Washington Engineer

Saying Goodbye to a Friend

Denice Denton remembered as mentor and leader

• Read the story on the college Web site
• Read the University Week story
• Read the Seattle Times article
• View tributes to Denton

Leaders at the UW College of Engineering and engineering notables around the country expressed shock and sadness at news of the death of former UW Engineering Dean Denice Dee Denton.

Denton died June 24 in an apparent suicide.

Denton, known among colleagues and friends as “D3,” led the college from 1996 to 2004. She was a nationally recognized educator and in 2004 was named Chancellor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Denton will be remembered as a strong and visionary leader who was a champion for women in science and passionate about creating opportunity for the underrepresented.

“Denice was an inspirational and transformational leader for the College of Engineering, with a strong focus on developing people to achieve their fullest potential,” said Mani Soma, interim dean. “Besides her impact on the national scene, she left an indelible legacy in our college.”

An informal memorial gathering for colleagues in the college was held July 6. A formal service is being planned for Nov. 2. Details will be published on the college Web site as plans are finalized.

Mechanical Engineering prepares for birthday party of the century

: Students test a Murray Corliss steam engine, circa 1949.

Formula race cars, human-powered submarines, a former CEO of Ford Motor Co. and the current CEO of Recreational Equipment Inc. will be on hand Sept. 15 for the UW Department of Mechanical Engineering’s 100th birthday party.

To register for the event, go to the ME Website, call (206) 616-8259 or e-mail MECentennial@engr.washington.edu. The deadline is Aug. 25.

Acting Engineering Dean Mani Soma urged alumni and friends to use the event as a vehicle to a deeper involvement with the department.

“If you are an alum, rekindle your connection with the ME community. Look up a professor. Observe the innovation and energy that infuse the work of students and faculty; volunteer as a mentor,” Soma said.

“We welcome your participation in whatever form it takes,” he added.

The celebration will begin with a panel discussion and video presentation documenting how the field has progressed from steam power to the space race and digital revolution. Department Chair Mark Tuttle will lead faculty in speculating on what lies ahead, for both the field and the department.

Donald E. Petersen, a 1946 alum, will address participants during the centennial luncheon. As chairman and CEO of Ford Motor Company in the 1980s, Peterson guided the automobile maker through the most radical transformation in its history, creating a new management paradigm that has been widely embraced.

The day will close with a dinner at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center on Pier 66 and an address by Sally Jewell, a 1978 alum and CEO of REI.

This year’s Engineering Lecture Series features free admission

Admission fees have been waived for the 2006 Engineering Lecture Series, which kicks off in October with topics ranging from thought-controlled robots to an instant chemical analyzer that could help poisoning victims and detect biochemical threats.

All lectures begin at 7 p.m. in Kane Hall, room 110. The sessions include:

Oct. 12: Mind Meets Machine

Computer Science & Engineering assistant professor Rajesh Rao works at the delicate connection point between brain and body, studying ways to allow a healthy brain to compensate for a body immobilized by a stroke or disease. With the right technology, a patient’s thought can now control a computer cursor or a robot. Rao will take the audience on an exploration of how to expand the reach of the human brain.

Oct. 26: Making the Right Choice

Fuel cell or ethanol? Paper or plastic? Cloth diaper or disposable? Mechanical engineering assistant professor Joyce Cooper explores the hidden environmental costs inherent in decisions made every day by manufacturers, marketers, consumers and policy makers. Often, the tradeoffs are not obvious, and the long-term toll on the environment can be surprising.

Nov. 9: Not a Drop to Drink

Is the shellfish safe? Did the patient take poison? Is there a biochemical threat in the air, water or soil? Urgent questions like these no longer have to wait for time-consuming, expensive lab analyses, thanks to the work of electrical engineering emeritus professor Sinclair Yee, whose optical system brings the answers to light.

The series is co-sponsored by the College of Engineering and the UW Alumni Association.

Alums and friends to go behind the scenes at the EMP

: The Experience Music Project

Alums and friends of the UW College of Engineering will go behind the scenes at Paul Allen’s rock ’n’ roll music museum, the Experience Music Project, on Oct. 7 and get the inside story on how the internationally recognized structure was built.

The tour, co-sponsored by the college and the UW Alumni Association, will feature a talk by ’75 civil engineering alum John Magnusson, CEO of Magnusson Klemencic Associates. Magnusson will focus on the unusual challenges his firm faced in constructing the unique facility. Afterward, participants will be taken on a guided walk-through of the museum.

The tour will begin at 9 a.m. and finish at noon. Cost is $40 for alumni association members, $50 for non-members. Online registration begins Sept. 5. To register, visit the UW Alumni Association Web site. Space is limited and seats will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis.

EE Prof, Interim Dean Take New Posts

Sahr takes post with undergraduate education

: John Sahr, professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, with student Melissa Meyer.

• Go to the Undergraduate Education site
• View Sahr’s Web site

John D. Sahr, professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and a leading researcher in passive radar technology, has accepted the position of associate dean for undergraduate academic affairs in the UW Office of Undergraduate Education.

“John is a great teacher and a strong scientist,” said Edward Taylor, vice provost and dean of undergraduate academic affairs. “As an engineering faculty member, he has been a good citizen of undergraduate education and brings a number of strengths to the core work of the Office of Undergraduate Education.”

Sahr earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology in 1984, and a doctorate from Cornell University in 1990. He joined the UW as a faculty member in electrical engineering in 1991. His research includes space plasma physics, scattering theory and radar signal processing. He has received several teaching awards from the College of Engineering, as well as the college’s Faculty Achievement Award. He is also a recipient of the Henry Booker Prize from the International Union of Radio Science.

Mani Soma to move into provost’s office

: Mani Soma, professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering who has been serving as interim dean for more than a year and half, will become associate vice provost for research in the fall.

• Go to the UW Office of Research site
• View Soma’s Web site

Mani Soma, professor in the UW’s Department of Electrical Engineering who has served as interim engineering dean since the departure of Denice Denton more than a year and a half ago, will move into the provost’s office on Sept. 1.

Soma has been appointed as the UW’s Associate Vice Provost for Research, according to Vice Provost for Research Mary Lidstrom.

“Mani has a distinguished record of interdisciplinary research and education in system reliability research,” Lidstrom said. “He will join the Office of Research team to help develop proactive and client-oriented approaches to facilitating research at the UW.”

In addition, Lidstrom said, Soma will focus on industry relations and information systems technology.

Soma, whose hobbies include folk dancing, is known among colleagues for his team-building ability and sense of humor as well as for his research and teaching prowess.

Kings of the Road

Civil engineering profs put paving pedagogy online for a national audience

: Steve Muench (left) and Joe Mahoney are taking their paving expertise nationwide in the form of a new start-up company, Pavia Systems Inc.

• Browse the Pavia Web site
• Go to the UW TechTransfer Web site

When it comes to pavement, you might say Joe Mahoney and Steve Muench are kings of the road.

The two faculty members in the UW Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering can tell you the difference between Superpave and regular asphalt paving mixes. They can explain isolation joints, construction joints, load transfer and aggregate interlock. Between them, they’ve been teaching such concepts to students for more than three decades.

And now they’ve gone national via the Internet.

Mahoney and Muench, with the assistance of the UW Office of Technology Transfer, have launched Pavia Systems Inc., a start-up company that aims to bring convenient, online instruction in road building to the more than 54,000 companies around the country in the paving and construction industries.

“I think it’s often tough for the people in the industry to get the training,” said Muench, assistant professor of civil engineering and the person responsible for adapting Pavia’s content to the Web to make it accessible. “Around here the paving season runs roughly from April to October, and most of the contractors and big players are working pretty hard during that time to get the mix down and the road paved.”

An online system allows employees to cover the content when it fits their schedules, added Mahoney, professor of civil engineering. It also provides an easy means of tracking for trainers.

“You can track how every worker goes through the material,” Mahoney said. “If you take a test, it’s recorded. You can see exactly where each employee is. It’s very straightforward. We’re getting positive feedback from the training folks.”

The enterprise began in the 1980s when Mahoney started work on a document for the Washington State Department of Transportation called the pavement guide, a reference work covering the intricacies of paving. As an educator, he felt a traditional textbook format would be less than useful. Muench entered the picture as a doctoral candidate, and made Web applications and online pedagogy part of his doctoral program.

“We eventually took all of this massive content, and wrapped it into a Web browser,” Mahoney said. “We wanted to put it together in a way that it was easy to update and keep very relevant.”

The department used the results in offering an online master’s program in conjunction with the Department of Construction Management. The pair’s work won several awards – from the Transportation Research Board and the National Engineering Education Delivery System, as well as an R1.edu Award for online learning. With that experience, Mahoney said, he and Muench began thinking about taking the system and content into the private sector.

“Since this would be largely private sector training, it made sense to take it as an entity to the private sector,” Mahoney said. “So we licensed all the stuff from the university that’s related to what we want to do through UW TechTransfer, and they’ve been great.“

The company opened to a national audience last month, is in negotiations with several companies to deliver training for them and just signed a contract with a major equipment manufacturer to help with its online training. Si Katara, president of Pavia, said the future looks bright.

“The UW has been the leader in creating training content for the paving industry,” Katara said. “With the license we have from the UW, we’ve got a platform to create a tangible, practical impact on the asphalt industry.”

Surgery from Afar; Forecasting Airfares

Researchers test remote robotic surgeon

: The surgical robot built by Blake Hannaford and Jacob Rosen’s biorobotics team ready for action during testing in the Southern California desert last month.

• Read the front-page Seattle PI story
• Watch a KING5-TV news clip
• Visit the project Web site

A joint project between two UW electrical engineering professors and their biorobotics students and a University of Cinncinati surgeon grabbed headlines around the country when the team operated a remotely controlled surgical robot from more than 1,000 miles away.

Blake Hannaford and Jacob Rosen, in the UW Department of Electrical Engineering, have spent the past several years designing and building a portable surgical robot that could be packed into distant spots – remote villages or near battle lines – and operated by surgeons from afar.

Collaborating with Cincinnati surgeon Timothy Broderick, the robot went through its initial round of field tests the first week of June. Researchers set up the robot, which disassembles and is packable at about 25 pounds, in the Southern California desert. Meanwhile, Broderick attempted to manipulate it via sophisticated joysticks from a conference room in Seattle.

Despite a few glitches – the motherboard on the main controlling computer died on the last day – researchers said the tests were successful.

“We did everything we said we were going to do,” Hannaford said. “And every time we have a glitch, that problem will never happen again because we will engineer it out.”

Airfare forecasting startup gets national press

• Read The New York Times story
• Read the Boston Globe story
• Read the Seattle Times article
• Read the Seattle PI story
• See the original news release

Oren Etzioni recalls the first time he started thinking about how airfare pricing worked. He was on a flight, and asked several fellow passengers how much they paid for their tickets for the same trip.

The answers varied wildly.

That was in 2002. A year later, he had initial results from the test of a data-mining algorithm that appeared to be able to predict with 90 percent accuracy whether a traveler can save money by waiting to buy tickets. This year, that process went commercial in the form of Farecast, a start-up company that uses Etzioni’s technology to help air travelers save money.

The company has been covered in national media outlets, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and on the Today Show.

An Engineering Trifecta

Atman scores triple engineering honors

: Cindy Atman, center, holder of the new Mitchell T. Bowie and Lella Blanche Bowie Endowed Chair, with members of the Bowie family.

• Read a story about one of Atman’s honors
• Visit the CELT site

Three is this year’s lucky number for Cynthia Atman.

First, the professor of industrial engineering was elected a fellow of the world’s largest scientific organization, the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Next, she became the first recipient of the new Mitchell T. Bowie and Lella Blanche Bowie Endowed Chair. Then, in recognition of her pioneering work in engineering education, she was made a fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education.

“This has been quite a year for me,” Atman said. “It's really a little overwhelming.”

It’s also well deserved, colleagues say.

“Cindy is a national leader in investigating how engineering students learn and how we can improve our educational methods to more effectively teach them,” said Mani Soma, UW acting dean of engineering. “Her work will revolutionize our world, not just in academics but in the world at large as better prepared students enter the work force.”

Beating the Heat

EE researchers use electrical charge to cool tiny microchips

: Undergraduate student intern Michael Fox (left) and UW doctoral student Nels Jewell-Larsen show off a set of newly fabricated micro cooling devices. The two are part of Alex Mamishev’s research team that has created the first working prototype of the devices, which use an electrical charge to create tiny cooling jets of air.

University of Washington researchers have succeeded in building a tiny cooling device small enough to fit on computer chip that could work reliably and efficiently with the smallest microelectronic components because it uses an electrical charge, rather than liquid or fans, to create a cooling air jet right at the surface of the chip.

It is the first time that anyone has built a working device that uses the method, according to Alexander Mamishev, associate professor of electrical engineering at the UW and principal investigator on the project.

“The idea has been around for several years,” Mamishev said. “But until now it hasn’t been physically demonstrated in terms of a working prototype.”

Mamishev and doctoral students Nels Jewell-Larsen and Chi-Peng Hsu presented a paper on the device at the AIAA/ASME Joint Thermophysics and Heat Transfer Conference last month, and are scheduled to give an additional presentation this fall. In addition, the UW researchers and collaborators with Kronos Advanced Technologies and Intel. Corp. have been awarded a $100,000 grant from the Seattle-based Washington Technology Center for the second phase of the project.

The technique, officially known as electrostatic fluid acceleration, utilizes an electrical field to accelerate air to speeds previously possible only with the use of traditional blowers. Trial runs showed that the prototype device significantly cooled an actively heated surface on just 0.6 watts of power.

The findings are significant for future computing applications, which will incorporate denser circuitry to boost computing power. More circuitry equals more heat and a greater need for innovative cooling technologies that go beyond bulky, noisy and relatively inefficient fans and blowers. Circulating liquids among the chips to draw away heat is one possibility, but computer chips and liquids don’t mix well; the cost of a cooling system breakdown could be steep.

“The beauty of this concept is that is still uses air to cool the chips,” Mamishev said. “It promises to be as efficient as using a liquid, but it’s safer and more adaptable to increasingly smaller circuitry.”

ME to Mark 100 Years

Fall celebration set for ME centennial

: Mechanical engineering students work on the department's entry in the 2005 Formula SAE competition.

To register for the event, go to the ME Website, call (206) 616-8259 or e-mail MECentennial@engr.washington.edu by Aug. 25.

Acting Engineering Dean Mani Soma urged alumni and friends to use the event as a vehicle to a deeper involvement with the department.

: Students test a Murray Corliss steam engine, circa 1949.

“We welcome your participation in whatever form it takes,” he added.

The day will close with a dinner at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center on Pier 66 and an address by Sally Jewell, a 1978 alum and CEO of REI.

This year’s Engineering Lecture Series features free admission

All lectures begin at 7 p.m. in Kane Hall, room 110. The sessions include:

Oct. 12: Mind Meets Machine

Computer science and engineering assistant professor Rajesh Rao works at the delicate connection point between brain and body, studying ways to allow a healthy brain to compensate for a body immobilized by a stroke or disease. With the right technology, a patient's thought can now control a computer cursor or a robot. Rao will take the audience on an exploration of how to expand the reach of the human brain.

Oct. 26: Making the Right Choice

Nov. 9: Not a Drop to Drink

The series is co-sponsored by the College of Engineering and the UW Alumni Association.

Parlez Vous Human?

New center tackles human-to-human and human-to-computer communication

: Jonathan Pool, president of the Utilika Foundation, provided the multi-million dollar gift that launched the Turing Center.

• Go to the Turing Center Web site
• Read about the Utilika Foundation

Anyone who has spent time in a foreign country with a limited grasp of the native tongue can testify to how easily misunderstandings are born and how hard intercultural communication really is.

Toss technology into the picture and you’ve entered the world of Jonathan Pool.

Pool is a former University of Washington political science professor whose foundation recently provided a multimillion-dollar gift to establish the UW’s new Turing Center, a forum dedicated to exploring communication issues from both the human and machine perspective.

“I set up the Utilika Foundation because of my fascination with the communication problem that information technology seems to have bestowed upon the world,” Pool said. “It occurred to me that maybe the language barriers between people and between people and machines weren’t as different as they seemed to be.”

The center, named for Alan Turing, whom many consider the father of computer science, has in one short year launched multiple research projects, seen several papers published, hosted an international array of speakers and sponsors regular lab discussions. Projects include the creation of a semantic Web, or a portion of the World Wide Web that can be easily understood by machines; creating a system to simplify translation of words with ambiguous or multiple meanings; building a “grammar matrix” that encodes grammar rules from many languages so they can be more easily translated from one to another; and facilitating Web search and data mining.

“What we’re trying to accomplish at a very high level is pan-lingual communication and collaboration among human and artificial agents,” said Oren Etzioni, a UW computer science professor and director of the center.

The idea, according to Etzioni, is to be an intellectual crossroads where researchers from multiple disciplines can come together to work on intriguing communication issues with technology overtones.

Those researchers are attempting to answer two fundamental questions:

The questions aren’t as straightforward as they might seem, according to Etzioni.

“Language is an infinite, intricate thing – it is just too complicated,” Etzioni said. “On the other hand, there are also simple parts of language. ‘Where is a Chinese restaurant?’ is very different from a Shakespearean sonnet.”

The idea would be to utilize simpler subsets of language to facilitate communication. The problem is that computers lack the intuitive grasp of the multiple meanings, relationships and context that go into figuring out what a sentence is saying.

Take, for example, the sentence “The pig is in the pen.” Most people would take that to mean a certain type of animal has been corralled in a confined area. But a computer, lacking intuitive language ability, might decide there is a tiny swine inside a writing instrument.

“Computers are very adept at finding ambiguity in things that seem simple,” Etzioni said.

In seeking to address such issues, Pool said he began examining research around the world to decide where Utilika’s assets might best be invested.

“The most enthusiastic, creative and responsive answers came from right here at the UW,” said Pool, who is also based in Seattle. “I decided not to fight it.”

David Notkin, immediate past chair of the UW Department of Computer Science & Engineering and a Turing Center board member, called the center’s work central to integrating technology and society.

“Communication is the core technology for solving any critical problem that the world faces,” Notkin said. “And most of the problems we see are, at the core, communication problems.”

Etzioni admits that the center’s mission is a tall order. But he’s undaunted. He and his colleagues are making inroads and expect to gather momentum as they proceed.

“There are at least 5,000 and as many as 7,000 languages spoken on Earth,” he said. “That’s a lot. But there’s also a Hebrew saying that says even if you cannot complete the task, it is still incumbent on you to engage in it.”

Good Matches

UW matching initiative bolsters engineering endowments

: When Lisa Wissner-Slivka (left) and Benjamin Slivka (right) gave $1 million to establish the newest endowed chair in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, the gift qualified for an additional $500,000 from Campaign UW’s matching fund program. In the past two years, the special pool of matching funds has helped the College of Engineering raise nearly $23 million for more than 30 fellowships, scholarships and professorships.

When Paul Liao, a UW doctoral graduate in Civil and Environmental Engineering, decided he wanted to open up opportunities for engineering students, he and his wife gave $1 million to create the Dr. and Mrs. Paul B. Liao Endowed Regental Fellowship.

The impact of that generous gift was significantly bolstered by a special group, the University of Washington Founders, who established a multi-million-dollar pool of matching funds two years ago to create new endowments across campus.

In the Liaos’ case, the founders provided an additional $500,000 for the fellowship, which supports students from UW Engineering and from the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan who wish to study at one another’s schools.

It’s a pattern that has been followed more than 30 times in the College of Engineering to generate almost $23 million for fellowships, scholarships and professorships, according to Judy Mahoney, assistant dean of development and external relations.

“This 1-to-2 match is a great way for our friends to see their gifts leverage additional revenue,” Mahoney said. “Those additional dollars both broaden and deepen the impact of a gift. That’s very meaningful to us because this particular support goes to our No. 1 resource in the college – our people.”

Being able to give that sort of support was important for Ben Slivka and Lisa Wissner-Slivka, who recently gave a $1 million gift to establish a new endowed chair in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering. As was the case with the Liaos, their gift received a $500,000 match. The first holder of the Wissner-Slivka Endowed Chair in Computer Science & Engineering is current department chair Hank Levy.

“As two people who have been incredibly fortunate in the field of computer science, the ability to support UW CSE with this chair was a wonderful opportunity for us and for our foundation,” Ben Slivka said.

For more information on the UW’s matching initiative, contact Mahoney.

Gone Googling

UW computer grads fill ranks at Google, other major companies

: Eleven members of the UW's "Google contingent" at the Mountain View, Calif., location pal around during an alumni event last year. Google is among top tech companies that regularly turn to the UW for computer science grads to fill their ranks.

• Watch a video featuring Erin Earl
• See another UW grad who works at Google
• Get the perspective of a third Husky Googler

With multiple bachelor’s degrees in music, piano and computer science, Erin Earl had a hard decision to make when she graduated from the UW in 2003.

Initially, she opted for music and started graduate school, but it didn’t seem right. So she got in touch with her friends in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering to discuss job options.

The next thing she knew, Google made an offer and she became the latest member of a growing contingent of UW grads to join one of the world’s leading Internet companies.

“It’s been great,” said Earl, now 21 and a software engineer who works at Google’s Mountain View, Calif., location on features that apply to cell phones. “There is a big group of us from the UW that graduated about the same time and we all hang out together.”

Such a large Husky presence is the sign of a satisfied customer, according to Ed Lazowska, Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the UW.

“UW Computer Science & Engineering has more than 50 alums at Google now,” Lazowska said. “They work at Google facilities all over the country – in Kirkland, in Mountain View, Calif., and in New York City. They represent all degree levels.”

And Google isn’t the only industry leader to take note of UW grads.

“We’re a top supplier to all the top companies,” he added. “In just this past year we have sent more than a dozen students each to Microsoft, to Amazon.com and to Google. In addition, of course, a number of our students every year go on to the top graduate schools in the nation.”

It’s a relationship that the companies, including Google, want to maintain. In a visit to the UW campus last year, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told students that he wanted them to consider a career at his company.

“We’re working on making sure we get the very best and the brightest,” Schmidt said. “And this is one of the three or four universities where we find them.”

Making Opportunities

: Acting Dean Mani Soma

When positive change comes into the world, it’s almost always because people have taken the initiative to act on their ideas.

That’s an observation I’ve made over the years and it’s the main thought I wish to leave you in my last Washington Engineer message as acting dean. Why? Because it has specific application to the UW College of Engineering.

If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to brag about a few recent examples of positive change brought about by some of the talented people we have in the college.

The first involves our Department of Materials Science & Engineering. Faculty members there have been working hard to take the department’s research agenda to the next level. As a result, they have logged a banner year in research funding from high-profile agencies, garnering nearly $18 million in grants. Department Chair Alex Jen put it best:

For more details, see the item in this issue under “Winners.”

The second involves an individual. Cynthia Atman, an industrial engineering professor and director of Center for Engineering Learning and Teaching and the Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education, has been named a fellow in two major scientific societies this year and been awarded an endowed chair. Her research area is unusual – she studies how engineering is taught, how students learn and how teaching practices can be more effective. Her work promises to change how universities worldwide go about educating tomorrow’s engineers.

Cindy exemplifies the kind of people we have in UW Engineering: Smart, talented, innovative and willing to tackle big, complex issues with international implications.

Finally, we initiated a special awards program this year in the college, the Diamond Awards. The purpose is to recognize engineers who make significant contributions, but who often remain in the background. This year’s winners all exemplify how our alums are changing the world, using the foundation they gained at the UW. To read more about them, check the story here.

So excellence is more than a label. It’s an action word that is fully realized when smart people work hard to make their vision reality.

That’s how I see UW Engineering now, and that’s what I see continuing under the leadership of our new dean, Matt O’Donnell, who takes the helm of the college Sept. 1. Matt is a leader of vision, and he has the enthusiasm and the drive to move the college toward that vision. In other words, he can help us continue along the path we’re on.

I think I speak for the entire college in saying with confidence that the best is yet to come.

One final note: We recognize with sadness the passing of the UW’s former dean of engineering, Denice Dee Denton. While at the UW, Denice led transformational changes in the college. She advocated for women and other groups often marginalized in engineering and the sciences, and initiated teaching and learning innovations that continue to make our students more effective and competitive.

Our hearts go out to Denice’s family and to Gretchen Kalonji, her longtime companion and our former UW colleague. Denice was a one-of-a-kind, and we will miss her greatly.

Touring the Narrows; EE celebrates 100 years

Engineering alums and friends see new Tacoma Narrows bridge up close

: A tale of two bridges: Tom Draeger, left, 1968 civil engineering alum and president of Bechtel Construction Operations Inc., and Howard Wahl, 1957 civil engineering alum and former leader at Bechtel, pause on the overlook of the old Tacoma Narrows Bridge on the right and its new counterpart going up on the left. Draeger hosted the UW group on the tour.

About 40 alums and friends of UW Engineering gathered last fall to get an up-close look at the largest suspension bridge currently under construction in the world – the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

The new span runs parallel and just 60 feet to the south of the old bridge, built in the 1950s to connect Tacoma to Gig Harbor.

Building the new bridge is Tacoma Narrows Constructors, a joint venture of Bechtel Construction Operations Inc. and Kiewit Pacific Corp. The $849 million project involves retrofitting the 1950 bridge in addition to building the new structure.

The new bridge is scheduled to be completed next spring. The retrofit of the old bridge should be done in early 2008.

The outing, co-sponsored by the College of Engineering and the UW Alumni Association, began with a slide show and briefing at the Tacoma Narrows Constructors main office on the site. Tom Draeger, president of Bechtel, told the group that the Tacoma Narrows provides tough conditions for bridge builders.

“The tides are 15 feet, 10 knots a day,” he said. That provided some challenges in positioning and placing the caissons, or foundations upon which the towers sit.

The cassions were built using large barges, upon which the cassions were assembled level-by-level; each new level allowed the cassion to sink further into the water until the “cutting edge” hit bottom. Crews then cut panels out of the caisson “floor,” which allowed them to dredge the riverbed inside the caisson walls, sinking it a further 60 feet into the ground.

During the entire process, the barge had to be held in precise position.

“We used 32 anchors on each one to hold it,” Draeger said. “The anchor chains are the same the Navy uses at Pearl Harbor. Each link weighs 210 pounds.”

Once the caissons were in place, workers built the 510-foot towers from them and began the process of running the cables, which, when done, are 20.5 inches in diameter.

Each visitor left with a small piece of the wire that is bundled to make the cables.

After the presentation, the group donned helmets, reflective vests and protective eye glasses for a hardhat tour that culminated in a walk along the catwalk of the old bridge for a close-up look at the new span that parallels it.

For information on upcoming trips and activities, see the UW Alumni Association Web site.

Electrical Engineering celebrates a century of innovation

• Go to the EE Centennial Web site
• Read the complete story on the EE Centennial

When the Department of Electrical Engineering first came into existence at the University of Washington, electricity remained a luxury in many areas of the country.

The year was 1905, and swaths of the United States were still off the grid. It was before the invention of the vacuum cleaner, electric washing machine, refrigerator or long-distance telephone call. Marconi made the first transmission across the Atlantic just four years earlier, and it would be another year before voice and music would be transmitted via radio.

Today, the department does leading work in areas ranging from genome science and nanotechnology to biorobotics and transportation systems.

“It’s come a long way from the original emphasis on electric machines, electrical transmission and communication,” said David Allstot, chair of the department. “Electrical engineering still includes that, but it’s also at the forefront of all the sciences. The field has become highly interdisciplinary.”

Last month, the department celebrated 100 years of growth and transformation with “A Century of Innovators,” a centennial celebration that coincided with the annual Engineering Open House and UW’s Washington Weekend. The event included tours of labs, panel discussions, interaction with past faculty members and opportunities to chat with current faculty and students about their research projects.

The keynote speaker was Bernie Meyerson, chief technology officer for IBM’s Systems and Technology Group, who spoke on new approaches to computing.

New UW specialty license plate available to alums, friends and fans

• Read the news release
• Go to the Campaign UW Web site for details

A team of students at the University of Washington has designed a bold new speciality license plate for Husky fans who want to demonstrate their pride by adorning their ride.

The new plates have added benefit of helping students by helping to fund the university’s General Scholarship Fund. And the donation is tax-deductible.

The newly designed specialty license combines the university’s seal with a purple block-letter W. The design is the result of research involving alumni, athletic fans, students, faculty, staff and parents.

The new plate was unveiled at last year’s Apple Cup, where hundreds of people signed up in advance to be among the first to put the new plates on their vehicles.

The plates cost an additional $40 the year a vehicle owner buys them and an additional $30 per year for as long as they remain on the vehicle. The fees are in addition to all other state and local licensing fees that are due.

Every time a vehicle owner buys or renews UW specialty plates, $28 of the fee paid is transferred to the UW General Scholarship Fund as a tax-deductible contribution.

The plates are available at neighborhood vehicle licensing offices statewide. Vehicle owners don’t have to wait until their current plates expire to purchase the specialty plates.

Mechanical Engineering sets date for centennial celebration

The UW Department of Mechanical Engineering will celebrate its 100th birthday this fall with historical presentations, lab and classroom explorations and a luncheon keynote address by 1946 alum Donald E. Peterson, retired chairman and CEO of Ford Motor Co. The celebration is set for Sept. 15.

Online registration will begin on June 1. Check the ME Centennial Web site for more information.

Lidstrom Leads Research; Thompson Tapped for UW Marketing

Mary Lidstrom appointed UW vice provost for research

: Mary Lidstrom, new Vice Provost for Research at the UW.

• View Lidstrom’s UW home page
• Go to the Lidstrom Lab Web site

Mary Lidstrom, professor in chemical engineering and microbiology and former associate dean for new initiatives in the College of Engineering, has been tapped to lead research for the UW as a whole.

Lidstrom’s research focuses on genome sequencing. Her teaching delves into helping engineering students bridge the gap between engineering and biology.

She received her B.S. in microbiology from Oregon State University. After receiving her master’s and doctoral degrees in bacteriology from the University of Wisconsin, Lidstrom conducted work as a Leverhulme Postdoctoral Fellow in Microbiology at the University of Sheffield. She has previously held academic appointments in microbiology at the UW, in the Center for Great Lakes Studies in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and in environmental engineering science at the California Institute of Technology. She currently is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Bacteriology and FEMS Microbial Ecology.

Tricia Thompson tapped to lead UW marketing

: Tricia Thompson, the UW’s new director of marketing.

Tricia Thompson, who has been the College of Engineering’s director of communications and marketing for the past three years, is taking her skills to a university-wide level as the UW’s new director of marketing. In engineering, Thompson led a yearlong study that delved into how the college is perceived, both internally and externally. Then, based on those results, she worked with college leaders to develop and implement a strategic plan to unify and manage the college’s image. As a result of that work, UW President Mark Emmert asked her to conduct a similar study across the university, which was completed last summer.

Specific to this publication, Thompson led the effort to create Washington Engineer in 2003 and has provided invaluable direction to the e-zine since. The Washington Engineer staff wish her the best in her new pursuits.

Hank Levy takes helm of Computer Science & Engineering

: Henry Levy, new chair of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, atop the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering. Levy served as department liaison for design and construction of the building, which opened in 2003.

• Read the UW news release
• View Levy’s Web site

Henry M. Levy, a longtime University of Washington professor and expert in operating systems and computer architecture, has been appointed the next chair of the university’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering.

Levy joined the UW in 1983 and led several pioneering projects that helped lay the groundwork for modern object-oriented distributed systems and languages.

In the early 1990s, he helped develop new techniques for high-performance thread support, synchronization and communication that influenced a number of commercial operating systems. In the mid-1990s, Levy, along with UW professor Susan Eggers and their students, invented simultaneous multithreading, which allows modern processors to execute multiple instructions from multiple programs in a single computing cycle.

This technology is used in several microprocessors, including the Intel Pentium-4 and the IBM Power-5.

College appoints Eve Riskin as associate dean of organizational infrastructure

: Eve Riskin, new associate dean of organizational infrastructure in the College of Engineering.

• View Riskin’s UW home page
• Go to the ADVANCE Web site
• Go to the Data Compression Lab Web site

Eve Riskin, professor in the UW Department of Electrical Engineering and director of the ADVANCE Center for Institutional Change, is the college’s new associate dean of organizational infrastructure.

Riskin’s research group in the UW Data Compression Laboratory is working in video and image compression. In collaboration with Richard Ladner in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, the group is compressing video of American Sign Language. In addtion, the researchers are developing constant-quality rate control algorithms.

Riskin earned a bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984, and two master’s degrees and a doctorate from Stanford University. She joined the UW faculty in 1990.

Daniel Schwartz new acting associate dean of new initiatives

: Daniel Schwartz, engineering’s new acting associate dean of new initiatives.

• View Schwartz’s UW home page
• Go to the Office of New Initiatives Web site

Daniel T. Schwartz, Boeing-Sutter Professor of Chemical Engineering and adjunct professor of Materials Science & Engineering, has been named acting associate dean of new initiatives for the College of Engineering.

Schwartz’s research interests include electrochemical and microsystem engineering and electrochemical Materials science. Along those lines, his group in the Electrochemical Materials and Interfaces Laboratory uses electrochemical engineering methods to grow and characterize functional films and surfaces under mild aqueous conditions.

The group’s work includes developing new computer-aided manufacturing schemes where microsystems are “printed” directly from a 3-D image drawn in software, basic research that could be used in the detection and clean-up of radioactive waste and participation in a nanotechnology effort at the UW aimed at the use of small polypeptides and proteins to facilitate the spontaneous growth of novel inorganic materials for electronic and magnetic applications.

Schwartz earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota in 1983 and his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of California Davis in 1985 and 1989. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in 1991.

Carter Captures World Attention; UW’s ‘Master of Disaster’

Building dedication makes international headlines

: Former President Jimmy Carter speaks to reporters during a press conference as part of the dedication of the new William H. Foege Building. Carter’s comments put the event on the international news wires.

• Read the Associated Press story
• Read the Seattle Post-Intelligencer story
• Read the Seattle Times story
• Watch a video of the dedication ceremonies

When former President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jimmy Carter agreed to a brief news conference as part of his appearance as keynote speaker to dedicate the University of Washington's new William H. Foege Building, event organizers had no idea that the arrangement would guarantee coverage of the festivities around the world.

During the 10-minute meeting with the press, one reporter asked Carter to give his viewpoint on the war in Iraq. Carter pounced on the opportunity to voice his displeasure.

“It was a completely unnecessary war. It was a completely unjust war. It was initiated on the basis of false pretenses,” he said. “All of that is true, but we are already there. We can't preemptively withdraw. It would cause a civil war. We are on the verge of a civil war.”

The violence in Iraq is escalating every month, Carter continued. “My prayer is that we will see some kind of stable democratic government evolve.”

If that can be accomplished, he added, he would like to see U.S. troops coming home as soon as possible.

“Other than that,” he joked. “I think things have gone well.”

An Associate Press reporter at the conference led his report with Carter’s sharp criticism of the war, then included details about the event that followed. The story went out on the AP wire and appeared in publications around the country, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, as well as outlets overseas.

UW ‘Master of Disaster” featured in magazine story

: Mark Hasselkorn, professor in the UW Department of Technical Communication, is leading a project that examines the logistical side of disaster, with the aim of getting supplies and support to people in need more quickly and efficiently.

• Read the Columns story
• Read a UW news release on Hasselkorn's work

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the destruction it wrought along the Gulf Coast and the government’s widely criticized response, Columns magazine ran a lengthy feature on the UW’s new Interdisciplinary Program in Humanitarian Relief.

In the article, Technical Communication’s Mark Hasselkorn, founding director of the program, and his colleagues discuss issues in disaster response that are often lost in the emotional outpouring that follows such calamities. The group’s work in figuring out how communication and logistics can be more efficiently handled to make response fast and effective is helping to rewrite how disasters should be managed.

VR guru Hunter Hoffman makes Fast 50, Today Show

: UW Research Scientist Hunter Hoffman takes a patient through Spiderworld, a virtual reality program that helps people overcome spider phobia.

• Read the Fast 50 list
• View a UW news release on Hoffman's work

Hunter Hoffman, an expert in virtual reality who studies how VR can be used to manage pain and treat phobias, has been named to edgy business magazine Fast Company’s 2006 Fast 50 list of people “who are writing the history of the next 10 years.” Included with Hoffman are the likes of former President Bill Clinton and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.

Hoffman had an opportunity to demonstrate his craft to millions of viewers recently when he appeared on the Today Show with Katie Couric. With Hoffman’s guidance, Couric donned a VR helmet and experienced “Spiderworld,” an immersive program that Hoffman uses to treat people suffering from spider phobia. One of Hoffman’s subjects then demonstrated how effective the treatment had been for him by allowing a tarantula to crawl on his hand.

ME’s Joyce Cooper and students featured in Seattle TV special

: A Seattle TV cameraman films Professor Joyce Cooper as she teaches her Design for the Environment class.

• Watch the video
• Go to the Design for Environment Lab

Mechanical Engineering Professor Joyce Cooper, whose research focuses on fuel cells and environmentally friendly life cycle management of products, caught the interest of the Seattle Channel early this year. The channel sent a film crew to her Sustainability and Design for Environment Class to get video of Cooper teaching engineering students about the issues involved in designing technologies that meet people's needs but also sustain the environment for future generations.

The video segment, titled “New School Engineering,” also features shots in Cooper’s Design for Environment Lab of students disassembling computers and evaluating the components for recyclability. The video also shows several student presentations and includes interviews with ME students Dustin Miller and Brandon Arteaga. Cooper said the intent of the course, which draws students from a variety of disciplines, is to get class members to consider how the products we create impact the enviroment by getting them to look more broadly at the life cycle of those products – how they are used and how they are thrown away.

Computer scientists prompt international chatter with spyware study

• Read the UPI story
• Read the study
• Read the UW news release

Hank Levy and Steve Gribble in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering have prompted a good deal of international discussion, both in the mainstream media and the tech community, with a study that evaluates the threat spyware poses on the Internet.

The study found that, although the saturation of some types of spyware had decreased, overall the threat remained extensive and pervasive. The study examined popular categories of Web sites, and found the greatest risk of “piggyback” attacks at game and celebrity sites, while sites that offer pirated software posed the greatest risk for “drive-by” attacks.

The story was picked up United Press International and appeared in media outlets around the world.

Computing the Future

UW leads consortium to help people with disabilities go high tech

: Richard Ladner and Sheryl Burgstahler are leading the new AccessComputing Alliance, a national NSF-funded effort to bring more students with disabilities into the computing field.

The University of Washington is launching a new national program that will consolidate its position as a leader in helping people with disabilities enter the world of computing.

The AccessComputing Alliance, supported with a $2 million National Science Foundation grant, teams up two UW entities already active in the field – the nationally ranked Department of Computer Science & Engineering and the award-winning Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking and Technology, or DO-IT, program. The intent is to build a nationwide network by partnering with other universities and industry to identify students who could benefit from specialized instruction and make the tools available to help them succeed in computing programs and careers.

“This is an untapped resource,” according to Sheryl Burgstahler, co-director of the alliance and director of DO-IT, which in 1997 received a Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring. “There are still a lot of computing fields out there looking for people with specialized expertise.”

Just a few years ago, she said, such pathways were blocked for many students with disabilities. But that has changed.

“We are working in new territory,” she said. “Now it”s very reasonable for these students to pursue a computing degree. We want to find them and encourage them to enter computing careers.”

Richard Ladner, co-director with Burgstahler and Boeing Professor in Computer Science & Engineering who received a presidential mentoring award last year for his work with disabled students, staff and faculty, said people with disabilities can help fill the country’s need for talented, creative individuals in computing careers.

“The shortage of qualified professionals in computing fields is due in part to the under-representation of specific groups of Americans, including women, racial and ethnic minorities and people with disabilities,” he said.

The obstacles faced by people with disabilities who want to enter the field are daunting, Burgstahler said. Facilities are often inaccessible, curriculum materials are difficult to use, and computers, scientific equipment and electronic resources are seldom designed for those with disabilities. Add to that inadequate academic support, lack of encouragement, a dearth of role models and low expectations, and the barriers can seem insurmountable.

To combat that, the alliance is using a three-pronged approach to:

• Increase numbers of students with disabilities in college computing programs. This includes setting up and supporting transition programs that give participants the skills they need to make the transition to college, intensive summer academies, internships with industry and Internet mentoring efforts.

• Embark on an effort to better educate college departments around the nation on what they need to do to make teaching effective for students with disabilities. This will include creating a yardstick by which departments can measure their level of accessibility.

• Create a comprehensive, searchable database, the AccessComputing Knowledge Base. The database will include case studies, effective practices, training and scholarly articles, all available on the Web, to help universities, instructors and students who are working to make computing programs more accessible. The DO-IT program already maintains a similar database that focuses more generally on assistive technology and access to college and careers, Burgstahler said.

“The infrastructure is already there – we’ll use it to connect successful practices from around the country,” she said. “We are building the elements of the alliance on models that have already proven successful in DO-IT and in Richard’s work. I think we’re the perfect combination to pull this off.”

Several events are already scheduled at alliance partner schools, she added.

Gallaudet University will conduct a four-week college transition summer workshop for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. New Mexico State is planning a two-day college transition academy for high school students on supercomputing. And the University of Southern Maine will host a weekend workshop in computing for students with disabilities.

At the UW, the alliance will help support a summer Vertical Mentoring Workshop for the Blind, conducted by Ladner. The alliance is also planning a nine-week Summer Bridge Academy in Computing for 2007 at the UW, targeting deaf and hearing-impaired students.

According to Ladner, the overall thrust of the alliance involves connecting people – both those with disabilities and those who interact with them – with critical resources that they might otherwise never know about.

“This is very much a people-oriented project,” Ladner said. “We are looking at breaking up the misunderstandings that happen because people simply don’t have experience.”

Alliance partners include Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C.; Microsoft; the NSF Regional Alliances for Persons with Disabilities in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (hosted by the University of Southern Maine, New Mexico State University and the UW); and American Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Accessible Computing.

Engineering research powers paving industry start-up

• Go to the Pavia Web site

Researchers in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering have put their research in paving construction into the public arena with a new start-up company that offers resources and training for the paving industry’s estimated 1 million workers.

Pavia Systems Inc. has licensed training content from the UW, developed by Joe Mahoney and Steve Muench, both Civil & Environmental Engineering professors, and George White, a research engineer in the department. The three have won multiple awards for their work, which pioneered the idea of interactive training for pavement construction.

Pavia’s initial offering includes the world’s largest collection of digital media and resources for training paving industry workers.

Thousands turn out for Engineering Open House and Washington Weekend

: Participants in the 2005 Engineering Open House learn about human-powered submarines.

• Go to the Engineering Open House Web site
• Go to the Washington Weekend Web site

More than 7,000 students, teachers, parents and friends gathered at the UW campus on April 28 and 29 to make liquid nitrogen ice cream, see how a robotic blimp can fly by itself and find out how it feels to be in an earthquake.

The occasion was the annual Engineering Open House, which offered participants more than 100 hand-on exhibits to explore the multi-faceted disciplines within engineering. Offerings included:

Biodiesel

Fuel cell demo: Participants found out how to make electricity and water at the same time, using hydrogen and air.

Lunar observatory: Students and parents saw a mission to set up an observatory on the moon, a first step in NASA’s new vision for space exploration. The facility will include a powerful telescope, two meters in diameter, and power systems to transmit images of deep space back to the Earth.

Mobile ASL: Visitors viewed a project that uses video compression techniques to enable deaf people to use cell phones with American Sign Language.

The Open House, a longstanding tradition, is now part of Washington Weekend, a chance for the UW to open its campus to the public with walking tours, demonstrations, lectures and sporting events.