DEAN'S MESSAGE
I am excited to announce that the National Science Foundation has awarded an $18.5 million, five-year grant to establish a new Engineering Research Center (ERC) focused on neural engineering at the UW. This center complements our science and technology center (STC) in optoelectronic materials and devices and is the second major NSF center in the college. The UW can now claim a substantial percentage of the roughly 40 NSF-sponsored ERC/STC centers currently operating around the country.
The Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering will develop robotic devices that interact with, assist, and understand the nervous system. This is a true campus-wide collaboration, involving a diverse group of faculty and students from Engineering, Arts and Sciences, and UW Medicine; we highlight a few in the cover story. Yoky Matsuoka, associate professor of computer science and engineering, will direct the center. Additional partners include MIT, San Diego State University, Spelman College, Morehouse College, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Tokyo.
“The new center will bring together university and industry researchers to establish Seattle as an education, research and commercial hub for ‘neurobotics.’”
Matt O'Donnell,
Dean of Engineering
The new center will bring together university and industry researchers to establish Seattle as an education, research and commercial hub for “neurobotics.” A vibrant set of companies involved in this field will interact closely with the center. I like to think of this network as a well-functioning neural engineering system, rich in dendritic connections. We expect this center to spur major advances in the field of prosthetics and neural engineering.
On another note, I’m very pleased to welcome Michael Young, the UW’s new president. He comes with high accolades from the University of Utah where, during his tenure as president, the budget increased from $1.6 billion to $2.6 billion. We are particularly excited about his role in technology transfer: in his five years at the University of Utah, the campus led the nation in the total number of company spinoffs. We look forward to working with him to advance tech transfer and overall commercialization of technology in UW Engineering, building on the momentum we’ve gained over the past few years.
A New Class of Innovators
Nine exceptional faculty members join the College this academic year. We highlight two here.
MEET ALL 9 »
Daniel Kirschen, Close Professor of Electrical Engineering
Daniel Kirschen joins the UW from Great Britain’s University of Manchester where he led the electrical energy and power systems research group. Prior to joining academia, Professor Kirschen worked in industry on advanced application software for electric utilities.
Kirschen’s research focuses on the development of techniques in electrical energy that achieve optimal balance between cost, reliability, and sustainability. He explores how resources such as demand-side participation, energy storage, and agile generating units should be deployed and operated ― the essence of the “smart grid.” Kirschen holds the Donald W. and Ruth Mary Close Professorship.
Rebecca Neumann
Civil & Environmental EngineeringRebecca Neumann comes to the UW from Harvard University where she has been a NOAA Climate and Global Change postdoctoral fellow. She earned her doctorate from MIT with a thesis project on arsenic-contaminated groundwater, one of the major human health problems in Bangladesh.
Neumann’s research seeks to understand how land-surface modifications and management decisions affect human and environmental health by altering the fluxes of water, nutrients, carbon, and contaminants in underlying soils. Her work recognizes that soils are the critical interface between the atmosphere, land surface, and subsurface, and that soil fluxes often control the quality of food and water resources.