Fall/Winter 2002 ❖ ECE’s New Head ❖ The Quest for Peace in the Middle East ❖ HKN is Wired to Win ❖ The Campaign for Purdue ECE Fall/Winter 2002 Departmental Notes 2. Kudos for ECE 4. New Faculty Members Bring Diverse Research, Experience Page 4 Features 10. Purdue Appoints New ECE Head 14. HKN: Wired to Win 18. ECE Alumnus Negotiates for Peace in the Middle East 22. The Campaign for Purdue ECE Gifts 26. ECE Honor Roll 2001-2002 28. ECE Seniors Raise Top Pledges at Purdue 30. One Hundred-Year Family Legacy Inspires Page 18 Gift to Purdue 33. Professor Holds Giving Record 35. ECE Researching Methods to Optimize the Internet Alumni 39. ECE Alumni Recognized as Old Masters 40. Fenwick’s Fervor 43. Alumni Notes 44. ECE Student Wins Emmy Award 45. Beering Receives Engineering Service Award 47. Alums Offer Mirror Image Perspectives on Page 33 Communications Industry Reflections On the Cover: 48. NASA Establishes Institute for Nanoelectronics and Computing at Purdue ark J. T. Smith, a 48. Guest Editorial by Meyya Meyyappan M professor of electrical and computer engineering and former executive assistant to the president Stop the Presses at the Georgia Institute of Technology, will take the The following was inadvertently omitted from the spring/summer 2002 issue of helm of ECE as the new Wavelinks: Fritz Friedlaender is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He also head on January 1, 2003 initiated a program with the University of Ruhr-Bochum for education and exchange of students. (page 10). Photo credit: John Underwood Kudos for ECE ECE faculty and staff members receive honors, your merits in the development of multimedia awards, and distinctions for their achievements. systems and the secure data communications they Connie Boss was elected chair of the Clerical require. You have also been engaged in long-term and Service Staff Advisory Committee (CSSAC) for cooperation with our university and forwarded its the 2002–2003 session. The CSSAC is a University activities within the international research commu- committee founded in 1965 to provide an effective nity.” means of communication between the clerical and Delp gave the plenary address at the Interna- service staff and the University administration, and tional Workshop on Digital and Computational to champion the general welfare and working Video held in Clearwater, Florida on November 14- conditions of its constituents. 15, 2002. His talk was entitled: “Digital Cinema: Is Supriyo Datta and Mark Lundstrom received This Just Another Video Application?” the 2001 Technical Excellence Award from the David Ebert was named editor-in-chief of the Semiconductor Research Corporation at its Board of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Director’s meeting in November 2002 for their Graphics for a two-year appointment beginning in “consistent contributions in the area of device January 2003. physics and simulation of nano scale MOSFETs.” Les Geddes was chosen for the American The SRC plans and manages a program of basic College of Clinical Engineering Devteq Award. The and applied university research on behalf of its Devteq Award is given annually in recognition of participating members. significant work in the area of safety as it relates to Supriyo Datta and Mark Lundstrom also were health care. His work has provided basic knowledge co-recipients of the 2002 IEEE Cledo Brunetti of ventricular fibrillation, impedance measure- Award. Established in 1975 by the IEEE Board of ments, electric shock, and electrosurgery. Directors, the award is presented for outstanding Leah Jamieson received the Indiana Women & contributions in the field of miniaturization in the Hi Tech Leading Light Award in the Science, electronic arts. The award will be presented during Technology, or Engineering Educator category. The the 2002 IEEE International Electron Devices award recognizes women’s achievements in science Meeting in December. and technology and acknowledges women who Ed Delp received one of only six Nokia Fellow- demonstrated expertise, professionalism, leadership, ships from the Nokia Foundation for his work in service, courage and tenacity in pursuing their multimedia systems, video compression, and security. chosen career. Sue Ream, President, Board of The award allowed him to travel to Finland and Directors, Women & Hi Tech, said, “Women & Hi visit the Nokia Research Laboratories and the Tech consider it a great honor to present awards to Tampere International Center for Signal Processing women like you who have demonstrated excellence at the Tampere University in Tampere, Finland. in their careers in which technology has had an Delp was in good company when he received an impact. Your achievements and accomplishments honorary doctoral degree from the Tampere Univer- will very likely inspire other girls and women to set sity of Technology in Finland; Paavo Lipponen, their sights high in choosing and succeeding in Finland’s prime minister, received the same honor. technology related careers. Truly, this is a way to Delp was a visiting professor at the Finnish highlight the mission of our group: ‘Valuing university’s Tampere International Center for Signal Women’s Achievements in a Technology Driven Processing. The citation stated Delp’s honorary World’.” degree was issued “in recognition of your scientific Jamieson was one of three keynote speakers at work in the field of signal and image processing and the Institute for Women and Technology’s 4th annual 2 Wavelinks Fall/Winter 2002 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference. Jamieson spoke on “Engineering Com- Les Geddes munity, Passion and Balance.” The conference, Vincent Walter inspired by the legacy of U.S. Navy Adm. Grace Hopper, took place October 9-12, 2002 at Vancouver, British Columbia, and is the world’s largest gathering of women in computing. Kaushik Roy was invited to serve as a visiting professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and will teach one month each year there for the next three years. Michael Zoltowski was selected to be a 2003 Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Signal Process- ing Society. There are six Distinguished Lecturers chosen each year to represent the Society by giving Paavo Lipponen lectures on their research around the world. The & Ed Delp Society’s Distinguished Lecturer program provides means for individuals who are well-known educa- Marian Delp tors and authors in the fields of signal processing to lecture at chapter meetings. Mark Lundstrom Kaushik Roy & SupriyoDatta Vincent Walter Vincent Walter Michael Zoltowski John Underwood Vincent Walter Leah Jamieson The Purdue University School of Electrical & Computer Engineering 3 New Faculty Members Bring Diverse Research, Experience By Kathy Mayer With avocations ranging from photography to being a Dad, hailing from homelands as near as Indiana and as far as Iran, and with equally diverse research interests—from wearable computers to novel devices for high-frequency applications—six new faculty members bring their experiences to ECE this year. The following is a brief summary of backgrounds, educations, and research interests for each new faculty member; complete curriculum vitae are available on the ECE Web site at www.purdue.edu/ECE. the game in his new home. He also enjoys basket- Saurabh Bagchi: Writer, ball and appreciates Indiana’s enthusiasm for it. As for traveling, he says, “My goal is to visit all 50 Sportsman, Traveler states in the U.S.” He’s about a third of the way there. He’s also eager to learn more about his new place of residence. “I want to see how things are done in A creative writer, serious badminton player and the warm Midwestern way,” he says. avid traveler describe Saurabh Bagchi. He came to For now, his energies are focused on his new post. Purdue this fall from New York, where he worked the last year and a half at the IBM T. J. Watson “It’s been a long-cherished dream of mine to Research Center. teach, to talk to young minds,” he says. “They are challenging me, and I am challenging them as we “My passion is reading and writing,” he says, both travel on a voyage of discovery. That’s just and his goal is to publish a collection of his short what I have wanted.” stories. Many of them center on displaced people as they adapt to new cultures. In the stories, he says, Bagchi came to the U.S. from India, where a his characters “slowly realize that very few things high school experience creating a geographical are absolute good or absolute bad, but are a func- discovery system prompted his interest in computers. tion of the local culture.” Writing a novel, too, is “It seemed extremely cool to me. It was instant something he may tackle one day. gratification. You could dive in and immediately For sport, Bagchi is a serious contender on the run it and know if you succeeded or failed,” he says badminton court and he hopes to spark interest in of the 1990 class software project that included a 4 Wavelinks Fall/Winter 2002 New faculty members are (left to right) Yung-Hsiang Lu, Saurabh Baghi, William Chappell, Saeed Mohammadi, and Samuel Midkiff. Not pictured: Mithuna Thottethodi. John Underwood graphical interface so users could learn about his a prototype and a product. Even though it’s a Indian state, West Bengal. “I could really let my cliché, I feel ‘the sky is limit.’ And the freedom of an imagination go. Computer science is typically not academic institution is something I’ve come to value seen as an imaginative field, but this project showed greatly.” me that in this field I could really be as imaginative as I liked.” He earned a bachelor’s in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur, then headed to the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, where he earned a master’s in 1998 and a PhD in 2000.