ISR News Story, Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland

ISR News archives: 2002

These ISR news stories predate the current "news engine" system and are outside the search system. You may search internally on this page for people and items of interest. We hope someday to put all these stories into the news engine. Please note that many of the links on this page no longer work. | Go to ISR news search | Go to ISR news archive page |

January

ISR alum Nick Sidiropoulos has received a 2001 Best Paper Award (formerly known as the Senior Award) from the IEEE Signal Processing Society. "Parallel Factor Analysis in Sensor Array Processing" was published in the IEEE Trans. on Signal Processing in August 2000. Co-authors were R. Bro and G.B. Giannakis. Sidiropoulos, a student of Professor John S. Baras (ECE/ISR) and assistant research scientist here, earned his Ph.D. from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and is now an associate professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota.

ISR-affiliated Professor Joseph JáJá (ECE), the director of the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, and an affiliate of the Computer Science Department, has been named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). JáJá was cited for his contributions to the design and analysis of parallel algorithms, algebraic and combinatorial complexity, VLSI architectures, and high-performance computing.

The robotic bower birds created by Associate Professor Greg Walsh (ME/ISR) and his students are back on PBS. This time they're featured in a Dec. 25 NOVA program on Biology Professor Gerald Borgia's research into the real birds' (see photo above) mating rituals.

The robotic birds page at NOVA's "Flying Cassanovas" web site

ISR's original story on the robot birds (1998)

ISR welcomes Assistant Professor Pamela Abshire (ECE/ISR) to the University of Maryland. Her areas of specialty are in VLSI circuit design and bioengineering, with a focus on better understanding the tradeoffs between performance and resources in natural and engineered systems.

Federal Computer Week quotes Professor Ben Shneiderman (CS/ISR) in its article about the proposed National Identification Card. Shneiderman testified before Congress on this issue in mid-November. Story at FCW

ISR-affiliated Professor William Levine (ECE) has been named Vice President of the American Automatic Control Council (AACC) for 2002-2003. The vice president normally becomes the president for the two years after his or her term as vice president.

The AACC is an association of the control systems divisions of eight member societies: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics; American Institute of Chemical Engineers; American Society of Civil Engineers; American Society of Mechanical Engineers; Association of Iron and Steel Engineers; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; The Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society; and the Society for Computer Simulation

February

On Feb. 1, Bernard Larrouturou, president of the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA) spoke to a packed crowd of students and faculty about information technology R&D in France and various positions available at INRIA and other national research institutes. The INRIA visit was hosted by Professor John S. Baras (ECE/ISR). More info

On February 1, eight ISR faculty spoke about their areas of expertise at the Lockheed Martin and University of Maryland Technical Summit, held here in the A.V. Williams Building. The summit was hosted by the Clark School of Engineering, the College of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences and the Robert H. Smith School of Business.

ISR participants: Professor Tony Ephremides (ECE/ISR)—pictured above, ISR Acting Director Eyad Abed (ECE/ISR), Prof essor Mike Ball (Robert H. Smith School of Business/ISR), Professor John S. Baras (ECE/ISR), Assistant Professor Don DeVoe (ME/ISR), Professor James Hendler (CS/ISR), Professor P.S. Krishnaprasad (ECE/ISR) and Professor V.S. Subrahmanian (CS/ISR).

Assistant Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR) has won a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award. Ghodssi's award is for "InP-Based MEMS for Optical Microsystems."

The NSF CAREER program fosters the career development of outstanding junior faculty, combining the support of research and education of the highest quality and in the broadest sense. More about Ghodssi's award

A note from our friends at the Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) program... MIPS offers matching funds for faculty engaging in
collaborative research with Maryland companies and is now accepting applications for its Spring 2002 round of contracts. More info

There's no stopping the bower bird story. The latest news outlet to focus on the mating rituals work of Associate Professor Greg Walsh (ME/ISR) and Biology Professor Gerald Borgia is CNN, which goes for the Valentine's Day angle.

The robotic bower birds created by Associate Professor Greg Walsh (ME/ISR) and his students for Biology Professor Gerald Borgia's research into the real birds' mating rituals keep making the news. The New York Times led its January 29 Science section with the story. Nature published a "brief communication" about the research in its January 17 issue. The story also has been picked up by the New Orleans Times Picayune and HealthScout. com.

The robotic birds page at NOVA's "Flying Cassanovas" web site

ISR's original story on the robot birds (1998)

ISR welcomed Mr. Yoshio Ikeda, Mr. Shu Yamada, and Mr. Masahiro Kotake from ISR Industrial partner Toshiba Corporation for a three-day visit, Jan. 23-25. They are pictured above with ISR Acting Director Eyad Abed, Clark School Dean Nariman Farvardin and Jeff Coriale, ISR's Assistant Director for External Affairs.

ISR and CSHCN welcome Mark Fleischer to his new role as Assistant Research Scientist. Previously, Fleischer was a post-doc working with both Michael Ball and Jeffrey Herrmann. His research interests include applied probability, cybernetic optimization, parallel computing, information theory and control theory and how these areas interface. Currently he is working on the Army Research Lab's CTA project in the areas of ad hoc wireless network routing and key distribution protocols.

ISR welcomes Associate Professor Ralph Etienne Cummings (ECE/ISR), whose research interests are in biologically inspired sensory motor systems for robotics. He focuses on computational vision systems and their realization with mixed signal VLSI circuits. Another interest is in compact computational acoustic microsystems using MEMS/CMOS hybrids for ultrasonic target localization and tracking. In addition, he is developing an adaptive locomotion controller chip using a VLSI model of central pattern generators found in vertebrates.

March

The Spring 2002 issue of ISR's newsletter, System Solutions, is now available in both PDF and online versions.

The Spring 2002 issue of the Computer Integrated Manufacturing Laboratory newsletter is now available in both PDF and online versions.

On March 19, Noriko Mills, Yoshimasa Suzuki and Masanori Satake of Honda R&D Company visited ISR to review the ongoing Visiting Scientists Program. Honda's current participants in the program are Hirokatsu Nakaie and Kazutomo Nishida. Above, the group is pictured with Clark School of Engineering Dean Nariman Farvardin. ISR's Karen Deal and Jeff Coriale are at left.

The Institute for Systems Research is currently conducting a search for Director. Position announcement

ISR also has a position opening for Assistant Director for Finance and Facilities. Position announcement

Koichiro Atsumi and Naoto Nishida of Toshiba Corporation flank University of Maryland President C.D. Mote during their visit to the campus on March 18. The corporate executives were in town for an update on the work of Haruhiko Kondo and Masa Kotake (also pictured with Mote above), Toshiba's current participants in ISR's Visiting Scientists Program. ISR External Affairs Director Jeff Coriale is at left.

The story the media can't resist has now been picked up in Australia, where all the research is actually focused. The bower bird mating habits study of Biology Professor Gerald Borgia, with robotic birds created by Associate Professor Greg Walsh (ME/ISR), was written up in Melbourne's The Age newspaper. Read the story at UMD's news service

Business Week's March 4 story about the Semantic Web features Professor James Hendler (CS/ISR). Read the story at Business Week's web site

Eleven ISR professors were among the University of Maryland faculty talking about their research with reporters attending the CASE News Media Fellowship. The reporters, who cover technology subjects for their organizations, spent several days at the university learning about the current state of the art in computing and robotics. ISR participants

Attention bower bird fans! The latest media attention appeared Feb. 13 on ABC World News Tonight. Biology Professor Gerald Borgia talked about the romantic tactics in a Valentine's Day story. Associate Professor Greg Walsh (ME/ISR) created robotic birds to aid the study. Watch the video clip

Ph.D. student Yinyin Zhao has been awarded a $1,900 grant by the Washington, D.C.-based Cosmos Club Foundation to support her research into "MEMS-based Piezoelectric Microphone for Biomedical Applications." Zhao is a graduate research assistant to Assistant Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR) in the MEMS Sensors and Actuators Lab.

April

Alireza Modafe, (at right in photo), a graduate research assistant in the MEMS Sensors and Actuators Lab, won the best poster award at the MEMS Alliance Workshop on Friday April 12 at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. His poster was titled, "A Power MEMS Device with Micro-Ball Bearing Support." His poster was selected by the 130 attendees at the event. Assistant Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR) helped organize the workshop.

The University of Maryland has been admitted to the GE Network Solutions Academic Program, which supports research in new and technologically demanding areas. The ISR team of Michael Casey (Ph.D. student) Associate Professor Mark Austin (CEE/ISR), and Professor John Baras (ECE/ISR) led the collaboration development for this partnership, which ties into the NSF CRCD grant for systems engineering curriculum.

GE Network Solutions is a business unit of GE Power Systems, which offers network software solutions to utility, communication and public systems organizations around the world. Press release at GE in PDF format

Congratulations to S.K. Gupta (ME/ISR) and Don DeVoe (ME/ISR). Both have been awarded tenure at the University of Maryland and will be associate professors beginning July 1.

ISR Senior Research Scientist Stuart Milner is the Principal Investigator for "Scalable Multilayer Control of Joint Battlespace Networks," a $4.3 million Air Force Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI). Co-PIs are Professor K.J. Ray Liu (ECE/ISR) Professor Christopher Davis (ECE/ISR) and ISR affiliated Professor Mark Shayman (ECE). The research looks to develop network architectures that circumvent the fundamental limitation on performance scalability of ad hoc, RF wireless networks. The award was one of 26 announced by the Department of Defense in March. The MURI program is designed to address large multidisciplinary topic areas representing exceptional opportunities for future DoD applications and technology options. Story

Assistant Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR) is the Principal Investigator for a Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) award from the Army Research Office. The $180,000 award will be used to purchase a chemical mechanical planarizer tool (CMP). Co-PIs for this award are past ISR Director and Professor Gary W. Rubloff (MNE/ISR) and Assistant Professor Elisabeth Smela (ME). Story

Associate Professor Carol Espy-Wilson (ECE/ISR) is one of the recipients of a new $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. The research, "Acoustics of Vocal Tract Shapes for Liquids," will aid understanding of vocal tract acoustics and articulatory variation in speech, and should improve speech recognition technologies and the implementation of articulatory and acoustic biofeedback therapy techniques. More info

May

Professor P.S. Krishnaprasad (ECE/ISR) was among the University of Maryland faculty affiliated with the The Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center to receive the American Helicopter Society's Grover E. Bell Award this year. The award was given for the center's pioneering fundamental contributions in smart structures technologies that had a successful transition into helicopter systems. Full story at the Mechanical Engineering Dept. web site

ISR's annual awards ceremony, held May 22, honored three persons: Professor Michael Fu (BGMT/ISR), outstanding faculty; graduating doctoral student Wade Trappe, outstanding graduate student; and Lee Harper Coordinator of Educational Programs, outstanding staff member. Wade Trappe is shown at left in the photo above with his family, who attended the ceremony. Incidentally, Wade has accepted an offer from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Rutgers University. His Ph.D. advisor was Professor K.J. Ray Liu (ECE/ISR). Story

Congratulations to Avis Cohen (Biology/ISR), who has been promoted to full professor beginning July 1, 2002. Dr. Cohen's research interests are in neuromorphic engineering of
walking systems, functional implications of regeneration of spinal cord, modeling of neuronal oscillators
and neural circuits, and motor control in vertebrates and invertebrates

Professor Tony Ephremides (ECE/ISR) is one of only 18 University of Maryland faculty members inducted into the first class of fellows for the university's new Academy of Excellence in Teaching and Learning.

The academy aims to be a community of scholars committed to fostering a culture of excellence in teaching and learning at the university. Academy fellows will interact with the campus and external communities, promoting and undertaking scholarly dialogues, innovative projects, and critical studies that contribute to improved undergraduate and graduate teaching and learning on campus.

Assistant Professor Allison Druin (EDU/ UMIACS/ISR), Human-Computer Interaction Lab Director Ben Bederson (CS) and Professor Ben Shneiderman (CS/ISR) were interviewed live online by the Washington Post on May 9. View the interview at the Washington Post site. Check out the video the Post made about HCIL, featuring Druin, Bederson and Shneiderman.

In addition, Shneiderman is featured in a May 9 Washington Post "Tech Thursday" story about the visual future. Story at the Post's web site. That same day, the U.K. web site vnunet.com put its own spin on the Post's Shneiderman story. Story at vnunet.com

A paper on single photon tunneling by Professor Christopher Davis (ECE/ISR), ECE Assistant Research Scientist Igor Smolyaninov, Anatoly V. Zayats, (Queens University, Belfast) and Ali Gungor (Faith University, Istanbul) has made the news. Their work was recently published in the American Physical Society's journal Physical Review Letters and selected for highlight in its Physical Review Focus magazine. The work is geared towards future technologies like quantum computers that will need to manipulate single electrons, atoms or photons. The four researchers developed a method by which individual photons might be coaxed to stop and go by using microscopic pinholes as temporary photon "holding pens." Read the APS Focus story. A second story appeared May 20, 2002 in the U.K. publication, Electronic Engineering Times. Read the EETimes story. You can view the related poster from this year's Research Review Day in PDF format.

Assistant Professor S.K. Gupta (ME/ISR) recently received the Literati Club's Highly Commended Award for his paper, "Intelligent Assembly Modeling and Simulation," published in Assembly Automation, Vol. 21, No. 3, 2001. Dr. Gupta's co-authors are C.J.J. Paredis, R. Sinha, and P.F. Brown.

The award is sponsored by Emerald, (MCB UP Ltd.), the British publisher of Assembly Automation and other management and library and information services journals.

ISR's Strategic Advisory Council convened on May 2 to discuss and suggest directions and initiatives for the Institute. The council is composed of industrial and academic leaders from around the world.

Intelligent Servosystems Lab manager and Ph.D. student Sean Andersson has received a $15,000 scholarship from the ARCS Foundation, Inc. (The acronym stands for Achievement Rewards for College Scientists.) Sean's research efforts are focused on the role of geometric phases in sensing and control and mobile robotics. His advisor is Professor P.S. Krishnaprasad (ECE/ISR).

The ISR-affiliated Human Computer Interaction Laboratory is holding its 19th annual Symposium and Open House on Friday, May 31. Info and online registration

Fifteen ISR faculty members participated in the NASA Goddard and University of Maryland Technical Summit, held in the AV Williams building on April 23. Participants included ISR Assistant Research Scientist Eric Justh (above), who spoke on high-resolution optical wave-front sensing and control. The event showcased research of the Clark School of Engineering relevant to NASA operations.

Assistant Professor Allison Druin (EDU/UMIACS/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new National Science Foundation Information Technology Research grant worth $3 million over five years.

The project will develop the Children's International Digital Library, addressing related research issues such as acquisition and rights management and searching /browsing /sharing technologies for children. It will also develop a testbed using large amounts of digital information.

Co-PIs for the project are Human-Computer Interaction Lab Director Ben Bederson (CS) and Professor of the Practice Ann Weeks (College of Information Studies).

The University of Maryland is partnering with The Internet Archive on the grant. This public nonprofit was founded to build an "Internet library" offering permanent access to historical collections that exist in digital format for researchers, historians, and scholars. Story

Professor Ben Shneiderman (CS/ISR) was featured on the April 18 edition of National Public Radio's All Things Considered. The segment deals with the debate on whether the voice recognition software now being used by automated phone systems should exhibit "personality." Listen to the segment at NPR's web site. Expanded coverage is also available at the NPR site.

June

ISR said goodbye to our stalwart and dedicated student worker Rachel Newman in June. Rachel helped ISR for two years, starting in External Affairs and ending in our Finance unit. She will be spending the summer in an auditing internship with the State of Maryland. We will miss her!

Welcome to new ISR Assistant Director for Finance, Victor Peguero.

Professor Dana S, Nau's (CS/ISR) AI planning system SHOP2 won a "distinguished performance" prize at the Artificial Intelligence Planning and Scheduling Conference's (AIPS-2002) international planning competition in April in Toulouse, France. Learn more about SHOP2 here.

Dr. Nau writes: "We are very pleased that SHOP2 did so well, because it works very differently from most other AI planning systems. Our design for the SHOP2 planning algorithm was based on the theories of planning that we developed as a result of our experience with application domains such as automated process planning, the game of bridge, and noncombatant evacuation planning."

The SHOP2 team: Dr. Nau; Tsz-Chiu Au (PhD student in CS); Okhtay Ilghami (PhD student in CS); Ugur Kuter (PhD student in CS); Bill Murdock (postdoctoral researcher at the Naval Research Laboratory); Dan Wu (PhD student in CS); and Fusun Yaman (PhD student in CS).

Raleigh News & Observer computer reporter Paul Gilster gives high marks to the work of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab, its Director Ben Bederson (CS) and Professor Ben Shneiderman (CS/ISR) in a May 29 story. He says he checks the HCIL web site every year because "The work these guys are doing will show up in commercial products not
so far down the road." Story

HCIL held its annual symposium and open house May 30 and 31 on campus.

Ph.D. student Alireza Modafe has been selected to receive the American Vacuum Society's Graduate Research Award for 2002. Only one Graduate Research Award is given each year. Alireza will receive the award on November 6 at the AVS 49th International Symposium in Denver.

Alireza is a graduate research assistant in the MEMS Sensors and Actuators Lab. His advisor is Assistant Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR), who coincidentally won this same award when he was a graduate student.

Ahlia Tillman, a graduate student of Professor Shihab Shamma (ECE/ISR), is the recipient of a GEM Fellowship award. The fellowship is sponsored by the National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science, Inc. Ahlia is a student in the Neural Systems Lab. Congratulations Ahlia!

Radha Poovendran, Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Washington, received his department's 2002 Outstanding Teaching Award as well as the Outstanding Graduate Advisor Award. It was the first time both awards were given to the same faculty member. Radha was a Ph.D. student of Professor John Baras (ECE/ISR), who said, "This is truly outstanding for a young faculty member like him."

ISR alum Richard Stamper, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, is one of the nation's outstanding new teachers, according to the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). He received a national ASEE award for teaching. He was a Ph.D. student of Professor Lung-Wen Tsai.

Thomas Vossen, 2002 Ph.D. in Business Administration and affiliated with ISR, has accepted an offer to join the University of Colorado at Boulder as an assistant professor this fall. His appointment will be within the Systems Division in the Leeds School of Business. His co-advisors were Professor Mike Ball (Robert H. Smith School of Business/ISR), and Professor Dana S. Nau (CS/ISR). Thomas was the winner of the 2000 ISR outstanding graduate student award.

Nikolaos Kanlis, 2002 Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering and affiliated with ISR, has accepted an offer from Texas A&M, Kingsville, as Assistant Professor. His Ph.D. Advisor was Professor Shihab Shamma (ECE/ISR).

Hamid Jafarkhani, 1997 Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of California, Irvine. His Ph.D. advisor was Clark School Dean Nariman Farvardin.

Jie Chen, 1998 Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, has accepted an offer from Brown University as Assistant Professor. His Ph.D. advisor was Professor K.J. Ray Liu (ECE/ISR).

Hua O. Wang, 1993 Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, has accepted an offer to join Boston University's Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering as Associate Professor with tenure. He will be assuming his duties in fall 2002. Dr. Wang did his doctoral work in the ECE Department and the ISR under ISR Acting Director Eyad Abed (ECE/ISR). He is currently assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke University, and is also program director for systems and control at the Army Research Office in Durham, NC.

Five students graduated from ISR's Master of Science in Systems Engineering program on May 23. Congratulations to: Ketan Babaria, a software engineer with Agilent Technologies; Phanikumar Bhamidipati, who plans to go on to advanced graduate stud; Brian Poskaitis, now returning to active duty as a Coast Guard Commander; Scott Selberg, returning to Agilent Technologies as a manufacturing engineer; and Vandana, who has been hired as an application developer for Microsoft in Redmond, Wash.

July

Eleven ISR faculty members participated in the second NASA Goddard and University of Maryland Technical Summit at the Goddard Space Flight Center on July 31. Part 1 of the summit was held April 23. Areas addressed in the summit included controls, guidance and navigation; and MEMS. The event showcased research of the Clark School of Engineering relevant to NASA operations.

ISR participants:
Clark School Dean Nariman Farvardin

Controls, guidance and navigation
ISR Acting Director Eyad Abed (ECE/ISR)
Professor John S. Baras (ECE/ISR)
Assistant Professor Timothy Horiuchi (ECE/ISR)
Professor P.S. Krishnaprasad (ECE/ISR)
Professor William Levine (ECE)
Professor Steve Marcus (ECE/ISR)

MEMS
Associate Professor Don DeVoe (ME/ISR)
Assistant Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR)
Professor Ramamoorthy Ramesh (MNE)
Professor Gary W. Rubloff (MNE/ISR

Mr. Kazutomo Nishida (pictured at right above), an engineer with Honda Motor Company in Japan, gave his final Visiting Scientist Program presentation on July 23. He spoke on "Design of Stepping Motor Aided Pointing System for Optical Wireless Tracking System," the research he conducted with Professor Christopher Davis (ECE/ISR). He will be returning to Japan at the end of July.

ISR Senior Research Scientist Stuart Milner is the project director for a new Maryland Industrial Partnerships grant. The project is titled "Advanced Transceiver Acquisition and Tracking for Optical Wireless Communications" and the industrial partner is Rockville-based LumenLink, Inc.

On July 17 and 18, ISR hosted a project review for the Department of Defense University Research Initiative (URI), "Distributed Immune Systems for Wireless Networks Information Assurance." More than 35 people associated with the project attended. ISR participants included Principal Investigator, Professor John S. Baras (ECE/ISR); Professor Carlos Berenstein (Math/ISR); Professor Anthony Ephremides (ECE/ISR); Professor K.J. Ray Liu (ECE/ISR); Assistant Professor Haralabos Papadopoulos (ECE/ISR) and Professor Nicholas Roussopoulos (CS/UMIACS). Professor Virgil Gligor (ECE) is also on this URI team.

Mr. Hirokatsu Nakaie, engineer with Honda Motor Company, described his research on motorcycle maneuverability for his final presentation at ISR. During his 13-month visit as part of the Visiting Scientist Program, he worked with ISR-affiliated Professor William Levine (ECE) on dynamic characterization of suspension systems in motorcycles. He will be returning to Japan at the end of July.

Just published by Westview Press, the third edition of Building Scientific Apparatus by Professor John H. Moore (Chemistry), Professor Christopher Davis (ECE/ISR) and Research Professor Michael A. Coplan (IPST). The book is a practical guide for working scientists and students who design and construct scientific equipment.

ISR alumnus Radha Poovendran, Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Washington, has won the Army Research Office's Young Investigator's Program (YIP) award. The award is for "Information Assurance for Energy Constrained Wireless Sensor Networks." Story

Associate Professor S.K. Gupta (ME/ISR) received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) on July 12. He saw President Bush, toured the White House and got to speak with the directors of NIST, NSF, NIH as well as key figures from other federal agencies. S.K. won the prestigious award for his work on developing a new molding process and decision support tool that make it possible to cost effectively manufacture multi-material parts. The PECASE is the highest honor given by the U.S. government to outstanding scientists and engineers in the early stages of establishing their research careers. Only 20 NSF-supported PECASE awards are given out each year. | Dr. Gupta's acceptance speech | NSF press release | Dr. Gupta also has been been selected as one of 84 young engineers in the country to participate in the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) eighth annual Frontiers of Engineering symposium this fall. The engineers in this program come from academia, industry and government. Story

ISR welcomes two new faculty members. G. Anandalingam is the Tyser Professor of Management Science in the Robert H. Smith School of Business. His research interests are in the design, economics, industry analysis, strategy, and policy telecommunications networks and electronic markets, and in global information systems strategy. He is co-director of the Center for Electronic Markets and Enterprises. He is joining ISR with a joint appointment.

Elias Balaras, a new affiliate faculty member, is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests are in computational fluid dynamics, biomedical fluid flows, fluid-structure interactions and turbulence and transition.

Congratulations to Assistant Professor Dimitrios Hristu-Varsakelis (ME/ISR), a former affiliate faculty member who now has a joint appointment with ISR.

Associate Professor Dave Akin (AE/ISR) is part of a 10-person University of Maryland team that has won one of seven NASA University Research, Engineering and Technology Institutes (URETI) awards. URETI is a new program to strengthen NASA's ties with academia. The new institute will address "Third Generation Reusable Launch Vehicles" and is funded at $3 million per year for a minimum of five years. Professor Mark Lewis (AE) is the principal investigator. Besides Akin, AE faculty include Norman Wereley,
Darryll Pines, Ken Yu and Christopher Cadou. They are joined by Ashwani Gupta and Steven Buckley from Mechanical Engineering, Carol Smidts (MNE) and Andre Marshall (FPE).

NASA press release on the URETI program

ISR alumnus Xin Cindy Chen, 41, and her husband Yuangeng Huang, 45, are helping steer the course at Everlasting Systems Ltd., a growing worldwide software provider based in Hong Kong. Story

Six college students from across the country arrived at ISR June 10 for the summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. Learn more

Professor Ben Shneiderman's (CS/ISR) study on factors that create online trust is highlighted in a Computerworld story, "How to Stop Web Shopper Flight." Story at the Computerworld web site

August

Master's of Science in Systems Engineering (MSSE) student Vera Osidach (atop her motorcycle in this ISR file photo), recently made the local news by having two feet of her long hair cut for charity. Vera's hair was given to Locks of Love, which makes hair pieces for children with hair loss due to chemotherapy and other causes. Vera is a biomedical engineer with the Centers for Disease Control in Hyattsville. Her thesis advisor is Professor Michael Fu (BGMT/ISR), and she expects to graduate in December 2002.

The Institute for Systems Research is currently conducting a search for Assistant Director for Finance and Facilities. Position announcement

Associate Professor Jeffrey Herrmann (ME/ISR), Associate Professor Linda Schmidt (ME/ISR) and Associate Professor Peter Sandborn (ME) are the principal investigators for a new NSF Product Realization and Environmental Manufacturing Innovative Systems (PREMISE) grant, Applying Decision Production Systems to Improve Environmentally Responsible Product Development. The project begins January 1, 2003, and runs until June 30, 2004.

The research will examine how product development organizations use environmental information in their decision making and create a novel, systems-level paradigm to develop new insights into their behavior. Unlike many existing approaches, this perspective will examine the entire organization, not just individual product development projects. Story

Associate Professor Ray Adomaitis (ChE/ISR) (PI) and Professor Gary W. Rubloff (MNE/ISR) are partners in a new National Science Foundation Information Technology Research (ITR) grant, Spatially Programmable Equipment: A New Design Paradigm for Semiconductor Manufacturing Enabled by Information Technology. The $500,000, three-year project starts in September.

Adomaitis and Rubloff will develop a new paradigm for semiconductor manufacturing equipment—flexible equipment design enabled by information technology. The project has the potential to fundamentally change the design paradigm of the industry to one that directly exploits a broad spectrum of information technology.
| Story | Project information |

Professor Ben Shneiderman (CS/ISR) is making his papers available to researchers at the University of Maryland's Libraries' Archives and Manuscripts Department in the Hornbake Library. The papers illustrate his work and emergence of the discipline of human-computer interaction. Online inventory of Dr. Shneiderman's papers

September

ISR Director Eyad Abed (ECE/ ISR) is the principal investigator for a three-year, $447,408 National Science Foundation Information Technology Research (ITR) award. The project, "Nonlinear Dynamics-Based Robust Congestion Control," tools from nonlinear dynamical systems and from bifurcation and chaos control will be harnessed for the analysis and control of congestion in networks with one or several bottlenecks with TCP-type and/or UDP-type traffic. It will develop an understanding of Internet network congestion dynamics and address some of the difficult systems issues that are at the heart of the congestion avoidance and control problem.

Professor Ben Shneiderman (CS/ISR) has written a new book, Leonardo's Laptop, published by MIT Press. The book "proposes Leonardo da Vinci as an inspirational muse for the 'new computing'" and invites readers to "wonder how Leonardo would use a laptop and what applications he would create." The September 2002 issue of the Association for Computing Machinery's Interactions magazine features Shneiderman's book on the cover and includes a 14-page excerpt.

ISR welcomes a new affiliate faculty member, Michel Cukier, an assistant professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department and the Center for Reliability Engineering. He has research interests in security evaluation, intrusion tolerance, distributed system validation, fault injection, and software testing.

Assistant Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new three-year, $270,000 NSF grant, "Micro-Ball Bearing Technology for Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS)." The research investigates the use of micro-ball bearing technology for MEMS and micro-machinery applications. Story

Professor Dana S. Nau (CS/ISR), his current Ph.D. student Tsz-Chiu Au and former research scientist Héctor Muñoz-Avila (now a professor at Lehigh University) won a best research paper award at the 6th European Conference on Case-Based Reasoning. The paper is titled, "On the Complexity of Plan Adaptation by Derivational Analogy in a Universal Classical Planning Framework."

Associate Professor Mark Austin (CEE/ISR) and his student Evangelos Kaisar (below) won a best paper award at the Sixth World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (SCI 2002) and the Eighth International conference on Information Systems, Analysis and Synthesis (ISAS 2002). "Multi-Level Object-Based Analysis of Narrow Passageway Transportation Systems" was selected as one of the best papers presented in the Information Technology Applications in Transportation session.

Professor Tony Ephremides (ECE/ISR); Professor John S. Baras (ECE/ISR); Assistant Professor Richard La (ECE/ISR); and Assistant Professor Sennur Ulukus (ECE/ISR) have received a three-year, $1.5 million National Science Foundation Information Technology Research (ITR) grant.

The project is titled "Vertical Protocol Integration in Ad-Hoc Wireless Networks." It seeks to exploit inter-layer dependencies in network protocols for improved network performance. In particular, the researchers will focus on ad-hoc wireless networks, in which these interdependencies are more pronounced and in which the network will benefit significantly by crosslayer designs. Dr. Ephremides is the Principal Investigator. Story

ISR welcomes two new Honda engineers in our Visiting Scientists Program. Mr. Takeo Yokoyama (right) is a chassis designer in the motorcycle body design division of Honda R&D Co. in Japan. Mr. Yoshihiko Eguchi (left) is a noise-damping and exhaust systems engineer in the automobile body development department at Honda R&D Co. in Japan. More information about ISR’s Visiting Scientists Program

On Sept. 4, Professor Ben Shneiderman (CS/ISR) commented about government agencies sharing information on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. Audio at NPR's web site

Professor G. "Anand" Anandalingam (Robert H. Smith School of Business/ISR), Professor Michael Ball (Robert H. Smith School of Business/ISR), Professor V.S. Subrahmanian (CS/ISR) and ISR-affiliated Assistant Professor S. Raghavan (Robert H. Smith School of Business) are part of an eight-member University of Maryland team that has received a three-year, $2 million National Science Foundation grant to study electronic markets for "time-sensitive" goods. Professor Anandalingam is the principal investigator.

"Rapid Response Electronic Markets for Time-Sensitive Goods" will be conducted at the Center for Electronic Markets and Enterprises. Researchers will analyze a variety of e-markets with particular focus on those where buyers and sellers have little time to make decisions on finalizing the deal. Goods that fall into this "time-sensitive" category include tickets to sporting and entertainment events, airline tickets, hotel room reservations, and landing time slots at airports. Story

Professor Tony Ephremides (ECE/ISR) will be the keynote speaker at the 2002 Mobicom in Atlanta, GA on Sept 25. Mobicom is an Association for Computing Machinery-sponsored conference established in 1995. It is regarded as the premier conference on wireless networking. Ephremides will talk about the importance of the wireless link in wireless networks.

ISR-affiliated Assistant Professor David Lovell (CEE); his student, Mr. Taehyung Kim; and visiting professor Dr. Yongjin Park from Daegu, Korea, have received a new National Science Foundation award. "Observation and Modeling of Variability in Car-Following Behavior" is a $143,554 grant that runs for two years. The researchers will observe and analyze car-following behavior and develop a model that can explain the stochastic effects across and within drivers, as well as those caused by factors such as human, traffic and road, and environmental characteristics. Story

The Maryland Hybrid Networks Center (formerly the Center for Satellite and Hybrid Communication Networks) (CSHCN) held its Industrial Advisory Board meeting on August 27. The board is made up of representatives from HyNet 's industrial partners program. HyNet is an ISR-affiliated center.

October

Professor P.S. Krishnaprasad (ECE/ISR), ISR Director Eyad Abed (ECE/ISR) and ISR Affiliated Professor Roger Brockett (Harvard) presented papers at a symposium in Monterey, Calif., Oct. 18-19. The event honored the 60th birthday of Professor Arthur J. Krener of the University of California, Davis, a pioneer in nonlinear control theory and its applications for the past thirty years. Dr. Krener spent a sabbatical year at ISR in 1992-93.

The Symposium on New Trends in Nonlinear Dynamics and Control and their Applications was an opportunity for control theorists to review major developments in nonlinear control theory from the past, to define new research trends for the future, and to share the success and experience of the community with young researchers who are just entering the field

Dr. Abed spoke on "Feedback Control of Border Collision Bifurcations," Dr. Krishnaprasad's talk was entitled "Interacting Particles on Lie Groups," and Dr. Brockett's examined "Quantum Control." Symposium web site

Professor James Hendler (CS/ISR) has been awarded the Air Force Exceptional Civilian Service Medal. This is the Air Force's highest honorary award for civilians. It recognizes exceptionally distinguished service and accomplishments having significant service-wide scope and impact.

The new fall issue of ISR's System Solutions newsletter is available in both online and PDF formats.

Professor K.J. Ray Liu (ECE/ISR) is now the editor-in-chief of IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. This is the most-read journal in the signal processing community, with more than 25,000 subscribers and one of the highest citation impacts.

Dr. Liu was asked to continue the journal's tradition and bring it to an even higher level of excellence. He also currently serves as the editor-in-chief of EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing, where his leadership has won high praises from colleagues worldwide for transforming a journal into a new leading publication paradigm for signal processing and communication research.

Professor Ben Shneiderman (CS/ISR) has written a new book, Leonardo's Laptop, published by MIT Press. His recent visit to London to promote his book is chronicled by Usability News. He also recently spoke with the ACM journal, Ubiquity.

Welcome to new ISR Assistant Director for Finance, Donna Nichols.

ISR has seven visiting researchers and 25 postoctoral researchers in residence this fall. Twelve of the postdocs are new:

Marianne Jensen is conducting research with Cynthia Moss on echolocation in bats in acoustically complex environments. Damianos Karakos is working with Prakash Narayan and Adrian Papamarcou on the applications of information theory and multiuser detection to the areas of digital watermarking and multimedia security.

Himanshu Khurana is responsible for the management of the new US/Sweden Experiment task for the DARPA project: Integrated Security Services for Dynamic Coalition Management and is supervising the experimental component of two MS Thesis projects carried out under the DARPA project.

Vijay Konda is conducting research with Michael Fu and Steven Marcus on the modeling and numerical solution (especially simulation-based) of Markov decision processes, with application to communication networks, planning and estimation problems, and financial Gongjun Li is working with Carol Espy-Wilson on speaker recognition.

Jie Luo is conducting research with Anthony Ephremides on wireless networks. Xiaobo Tan is researching control of communication systems, control and design of smart materials, and quantum computation and control.

Caroline Essex Torcaso is working with William Levine on the biomechanical model of the human tongue. Zhen Wang is conducting research with K. J. Ray Liu on signal processing and communications.

Zhiyang Yao is partnering with S.K. Gupta on knowledge acquisition and reuse in virtual environments. Miao Yu will develop computer code and characterize laser beam propagation in atmospheric turbulence in the conditions of strong intensity scintillations and nonlinear effects.

Zhaoyan Zhang is conducting research with Carol Espy-Wilson on the development of acoustic models for American English /l/ and /r/ sounds.

We extend a warm welcome to these new researchers.

On September 30, ISR hosted the kickoff meeting for Scalable Multilayer Control of Joint Battlespace Networks, a $4.3 million Air Force Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI).

ISR Senior Research Scientist Stuart Milner is the Principal Investigator for the Maryland part of the team. Co-PIs are Professor K.J. Ray Liu (ECE/ISR) Professor Christopher Davis (ECE/ISR) and ISR affiliated Professor Mark Shayman (ECE). The Maryland participants were joined by their partners in the MURI, scientists from Cornell University and the University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign, and by Air Force representatives. The research looks to develop network architectures that circumvent the fundamental limitation on performance scalability of ad hoc, RF wireless networks. MURI info

ISR is pleased to announce the speakers for its Distinguished Lecturer Series for Fall 2002. On Friday, October 25, Dr. Bede Liu of Princeton University will speak on Video Re-Coding. On Friday, December 6, Dr. Christos Papadimitriou of the University of California, Berkeley, will speak on Algorithmic Aspects of the Internet. Both lectures will be at 10 a.m. in the Judith Resnik Lecture Hall on the campus of the University of Maryland. Information

November

Seven ISR faculty members are among the core faculty in the Clark School of Engineering's new Graduate Bioengineering Program, which offers both M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. The highly cross-disciplinary program "marries the principles and applications embedded within engineering with the sciences of biology, medicine and health," says William Bentley, the director of the program. "It is our belief that developments at the interface of biology and engineering will advance the efficacy of health care by developing new paradigms for the diagnosis of disease and the development and delivery of new therapeutics."

The seven from ISR are: Assistant Professor Pamela Abshire (ECE/ISR); Professor Christopher Davis (ECE/ISR); Associate Professor Don DeVoe (ME/ISR) Associate Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings (ECE/ISR); Professor K.J. Ray Liu (ECE/ISR); Professor Shihab Shamma (ECE/ISR); and ISR-affiliated Assistant Professor Jonathan Simon (ECE).

Dr. Eyad Abed (ECE/ISR) has officially been named Director of the Institute for Systems Research. Clark School of Engineering Dean Nariman Farvardin (ECE/ISR) made the announcement on November 4. Dr. Abed has been the acting director of ISR since 2001.

Dean Farvardin noted, "I am sure Dr. Abed will be a strong advocate for the ISR and a leader in organizing the efforts of the Institute to launch new and exciting research and educational programs and in strengthening the ties between the institute and various external constituencies.... Dr. Abed was strongly recommended by the search committee for this position and enjoys the widespread support of faculty, staff and students." Full text of the Dean's announcement

Professor Avis Cohen (Biology/ISR) and Associate Professor Ralph Etienne Cummings(ECE/ISR) were featured at the University of Maryland's Bioscience Research and Technology Review Day, November 19 in the Stamp Student Union. Dr. Cohen spoke about her work on "Control of an Injured Spinal Cord: Perspectives after Regeneration," and Dr. Etienne-Cummings explained his research in "Biomorphic VLSI Systems for Sensory-Motor Control." Event info and free registration

Professor K.J. Ray Liu (ECE/ISR), ISR/ECE alumnus Farrokh Rashid-Farrokhi and ECE Research Professor Leandros Tassiulas were issued U.S. Patent #6,377,812 on April 23, 2002. The invention, "Combined power control and space-time diversity in mobile cellular communications," achieves the optimal solution for a mobile cellular communications system uplink that minimizes the mobile power, and achieves a feasible solution for the downlink if any exist. The combination of power control and space-time diversity apply to networks with fading channels, including networks in which the number of cochannels and multipaths are larger than the number of antenna elements. ISR's patents page

Mr. Masahiro Kotake, (at right) research scientist with Toshiba Corporation, Japan, finished up his 10-month visit with ISR at the end of October. He conducted research with Professor Michael Ball (Robert H. Smith School of Business/ISR) on supply chain management. Mr. Yoshinori Shirasu, (at left) also a Toshiba research scientist, arrived in October and will continue the ongoing work.

Associate Professor Guangming Zhang (ME/ISR) is participating in a five-year, $5.9 million National Institutes of Health grant, "Machinable Ceramics: Optimizing Performance and Properties." This grant is funded through NIH's National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR).

The program will develop fundamental understanding of damage initiation and accumulation in all-ceramic layered dental crowns as a function of materials, crown and tooth preparation design, and fabrication variables. Story

ISR Assistant Research Scientist Michael Hadjtheodosiou is the Principal Investigator for a NASA Space Communications Project in Computing Information and Communication Technologies award. The project proposal, "Flexible and Secure Access for High Data Rate Space Communications," was submitted through The Maryland Hybrid Networks Center (formerly the Center for Satellite and Hybrid Communication Networks)/ISR. Professor John S. Baras (ECE/ISR) is Co-Principal Investigator.

The research will evaluate alternatives for more efficient and dynamic ways to communicate with NASA missions. The objective is to enable scientists to access data "anytime, anywhere" through the Internet. It focuses on issues such as dynamic multiple access techniques for an "on-demand" operational scenario and required modifications of the Ground Network that will enable more efficient access. It also looks at security, traffic analysis and QoS support issues for this architecture.

The two-year award carries a possibility of renewal for a third year. It will enhance activities already under way at HyNet related to supporting communications for NASA missions and developing a new space communication architecture for the future. NASA Space Communications Project web site

December

Congratulations to Professor John S. Baras (ECE/ISR), Alvaro A. Cardenas and Vahid Ramezani, who won the Best Paper Award in IT/C4ISR (Information Technology, Information Technology/Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) at the 23rd Army Science Conference in Orlando, Dec. 2-5. Their paper was titled, "On-Line Detection of Distributed Attacks From Space-Time Network Flow Patterns."

Two ISR faculty members are the editors of a new book published by Kluwer academic publishers. Telecommunications Network Design and Management is edited by Professor G. "Anand" Anandalingam (Robert H. Smith School of Business/ISR) and ISR-affiliated Assistant Professor S. Raghavan (Robert H. Smith School of Business).

The book represents the state of the art of applying operations research techniques and solutions across a broad spectrum of telecommunications problems and implementation issues. Major topics include: the design of wireless networks, including UMTS and Ad-Hoc networks; the optimal design of telecommunications networks; traffic flow; network management; and the construction of topologies and allocation of bandwidth to ensure quality of service.

Associate Professor Jeffrey Herrmann (ME/ISR) has received the 2003 Jiri Tlusty Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award. The award was given to Dr. Herrmann by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) for his significant achievements and leadership in manufacturing engineering as a young engineer. Only 12 recipients were selected for this prestigious award for 2003.

On Dec. 6, ISR's second Distinguished Lecture of the semester featured Christos Papadimitriou
Professor, Computer Science Division at the University of California at Berkeley.

Former ISR-affiliated Assistant Professor Allison Druin's (EDU/ UMIACS) Children's International Digital Library project officially has been launched. The project addresses research issues such as acquisition and rights management and searching /browsing /sharing technologies for children. It is developing a testbed using large amounts of digital information. | Visit the site | NSF press release | NPR's All Things Considered Nov. 19 interview (transcript) (Audio) | Wired.com, November 19 | International Herald Tribune | Internet magazine | Hindustan Times | USA Today | The New York Times | Bowie Gazette | The Christian Science Monitor | Philadelphia Inquirer |

ISR extends condolences to the family of former faculty member Dr. Lung-Wen Tsai, who passed away suddenly Nov. 29. Dr. Tsai conducted research into mechanisms and machine theory, design methodology, automotive engineering, robot manipulators, and micro electro-mechanical systems. In 2000 he moved from the University of Maryland to the University of California, Riverside where he was a professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department. Dr. Tsai was the editor of the ASME Journal of Mechanical Design, chaired the ASME Mechanisms Committee, and was an ASME Fellow. Dr. Tsai had been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) shortly before his death.

Professor Christopher Davis (ECE/ISR), ISR Senior Research Scientist Stuart Milner, and Professor Uzi Vishkin (ECE/UMIACS) of the Maryland Optics Group (MOG) have received a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant under its TeraHertz Operational Reachback (THOR) program. The THOR program is developing optical wireless links that will form an "Internet in the Sky" and allow very high data rate transfer to anywhere in the world in a secure way, without the need for installed fiber optic infrastructure.

MOG researchers will be working on the development of 1) agile, tracking transceivers and software for node acquisition, tracking, and efficient data transfer; 2) topology control algorithms for rapidly reconfigurable networks to accommodate groups of point-to-point transmission requests in the face of node failures and irrecoverable link failures; and 3) communication protocols to provide reliable data transfer and error correction to mitigate the effects of obscuration in the path between moving nodes. The nine-month first phase of the grant is worth $300,000.

The Fall 2002 issue of the Computer Integrated Manufacturing Laboratory newsletter is now available in both PDF and online versions.

Professor K.J. Ray Liu (ECE/ISR) has been elected a Fellow of the IEEE for his "contributions to algorithms, architectures, and implementations for signal processing."