and research initiation support will be commensurate with qualifications and competitive with international norms. Application materials should include a cover engineering. Applications are especially encouraged from candidates whose interests letter with current contact information including email address, as well as complete address interdisciplinary topics exemplified by nano-scale electronics&photonics, curriculum vitae, statements of research and teaching goals, and the names of RF&THz Technologies, big-data, bio-computing, next-generation of networking, three or more references. Please submit applications at http://zui.illinois.edu or at advanced communication, smart energy/power devices and systems, transportation [email protected], [email protected]. For more information, please electrification as well as inter-disciplinary areas involving information science visit http://zjui.zju.edu.cn for job opportunities. technology, engineering sciences and intelligent infrastructure sciences. The ZJU- ZJU and UIUC are renowned for their engineering programs, and have a long history UIUC Institute holds classes and student activities in English. of collaboration. The ZJU-UIUC Institute leverages a new campus and creates a Successful candidates will initiate and lead collaborative research and perform unique student experience of cross-disciplinary collaboration, technical leadership, academic and professional service duties associated with the ZJU-UIUC Institute. teamwork, and creative excellence. Individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences, They will be leaders for teaching and research innovation, giving students a and ideas who embrace and value diversity and inclusivity are encouraged to apply and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard meaningful and interactive engineering education. to race, national origin, disability, age, or other personal characteristics.

The Ohio State University invites applications for multiple tenure Applications are invited for:- track faculty positions in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. All areas and ranks will be considered. We are especially Department of Information Engineering interested in (i) robotics, including human/robot interactions, (ii) mobile Professors / Associate Professors / Assistant Professors health sensing and health analytics, (iii) senior and junior faculty in Assistant Professor cybersecurity (including hardware-enabled cybersecurity) and mobility, (Ref. 160001N0) (iv) electric machines and variable frequency drive systems, and (v) Director of the ElectroScience Laboratory and Professor of Electrical and The Department is looking for strong candidates in the area of cyber Computer Engineering. For additional information on these positions, security to supplement its existing strength in communication systems, see https://ece.osu.edu/about/employment. All positions may involve networking, information theory, and deep learning research. Outstanding joint appointments with other engineering departments. Applicants candidates in other areas of information engineering will also be considered. Further information about the Department is available at must have a Ph.D. and outstanding academic credentials. Successful http://www.ie.cuhk.edu.hk. candidates are expected to develop a vigorous externally funded research program, show excellence and leadership in academic and scholarly Applicants should have (i) a relevant PhD degree; (ii) strong commitment to activities, and demonstrate outstanding teaching at the undergraduate excellence in research and teaching; and (iii) outstanding accomplishments and graduate levels. and research potential. Applicants are requested to send a letter of application, curriculum vitae, Appointments will normally be made on contract basis for up to three years statement of research plans, brief statement of teaching philosophy, initially commencing August 2017, which, subject to mutual agreement, may lead to longer-term appointment or substantiation later. and name, address, and email of four references to Professor John L. Volakis at [email protected]. Some of these positions are partially Applications will be accepted until the posts are fi lled. funded by Ohio State’s Discovery Themes Initiative, a significant faculty Application Procedure hiring investment in key thematic areas that build on the university’s Applicants please upload the full resume with a cover letter, copies of culture of academic collaboration to make a global impact. The academic credentials, publication list with abstracts of selected published Ohio State University is committed to establishing a culturally and papers, a research plan, a teaching statement, together with names and intellectually diverse environment, encouraging all members of our e-mails addresses of three to fi ve referees to whom the applicant’s learning community to reach their full potential. We are responsive to consent has been given for their providing reference (unless otherwise dual-career families and strongly promote work-life balance to support specifi ed). our community members through a suite of institutionalized policies. The University only accepts and considers applications submitted online We are an NSF Advance Institution and a member of the Ohio/Western for the post above. For more information and to apply online, please visit http://career.cuhk.edu.hk. Pennsylvania/West Virginia Higher Education Recruitment Consortium.

66 | Oct 2016 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

10ap66.NA [P].indd 66 9/9/16 11:24 AM Senior Scientist for Radiation Physics and High Energy Density Materials

The Electrical Engineering program in the Ingram ST-1310, $123,175 to $185,100* per annum School of Engineering at Texas State University *Rate limited to the rate for level III of the Executive Schedule (5 U.S.C. 5304(g)(2)) invites applications for a tenure track faculty position at the assistant professor level starting fall 2017. The Serves as the technical expert in the fields of radiation physics and high energy density materials successful candidate will be expected to establish a including radiation atomic physics and transport, inertial confinement fusion, hydrodynamics program of funded research in electrical engineering, and magnetohydrodynamics, shock waves, and hydrodynamic instabilities. exhibit a strong commitment to student-centered Conducts and leads a broad-based, multidisciplinary research program pushing the teaching and mentoring at the undergraduate frontiers of plasma radiation sources and plasma discharges, with particular emphasis and graduate levels, and perform university and on applications to nuclear weapons effects simulation, thermonuclear fusion, advanced professional service. Women and minority candidates weapons, sensors and detectors, materials plasma processing, and advanced diagnostics. are strongly encouraged to apply. As a distinguished scientist and recognized leader in his/her field the incumbent will be called Required Qualifications: 1) An earned doctorate upon to brief DoD senior officials regarding Laboratory research efforts in the above areas, to in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or serve as liaison between NRL, the Navy and other national and international organizations, a closely related discipline. 2) Domain-appropriate and to consult on important scientific and programmatic issues. research publications in internationally recognized Applicants should be recognized as national/international authorities in the above areas journals and conferences. 3) Proven ability as an of research, and should have demonstrated the scientific vision and organizational skills effective teacher in an academic environment. 4) necessary to market new research proposals to obtain funding and bring long term, multi- Excellent oral and written English language skills. faceted research programs to successful completion. NRL is the Navy’s corporate lab and Preferred Qualifications: 1) Research specialization in operates under the Navy Working Capital Fund (NWCF). computer engineering. 2) Industrial, commercialization, You must apply online by logging in to USAJOBS at www.usajobs.gov and searching for the or post-doctoral experience. 3) Ability to work across vacancy announcement number NW61310-00-1757501K9453341S. Please carefully read the multiple specialties within electrical engineering. 4) Prior announcement and follow the instructions when applying. Please contact Annemarie Slattery experience writing and securing grants and/or contracts. at [email protected] for more information. Vacancy announcement closes on 1 November 2016. To apply, applicants should go to https://jobs. hr.txstate.edu/postings/17815. Review of applications begins on December 1, 2016, and will Navy is an Equal Opportunity Employer continue until the position is filled.

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE Tenure-Track Faculty Position OF TECHNOLOGY Cambridge, MA The Department of Electrical Engineering seeks FACULTY POSITIONS applications in all areas of Electrical Engineering for a tenure-track assistant professor faculty The Massachusetts Institute of Technology include a curriculum vitae and the names and position with particular interest in the areas of: (MIT) Department of Electrical Engineering and addresses of three or more individuals who Biological & Biomedical Engineering, Computer Computer Science (EECS) seeks candidates will provide letters of recommendation. Letter Engineering, Electronic Materials and Devices, for faculty positions starting in September 1, writers should submit their letters directly to Information Sciences and Systems, Photonics, 2017 or on a mutually agreed date thereafter. MIT, preferably on the website or by mailing Power and Energy, Quantum Engineering, Robotics Appointment will be at the assistant or to the address below. Complete applications and Cyber-Physical Systems, and Solid State untenured associate professor level. In special should be received by December 1, 2016. Physics. Candidates should have a commitment cases, a senior faculty appointment may be Applications will be considered complete only to teaching and a demonstrated ability to pursue possible. Faculty duties include teaching when both the applicant materials and at least a high impact research program. A start date of at the undergraduate and graduate levels, three letters of recommendation are received. September 1, 2017 is preferred. research, and supervision of student research. It is the responsibility of the candidate to Candidates should hold a Ph.D. in electrical Applicant review will begin in November. For full arrange reference letters to be uploaded engineering and computer science or a related consideration, please submit applications no later at https://eecs-search.eecs.mit.edu by field by the start of employment. We will than December 15, 2016, using the following site: December 1, 2016. https://apply-ee.princeton.edu/. Applications consider candidates with research and teaching require: a complete curriculum vitae, descriptions interests in any area of electrical engineering Send all materials not submitted on the website to: and computer science. of research and teaching interests, and the Professor Anantha Chandrakasan contact information for four references. Princeton Candidates must register with the EECS Department Head, Electrical Engineering and University is an equal opportunity employer. All search website at https://eecs-search.eecs.mit. Computer Science qualified applicants will receive consideration for edu, and must submit application materials Massachusetts Institute of Technology employment without regard to race, color, religion, electronically to this website. Candidate Room 38-401 sex, national origin, disability status, protected applications should include a description 77 Massachusetts Avenue veteran status, or any other characteristic protected of professional interests and goals in both Cambridge, MA 02139 by law. The selected candidate will be required to teaching and research. Each application should successfully complete a background check. M.I.T. is an equal opportunity/affirmative action

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | Oct 2016 | 67

10a.p67.NA [P].indd 67 9/13/16 9:48 AM Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Graduate School of Engineering and Management Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) Dayton, Ohio Department Head and Faculty Position in Computer and Electrical Engineering LECTURER POSITIONS Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering The Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), the premier Department of Defense (DoD) The University of Pennsylvania’s Department of institution for graduate education in science, technology, engineering, and management, Electrical and Systems Engineering invites appli- is seeking applications for the position of Professor and Head, Department of Electrical and cants for two full-time Lecturer positions. The department seeks individuals with exceptional promise Computer Engineering. The department offers MS and PhD programs in EE, CPE, and CS and for, or a proven record of, excellence in teaching, an MS program in Cyber Operations. These programs are accredited by the North Central course and curriculum innovation. Applicants Association of Colleges and Schools. Both the MS EE and MS CPE programs are also accredited should have a Ph.D. degree in Electrical or Systems Engineering or related field. We are particularly in- by ABET, Inc. terested in candidates that enhance our educational Applicants for the Department Head position must have an earned doctorate in electrical curricula in the broad areas of: or computer engineering or computer science with credentials commensurate with the 1. Computer engineering & embedded systems appointment as full professor with academic tenure. In addition, a strong record of academic (embedded programming, distributed systems, hardware/software co-design, model-based de- leadership experience is highly desirable. sign, internet of things), and AFIT is also seeking applicants for a tenure-track faculty position in electrical or computer 2. Information & systems engineering (control sys- engineering. Background and experience in electronic warfare or VLSI/microelectronics tems, optimization, robotics, signal processing, stochastic systems, model-based systems engi- are particularly desired. The position is at the assistant professor level, although qualified neering, systems engineering projects). candidates will be considered at all levels. The position requires teaching at the graduate level as well as establishing and sustaining a strong research program. Applicants must have an earned The department is strongly interested in individuals that will balance principles-based lectures with hands- doctorate in computer engineering or electrical engineering or closely related field. on projects addressing emerging application domains. Applicants for either position must be U.S. citizens and currently possess, or be able to obtain, Diversity candidates are strongly encouraged to a Top Secret security clearance. apply. Interested persons should submit an online application at http://www.ese.upenn.edu/ Full details on these positions, the department, applicant qualifications, and application faculty-positions and include curriculum vitae, state- procedures can be found at http://www.afit.edu/ENG/page.cfm?page=1200. Review of ment of teaching interests, and three references. applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. The United The University of Pennsylvania is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Minorities/Women/Individuals with Disabilities/Veterans States Air Force is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. are encouraged to apply.

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY

The Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at Vanderbilt University is seeking The Division of Engineering and Applied Science candidates for up to three T/TK faculty positions in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering. The School of at the California Institute of Technology invites Engineering is on a strong upward trajectory in national and international stature and prominence, and has built applications for a tenure-track faculty position at infrastructure to support a significant expansion in faculty size. Successful candidates for these positions are expected the assistant professor level in the Department to teach at undergraduate and graduate levels and develop and grow vigorous programs of externally funded research. of Electrical Engineering. We are seeking Areas of focus are: (1) Computer Assisted Surgery and Interventions. We seek world-class expertise in medical highly qualified candidates committed to a image and signal analysis, computer vision, and medical robotics. The successful candidate will expand EECS career in teaching and research in the areas of curricula in these areas and have a strong interest in translational research, collaboration with the Vanderbilt integrated circuits, integrated photonics, micro- and nano-electronics, power, sensing, imaging, University Medical Center, and is expected to engage with the Vanderbilt Institute in Surgery and Engineering. and integrated systems using non-traditional VISE’s mission is the creation, development, implementation, clinical evaluation and translation of methods, technologies and devices. devices, algorithms, and systems designed to facilitate surgical and interventional processes and their outcome. (2) Big Data/Data Science/AI. We seek world-class expertise in broadly defined areas of data science, machine Qualifications include a PhD in electrical engineering or an appropriate engineering learning, data mining, visualization, computer vision, and/or artificial intelligence. For openings (1) and (2), on- or science-related discipline. Applicants with line applications are preferred at the assistant professor rank; please see https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/ strong focus on biomedical devices and systems jobs/7736. (3) Nanoscale optics, nano-electronics, computational nanoscience, new nanoscale materials, and/or should apply to Caltech’s Department of Medical nano-energy. The successful candidate will expand the EE curriculum in these areas, and work with faculty, staff Engineering. and students in the Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (VINSE) to stretch the boundaries Interested applicants should submit an of nanoscience to advance our multi-disciplinary research, education, and outreach missions. VINSE recently electronic application at https://applications. constructed a new, state-of-the-art cleanroom and high-end instrumentation suite with expected occupancy in caltech.edu/job/ee. Applicants are encouraged Spring 2017. For this potential opening, applications will be considered at all faculty ranks. Please apply on line to apply by December 15, 2016, but applications at: https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/7807. will be accepted continuously until the position is filled. The term of the initial appointment Vanderbilt University is an equal-opportunity, affirmative-action employer that aspires to become a leader among at the assistant professor level is normally peer institutions in making meaningful and lasting progress in responding to the needs and concerns of women and four years, with appointment contingent members of under-represented minority groups. For more information, please visit our web site: http://engineering. upon completion of a PhD in a relevant field. vanderbilt.edu/eecs/. Applications for each position will be reviewed on a rolling basis beginning November 1, 2016 Questions about the application process may be with telephone interviews beginning December 1, 2016. The final application deadline is January 15, 2017. directed to [email protected].

68 | Oct 2016 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

10ap68.NA [P].indd 68 9/9/16 9:50 AM The Dwight Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M University invites applications for a senior position at the full professor level in the area of big data, broadly understood to encompass information and computational sciences, and their applications in engineering domains. Candidates who have demonstrated exceptional research achievement, success in leading team efforts at the university or national level, and who can create common ground across diverse engineering domains are especially encouraged to apply. The candidate is expected to grow and coalesce existing activity in the big data area. The department(s) in which the successful candidate is appointed, with the strong backing from college, will provide the necessary resources for this growth. Candidates having synergistic interests with existing areas of research strength, and those who will broaden and expand our current programs will generate the most interest. The successful candidate will be expected to teach at the undergraduate and graduate levels, develop an independent, externally funded research program, advise graduate students, serve the profession, and participate in all aspects of the Look College’s mission, with significant contributions to the excellence of our big data initiatives. The successful candidate will hold an appointment in one of departments of the Look College, or a joint appointment between departments if appropriate. Details concerning the academic departments and research programs of the Look College may be found at https://engineering.tamu.edu. Applicants must have an earned doctorate in an engineering discipline or a field related to big data. Applicants should submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, teaching statement, research statement, and a list of five references (including postal addresses, phone numbers and email addresses) by applying for this specific position at www.tamengineeringjobs.com. Full consideration will be given to applications received by December 1, 2016. Applications received after that date may be considered until positions are filled. It is anticipated the appointment will begin in fall 2017. The members of Texas A&M Engineering are all Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action/Veterans/Disability employers committed to diversity. It is the policy of these members to recruit, hire, train and promote without regard to race, color, sex, religion, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, sexual orientation or gender identity.

The Department of Electrical and Computer FACULTY OPENING STANFORD UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT Engineering in the Samuel Ginn College of OF AERONAUTICS AND ASTRONAUTICS Engineering at Auburn University invites applications for 3 tenure-track positions. Assistant/Associate The Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Candidates whose research programs in Aeronautics Professor positions are available in the following Stanford University invites applications for a tenure and Astronautics will involve the development of areas: microelectronics, wireless engineering, and track faculty position at the Assistant or untenured sophisticated computational and/or mathematical computer engineering. Associate Professor level. We will also consider methods may be considered for an appointment with Please visit www.eng.auburn.edu/elec for details senior candidates with outstanding research and an affiliation with the Institute for Computational and about these positions and application instructions. teaching track records. Mathematical Engineering (http://icme.stanford.edu/).

Auburn University is an EEO/Vet/Disability Employer. Research advances in the fundamental areas of All candidates should apply online at https:// aerospace engineering are critical for future air aa.stanford.edu/job-openings. and space transportation systems that will provide Applications should include a brief research and efficiency, safety, and security, while protecting the environment. We are seeking exceptional applicants teaching plan, a detailed resume including a who will develop a program of high-impact research, publications list, and the names and addresses of at contribute to an innovative undergraduate curriculum, least five references. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. However, the review The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and develop graduate courses at the frontier of areas invites applications for a fulltime, tenure-track faculty such as aerospace system design, autonomous process will begin on January 1, 2017. position in the area of computer engineering. Applicants vehicle technologies, and breakthroughs in aerospace Stanford University is an equal opportunity must have an earned doctorate degree in Electrical propulsion concepts. We will place higher priority on Engineering by the start date of their appointment. The employer and is committed to increasing the successful candidate has strong primary commitment the impact, originality, and promise of the candidate’s diversity of its faculty. It welcomes nominations of to excellence in teaching at undergraduate level, but work than on the particular sub-area of specialization and applications from women, members of minority is also committed to graduate courses and research, within Aeronautics and Astronautics. and will be able to take advantage of the College’s well groups, protected veterans and individuals with established ties to industry. For additional information Evidence of the ability to pursue a program of disabilities, as well as from others who would bring please visit innovative research and a strong commitment to additional dimensions to the university’s research, http://www.calstatela.edu/2017/college-engineering- graduate and undergraduate teaching is required. teaching and clinical missions. computer-science-technology/ecst-ece-ttf

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | Oct 2016 | 69

10a.p69.NA [P].indd 69 9/13/16 9:51 AM The Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at Portland State University seeks outstanding candidates for two tenure- track assistant professor positions in the area of underwater sensing. We are especially interested in applicants with research agendas that One of the most are internationally recognized, regionally relevant and complement our existing research programs. The positions are part of a hiring initiative to influential reference grow our group of research faculty in sensing and monitoring of coastal and freshwater hazards and habitats. This group of faculty will collaborate resources for engineers closely to attract and execute funded research for the development of sensing systems, signal processing algorithms, and unmanned sensing around the world. systems for coastal and riverine environments. Outstanding candidates may be considered at the associate professor level. A Ph.D. in Electrical For over 100 years, Proceedings of the IEEE Engineering, or a closely related field, is required. Candidates who are has been the leading journal for engineers ABD will be considered, but must have completed their degree prior to the start date of employment. looking for in-depth tutorial, survey, and The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department is committed to review coverage of the technical excellence in education and the best practices of pedagogy. Duties include developments that shape our world. instruction at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The Department has ABET-accredited B.S. degree programs in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering, as well as M.S. and Ph.D. programs. Applications must be submitted online at https://jobs.hrc.pdx.edu/ for To learn more and start positions D91781 and D91784. Applications must include a cover letter, your subscription today, visit curriculum vitae, a teaching agenda, a research agenda and at least three ieee.org/proceedings-subscribe references. Application reviews will begin immediately and continue until finalists are identified. Portland State University is an Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity institution and welcomes applications from all diverse candidates, including, among others, protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.

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The Department of Computer Science at author in 4 to 6 weeks. Rutgers University invites applications for Published only online, IEEE Access one or more positions as Teaching Professor is ideal for authors who want Best New or Professor of Practice in the area of Data Journal in to quickly announce recent STM 2015 Science, at the level of Assistant Professor, developments, methods, or new although exceptional candidates may be products to a global audience. appointed at the rank of associate or full • Publish articles in 4 to 6 weeks professor. These appointments may begin in • Submit multidisciplinary either spring or fall semester 2017. articles that do not fit neatly in traditional journals Explore how technical standards Main Responsibilities will include Teaching, • Reach millions of develop, grow, and impact today’s new Coordination of our Capstone project series, global users through ® global technologies: Design of short term tutorials dedicated to the IEEE Xplore digital library with Educational Programs Data Science topics of current interest and free access to all Coordination of Data Science Workshops. Tutorials and Case Studies A PhD in Computer Science or closely related IEEE Access... Profiles of Developers a multidisciplinary University Courses, and more field is required. Candidates with an MS and open access journal substantial industry experience in software that’s worthy of the IEEE. systems design and implementation are Begin your journey into the high-tech encouraged to apply. world: http://trystandards.org To apply, please submit a curriculum vitae, Learn more about this award-winning teaching statement, and contact information journal at: www.ieee.org/ for three references at: ieee-access 14-PUB-246 11/15

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70 | Oct 2016 | north american | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

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10ap70.NA [P].indd 70 9/9/16 2:37 PM Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Chair and Professor

TEXAS A&M ENGINEERING HIRING Lawrence Technological University seeks a Professor and Management. Of these, Engineering is the oldest MULTIPLE FACULTY POSITIONS IN and Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer and largest, enrolling more than 1,000 undergraduate CYBERSECURITY AT ALL RANKS Engineering. The department enrolls some 180 and 600 graduate students. The College includes Texas A&M College of Engineering has launched undergraduate and 80 graduate students. It offers five departments: Civil and Architectural; Biomedical; a major initiative to hire a significant number of accredited B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Electrical and Computer; Mechanical; and Technology. faculty in cybersecurity at all ranks. Applications Computer Engineering, as well as a B.S. degree in Over a third of the students enroll in evening programs, are being accepted for new faculty positions in all Embedded Software Engineering (new) and an M.S. in and the College serves both full-time and working adult areas of cybersecurity in computing, networking, Electrical and Computer Engineering. The department’s students. The University enjoys strong ties with many cyber physical systems, critical infrastructure in industries headquartered in the region and is expanding healthcare, transportation, manufacturing and faculty is primarily dedicated to high quality teaching and energy sectors. learning, and at the same time it also has a commendable academic, service, and applied research programs. scholarship program including R&D collaboration with Applicants must have a Ph.D. in computer PayScale lists Lawrence Tech among the nation’s top international corporations and federally funded grants. engineering, computer science or electrical 100 universities for the salaries of its graduates, and engineering, or a closely related field. For Qualified applicants for the chair position will have specific questions about the positions, contact U.S. News and World Report lists it in the top tier of best [email protected]. strong leadership and administrative skills, an interest in Midwestern universities. LTU’s College of Engineering Accepted applicants will receive faculty advanced teaching methodologies, a vision for growing also fares well in the best undergraduate engineering appointments in one of the departments within the research enterprise in the department, and the ability programs category, ranking 23rd of 46. Lawrence the college, primarily within the departments of to build strong relationships with academic departments, Tech’s online undergraduate and graduate degree computer science and engineering www.cse.tamu. potential students, and corporations. A Ph.D. in programs also are ranked among the nation’s best. edu and electrical and computer engineering www. electrical or computer engineering or a closely related ece.tamu.edu. Candidates will be expected to teach, Lawrence Tech welcomes applications from minorities field is required as well as credentials commensurate perform research, supervise graduate students, and women. The position is available July 1, 2017. with appointment as a full professor with tenure. Past participate in all aspects of the department’s Applications will be reviewed beginning November 1, activities; and serve the profession. Senior hires experience in formal academic leadership and in the ABET 2016 and will be accepted until the position is filled. may come with additional positions. accreditation process is preferred. Salary is competitive Interested candidates should send resume and references For more information, and to apply for this position, and commensurate with qualifications and experience. to: Dr. Nabil Grace, Dean, College of Engineering, Lawrence visit www.tamengineeringjobs.com Lawrence Tech is a private, focused university with Colleges Technological University, 21000 W. Ten Mile Rd., TEXAS A&M ENGINEERING of Architecture & Design, Arts & Sciences, Engineering, Southfield, MI 48075-1058 or [email protected]. EOE www.tamengineeringjobs.com

The Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, York University, is seeking two outstanding candidates, one at the rank of Full, Associate or Assistant Professor in the area of Electric Power Engineering and one at the rank of Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering or Micro/Nanoelectronics, although exceptional applicants from other areas in Electrical Engineering may also be considered. Successful candidates will have a PhD in Electrical Engineering, or a closely related field, and a research record commensurate with rank. Appointments are to commence on July 1, 2017, subject to budgetary approval. For full position details, see http://www.yorku.ca/acadjobs. Applicants should complete the on-line process at http://lassonde.yorku.ca/new-faculty/. A complete application includes a cover letter indicating the rank for which the candidate wishes to be considered, a detailed CV, statement of contribution to research, teaching and curriculum development, three sample research publications and three reference letters. Complete applications must be received by November 30, 2016. York University is an Affirmative Action (AA) employer. The AA Program can be found at http://www.yorku.ca/acadjobs or a copy can be obtained by calling the AA office at 416- 736-5713. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadian citizens and permanent residents will be given priority.

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | north american | Oct 2016 | 71

10a.p71.NA [P].indd 71 9/14/16 1:02 PM past forward_by evan ackerman

1946: Raytheon demonstrates its Radarange, the world’s first commercial microwave When Nuking “stove.” This prototype (labeled “Raydarange”) was intended for sandwich shops, where it would feed radiation from a water-cooled magnetron tube into a small external container to cook Food Was a presumably lousy hamburger in 35 seconds flat. The first consumer microwave wouldn’t Novel go on sale until 1955. Users’ initial disappointment with rubbery chicken turned to delight once they discovered the joys of nuking popcorn, Hot Pockets, and marshmallow Peeps. ■ es g Bettmann/Getty Ima Bettmann/Getty

72 | OCT 2016 | North American | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

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