Study Abroad

S P R I N G 2 0 0 8

and the Globalization of Engineering

1S P R I N G 2 0 0 8 M A G A Z I N E www.bu.edu/eng

SPRING 2008

EditorMichael Seele

Staff WritersKate Fink, Jason L. London

Design and ProductionBoston University Creative Services

PhotographyBoston University Photo Services, except where indicated

The BU College of Engineering Magazine is produced for the alumni and friends of the Boston University College of Engineering. Please direct any questions or comments to Michael Seele, Boston University College of Engineering, 44 Cummington Street, Boston, MA 02215. Phone: 617-353-2800; fax: 617-353-5929; e-mail: engalum@bu.edu;website: www.bu.edu/eng.

Boston University’s policies provide for equal opportunity and affirmative action in employment and admission to all programs of the University.

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COVER STORY

A World of LearningThree study-abroad programs for engineering sophomores help give students a global perspective.

FEATURESNew Graduate Degrees Planned for 2008

Alumna Heads Society of Women Engineers

Research Is ‘Heart’ Work

Young Innovators Add Spark to ENG Labs

Aerospace Alum Shoots for the Stars with New Movie, TV Series

In Memoriam: Moe Wasserman

DEPARTMENTSFrom the Dean

ENG News

Faculty News

Alumni Events

Class Notes

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COVER: Aaron Seaman (BME’09), fellowinternational Tel Aviv University studentSarah Dolgoy and David Scaduto(BME’09) traveled to the ancient city ofPetra, Jordan, during their semesterabroad in Tel Aviv, Israel. [Photo courtesyof Aaron Seaman]

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There is no more important mission for an engineering school thanpreparing its undergraduates for their careers. In today’s rapidly evolv-ing engineering landscape, we have an increased obligation to trans-form the undergraduate educational experience from the traditionalpedantic curriculum in explicit disciplines to a broader foundationalexperience for lifelong success.

Engineering, by its very nature, requires its practitioners to con-tinue to learn long after their formal education ends. This has neverbeen more true than today, when we can see an accelerated pace ofengineering innovation continuing for decades. Engineers need toevolve, and so do engineering schools.

At the College of Engineering, we’re taking on that challenge bybroadening the education of our students. While mastery of the techni-cal aspects of engineering must remain at the curriculum’s core, weneed to add new dimensions that will better prepare students for theworld of today and tomorrow.

We want to provide an undergraduate education that ensuresour graduates can be the creators—the artists, if you will—of the sci-entific and quantitative spheres. They need to understand how tech-nology works so they can be effective as innovators. They also need“soft” skills, such as the ability to communicate their technical ideasand concepts and galvanize a wide array of people, including thosewithout technological backgrounds and people from other cultures.Combine these skills with the ability to be lifelong learners, and ourgraduates have the potential to make real impacts that can better ourquality of life for generations to come.

The first thing we need to do is capture the imagination of fresh-men as soon as they arrive on campus. The traditional first-year cours-es focusing on math, science, physics and computing are designed tobuild the fundamental technical skills and are necessary. They arealso difficult, and unless students see how this material relates to theextraordinary innovation potential of their chosen major, we run therisk of turning them off to engineering right away. Also, a first-yearcourse explicitly dedicated to introducing students to areas in whichengineering advances society could help freshmen see the forestwhile they climb the trees.

We offer enrichment experiences that must expand so more stu-dents can take advantage of them. For example, the study abroad pro-gram we began in 2001 in Dresden, Germany, was immediatelypopular. Students crave the international experience, and a programthat enables engineering sophomores to fulfill their course require-ments overseas—and thus not delay their graduation—has great

appeal. We’ve added similar programs in Mexico and Israel, but thereremains more we can do.

We also are rapidly expanding the opportunities our studentshave to work in faculty research labs—this has emerged as anotherpopular endeavor for them and one where they are enjoying great suc-cess. We offer a great number of internship and co-op placements forour undergraduates that are heavily utilized.

Recently, the College expanded community service opportunitiesby establishing a chapter of Engineers Without Borders; our EWB stu-dents are now scouting a project that aims to bring electricity to aremote Peruvian village. More of these opportunities are needed at theglobal, national and local community levels.

We can also do more to broaden our students’ horizons righthere on campus. We have begun to explore joint courses with otherschools and colleges at BU that have special applications for engineers, among them a potential business-to-innovation program with the School of Management. There is also a new pro-gram in materials science and engineering that engages faculty and courses from engineering and other departments—like physics andchemistry—and which will support a minor available to all of ourengineering students.

Engineering leaders this century need a broad education thatgoes beyond the classroom and the laboratory. The engineering profes-sion is poised to make its most significant impact on human history inthe coming century and Boston University graduates should be on thecrest of that wave.

Capitalizing on established and emerginginterdisciplinary strengths, the College ofEngineering will offer new graduate degree pro-grams in Materials Science and Engineering,Biomedical Engineering, and SystemsEngineering in the fall.

The College plans to expand its master’sand doctoral programs in biomedical engineer-ing to include a Master of Engineering degree.Unlike the existing programs, the new degree willnot require a thesis and is aimed at biomedicalengineers working in industry. A similar degreein Systems Engineering, as well as a new Masterof Science degree, will complement the doctoralprogram in that area.

New programs in Materials Science andEngineering will include Master of Science anddoctoral degrees, the latter having both post-bachelor’s and post-master’s tracks. Courses inthe Materials Science and Engineering degreeprograms are likely to be drawn from the Collegeof Engineering as well as other departmentsthroughout Boston University, such as physicsand chemistry.

“The new degree programs in MaterialsScience and Engineering will be truly interdisci-plinary,” said Professor Soumendra Basu. “Theywill bring materials and researchers from variousdepartments and colleges into the same class-rooms and help build a community that fostersnew collaborative research ideas.”

While Boston University has not previ-ously offered a formal degree in MaterialsScience and Engineering, there has long beenmaterials science expertise among the faculty.Materials science applications to solid-statematerials, energy materials, biomaterials andmaterials processing have long been productivefaculty research avenues.

“Boston University is already home to out-standing materials scientists,” Professor TheodoreMoustakas said. “The new program will provide

faculty and students with a new base from whichto practice their interdisciplinary research.”

The Master of Engineering in BiomedicalEngineering has been developed specifically forstudents seeking careers in the biomedicalindustry and will focus on the transfer of inno-vation from research lab to practical use. The32-credit degree will allow students withcareers in the biomedical industry—as well asthose interested in entering the field—theopportunity to learn more about this area whilefocusing on topics relevant to industry, such asintellectual property and commercialization.The program is designed for students inter-ested in engineering design, development,manufacturing and management.

“The Master of Engineering in BME is aninnovative program that blends graduate-levelengineering coursework with topics related to technology evaluation, translation and intel-lectual property,” said Professor SolomonEisenberg, the BME chairman ad interim. “Wefeel this program will be more attractive to prac-ticing professionals than the more research-ori-ented M.S. program.”

Training students in complex systemsanalysis and control and decision sciences, the new Master of Science and Master ofEngineering degrees in Systems Engineeringwill augment the doctoral program and furthercapitalize on the research activities of facultyaffiliated with the Center for Information andSystems Engineering (CISE).

The new Systems Engineering programswill offer a balance between theory and appli-cation and will appeal to both industry profes-sionals and students continuing from abachelor’s with quantitative backgrounds. Themore research-based M.S. will require a thesis,while the M.Eng. will focus more on practicumwith advanced project work in lieu of a thesis.With a variety of minor concentration areas,graduates of these new programs will be ableto pursue either doctoral research or employ-ment opportunities in communications andnetworks, computational and systems biology,control systems and robotics, financial engi-neering, manufacturing systems and supplychains, and operations research.

“Systems engineering is a reflection of aworld increasingly consisting of many hardwareand software components with complex interac-tions that define a system,” said ProfessorChristos Cassandras. “This requires a sciencefor designing, managing and maintaining sucha system in diverse application environments.Indeed, engineering as a whole is rapidlybecoming more interdisciplinary.”

For more information on MaterialsScience and Engineering, send an e-mail tomaterialsscience@bu.edu. For details about thenew master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering,contact Rene Smith at smithr@bu.edu or 617-353-7609. For information on SystemsEngineering programs, contact Elizabeth Flaggat eflagg@bu.edu or 617-353-7609.

New Graduate DegreesPlanned for 2008

Engineering Education for the 21st CenturyBy Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen

By Jason L. London

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“The spirit we had going in to it was to let goof things here and not expect it to be Americain another place. I think that’s important for any-one studying abroad—the way to experience it isto let yourself be a part of it,” said Aaron Seaman(BME’09), who was among the first group of BUengineering students to study in Tel Aviv, Israel,in the spring of 2007. “There are differenceseveryplace.”

Take the dormitories, for example. “They were modest, which was fine,” said

Seaman’s roommate in Tel Aviv, David Scaduto(BME’09). “And difficult to keep clean, but that’sjust because they do it differently. The floors areall tile, and there’s a drain in the middle. You moveall the furniture out, splash a bucket of soapywater all over the floor, and use a big squeegeecalled a ‘magav’ on it. That’s cleaning the waythey do it.”

The two roommates soaked up the newculture and customs and thought the squeegeemethod was a clever way to clean, but with dif-ferential equations and circuit theory to learn,intensive Hebrew class, travel and trips to thenearby beach, somehow they just never foundthe time to give their accommodations such athorough treatment.

“Which led to sand buildup in multiplelocations in the room,” said Seaman. “Sandsticks to everything and will always return with you.”

The day-to-day differences in a foreigncountry may seem inconsequential, but, like thesand, these experiences accumulate overmonths spent abroad. Students’ lives changeand their views of the world and plans for thefuture shift.

As the workplace globalizes and engi-neers from far corners of the world work moreclosely together, the perspective gained bystudying abroad is rapidly becoming extremelyvaluable to engineering students.

“Living abroad definitely added an interna-tional emphasis to my life,” said Scaduto. “It’sdeepened my passion to reach out beyond ourborders to this whole global community. I think

By Kate Fink

A World of Learning

Engineering Students Gain a Global Perspective

Photo left: Aaron Seaman and Else Frohlich visit Thailand. [Photo courtesy of Aaron Seaman]

David Scaduto, Aaron Seaman, Anna Yanko and Erin Allen, the first BUengineering undergraduates to study abroad at Tel Aviv University in Israel.

David Scaduto visits Wadi Rum during his semester abroadat Tel Aviv University. [Photo courtesy of David Scaduto]

Dresden, Germany [Photo courtesy ofBU International Programs]

A troop of engineering students from BU and other univer-sities visited the statue of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engelsin Berlin. [Photo courtesy of Chris Vandevoordt]

Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, Guadalajara, Mexico [Photo courtesy of BU International Programs]

A statue of Lord Murugan stands at theentrance to Batu Cates near Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia. [Photo courtesy of Else Frohlich]

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and a Mexican culture adjusting to a new, tech-nological economy.

“Mexico has been restructuring its position from being a low-cost producer to ahigher-value, more strategic potential partnerwith companies in the United States, andGuadalajara is the center of a lot of that activity.It’s an interesting time for the InstitutoTecnológico de Monterrey, which is playing aleadership role in rethinking how to position theMexican technical economy in this evolvingglobal space,” said Eisenberg.

At each of these locations, students takethree engineering classes in order to continueseamlessly on to BU’s junior year curriculum,as well as a social science course in which theylearn about the culture and technology of thearea. Although the courses are taught inEnglish, an intensive language course is alsoincluded to facilitate the students’ integrationinto the local society during their semester-long stay.

Julia Delogu (AME’09) studied inGuadalajara during the spring 2007 semester.Though many students on the university campuscame from wealthy families and went home tofarms and lake houses during school vacations,she also saw extreme poverty off campus whenshe took a bus trip down the coast during aschool vacation with BU friends.

“One of the site coordinators volunteeredat a foster home for young boys in downtownGuadalajara,” said Delogu. “So I did that withher. It was nice to help out the community andimmerse myself in the society.”

In Dresden, Chris Vandevoordt (AME’08)and classmates went on engineering-relatedtrips to a uranium mine and the localVolkswagen factory, where they took a behind-the-scenes tour most visitors don’t see.

“One of my professors also showed mesome of the experiments he was doing over in Germany; it was really cool to see and to get to know the professors over there,” saidVandevoordt. He also met many German stu-dents by playing in an intramural basketballleague.

Scaduto and Seaman participated in TuB’Shvat—a holiday with Jewish origins observedacross Israel as a countrywide celebration oflife—by planting trees outside the city of Tel Aviv.

With many of the obstacles to travel nowremoved, the College continues to expand itsglobal offerings. Several juniors, includingSeaman, are studying in Singapore for the 2008spring semester, pioneering a new program atthe National University of Singapore. Futureofferings for juniors will include programs inEnglish-speaking countries such as Ireland,Australia or New Zealand, where students can

directly enroll in classes already held at univer-sities in these countries.

Singapore and future programs for juniors will involve much more independentplanning and preparation. Unlike the sopho-more programs, coursework is not specificallybuilt to fit the BU curriculum. Instead, juniorsenrolling at these institutions need to care-fully assess course offerings at internationaluniversities and decide whether the contentfits their needs and can be transferred backto BU.

Though the travel destination of engi-neering students is not specifically dictated bytheir majors—as it might be for an art studentgoing to Venice—no matter where they go, theexperience is enormously valuable.

After living abroad—where students speakthe native language, meet the people, eat thefood, travel independently and learn how localcompanies and universities work—they see theirown world with fresh eyes. These shifts in per-spective give them new ideas of where they wantto go in the future and the kind of differencesthey can make as engineers.

“It broadened my perspective,” said KelliBechly (BME’08), who studied in Dresden in thespring of 2005. “Someday, I really do want tolive in another country and now I realize that’snot unreachable.”

it also makes you realize that you are part of thishuman society. Yeah, you are American orIsraeli, but you’re all humans.”

This life-changing opportunity was virtuallyoff-limits to engineering students until recently.

BU pioneered unique study abroad pro-grams for sophomore engineering students in2001 by offering a semester in Dresden,Germany, expanding its offerings in 2006 toinclude Guadalajara, Mexico, and adding a pro-gram in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 2007.

Study abroad, long the provenance ofsocial science, language and liberal arts stu-dents, used to be so obstacle-strewn for engi-neering students that very few even tried to goabroad during college. The need for specifictechnical classes, coupled with language barri-ers, made study abroad nearly impossible forengineering students who wanted to stay ontrack to graduate in four years.

Although engineering students comprisejust three percent of the nearly quarter-millionAmerican students who study abroad eachyear, their ranks are growing. In 2005–06,engineering undergraduates traveling abroadnumbered 6,556, a 58 percent increase in justsix years.

At BU, 52 undergraduate engineering stu-dents studied abroad last year. In all, by the endof the 2008 spring semester, 233 students will

have participated in BU sophomore engineeringstudy abroad programs, including 23 studentsfrom other universities such as Brown, Tulaneand Vanderbilt.

“The point of the programs is that studentsdon’t have to sacrifice or make a choice betweenlosing time towards a degree or somehow notbeing able to fulfill their technical requirements.We’re trying to remove those barriers so that engi-neering students will be able to get all the bene-fits of going abroad,” said Associate Dean forUndergraduate Programs Solomon Eisenberg.“It’s well-roundedness, it’s an understanding ofbeing ‘the other,’ the notion of not speaking thelanguage and having to deal with that for awhile—all of those experiences that are reallytransformative.”

The rigid structure of engineering curric-ula dictates a specific order of class work thatbuilds upon each past semester. Though mostengineers around the world graduate with sim-ilar knowledge, each institution packages theinformation differently along the way, makingit tricky to find courses that fit the specific BUcurriculum.

BU’s study abroad programs solved theseproblems, freeing engineering students to study,live and learn in other parts of the world. In tai-lor-made classes, the host universities teach thespecific set of courses BU sophomores need.

The first engineering study abroad pro-gram at the Technical University of Dresden waspossible largely because of Boston University’sestablished presence there. It was already oneof many study abroad locations around theworld that the University had developed over theyears, and its faculty agreed to add engineeringcourses—taught in English—for BU sophomores.

“Boston University can leverage its positionas a major research institution with a wide net-work of international partnerships and existingcenters abroad to successfully develop programsof this kind,” said Ben DeWinter, AssociateProvost of International Education.

“Dresden is an interesting place becausethere’s a lot of economic development andindustry, and there’s a long history of technolog-ical development in the area,” said Eisenberg.

The first 12 engineering students traveledto Dresden in the spring of 2001. A total of 193students have now attended the TechnicalUniversity of Dresden; 30 students traveled toGuadalajara in that program’s first three years;and four students pioneered the Tel AvivUniversity offering in 2007, with another sixattending this spring.

The Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey inGuadalajara diversified the College’s offeringswith an experience different from that ofEurope, as well as close proximity to the U.S.

“The point of the programs is that students don’t have to sacrifice ormake a choice between losing time towards a degree or somehow notbeing able to fulfill their technical requirements.”

Dresden, Germany [Photo courtesy of BU International Programs] From left, Lauren Tuthill, Julie Sygiel of Brown University, Adam Detwiler, Carden Ryder,Natasha Stephenson and Andrew Rothman visit Guanajuato, Mexico on a BU-sponsored tripwhile studying abroad in Guadalajara, Mexico. [Photo courtesy of Julia Delogu]

Julia Delogu (AME’09) visits the ancient city of Teotihuacánnear Mexico City during her semester abroad in Guadalajara,Mexico. [Photo courtesy of Julia Delogu]

Aaron Seaman (left) and David Scaduto plant trees during theTu B’Shvat holiday while studying abroad in Tel Aviv, Israel.

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Michelle Tortolani (BS’82, MS’89) special-izes in networking—at grocery stores, on top oftall buildings, and with a nationwide commu-nity of women engineers. In her day job, sheweaves together networks of radio waves forXM Satellite Radio Inc., and as the president ofthe Society of Women Engineers (SWE), sheconnects students, engineers, corporationsand policy makers.

The SWE announced Tortolani’s appoint-ment as the organization’s 45th president inAugust of 2007. She has been a member since her freshman year at the College ofEngineering and will hold the position for the2008 fiscal year. SWE, founded in 1950, is anot-for-profit educational and service organiza-tion that offers aspiring engineers and workingwomen engineers career guidance, profes-sional development and a supportive commu-nity of 20,000 peers.

Tortolani’s career path began with a con-versation at a grocery store, where she had a

summer job during high school and where shemet a co-worker who was studying electricalengineering in college.

“I told him I liked math and science andhe said, ‘Well, did you think about engineer-ing?’ I hadn’t heard about it at high school,”said Tortolani.

With engineering in mind, Tortolaniheaded to Boston University from her home inRhode Island, entered the College ofEngineering, joined SWE during the secondsemester of her freshman year, and became thegroup’s treasurer. After college, her life andcareer took her around the country, but Tortolanimaintained her connection to SWE in the LosAngeles, Orange County, Boston, Houston and—now—Baltimore-Washington sections. Tortolanihas held a variety of positions for the Society atthe sectional, regional and national levels andhas helped lead initiatives that strengthen thesociety’s membership, professional develop-ment and public policy programs.

“SWE gives you different things at differ-ent times throughout your life,” said Tortolani. “Asa college student, I joined SWE to learn moreabout the career opportunities in my chosen dis-cipline, electrical engineering, as a resource forfinding summer and permanent employment,and to meet other women engineers.”

During her junior year at BU, Tortolaniattended the 1981 SWE National Conferenceand met a representative of Hughes AircraftCompany at the event’s career fair. After grad-uation, this connection led her to Los Angelesfor her first engineering job. Three years later,she returned to BU to complete a master’sdegree in electrical engineering because sheliked the small size and personalized attentionof the graduate program.

Having worked at large companiesbefore and during her master’s degree studies,Tortolani decided to make a change.

“It was my goal to make the transitionfrom engineer to manager, and you can do it

By Kate Fink

As the president of the Society of Women Engineers, Michelle Tortolani delivers a speech at the organization’s 2007 annual meeting.

Overcoming Obstaclesthrough NetworkingAlum Michelle Tortolani, 2008 president of the Society of Women Engineers, finds ways to be heard

In a survey of past participants of theDresden program conducted in 2006 by theCollege of Engineering, 49 of 61 respondentssaid they thought their experience would influ-ence what they will be doing in 10 years. A thirdof the students also said they were interested inworking abroad in the future.

Upon his return, Seaman took a look athow he could best achieve his long-term goalsof working abroad and using his engineeringeducation to solve international problems.

“I want to do things now in my educationso that I can facilitate that dream of helping peo-ple, but in a way they want, rather than just goingin there and saying, ‘I’m the American, I haveeverything and you don’t have anything,’ becausethat’s not true. I’ve learned in my travels that a lotof people who have less money and things thanwe do actually have a lot more,” he said.

The global awareness and independencefostered by studying abroad also make stu-dents more appealing to employers.

“It’s increasingly likely that in theircareers, students are going to be working onglobal teams with colleagues around the world.The nature of how we work is changing very rap-idly in technical fields,” said Eisenberg.

“It completely changed the way I wasplanning my life after graduation,” said Ray

Taylor (MFG’08), a Dresden program alum. “Iwant the beginning of my engineering careerto be as diverse as possible. I’m looking forrotational programs where you get to go to dif-ferent locations instead of staying in one place.I appreciate change; I want to be in differentsituations and have to face challenges that Iwouldn’t otherwise have.”

Mike McCullough (ENG’03), who works atGE Aviation in Lynn, Massachusetts, partici-pated in the first engineering study abroadsemester in Dresden and experienced a simi-lar feeling when he returned to the U.S.

“Complete immersion in a different cul-ture was the biggest benefit of my study abroadexperience,” McCullough says. “My conven-tional thinking was challenged as I was con-stantly forced to consider alternate approachesto common and routine tasks—like groceryshopping—and technical and specialized con-cepts like German engineering.”

After college, he entered a GE rotationalprogram, working at four locations over twoyears, then traveled “100 percent of the time”for two more years to GE offices throughout theU.S., Europe, and Central and South America.“Thanks to my study abroad experience, I waswell prepared to work through many culturalbarriers and now have a global perspective.”

As part of a team that recruits new grad-uates, McCullough now looks for these qualitiesin people he hires. Seeing study abroad experi-ence on a résumé means “that person can eas-ily adapt to new situations and the associatedchallenges.”

Engineering students face new chal-lenges every day when living and studyingabroad. Each piece of this experience—tryingto order food in a foreign language; navigatingnew cities; finding that shops close at 2 p.m. onFridays in preparation for the Sabbath in TelAviv; realizing that in a German engineeringclass instructions to ‘sketch’ a sine curve meanprecisely graphing the line or precious pointswill be lost; or having friendly arguments aboutwhether to converse in Spanish or Englishbecause students of each nationality want toimprove their skills in the other’s language—adds to their understanding. By the end of asemester far removed from the familiarity ofBoston, students have learned about them-selves, engineering as a global discipline andthe ever-shrinking world around them.

Vandevoordt said, “It might sound kind ofcheesy, but our motto is ‘We Change the Waythe World Works,’ and you actually have toknow the way the world works before you canchange it.”

Aaron Seaman (far left) walks into the ancient city ofPetra. [Photo courtesy of David Scaduto]

Alumni of the Dresden study-abroad program, from left,Benoit Schmitlin, Edwin Cheung and Jessica Peters

Students studying in Dresden visit the Königstein uranium mine,in use until 1991. From left, Eddie Walton, Kevin Burek, ChristineReinders, Raymond Taylor, Timothy Cieslak and Kyle Kasparek. [Photo courtesy of Chris Vandevoordt]

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more quickly if you jump into a small company.So when I moved to Washington, D.C., I startedwith a small systems engineering company,”said Tortolani.

Eight years ago, she joined XM SatelliteRadio Inc., a company headquartered inWashington, D.C. The XM system broadcasts adigital radio signal via geostationary orbit satel-lites and terrestrial repeaters to mobilereceivers in personal automobiles, commercialtrucks, recreation vehicles, and to portable andhome-based receivers in the continentalUnited States.

“What attracted me was the exciting newtechnology. I like to get in on the front end ofdevelopment and be a part of defining therequirements for a system,” she said. Now asenior director of repeater engineering andoperations, Tortolani keeps many urbanmotorists happy by making sure the music pro-grams and talk shows they want to hear reachtheir radios in an uninterrupted stream.

Tall buildings can block radio signals incities, obstructing XM satellite reception. Toovercome this problem, a network of terres-trial repeaters broadcasts the same programsas the satellites. The repeaters, each aboutthe size of a refrigerator, perch on rooftopsand tower structures, where they receive anddecode the satellite signal, modulate a differ-ent waveform, and amplify and broadcast the terrestrial XM signal, assuring that cus-tomers can tune in without interruption inurban areas.

Tortolani manages the development andimplementation of these repeater networks. Atfirst, she traveled to cities across the countryas the repeater hardware went into action; shenow works on designing and developingimprovements to it and managing the manyvendors that maintain and repair the networkequipment.

“What I find most exciting in my job isthe opportunity to manage a program fromthe system perspective and to be responsiblenot only for the technical aspect but also the financial, management, performance and implementation beginning to end,” saidTortolani.

She also gets to take advantage of herown handiwork. “Right now I’m listening to TopTracks, station number 46,” (a classic rock

hits channel and one of XM’s more than 170stations). “Whenever I get in someone else’scar, they want to let me pick the station, but I say, ‘No, listen to what you like to listen to.’ It’s interesting. You get introduced to dif-ferent channels you might not check out onyour own.”

Tortolani approaches her SWE presi-dency in a similar way—by emphasizing solidnetworking and keeping an ear tuned to members’ feedback.

“There are two initiatives that I am par-ticularly passionate about personally and inwhich SWE, as an organization, has made sig-nificant progress—professional developmentand public policy,” she said. According toTortolani, these areas, previously weaknessesof SWE, are now strengths of the Society.

Four years ago SWE did not have astrong national professional development pro-gram; today, members give rave reviews toSWE’s offerings that allow working membersto view webcasts live or replay them at a moreconvenient time later. Members asked for programming addressing different careerstages and paths and the issues membersencounter in the work force. SWE has steppedin to fill this need with professional develop-ment tracks, from young professionals to managers and executives, consisting of face-to-face seminars, webinars, podcasts and discussion groups. SWE also offers profes-sional development programs for collegiatemembers.

In public policy, Tortolani aims to makeSWE the government’s primary resource onwomen in Science, Technology, Engineeringand Mathematics (STEM) fields. SWE has writ-ten position papers, briefed Congress andchairs the planning committee for the newlyformed Congressional Diversity and InnovationCaucus. In this role, SWE will plan briefingsand educational programs for members ofCongress and their staffs on the importance ofdiversity in STEM fields.

“There is a lot of opportunity in engineer-ing. SWE membership means different thingsto different members, but we are all driven bythe underlying goal to be a positive force forwomen in the world of engineering and tech-nology,” said Tortolani. “Networking is still atthe core of SWE.”

The earliest recorded successful cardiacsurgery dates to 1896, when German physi-cian Ludwig Rehn repaired a stab wound to apatient’s right ventricle. In the 100-plus yearssince, cardiac surgery has evolved to includethe complex repair of injuries, birth defectsand diseased tissue. Despite tremendousadvances in medical technology, limitations incardiac surgery remain.

Professor Pierre Dupont (AME) is workingto overcome these barriers by developing surgi-cal instruments and imaging technology soopen-heart surgery can more often become aminimally invasive procedure.

“On a variety of fronts, we’re trying to pro-duce a new model for how heart surgery isdone,” Dupont said. “I’d like to see the pointwhere we’re not cutting the heart open as oftenas we do now. That’s going to require the devel-opment and integration of new instrumentationand imaging technology and a fresh perspectiveon surgical techniques.”

Dupont’s most recent research stemsfrom a five-year, $5 million National Institutes ofHealth grant he received in collaboration withChildren’s Hospital of Boston to develop mini-mally invasive surgical instruments to fight dis-ease and repair defects inside the human heart.The goal of the grant, which began in the sum-mer of 2007, is to develop instruments that willeliminate many of the limitations of minimallyinvasive cardiac surgery. The instruments wouldenter the chest and heart wall through needle-sized incisions and snake their way—under sur-geon control—to the surgical site.

“There are two approaches to repairingproblems inside the heart: open-heart surgeryand catheter-based interventions,” Dupontsaid. “With catheters, you don’t have to cut thechest and heart open, but in comparison toopen heart surgery, what you can accomplishis limited. We’re trying to incorporate the bestof both approaches. We want to produce instru-ments as minimally invasive as catheters, whileproviding the precision and control of open-heart surgery.”

Exceeding current levels of precision andcontrol requires more than improved instru-mentation, Dupont said. Enhanced imagingtechniques are also needed to enable the surgeon to navigate instruments through thebeating heart.

“Instrumentation and imaging is a hand-in-hand effort,” he said.

On this front, Dupont is in the final yearof another five-year grant to study real-time,improved three-dimensional imaging for cardiacsurgery. This research has focused on adaptingultrasound techniques so that instruments andcardiac tissue, which have very differentacoustic properties, can be imaged simultane-ously during surgery.

“We’ve made a lot of progress,” Dupontsaid. “Our clinical partners are now convincedthey can reliably perform simple surgeries insidethe beating heart under ultrasound guidance.For more complex repairs, though, there’s morework to be done.”

Although developments in instrumenta-tion and imaging are in the early stages, Duponthopes these advances will have a lasting influ-ence on cardiac surgery.

“Academia is a profession where it is veryeasy to become so specialized that only a fewpeople in the world care about your research,”Dupont said. “But if your research is finding bet-ter ways to fix their hearts, everyone is inter-ested. I don’t want to disappoint them.”

Research Is ‘Heart’ WorkPierre Dupont tackles the limitations of cardiac surgery

By Jason L. London

“SWE membershipmeans different thingsto different members,but we are all drivenby the underlying goalto be a positive forcefor women in theworld of engineeringand technology.”

Pierre Dupont’s (AME) research in instrumentation and imaging willmake cardiac surgery more precise and less invasive.

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Young Innovators Add Spark to ENG LabsFor many college students, summer workis hardly extraordinary. They may wait tablesor perhaps work as camp counselors in aneffort to earn extra money and pass the timebetween academic years. When schoolresumes, summer jobs are left behind andlargely forgotten.

Not so for 30 College of Engineeringundergraduates who spent last summerbuilding a working satellite for the U.S. AirForce’s University Nanosatellite CompetitionProgram. Under the guidance of ProfessorTed Fritz (CAS) and doctoral student DavidVoss (ENG’09), the BU team was among 11others also representing universities giventhe chance to design and build a workingsatellite, with the winning invention guaran-teed a launch into space.

Much more than a summer project, thecompetition began in February 2007 and will

Shewanella oneidensis lives contently with orwithout oxygen. It will eat metal for breakfast ifthat’s all that’s around. About a hundred of thesetiny bacteria could fit end-to-end in the dot of thisi. Their DNA and energy-producing machineryfloat within the soup of their tiny cytoplasmicinnards, all bound together by two plasma mem-branes and a thin cell wall.

Despite its diminutive size, S. oneiden-sis—along with many helpful human labmatesand advisors—has become an inspirationalteacher for three engineering undergraduates.Rahul Ahuja, David Shi and Christian Ling (allBME’09) have made the bacteria, fondly knownto the group as “Shewy,” their near-constantcompanion in the lab and have learned numer-ous lessons from it as they research and tinkerwith the bacteria’s inner workings.

The three students teamed up last summer to work full time in the laboratory on

By Kate FinkBy Jason L. London

dfd

Studentteam buildsa satellite

Undergrads takeon real-worldchallenges in advancedresearch

dfd Aaron DesRosiers showcases the work he and

teammates have been doing on a nanosatelliteproject for the U.S. Air Force.

Rahul Ahuja holds a Petri dish smeared withShewanella oneidensis, the tiny bacteria that takecenter stage in his research.

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“We’ve maintained a solid core of stu-dents who are putting in significant time andenergy and really want to do this,” Voss said.“We’re there to give guidance and act as qual-ity assurance, but the students just took to itand ran with it—finding NASA standards,working together and asking, ‘How are youdesigning this board or that device?’”

Last spring, the students were dividedinto groups to work on subsystems, such ascommand and data handling, system housingand attitude control and determination. After alate-semester project concept review, the teamdecided to work over the summer.

The Air Force provided $110,000 for theproject, but most of it was spent on materials,leaving little for student summer wages. Fritzraised another $100,000 from BU faculty andadministration that funded their full-time work.

“I never would have thought I’d be build-ing a satellite for the U.S. Air Force,” said ChrisCalvitto (AME’08). “It’s a nice thing to stick onyour résumé. We get to design what we want todo, rather than being told exactly what has tohappen. It’s our satellite.”

The group worked throughout the sum-mer building the initial design. In late August,Fritz and a small group of students traveledto the University of Utah at Logan for themandated Preliminary Design Review beforeAir Force and industry officials. The 45-minute presentation covered the blueprintand design aspect of the satellite.

“There really weren’t too many ques-tions that we couldn’t answer,” said Calvitto.“We got some good feedback from the AirForce and the general consensus was that itwent well. We were a lot further along thansome groups.”

“The guys who went did a great job,” saidFritz, who has joint appointments in CAS andENG. “A panel of reviewers from industry, aca-demia, NASA and the Air Force was reallyimpressed with their work. It showed themwhat they needed to do going forward.”

With summer gone but the design com-petition not yet half over, the students realizedthat their work had just begun. For many, it wasan eye-opening first attempt at the researchand design aspect of engineering.

“Not only do we have to build a workingsatellite,” said Joe Aghia (AME’08), “but wehave to test over and over to make sure whatwe’re doing is actually feasible.”

“(The students) never realize that debug-ging takes just as long as the design work,”said Voss. “The hardest part of the whole com-petition is staying on schedule. The biggestproblem the students have is saying, ‘No prob-lem, I can get that done.’”

With the blueprint portion of the satellitecompleted, the team spent the fall preparingfor their Critical Design Review (CDR) that willtake place this spring, which Voss calls the“biggest review by far.” While maintaining theirregular class schedule, the students willdesign and present “breadboards,” or over-sized working prototypes. Air Force officials willtravel to BU to review the proposed satellite.

“For the CDR, you have to prove to the AirForce that what you’re doing will actually work,”Voss said. “If it’s not ready for the CDR, morethan likely it won’t be ready in time.”

During the fall semester, select stu-dents, including Erasmo Rodriguez (AME’08)

Ahuja, Shi and Ling work on mutating the bac-teria’s genes to create a strain that efficientlyproduces much more electricity—up to 1,000times more—a needed improvement before thebugs can be put to work in fuel cells.

The project opened the door for thesethree students to experience working asresearch scientists, complete with frustrationsand “eureka” moments. Throughout the Collegeof Engineering’s labs, they are among manyundergrads who are stepping up to lab benches,computers and complex machinery to take onmeaningful and productive roles in research.Undergraduates who seek out research experi-ences at ENG find a wealth of opportunities andadd a new facet to their education.

“As soon as we step into the lab, we knowwe’re there on our own time—we’re choosing to bethere, it’s not for a grade or anything,” said Ling.“We’re there for our own benefit. When you havethat understanding, it really makes you approacheverything that comes at you in lab a different way.There have been times when we’ve been frus-trated and we’ve spent a lot of hours but we’vehandled it ourselves—this experiment is a reflec-tion of our own efforts, thoughts and ideas.”

Every engineering student completes a se-nior project, but beyond this, seven distinct pro-grams—as well as funding under individualprofessors’ grants—help bring undergraduate engi-neering students into the world of research.Students can also seek out unique opportunitiessuch as the iGEM team’s experiment, for whichtheir advisor, Assistant Professor Tim Gardner(BME), helped them secure funding from theCollege, the BME Department and Pfizer, Inc.

In each of the past two years, more than130 engineering undergraduates participated inresearch projects outside of class and senior proj-ect requirements. Some jump into research as earlyas freshman year through the Engineering Scholarsprogram, or participate through the UndergraduateResearch Opportunities Program. Others areawarded Trustee, Bell and FIRST scholarships, orget Supplemental Undergraduate Research Funds.Some programs are sponsored by outside agen-cies, like the National Science Foundation’sResearch Experience for Undergraduates, whileENG alumni make the Summer Term AlumniResearch Scholars program possible by donatingthe students’ summer housing costs. During thesummer, students work full time on research and

typically cut back to about 10 hours per week in labduring the academic year.

“It’s very pleasant working with under-grads because their pragmatic, problem-solvingapproach focuses on delivering products, versusthe more long-term research process of the gradstudents,” said Professor Tom Little (ECE), whohas two undergraduates working for him. “Thestudents who participate in research labs reallyget something special they can put on theirrésumés, and that stands out when they applyto graduate school, internships, co-ops or full-time jobs. They’ve got a rich experience they cantalk about.”

Undergrads can face some steep chal-lenges when they set foot in research labs, suchas learning advanced technology and techniques,working autonomously and tackling projects muchlarger in scope than those they are assigned inclass. Students who express interest and approacha professor for work—who want to be there—comeaway with valuable expertise in solving real, long-term engineering problems, said Little.

The iGEM team set out with expansivegoals. First, they had to learn how to effectivelyinsert new genetic material into Shewy to control

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dda project for the International GeneticallyEngineered Machines (iGEM) competition.More than 50 student teams from around theworld enter the friendly contest that culminatesin a November Jamboree at MIT. Each teamworks throughout the summer to create a bac-teria-based project within the field of syntheticbiology that applies engineering principles to liv-ing things. Researchers in the field create andmanipulate interchangeable pieces of DNA toprogram bacteria to perform specific tasks.

The BU team works on S. oneidensisbecause of this bacteria’s unique ability to pro-duce electrical energy. The bacteria churn outa current that might eventually feed into fuelcells, providing a source of clean, green energy.It may also prove handy for decontaminating soilor water because, in producing its electric cur-rent, it can feed on harmful metals. But, Shewy“in the wild” generates only a weak current.

Undergrads take on real-worldchallenges in advanced research

Student team builds a satellite

Photo right: Rahul Ahuja (BME’09), Christian Ling (BME’09)and David Shi (BME’09) bring their game faces to lab asthey mold the genetic make-up of Shewanella oneidensisto fit the jobs they have planned for the bacteria.

Photo right: Aaron DesRosiers, Adrial Wallick and PeterArgue (all ECE’08) talk over the details of their nanosatellitecomponents during a Saturday work session with the team.

not announce a winner until January 2009, giving participants a two-year window to designa device that will hover over the aurora bore-alis. The measurements and images from thesatellite will test an existing computer model ofauroras to help better predict space weatherthat can potentially damage spacecraft elec-tronics and communication networks for cellphones and pagers.

“This is rocket science,” said Voss, whocompeted in the Nanosatellite Competition asan undergraduate at Taylor University. “The‘build-a-satellite-from-scratch’ idea reallyappeals to an engineer’s mentality.”

In January 2007, Fritz and Voss learnedthat their proposal was accepted by the AirForce and immediately set about recruitingstudents for the project, most of whom remainon the team.

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and Avi Gunda (AME’08), traveled to KirtlandAir Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico,for a two-day satellite fabrication course spon-sored by the Air Force.

“It painted a picture of everything weneed to do to make it succeed,” Rodriguez said.“One mistake can set you back a long time—something you may not realize until the launchcan set you back years.”

The design team is learning that everymistake comes with a lesson.

“It’s a great opportunity to do hands-onresearch on a project,” Gunda said. “We’rereally learning things we’ve never encounteredin a classroom.”

Spring 2008 marks the midpoint of thetwo-year competition and the design teamstill has a long road ahead before it can pro-duce a working satellite. After the CDR, theteam faces a Flight Qualification Review inAugust—which includes the testing of anactual spacecraft—and their final review inJanuary of 2009.

“We have about two years to do this,”Voss said. “NASA generally spends five to 10

years building a spacecraft. If we don’t haveflight hardware by January of 2009, we can’twin. The students are not only building it, buttraining themselves in the proper procedures forbuilding a spacecraft. And they’re doing itaround their classes.”

Regardless of whether the BU entry winsthe Nanosatellite Design Competition, the two-year endeavor will ultimately provide studentswith the type of knowledge, training and expe-rience they wouldn’t get in a classroom setting.

“It’s great for everything,” Voss said.“You learn in these projects how to do theentire research process, which is such a diffi-cult thing to know how to do. That’s the pur-pose from the Air Force standpoint—trainingthe next work force.”

Despite long summer hours, someSaturday lab sessions during the semester andthe usual pratfalls that come with any researchand design, the students agreed with Voss.

“We’ve had to learn things that haven’tbeen taught to us in class yet,” JonathanMesser (AME’09) said. “Something thatshould seem pretty simple isn’t at all. We’ve

had to go on a few wild goose chases to figureout how to do it.”

“I never expected to be working on aspacecraft and actually have something toshow for it,” said Jeanette Hancock (AME’08).“In classrooms, you’re doing what the professorasks. Here, we’re all working together or we’reall failing together.”

And, at the very least, they had an inter-esting summer job.

“I was explaining to my friends thatwhat I did over the summer was actuallyrocket science,” Messer said. “And should wewin, we’ll actually be sending something up inspace. They were pretty flabbergasted.”

first day, they said, ‘Here’s the chamber. You’regoing to be getting this thing working.’ And I said,‘What is it?’ And now, I feel like I could teach aclass on e-beam evaporation and vacuum cham-bers,” said Tuttle.

“The best thing is how much I learneddoing it,” he said. “You’re applying things you’velearned in class to real, physical problems.When you’re doing a book problem, it’s set up

so you can find an answer a specific way. Whenyou’re looking at a real one, which is what youcome across in research, there’s much morethat can happen.”

Ahuja, of the iGEM team, agrees. “Themain difference I felt working on this researchcompared to class labs is the bigger picture. Forlabs, we’d have different steps broken down overa couple of weeks, like a cookbook procedure.But now, with the research, we have to keep allthese things in mind—what we’ve accomplishedand why we’re doing certain steps.”

Teams of 10 to 20 students from acrossthe U.S. and England, Argentina, China and othercorners of the globe came to present their workat the iGEM competition at MIT. Most had projects that had been passed on from year toyear and from team to team. The BU threesome,undaunted by their small group and rookie status, presented their work with aplomb.

“People really enjoyed it and we drew themin from other presentations. I feel like we’re defi-nitely making a positive contribution to this typeof research,” said Shi.

The BU iGEMers are already back in thelab and will continue working on the project

through the 2007–2008 academic year andlikely for a second summer as well. They arefinding that the experience is shaping theirgoals and aspirations for the future.

Shi plans to enroll in medical school at BUafter graduating from ENG. “I understand thatbeyond the doctor-to-patient interaction, there arenew medical technologies being developed andnew medical ideas that are just as important thatI may pursue in medical school,” he said.

Ganick realized that the work he’s donein Little’s lab is what he wants to keep on doing.“I really think I’d like to do hardware design andapplications with security and vision systems—pretty much exactly what I’m doing here.” He’spursuing an internship with the Federal AviationAdministration to work on developing hardwarefor airport surveillance and security.

The entire experience enriches students,improves their interaction with professors andachieves the ultimate purpose of these opportu-nities: advancing the research itself.

Advisor Tim Gardner said of the iGEMtrio, “They’re identifying problems, solving themand exceeding my expectations wildly. They’redynamite.”

its metabolism, then alter these genes to createan array of Shewy mutants, each with a differentmetabolism. The team then needed to identifyonly those organisms that demonstrated spectac-ular ability to create electricity, isolate them andput them to work in fuel cells.

This master plan was complicated byShewy’s relative novelty on the research scene;researchers have worked with it for less than adecade. Procedures that are simple and wellestablished with E. coli, the ubiquitous bacteria ofbiological research, can become complicated inShewy, requiring extended periods of experimen-tation to find new ways to accomplish otherwisestandard tasks. In doing this, the iGEM team raninto one of the fundamental difficulties with bio-logical research—uncertainty.

“Even though we haven’t made a lot of for-ward progress, we’ve made a lot of lateral progressin terms of finding different ways to do things,” saidLing. “Every day when we go in, even if somethingfails, when we go back and look at our procedure,there’s always something we can pick up on. Thiskind of research really opens up your eyes.”

They developed new nuances in how to best work with Shewy and established

protocols for procedures that no one had yetperfected in the bacteria.

Another student researcher, Aaron Ganick(ECE’10), works in Little’s electrical engineeringlab on a video monitoring system that uses verylittle energy so ecologists can monitor remoteareas over long time spans. His new 360-degreehyperbolic mirror lets the camera see in all direc-tions without wasting valuable energy to changeits field of view.

“The hardest thing I’ve done was this hyper-bolic mirror,” Ganick said. “It took months of look-ing through documented papers. There are allsorts of equations and differential equations thatgo along with the mirror profile. I had to searchthrough tons of MATLAB software and find a pro-gram to help me make a mirror for the angles wewanted to view. And, it’s a very expensive piece,so you really can’t screw it up.”

Matt Tuttle (AME’09) works in AssociateProfessor Michael Gevelber’s (MFG) materials pro-cessing lab refurbishing a vacuum chamber usedto test methods of depositing optical coatingsusing electron beams.

“When I first came into it, I didn’t even knowwhat the system was or anything about it. On the

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“You’re applyingthings you’velearned in classto real, physicalproblems.”

“In classrooms,you’re doing whatthe professor asks.Here, we’re allworking togetheror we’re all failingtogether.”

Photo right: With the hyperbolic mirror he designedreflecting every move he makes, Aaron Ganick(ECE’10) works on his energy-conserving videomonitoring system.

From left, Kyle Willis (ECE’08), Erasmo Rodriguez(AME’08) and Chris Calvitto (AME’08) work throughthe challenges of moving their nanosatellite from atwo-dimensional drawing to a three-dimensionalprototype (far right).

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Most aerospace engineers hope the publicnever associates tragedy, doubt and despair withtheir work. Stewart O’Nan (AME’83), however,thrives on these themes.

O’Nan’s career in engineering veered in anunconventional direction in 1993 when he left ajob in aerospace engineering to become a writer.He has since written 12 novels, co-written a bookon the Boston Red Sox with Stephen King, editedcollections of fiction, and now continues hisupward trajectory as the stars of Hollywood por-tray the characters from his book Snow Angels ina movie adaptation of the novel.

The book delves into the lives of small-townButler, Pennsylvania, residents in 1973.Trombone-playing teenager Arthur Parkinsonmarches through high school as his family crum-bles. Parkinson’s former babysitter and co-workerat a Chinese restaurant, Annie Marchand, sepa-rates from her husband, has an affair and dealswith a life in which doors of opportunity keep clos-ing. A tragic death punctuates the end of the story.

The film version debuted at the SundanceFilm Festival in January 2007 and opened in lim-ited release in the U.S. on March 7, 2008. KateBeckinsale stars as Annie Marchand, SamRockwell plays her alcoholic husband andMichael Angarano plays Arthur Parkinson.

O’Nan himself steered clear of involvementin the film. The film’s director, David GordonGreen, wrote the screen adaptation of O’Nan’snovel, making some significant changes in thefilm version, including pulling the setting forwardfrom 1973 to the present. He also added somehumor to make the dark storylines more palat-able for audiences.

“For my sanity, it’s important that I see thebook and the movie as separate works,” saidO’Nan. “I’m happy that someone felt stronglyenough about the book that they wanted to makea movie of it, and I’m grateful they’ve succeeded.”

Even while studying engineering at BUand then working as an aerospace engineer,

almost all of O’Nan’s spare time was consumedwith books.

“I’ve always been a big reader. Thelibrary’s my favorite place in the world and hasbeen since I was little. Even when I was work-ing at Grumman, I was reading heavy-dutystuff at lunchtime,” he said. “Gradually, Ibegan to spend most of my free time readingand writing. Work all day, drive home, go down in the basement and write, then stay up late reading, wake up the next day and doit again.”

Eventually his wife intervened, making himrealize he wanted to write more than anythingelse. He left his engineering job at age 28.

“It’s still true 20 years later,” said O’Nan.“I’d rather be reading and writing than anythingelse. Besides being at Fenway, maybe.”

The big screen debut of his work may soonbe followed by the small screen. His book,Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox FansChronicle the Historic 2004 Season, co-writtenwith fellow fan Stephen King, is being developedinto a TV miniseries, likely for release in 2008.

Aerospace Alum Shoots for the Stars with New Movie, TV Series

By Kate Fink

Funding the early stages of academic researchcan be challenging. Innovative ideas foraddressing important problems often begin asjust that—ideas. The next step is to performearly-stage research to establish proof-of-prin-ciple. Often, the more novel or higher risk theidea, the harder it is to attract financial back-ing. To realize solutions, financial support isnecessary. Unfortunately, recent budget cutsat major funding agencies like the NationalInstitutes of Health and the National ScienceFoundation have made funding increasinglydifficult to come by.

To combat this reality and to advancepromising faculty research ideas, DeanKenneth R. Lutchen instituted the Dean’sCatalyst Awards in May 2007. The newawards provide seed money for promisinginterdisciplinary research, allowing projectsto get off the ground and generate the kindof initial results that are likely to win grantsfrom major funding agencies.

A faculty committee reviewed 16 pro-posals submitted by interdisciplinary teamsinvolving 37 faculty members and selectedfive projects for grants totaling $162,000.The committee apparently chose wisely, asthree of the related projects won externalfunding within six months.

“The Dean’s Catalyst Awards are sonamed because they are intended to cat-alyze and accelerate high-risk, high-impactresearch to a point deserving of next-stagefunding,” Lutchen said. “It’s difficult to attractearly-stage funding for these types of proj-ects, which are interdisciplinary and lie at theinterface of basic and applied science. Theseawards are an investment in our vision forinterdisciplinary research.”

Professor Thomas Little, AssociateProfessor Janusz Konrad and AssistantProfessor Prakash Ishwar (all ECE) used theDean’s Catalyst Award to explore the devel-

opment of a wireless, low-power video sensornetwork that records a coastal ecosystemand transmits selected information back to abase station for review.

The three are well on their way toachieving their goal—in September, theyreceived a three-year, $450,000 grant fromthe National Science Foundation to developa 50-sensor network to observe woodlandanimals at Boston University’s Sargent Campand study shorebirds and grey seals at aUniversity of Massachusetts Field Station inNantucket, Massachusetts.

“The Dean’s Catalyst Award was instru-mental in our being able to create a prototypefor the field station—it funded the creation ofthe sensor network hardware. And based onthe availability of the equipment, the NSFwas able to award us a much broader proj-ect,” Little said.

“It can be difficult to get grants becausethe ideas can be controversial,” said award win-ner Assistant Professor Kamil Ekinci (AME).

“They are not super-intuitive. The Dean’sCatalyst Awards serve as a proof of concept,[which] often leads to external funding.”

Along with Professor Viktor Yakhot(AME), Ekinci is researching the vibration ofnanoscale wires in lab-on-a-chip devices sub-merged in liquid. Their goal is to createdevices that work in water without losing thecharacteristics they exhibit in air. While theconcept has been successful in a gas, theDCA grant has allowed them to further theirresearch with extensive water testing.

Since the award, Ekinci and Yakhot’snanoscale work has been published inPhysical Review Letters and the Journal ofFluid Mechanics.

Award-winners Assistant ProfessorLuca Dal Negro and Associate ProfessorRobert Kotiuga (both ECE) are aiming to cre-ate new strategies for generating and control-ling miniature optical fields on nanoscalearrays of metal particles. The creation andmanipulation of these highly localized field

New Dean’s Catalyst Awards Produce ResultsBy Jason L. London

Author and aerospace engineer Stewart O’Nan (AME’83) and daughter Caitlin (CAS’08)attend Game Two of the 2007 American League Championship Series at Fenway Park.

Dean’s Catalyst Award recipient Tom Little (ECE).

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states, which are generated using the math-ematical rules of symbolic dynamics, canbenefit chemical and biochemical sensors,nanoscale light sources and the creation ofoptical systems. Their most recent resultsdemonstrated the importance of aperiodicorder for the engineering and control withinthe optical fields.

Since the award, Dal Negro’s relatedwork has been published in Optics Express andthe Journal of Optics and has been the subjectof a June symposium at Boston University andpresentations in Buena Vista, Florida, Capri,Italy and MIT. He was also part of a team thatreceived a $45,000 grant from the Air ForceResearch Office related to nanoscale measure-ments and deterministic, aperiodic arrays.

“The Dean’s Catalyst Award has beenfundamental to boosting all of these ideas,”Dal Negro said. “Our most recent resultswould not have happened without theaward—it instigated the interaction betweenRobert and me, two professors who other-wise would not have worked together.”

DCA recipients Assistant ProfessorsSean Andersson (AME) and Natalia Broude(BME) are following RNA as it roams arounda living cell by attaching fluorescent tags thatbetter allow them to watch its movements.Their goal is to improve the technology neededto track RNA and better understand its rolesin living cells.

Andersson’s work with fluorescent par-ticle tracking led to a three-year NSF grant todevelop techniques for concurrently trackingmultiple RNA particles under a confocalmicroscope. The project will also developalgorithms for tracking single fluorescent par-ticles and enable the study of communicationand processes between living cells.Andersson and Broude are jointly working ona NSF grant proposal to further their studies.

“The Dean’s Catalyst Award is a greatidea,” Broude said. “The more support theCollege can provide to the faculty, the better.Governmental support for research inMassachusetts is very difficult to obtain, so aprogram like this that boosts experimentalstudies is very useful.”

Doctors rely on a dwindling arsenal of drugsto fight bacterial infections as the bugs keepfinding ways to survive and thrive in hospitalsand patients. These “superbugs” might bebrought to their knees, however, with BU bio-medical engineers’ discovery of a previouslyunknown chain of events that occurs in bac-teria when they are fed antibiotics.

The three classes of bactericidal antibi-otics used today each target a different bacte-rial function: inhibiting DNA replication;blocking protein-building; and halting construc-tion of cell walls. But, research from the labo-ratory of BME Professor Jim Collins hasrevealed that the three distinct classes aremore alike than previously believed—and thecommonalities may be the bugs’ downfall.Collins and his group published an article onthe topic, “A Common Mechanism of CellularDeath Induced by Bactericidal Antibiotics,”in the September 7, 2007, issue of Cell.

Last year, the National Institutes ofHealth recognized the promise in Collins’research with a prestigious $2.5 millionDirector’s Pioneer Award. He was one ofonly 12 researchers among 449 applicantschosen.

Collins and his research team dis-covered a common process, or pathway,

that is triggered by all three types of antibi-otics. “There’s an underlying pathwaybeyond the drug interacting with the tar-get,” said graduate student and lead authorMichael Kohanski (BME, BUMC), “and theendpoint of this pathway is excessive freeradical production.”

Free radicals, such as hydroxyl or super-oxide radicals, are molecules that carry afree—or unpaired—electron like a weapon.“They’ll damage DNA, proteins, lipids in themembrane, pretty much anything. They’reequal opportunity damagers,” said Kohanski.

This hidden pathway and resultant freeradical overload can cripple or kill bacteria,and in the future might be employed to helplower antibiotic doses, increase the vulnera-bility of resistant bacteria to drugs, or developnew antibiotics.

“We showed that if you can inhibit orblock the bacterial defense mechanisms tohydroxyl radical damage, you can potentiateor enhance the lethality of bactericidal antibi-otics. This highlights the value of taking a net-work biology approach to antibiotics andprovides a framework for creating newclasses of drugs,” said Collins.

“What we think is happening is the cellis getting a signal that says, ‘There’s some-

BME Researchers Find a Chink inBacterial Armor By Kate Fink

A group of investigators led by AssistantProfessor Kamil Ekinci (AME) has developedan inventive technique that will allowresearchers to collect nanoscale microscopyimages roughly 100 times faster than currentstate-of-the-art scanning tunneling micro-scopes. The findings, published in Nature,present a modification of the 25-year-old tra-ditional microscopy technique that remediesthe slow pace and limited high-frequencyresponse of current microscopy circuitry.

To achieve atomic-scale spatial resolu-tion at the nanoscale level, traditional scan-ning tunneling microscopy (STM) relies onlocalized electron tunneling between a sharpprobe tip and a conducting sample. In thistechnique, the tip is brought to within a fewangstroms of the sample surface and anelectrical current is drawn and measuredbetween the tip and the surface.

While traditional STM has produced awealth of discoveries in many diverse physicalsystems, the technique has visual limitations.

“In traditional STM, the electrical cur-rent between the tip and the sample needsto be boosted up by a large amount becauseit is very tiny,” Ekinci said. “But when youboost up, there is trade-off—you lose tempo-ral resolution and bandwidth, which meansyou cannot detect fast signals.”

Ekinci’s group, which includesBoston University graduate student UtkuKemiktarak (CAS’09), overcame the short-coming by increasing the high-frequencyresponse of the tunnel current’s readoutcircuitry. The new higher-frequency resultsdemonstrated electronic bandwidths ashigh as 10 megahertz—a 100-fold improve-ment over traditional STM.

“In our approach, we were able toeliminate the problems introduced by theboosting process by attaching an imped-ance matching circuit to the probe tip,”

Ekinci said. “This opened up a usable band-width which resulted in good temporal res-olution. While the technique itself is quitesimple, this is the first time it is applied toSTM.”

The new technique enables fast sur-face imaging, which was previously difficultbecause of the resolution loss and thedecrease in bandwidth.

“With regular STM, it was hard to dofast surface scans because you would not beable to see the images,” Ekinci said. “If youwent too fast with scanning, everythingwould be blurred out. Our technique hasallowed the circuit to become responsive tofast changes.”

In addition to collecting rapid-pacedimagery, the new technique will act as amotion detector at high frequencies and mea-sure the noise of the tunneling electrons, thelatter of which is very important for the detec-tion of temperature on the sample surface.

“We’ll be able to use our tip on the sur-face to measure the temperature,” Ekinci said.“This is a very important feature for high-techintegrated circuits. By extracting temperaturefor the surface, it will allow us to see whichareas in a circuit may be hotter than others.”

Under a Microscope, AME ProfessorSpeeds up the Nanoscale By Jason L. London

thing wrong with our energy production sys-tem and we need to make more energy.’ But,there’s really nothing wrong. The cell becomesconfused, turns on too many processes atonce, and it’s overwhelmed,” said Kohanski.

Previous work by Kohanski and co-leadauthor Dan Dwyer (BME) revealed the firsthints that this underlying pathway exists. Instudying the bacterial response to aquinolone, an antibiotic that inhibits DNAreplication, they noted a surprising change ingenes responsible for energy production andiron uptake.

In the Cell publication, the researchersused DNA microarray studies to see if allthree classes of bactericidal antibiotics trig-gered this process. Across the board, theynoted increased activity along the intracellu-lar assembly lines that make energy for the bacterial cell, just as in the earlierstudy. They began to deduce the details ofthe new pathway.

Cells produce free superoxide radicalsnaturally in oxygen-rich environments, butwhen they unnecessarily ramp up energy pro-duction to a frantic pace—such as when theyare triggered by antibiotics—more radicals getchurned out than the cell’s safety measurescan mop up. The superoxide radicals thenpull iron from other components of the cell,and this iron rapidly stimulates production oftoxic levels of hydroxyl radicals.

“It’s really amazing that despite thediversity of targets, you have everything fun-neling into this common pathway wherethere’s a global meltdown occurring,” saidDwyer. “There’s almost no way for the cell torecover from this. It shows you how potentthese molecules are to damaging and killingthe cell.”

In addition to potentially making bacte-ria more vulnerable to current drugs, this find-ing may revitalize development of antibioticdrugs sidelined because of narrow differ-ences between therapeutic and toxic doses.Such drugs might re-enter the pipeline, if thisfree radical-producing pathway is exploited tolower the therapeutic dose and make for-merly dangerous drugs safer.

Michael Kohanski, Carrie Lawrence, Professor Jim Collins and Dan Dwyer research bacterial resistance.

Kamil Ekinci

2 3S P R I N G 2 0 0 8 M A G A Z I N E www.bu.edu/eng

ENGNews

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ENGNews

To start an energy club at BU, graduate stu-dent Elijah Ercolino needed people. He foundhis first fellow energy enthusiast on March 9,2007, when he met doctoral student PeterZink at an energy conference in Cambridge,Massachusetts. A year later, the BU EnergyClub has more than 130 members.

“We’re bringing people out of thewoodwork and getting them together,” saidErcolino. “There was general interest here,but it took this group to start people talkingabout things—get ideas going—and we justran with it. We want to be a catalyst.”

Early in his search for members,Ercolino, a master’s degree student inmechanical engineering, realized the clubshould include people with many differentapproaches to energy issues. He recruitedKatie Schu, a graduate student in BU’s Centerfor Energy and Environmental Studies (CEES),now a club vice president representing theCollege of Arts and Sciences. GraduateSchool of Management student Angus Shawfound his own way across CommonwealthAvenue to Ercolino’s group and became a vicepresident representing GSM.

“It’s been great to get CEES and themanagement students and engineers tomake something bigger than any one of thethree pieces could be on their own,” saidclub president Zink, who worked in financebefore getting started on his manufacturingengineering Ph.D. He now researches fuelcell technology in the laboratory of ProfessorUday Pal (MFG), the club’s primary advisor.Professor Robert Kaufmann (CAS) andAssistant Professor Nitin Joglekar (GSM)also advise the club.

“It is clear that Boston University hasnumerous top-notch educational andresearch programs in the area of cleanenergy,” said Pal. “This club will promote col-laboration among students interested invarious aspects of energy technologies

throughout Boston University. Students willincrease awareness at BU and in local com-munities about environmental issues suchas global warming, pollution and resourcedepletion. These issues will dominate allaspects of our life, and availability of cleanenergy will be essential for both sustainabil-ity and prosperity.”

With their initial goal of building a com-munity well on its way to being realized, thegroup is now poised to explore their manyand varied energy-related interests and worktogether on a broad spectrum of projects.

The Energy Club invites guest speakersto campus to discuss topics ranging from thesocial aspects of energy—such as ride-shar-ing services—to the technological aspects,such as solar power innovations. It also organ-izes informal discussion groups and socialevents, goes on field trips (in September, a

group visited the Hull, Massachusetts, windturbine) and participates in industry-spon-sored contests including the Ignite CleanEnergy business presentation competition,which features a $200,000 prize.

The club also offers professors a wayto get student input and assess interest innew energy-related classes, including one tofollow up on a recent energy audit of BU thatwill further analyze and act on specific waysto improve energy efficiency at the University.

For more information, visit the EnergyClub website at http://people.bu.edu/buenergy/.

New Energy Club Gains Steam By Kate Fink

A flight to Lima followed by a precarious, 28-hour ride over mountain roads landedfive students in the remote town ofChirimoto, Peru, this past January. Thegroup—a contingent from the BU EngineersWithout Borders chapter—visited the town to assess the needs of its residents anddetermine how to help improve living condi-tions there.

“We all went into it not knowing whatto expect, but it was really successful. As anassessment trip it really served its purposebecause it opened our eyes to what the realpossibilities are and gave us a new perspec-tive on potential areas to work in,” said JuliaDelogu (AME’09).

This is the first project for the BU chap-ter of this national nonprofit organization.Formed in October of 2006, the chapterworked to meet fundraising goals throughoutthe Fall 2007 semester for its initial trip toChirimoto, a remote village in northern Peruthat has yet to fully recover from devastatingfloods that struck the area three decadesago. Typically, EWB chapters visit an area atleast twice for a project; first, they take anassessment trip, then—six to eight monthslater— implement the project.

Chapter President Chris Spring(AME ’08) and group members Delogu,Paulo Belfiore (BME’09), graduate studentEmily Johnson (SPH’08) and Ramona

Follow-up: Engineers Without BordersStudents Visit PeruBy Kate Fink

Georgescu (ECE’07) made the two-weekjourney accompanied by Chirimoto nativeLuis Chavez, a doctoral candidate inromance languages.

To test the feasibility of installing awater purification system or providing solarpower, the students performed basic water-quality tests on rivers that provide thetown’s drinking water and measured solarradiation using a pyronometer. The EWBmembers also wanted to ensure that theirproject would fill a real need for the towns-people, so they talked to residents in a townmeeting, a women’s meeting and individualinterviews.

Since returning to Boston, the grouphas begun evaluating this information and isconsidering some new ideas brought up inconversations with Chirimoto residents, suchas helping the town’s coffee growers furtherprocess their beans to get a better price forthem.

Just before departing, the group alsomet with a regional government official.

“If we’re able to implement a projectthat proves beneficial, such as a waterpurification system, they would be inter-ested in using our design and our researchto implement the system in other parts ofthe region, which we’re really happy about,”said Spring.

The group will research potential proj-ects and consult experts this spring to decidewhat project will most benefit Chirimoto. Thestudents will continue fundraising and planthe project’s logistics in anticipation of areturn trip to Chirimoto this summer.

“I really hope that just by our goingthere, we planted the seed that there’ssomeone who cares and that whatever proj-ect we do can help as many people as pos-sible,” said Delogu. “And we’re going to doit with them, with their help. I think what-ever we do, everyone’s going to be appre-ciative and say, ‘OK, what else can we dotogether?’”

For more information, please visit theBU Engineers Without Borders website athttp://people.bu.edu/ewbexec/.

A Boston public school for students withintensive special needs and cognitive dis-abilities can now continually interact withits students thanks to a new “personalgreeter” device created by a 2007 ECE senior design team.

Using digital voice recording and radiofrequency identification (RFID) technology,the student team worked closely with staffat the William E. Carter School to createunique personal messages up to six sec-onds long that can be relayed individually aseach student moves throughout the school.In time, the device could also be used toremind students when to take medication,notify them when they are leaving a specificarea, and alert Carter School staff when anew student has entered a room.

The design team—2007 graduatesVictor Bartolome, David Huynh, Kyle Martinand Jerry Lam—entered the project in the national Rehabilitation EngineeringResearch Center for the Advancement of Cognitive Technologies (RERC-ACT)Student Design Competition and won thesecond-place prize.

“We were able to go to the schooland meet with the teachers and students,”said Martin, who traveled to the Universityof Colorado at Boulder in October to pre-sent the device and accept the award. “Thestudents needed something more person-alized and familiar. That’s hopefully whatour project gave them.”

In addition to the digital voicerecording and RFID interface, other major

ECE Design Team Places atNational CompetitionBy Jason L. London

From left, David Huynh, Jerry Lam, Victor Bartolome and Kyle Martin (all ECE’07)

2 5S P R I N G 2 0 0 8 M A G A Z I N E www.bu.edu/eng

ENGNews

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ENGNews

A new partnership between the College ofEngineering and a Boston-based consortiumof biomedical and healthcare institutionsbegan in November with the awarding ofthree graduate student fellowships.

“We are pleased to be teaming withBoston University on this valuable grant pro-gram,” said John Parrish, director of theCenter for Integration of Medicine andInnovative Technology (CIMIT). “Our goal is todevelop better healthcare for patients, andaiding motivated students in their research isan important step in that process.”

The inaugural fellowship winners, doc-toral students Pui Leng Leong (BME) and

Burkay Birant Orten (ECE) and master’sdegree student Jane Yuqian Zhang (BME),each received an award of $55,000 forresearch and $500 for travel to present theirresearch at a national meeting.

“We consider this fellowship a greatopportunity for our students in this emerg-ing area of healthcare research,” saidSelim Ünlü, ENG’s associate dean forResearch and Graduate Programs.“Working with CIMIT will allow our studentsto pursue the applications of innovativeengineering discoveries in translationalmedicine—an area of significant impor-tance to the College.”

The BU/CIMIT Applied HealthcareEngineering Fellowship is awarded to second-or third-year graduate students researchingtopics that help solve healthcare challengessuch as medical device development, creatingalgorithms and software for use in clinical prac-tice, and engineering in medical environments.The fellowships are awarded for one year withthe potential to renew for a second year.

CIMIT is a nonprofit consortium ofBoston-area teaching hospitals and engineer-ing schools. It provides innovators with theresources to explore, develop and implementnovel technological solutions for today’s mosturgent healthcare problems.

BU, Consortium Award First GraduateStudent FellowshipsBy Kate Fink

obstacles stood in the way of producing aworking system. The senior design teamhad to determine potential safety haz-ards, power sources and even the aver-age height of a student and/or theirwheelchair to establish the best locationfor the device.

“Our major challenge was to deter-mine each particular engineering require-ment for the system,” Martin said. “We hadto ask ourselves, ‘How do we refine therequirements and set a good engineeringdesign?’”

The ECE team split the project intothree parts: RFID, voice recording andaudio playback. Each aspect had to work insynch with the others to enable the workingdevice.

“We had to apply knowledge from allof our courses,” Lam said, “even freshmanyear. Microprocessing, electronics—therewas a little bit everything.”

The design team was unaware of theRERC-ACT contest until late in the springsemester. In order to complete their require-ments for the competition, the team volun-teered its time on the project and workedinto the fall semester.

“Knowing the senior design coursewas over, these guys worked further on iton a volunteer basis,” said Professor MikeRuane (ECE), who helped oversee theSenior Design course. “Their preparationfor the conference in October was wellbeyond the realm of the course.”

A group of cognitive disability spe-cialists, engineers, and computer scien-tists judged each project on four criteria:design specifications; significance ofimpact; breadth of impact and likelihoodof success; and availability. The BostonUniversity group finished ahead of schoolssuch as Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt andArizona State University en route to theirsecond-place finish behind CarnegieMellon University.

“This proved to me that BU engineer-ing is top notch,” Martin said. “It wasrewarding to hear that from the judges.”

The application of optical molecular imagingto cancer research is expanding rapidly butfaces daunting scientific and industrial chal-lenges. New directions in optical imagingtechnology as applied to cancer diagnosisand therapy were discussed at a gatheringof academic, industry and research leadersat the Photonics Center last November 30.

The event, “Optical Imaging forMedicine and Biology: Applications in CancerDetection,” was sponsored by the College ofEngineering’s Emerging Technology and BestPractices Seminar Series. Hosted by ProfessorJerome Mertz (BME), the symposium focusedon issues including the importance of stabiliz-ing tumor vessels, bench-to-bedside patientcare and the long-range forecast of eradicat-ing colon cancer.

Karen H. Antman, dean and provost ofthe School of Medicine, discussed the cur-rent and future clinical application of molec-ular imaging to cancer. Her talk touchedupon the different options of detecting can-cer though MRI, hypoxia imaging, theragnos-tics and nanotechnology.

“There are major advances in imag-ing technology each year,” Antman said.“Going forward, the most important ofthese we need to facilitate are evaluatingand lowering the cost of the development

of new drugs and continuing to standardizeimaging.”

Speakers included Rakish K. Jain, pro-fessor of tumor biology at Harvard MedicalSchool, and Satish K. Singh, assistant profes-sor of medicine at the BU School ofMedicine. Jain discussed the acceleratedbench-to-bedside efforts to study cancergrowth and the effects of oxygen and fluid ontumors. Singh spoke about common miscon-ceptions about colonoscopy, stressing thedemand for more trained colonoscopists, therationale for screening strategies and differ-ent techniques that may improve the detec-tion of lesions.

Other topics covered throughout theday included novel strategies in endoscopicimaging, using preclinical models to studycancer growth, whole-scale microscopy tech-niques and spectroscopic detection basedon fluorescence and scattered light.

The next Emerging TechnologySeminar, in April 2008, will focus on the appli-cation of nanoparticles and nanostructures inhealth care. The seminar will be held at theCollege of Engineering and co-hosted by theCollege of Engineering and the School ofMedicine. For more information, including alist of speakers and online registration, visitwww.bu.edu/eng/etseminar.

Boston University Hosts OpticalImaging SeminarBy Jason L. London

The National Science Foundation has awarded Professor Christos Cassandras(MFG), Associate Professor IoannisPaschalidis (MFG) and Professor AzerBestavros (CAS) a four-year, $2 millionEmerging Frontiers in Research andInnovation grant to advance the reconfigura-tion of autonomous networks after unex-pected system errors.

The researchers plan to develop soft-ware that allows a network to reset itselfafter unexpected problems or suddenchanges in conditions. The main test bed willbe OpenAir Boston, a nonprofit organizationthat will oversee Boston’s planned city-widewireless network.

“This is an excellent complement toour objectives,” Pamela Reeve, OpenAirBoston chief executive officer, said. “It willplay a crucial role in creating a responsive,self-adjusting enterprise.”

“The goal is to develop networksthat can automatically reconfigure them-selves,” Cassandras said. “If a trans-ceiver breaks down or a battery runs out, the network will reconfigure itselfwithout anyone physically correcting theproblem.”

Applying this research to an urbanenvironment like Boston impressed the NSF,Cassandras said.

“A test bed throughout Boston is aunique idea,” he said. “It is different andambitious, as is the collaborative effort ofBoston University and a private industry likeOpenAir Boston.”

Because OpenAir Boston will initiallyincorporate only basic wireless capabili-ties, a reconfigurability feature will beadded that incorporates extra intelligenceotherwise difficult to do with fully opera-tional wireless networks.

“This will make the design robust from the beginning,” Cassandras said.“Retroactively imparting extra data to any sys-tem is difficult. This allows for a much bet-ter chance of success.”

The Center for Information andSystems Engineering (CISE), a systems engi-neering team made up of faculty from ENG,CAS and SMG, will facilitate the collaboration.

“This is another success story forCISE,” Cassandras said. “Our hope is thatBoston University and CISE become the coreof Boston’s wireless network.”

Research Focuses on Getting WirelessNetworks to Fix ThemselvesBy Jason L. London

Dr. Rakish K. Jain

Christos Cassandras

2 7S P R I N G 2 0 0 8 M A G A Z I N E www.bu.edu/eng

FacultyNews

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FacultyNews

College of Engineering Dean Kenneth R.Lutchen has named Professor Ronald Roychairman of the Aerospace and MechanicalEngineering Department, a position Roy hadheld on an interim basis since August.

The selection represents Lutchen’sfirst appointment of a full-term departmentchair since he assumed deanship of theCollege in 2006.

“It is a pleasure and an honor toannounce Ron Roy’s appointment as thenext chair of AME,” Lutchen said. “I receivedan outpouring of excitement regarding sup-port for Ron as the next chair. He has anextraordinary record of accomplishmentsand impact in research, in funding, in educa-tion and in service to Boston University andthe profession.”

Roy’s three-year appointment will coin-cide with the planned merger of the AMEand Manufacturing Engineering depart-ments. Upon completion, Roy will be chair-man of the newly merged department.

“I’m looking forward to the new posi-tion,” Roy said. "Merging departments will bea complex, multifaceted process. Our long-term goal is to advance the quality of aca-demic life within the department and toincrease our visibility and impact nationwide.More immediate objectives include the for-mulation of a merged undergraduate degreeprogram that offers both depth and breadthto go along with an expanded graduate pro-gram and faculty research portfolio.”

Roy joined AME as an associate pro-fessor in 1996 and was promoted to full pro-fessor in 2002. He believes his familiaritywith both the AME and College ofEngineering communities will facilitate asmooth transition and that recent successesin faculty recruitment will serve as a launch-ing pad for the department’s further develop-ment and growth.

“When you have the support of, and aconnection with, the people around you, itmakes everything much easier,” he said.“John Baillieul, Tom Bifano and Uday Pal dida great job recruiting some top-quality juniorfaculty who are now coming into their own.That’s going to be the foundation uponwhich the department will rest.”

Roy spent the 2006–2007 academicyear as the University of Oxford GeorgeEastman Distinguished Visiting Professor.Prior to his arrival at Boston University, heheld faculty positions at the University ofWashington and the University of Mississippi.His work in the engineering industry includesa research scientist position for the NationalCenter for Physical Acoustics and director forresearch and development for ApfelEnterprises, focusing on developing new tech-nologies for radiation monitoring.

His research specializes in the appli-cation of physical acoustics principles toproblems in biomedical acoustics, industrial

ultrasonics and acoustical oceanography.Roy is a fellow of the Acoustical Society ofAmerica. He is also a member of theAmerican Society of Mechanical Engineersand the International Society of TherapeuticUltrasound and a past member of theEuropean Society of Sonochemistry and theAmerican Institute of Physics.

Roy holds a bachelor’s degree fromthe University of Maine at Orono, master’sdegrees from the University of Mississippiand Yale University, and a doctorate fromYale University.

Ron Roy Named AME ChairBy Jason L. London

carriers for targeted drug delivery applications,and the effects of oscillating bubbles on cellmembrane permeability. His work in theseareas has concentrated on eroding or eradi-cating diseased cells—such as cancer cells—with minimal or zero damage to the healthycells in the area.

“When the president of the ASA called,I was at a loss for words,” Porter said. “It cameas a real surprise. Someone from within theASA nominated me for the award. The phonecall came as a real shock.”

This is not Porter’s first honor in acousticachievement. During the 2003–04 year, he received the ASA Frederick V. HuntPostdoctoral Fellowship as a doctoral student at the University of Washington. His disserta-tion focused on investigating the connectionbetween ultrasound and membrane disruptivepolymers and their effect on cell membranes.

His acoustical work has been pub-lished in numerous journals, most notably“Control of cavitation-induced hemolysis witha surface-active polymer” in AcousticsResearch Letters Online (2005) and “Acoustictechniques for assessing the Optison®destruction threshold” in the Journal ofUltrasound Medicine (2006).

Porter is the third AME faculty memberto receive an acoustical award in the pastyear. Professor William M. Carey was awardedthe 2007 Pioneer of Underwater Acoustics sil-ver medal by the ASA in June and ProfessorAllan D. Pierce received the 2007 StanleyEhrlich Gold Medal from the AcousticalFoundation for Education and Charitable Trustof India in September [see story below].

“Acoustical achievement is most defi-nitely one of the strengths of the AMEDepartment,” Porter said.

Ronald Roy

The Acoustical Society of America hasawarded Assistant Professor Tyrone Porter(AME) the 2008 R. Bruce Lindsey Award foroutstanding achievements in acoustics.

According to the ASA, the annualaward is presented to “a member of the soci-ety under 35 years of age who, during aperiod of two or more years immediately pre-ceding the award, has been active in theaffairs of the society and has contributedsubstantially, through published papers, tothe advancement of theoretical or appliedacoustics, or both.”

Porter will receive the award at the soci-ety’s meeting in Paris this summer.

“Tyrone is one of the ASA’s rising stars,”AME Chairman Ronald Roy said. “He bringsenergy and leadership to all ASA administra-tive, research and academic activities. Tyroneis highly regarded by his peers and this recog-nition is richly deserved.”

A member of the AME faculty since2006, Porter’s acoustical work and researchhas focused on investigating the behavior ofultrasound contrast agents in acoustic fields,the development of ultrasound-triggered drug

Acoustical Society of America honorsProfessor PorterBy Jason L. London

Tyrone Porter

The Acoustical Foundation for Education andCharitable Trust (AFECT) of India selectedProfessor Allan D. Pierce (AME) as therecipient of the 2007 Stanley Ehrlich GoldMedal for his contributions to physical, envi-ronmental and structural acoustics, andacoustics education. In conjunction with theaward, Pierce presented the Stanley Ehrlichlecture at the 2007 National Symposium onAcoustics in Tiruchengode, India.

According to AFECT, the Gold Medal ispresented to an eminent acoustician or sur-geon, irrespective of nationality, age, or soci-ety affiliation, to promote internationalbrotherhood in the diverse field of acoustics.

“It’s an honor to receive this award,”Pierce said. “Foreigners receive this medalonly every so often. They could have pickedanyone and they chose me.”

Pierce is only the third American toreceive the AFECT award. As editor-in-chief of

the Acoustical Society of America, Piercebecame familiar with acoustical activity andresearch in India when the country becamehome to the first ASA chapter outside the U.S.He was nominated for the award and lecture by AFECT President Hari Paul.

“This award allows me to learn moreabout India and international relations,” saidPierce. “Acoustics are a strong, emergingarea in the country.”

Over the course of his career, Pierce’sdiverse acoustical interests have blendedphysical insight and mathematical rigor. Hisearly research focused on determining themagnitude of an explosion by its measuredwaveform, which was used to verify the banon atmospheric testing of nuclear weaponsand estimate the magnitude of eruptions onMount St. Helen’s. He has been recognizedfor research in laser generation of sound anddiffraction around thick barriers and is study-

ing sound propagation in the ocean with fel-low AME Professor William Carey. His book,Acoustics: An Introduction to Its PhysicalPrinciples and Applications, is one of thebest-selling ASA books.

The Gold Medal is the most recent ina long line of acoustical awards received byPierce. The ASA awarded Pierce a goldmedal in 2005 and a silver medal in 1991.He was the first recipient of the RossingPrize in Acoustic Education in 2004, andwas awarded the Per Bruel Gold Medal for Noise Control and Acoustics in 1995, andthe Senior U.S. Scientist Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 1976.

Pierce’s Work in Acoustics Earns HimInternational AwardBy Jason L. London

Allan Pierce

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AlumniEvents

BU hockey versus BC, December 1, 2007Alumni gathered at Agganis Arena to reconnect with friendsand attend the BU hockey game versus archrival BC.

Photos top left to right:

Robert Jedzinak, Paula Jedzinak, their daughter KatherineGreaney (’00), and her husband Mike Greaney

John Keeter, Bill Neifert (’90, ’92), Elijah Marantette (CAS’93),Steve Foraste (’91) and Assistant Dean Rich Lally

Middle Photo:

Lisa Campana (’06) and Heather Rasich (’06)

Photos bottom left to right:

Isabel Pisano (MET’87) and Adjunct Professor Alan Pisano (ECE)

Chris Antonowich (MET’07), Jeff Harrington (’03) andNatasha Lewin (SMG’07)

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FacultyNews

The College of Engineering has establishedtwo new annual awards to recognize facultymembers engaged in high-impact research.Professor John Baillieul (AME) has beenawarded the first Distinguished LectureSeries Award and Associate Professor AmitMeller (BME) is the inaugural Early CareerResearch Excellence Award winner.

The Distinguished Lecture SeriesAward honors a faculty member engaged in outstanding research and gives the recip-ient a public forum to discuss and show-case that research. Baillieul chose the topic,“Control Theory, Networks and Life Itself,”for his lecture.

Baillieul’s research deals with robot-ics, control of mechanical systems andmathematical system theory. A sought-after public speaker, he has served as edi-tor-in-chief of IEEE Control Systems

Society, IEEE Transactions of AutomaticControl, Society for Industrial and AppliedMathematics and the Siam Journal forControl Optimization.

“John is of the most influential intel-lects recognized both nationally and internationally in his field,” said ProfessorHue Weng (AME). “His academic and pro-fessional achievements have been recog-nized by his peers in the highest forms.”

The Early Career Research ExcellenceAward celebrates the recent researchaccomplishments of tenure-track facultywithin 10 years of completing their PhD.

Meller’s research has focused onrapid, inexpensive DNA sequencing, RNAfolding kinetics and genetic regulation. Hiscollaborative research with AssociateProfessor Zhiping Weng (BME) aims toreduce the cost of genome sequencing.

“Amit has played an integral servicerole in the BME Department,” said ProfessorSolomon Eisenberg, the BME chairman adinterim. “As the first award winner, he hasset the bar very high in terms of the level ofresearch achievements and general goodcitizenship that this award recognizes.”

Baillieul, Meller Win InauguralFaculty AwardsBy Jason L. London

Boston University selected AssistantProfessor Hatice Altug (ECE) as a 2007Peter Paul Career Development Professor.The professorship is awarded to elite,young Boston University faculty, irrespec-tive of college or discipline, in their first twoyears of appointment at Boston University.Recipients are nominated by their deansand selected by the president and provost.The three-year professorship provides$50,000 annually towards salary andresearch.

“Our department is delighted aboutProfessor Altug’s selection,” ECE ChairmanDavid Castañón said. “This will provide valu-

able resources to enable her to continueher groundbreaking work and develop newcollaborations.”

Altug joined the College in January of 2007 after receiving master’s and doc-toral degrees from Stanford University andher bachelor’s from Bilkent University(Turkey).

Altug’s research involves the designand implementation of ultra-compact nano-photonic devices and sensors. Her demon-stration of the world’s fastest on-chipsemiconductor laser appeared on the coverof the July 2006 Nature Physics. Her workhas also appeared in Nature Photonics,

Laser Focus World Magazines, PhotonicsSpectra and the IEEE LEOS Newsletter.

She was also awarded best researchpaper at the November 2006 IEEE LEOSConference and received the October 2005IEEE LEOS Research Excellence Award.

Altug Selected as Peter Paul CareerDevelopment ProfessorBy Jason L. London

John Baillieul

Amit Meller

Hatice Altug

3 1S P R I N G 2 0 0 8 M A G A Z I N E www.bu.edu/eng

ClassNotes

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AlumniEvents

1982Michelle Tortolani, B.S.’82, M.S.’89Alexandria, VirginiaMichelle was installed as the 45th president of theSociety of Women Engineers at a ceremony inBethesda, Maryland, last August. Michelle is the se-nior director of repeater engineering and operations at XM Satellite Radio in Washington, D.C.

1984Eric Hernandez, B.S.Topeka, KansasAfter working for General Motors and Innovia Films,Eric now works at Goodyear, where he is responsiblefor maintaining about 40 percent of the plant. “I cannow say that I am truly happy to be back in the auto-motive business,” he writes. “Alcira and the boys havesettled well into their routines.”

1985Karen Panetta, B.S.Medford, Massachusetts Karen, chair of the Women in Engineering Committeeat the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers,launched the premier issue of a new IEEE publicationin January of 2008, IEEE Women in Engineering. Aninteractive pdf of the magazine is available online(http://www.ieee.org/portal/cms_docs/committee/women/13350.pdf ) and includes articles and profiles relat-ing engineering to current issues, careers, health care,medicine, law and governance. The committee Karenleads includes more than 12,500 members and sup-ports women in engineering careers as well as thoseconsidering the field.

1987 Edward Cook, B.S. Baghdad, Iraq Edward works in the Health Attaché Office of theAmerican Embassy in Baghdad. “My focus is buildingthe capacity of the ministry of health’s ability to deliverservices to Iraq,” he writes. His goals are getting Iraqidoctors to return to work at clinics and hospitals, build-ing the emergency medical systems and helping Iraqdevelop a comprehensive health-care strategy.

1989Celia (Ketley) Leber, B.S.Bend, Oregon Celia and her husband co-own a bicycle touring company—learn more at www.wildheartcycling.com.

1992Matthew Magne, B.S. Wilmington, North CarolinaMatthew recently joined IBM as a senior IT special-ist in technical sales for the company’s Master DataManagement Solutions; he previously ran his own

software company. Matthew is pursuing his M.B.A. atthe University of North Carolina in Wilmington, wherehe has lived for four years with his wife, Kristin, theirseven-toothed one-year-old, Lukas, and their twodogs, Buddha and Bella. Contact him atmkmagne@us.imb.com.

1994John A. McNeill, Ph.D.Stow, MassachusettsJohn, an associate professor of electrical and computerengineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, was oneof two faculty members to receive the inauguralChairman’s Exemplary Faculty Prize at WPI’s 2007commencement exercises. John, who earned a Ph.D.in electrical engineering at BU, was honored in part forhis research in mixed-signal integrated circuit design.

1995Brian Anderson, B.S.Monterey, CaliforniaBrian, a major in the Marines, attends the NavalPostgraduate School and will graduate in September2008 with master’s degrees in Space SystemsOperations and Applied Physics. He and his wife AngiAnderson (CAS/SED’96) have two boys, Charles, 6, andSamuel, 4, who keep them busy, and the family lovesthe Monterey Peninsula. Brian and Angi speak often andfondly of their days at BU and would love to hear fromold friends. E-mail the Andersons at angitwo@gmail.com.

1998Jason Ulberg, B.S.Swampscott, MassachusettsJason and Jaime (Ruyack) Ulberg (SMG’98)announce the birth of their first child, Charlie Topher,on July 8, 2007.

David Yeh, B.S.’98, M.S.’01 Austin, TexasDavid and Jenny Wu (SMG’98) were married onDecember 17, 2005, in Hong Kong. In attendancewere Faye Liu (CAS’01, CGS’99), Eric Yu (CAS’99),Alle Siu (CAS’98), Kelvin Law (ENG’98), Ming Chen(CAS’98), Aviva Chow (SHA’98), Edmund Chau (SMG’97), Dickson Chan (CAS’00), Angela Chien(CAS’98), Kevin Chan (ENG’98), David Huang (GSM’02), Florence Lin (SHA’99) and Angelie Shek(CAS’99). David is the product marketing managerat Silicon Laboratories. You can contact the coupleat jwudyeh@yahoo.com.

1999Jay B. Hancock, B.S. Pickering, OntarioJay’s incorporated company, Kibbles Software, Inc.,builds business process automation software for small and medium businesses, helping to “pro-vide integrity where humans tend to be forgetful

or produce errors, and save expense and time,” Jay writes.

Herbert Lun, B.S.’99, M.S.’02, GSM’02 Kowloon Tung, Hong KongHerbert and Tracy Law (COM’99) proudly announce thebirth of their first child, Ethan James, on September22, 2007. Contact them at htklun@yahoo.com.

2002Liberty Gunter, B.S.Dunbarton, New HampshireLiberty was named the Outstanding New HampshireYoung Engineer for 2007 by the Institute of Electricaland Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Liberty joined BAESystems in 2002, where she works in electrical engi-neering and semiconductors and volunteers as amentor in the company’s Women in Technology pro-gram for high school students. She also works withthe FIRST Robotics program and the LEGO League.

Jason Light, B.S.’02, M.S.’04Dupont, Washington Jason married Samantha Nagle on August 18, 2007,in Bellingham, Washington.

2003Earl Valencia, B.S.Stanford, CaliforniaEarl is pursuing a master’s in business administrationat the Stanford Graduate School of Business startingin the fall of 2007 and says he is unfortunately the onlyBU alum in his class. Earl is on educational leave fromRaytheon, where he is a senior systems engineer and a graduate of their Engineering LeadershipDevelopment Program. He would like to reconnect withformer classmates, professors or any Bay Area alumni.Contact him at earlv@stanford.edu.

2004Wenyuan Chen, B.S.Cumberland, Rhode IslandWenyuan, of Cumberland, Rhode Island, has beenproject manager of Servo products at AC TechnologyCorporation, a member of the Lenze Group, sinceOctober 2005. Wenyuan and his wife, Xuzheng Wang,welcomed their second child, Victoria (Jianchen) Wangon January 4, 2008. Their son Charlie is 3 years old.E-mail them at wychen@alum.bu.edu.

Nicholas Pratt, B.S.’04, M.S.’06 Manchester, VermontNicholas married Jasmine Marrero-Pratt (CAS’04,CGS’02) on October 20, 2007. Charlene Kjobstad(CAS’04) attended the wedding.

Jonathan Weiss, B.S. Waltham, MassachusettsJonathan married Katherine Lochbrunner (CAS’02)in Kauai, Hawaii, on July 15, 2007. The couple residesin Waltham, Massachusetts.

What are you doing? We want to hear from you! Send your class notes submissions to engalum@bu.edu.

Dean’s Reception, October 17, 2007 at the BU Club Photos top left to right:

From left, Dave Lancia (’02, ’04), Ruth Hunter (’64) and Al Muccini (’64)

From left, Tony and Cathy Giordano, parents of Nicholas Giordano (’11), andCameron and Michael MacDonald, parents of Michael MacDonald (’09)

Middle Photo:

From left, Jamie Heller, Karen Panetta (’85) and Geraldine Muccini

Bottom Photo:

From left, Andrea Laforme, Tom DiCicco (’01), Mike Keefe (’89), and Peter Cirak (’01, ’07)

3 2 B U C O L L E G E O F E N G I N E E R I N G

On November 4, 2007, the College ofEngineering mourned the loss of longtime fac-ulty member Moe Wasserman, who, for morethan two decades, left his mark on studentsand colleagues as an outstanding teacher andresearcher.

Wasserman joined the faculty in 1983while still working at GTE Laboratories (hereceived the company’s Leslie WarnerTechnical Achievement Award the followingyear). By 1987, he was working at BU full timeas an associate professor and won theUniversity’s Outstanding Engineering Professorof the Year Award in 1992. He retired in 1997,although he continued as professor emeritusuntil his death.

Professor Mark Horenstein (ECE) was acolleague of Wasserman’s and knew him well.He delivered the following eulogy atWasserman’s funeral.

I had the pleasure of working with himthroughout his second career at BostonUniversity, from his initial hiring as an adjunctprofessor in 1983 until his official retirement in1997. We taught courses together, wrote bookstogether and shared family events. He masteredthe art of balancing work and family. For my wifeand me, Moe and Jo served as one of our mosttrusted role models as we navigated the turbidwaters of raising children.

A more dedicated teacher one couldnever find. In 1987, when our first new engineer-ing building had only unofficially opened, Icaught Moe climbing seven long flights of stairsbecause the elevators had not yet been acti-vated. Even at that time, respiratory problemshad begun to plague him.

“Moe, what are you doing?” His response:“I have to set up my new office. Classes will bestarting soon. I need to be ready.”

Moe was the first faculty member to offi-cially retire from the Department of Electricaland Computer Engineering at BostonUniversity. To him, “retirement” was but a signto spend more time with family, but the call ofteaching continued to beckon him. For years

thereafter, he taught occasional courses aswell as regular summer term. As late as lastyear, Moe inquired about teaching yet anothercourse while tethered to his oxygen tank. “I’llbe fine” he said to me one day in the mailroom. “The tube is definitely long enough. Imiss teaching.”

Moe was held in esteem by all of his colleagues. None can ever recall him beinganything but cheerful, optimistic and dedi-cated to his profession. When his passing wasannounced to the faculty, many offered theirthoughts of remembrance. I share these withyou now, along with several student commentsgleaned from his teaching evaluations over the years.

First, from his student-teacher evalua-tions just before his official retirement:

• He is always well prepared, very inter-ested in the material and knowledgeable. Heclearly loves teaching.

• He is always willing to meet with students outside of class. His teaching style isintimate, and he always encourages discus-sion and questions. He is very concerned thatstudents understand the material.

• His clarity of presentation is outstand-ing. He is perhaps the best instructor I have hadat Boston University.

And from some of his faculty colleagues:• I am saddened by the news (of his

passing). I will remember Moe as a kind, gentleman who was always ready to contribute with ahelping hand. He was a wonderful person whodid a great many things for the school.

• Although I knew him only briefly, I haveenjoyed using his lab manual for the past manyyears. I’ll miss seeing him in the halls of ourbuilding.

• Moe was special to me. When I startedteaching at BU, Electronics was the first under-grad course and I taught it along with Moe. Hewas an exemplary man. A very, very kind person.I will miss him.

• Moe was always an inspiration to me.He was always so strong and positive in mindand spirit, despite the physical impairments ofhis later years. We never had an unkind wordbetween us over many, many years, and I careddeeply for him and respected him in every way.

I am sure I can speak for all of us here inexpressing our admiration and respect for Moeand our sadness at his passing. May his mem-ory be a blessing.

PASSINGS

Alden T. Greenwood (ENG’53) Mason,New Hampshire

Richard J. Osborne (ENG’61, ’63)Venice, Florida

David H. Leonard (ENG’62) VernonRockville, Connecticut

William F. Cullinane (ENG’67) WestHartford, Connecticut

Domenic A. Coppolino (ENG’72)Wakefield, Rhode Island

John S. Coyner (ENG’86) Hinckley, Ohio

In Memoriam: Moe Wasserman

By Jason L. London

Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen has convened a group of senior executivesfrom industry and academia to advise him on future directions, chal-lenges and opportunities for the College. This Engineering LeadershipAdvisory Board will offer input on how the College of Engineering canimpact future technologies, recruit outstanding faculty, solve complexproblems, set priorities, and garner the additional resources necessaryto bring the College to the next level of excellence.

Dean Lutchen and the College are grateful for the advice and service ofthe Engineering Leadership Advisory Board members:

Engineering Leadership Advisory Board

John E. AbeleFounder and DirectorBoston Scientific Co.

Doug P. AdamsPresident & FounderSOLX Glaucoma Division

Occulogix Inc.

Noubar B. Afeyan Managing Partner

& CEOFlagship Ventures

Roger A. Dorf, ENG’70President & CEONavini Networks

Ralf FaberCo-Founder, President,

& CEO3Wave Optics LLC

Janie FoukeProvostUniversity of Florida

Ronald G. Garriques, ENG’86

President Global Consumer Group,

Dell Inc.

Norman E. GautChairman and Co-FounderSWS, Inc.

Jon K. HirschtickGroup Executive &

Board MemberSolid Works Corporation

Bill I. HuyettDirectorMcKinsey &

Company Inc.

Dean L. KamenPresident & FounderDEKA Research &

Development Corp.

Nick Lippis, ENG’84,’89PresidentLippis Enterprises, Inc.

Tom MagnantiFormer Dean Engineering, MIT

Richard D. Reidy, SMG’82PresidentDataDirect Technologies

John Tegan, ENG’88PresidentCommunication

Technology Services

John J. UlloSenior Management

AdvisorSchlumberger

Technology Corp.

Moe Wasserman

Boston University College of Engineering

Boston University College of Engineering

College of Engineering

NONPROFIT

U.S. POSTAGE

PAID

BOSTON MA

PERMIT NO. 1839

44 Cummington StreetBoston, MA 02215

Kamil EkinciPh.D., Brown UniversityAssistant Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

“You could say I’m a hard-core experimentalist,” says AME AssistantProfessor Kamil Ekinci. “My experiments verify existing theories, andsometimes, lead the way for new theoretical work.”

It’s the right time to be at Boston University, says Ekinci,whose research focuses on nanodevices and scanning probemicroscopy, a very high resolution microscopy technique. “BostonUniversity is on an upward slope. The College of Engineering madea commitment to invest in my research, and it’s great to team up withpeople of different backgrounds. The interdisciplinary nature of theUniversity is tremendous.

“The students that I work with are major stars, some of whomhave been published in top scientific journals such as Nature andPhysical Review Letters. It’s not easy to find students like this.”

To learn more, visit:www.bu.edu /eng