DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING NEWSLETTER
Week of September 21 - 25, 1998

This page contains news related to the ECE department of the current week. Specifically it includes current information about seminars, exams, travel, research grants, professional news, personal news scheduled for this week.

This newsletter is also emailed by Friday afternoon of previous week to: {faculty,staff,gradstudents,ee-undergrads,co-undergrads}@ece.nwu.edu.

If you are not receiving this email, please contact root@ece.nwu.edu and we will get you on that email list, mention which category you belong to.

CHAIRMAN'S COLUMN

We will begin classes for the new year on Sept. 23rd. Everyone - students, faculty, and staff - is going to be very busy next week. I want to welcome the new undergraduate and graduate students to this department and wish them luck with their academic pursuits.

Since we have had some of our faculty leave our department in the past few months to pursue other career opportunities, and we were not able to replace all of them, we have had a strain on our ability to offer all the courses in all the quarters that we had hoped for. We have updated the schedule of courses on the web site (http://www.ece.nwu.edu). Please look at the site for details so you can plan when to take various courses. While we understand that the cancellation of courses creates severe disruptions of student career planning, we are sometimes forced to do that. Thanks a lot for your support.

The good news is that we plan to hire two new faculty next year, one in the area of digital signal processing, and another in the area of networking and optical systems. We also hired one faculty (Chris Jelen) this year who will start teaching next Fall. With three new faculty on board in Fall 1999, our teaching situation for next year will be greatly improved.

Finally, I would like to remind everyone that the contest for the design of the NEW ECE Web page is still on. Look at the current web page for more details. All entries are due Oct. 1, 1998. Students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to enter. There is a cash reward of $500 for the best design.

Have a great week!

SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENTS

There are no seminars scheduled this week.

EXAMINATIONS

Tuesday, Sept. 22:
M.S. Final Examination - 1:00 p.m., Room B211
Philippe Canal
"Finding Paths Among Obstacles in Two Layers Interconnection Model"
Committee Members: Prof. D.T. Lee (Chairman), Prof. C.H. Wu, and Prof. L. Henschen

Tuesday, Sept. 22:
M.S. Final Examination - 11:00 a.m., Room L324
Yang Chao
"On a Web-Based Telemanipulation and Monitoring System"

Friday, Sept. 25:
Ph.D. Final Examination - 10:00 a.m., Room L324
Young Kun Park
"Eigenvalue Method for Accurate Numerical Vector Calculation of Optical Fiber Dispersion"
Committee Members: Prof. M. Marhic (Chairman), Prof. M. Epstein, Prof. M. Plonus, and Prof. A. Taflove

RESEARCH GRANTS

Prof. D.T. Lee received a research grant for $219,272.00 from the National Science Foundation for a project entitled "Geometric Algorithm Design and Visualization" for the period 9/1/98 - 8/31/01.

TRAVEL

Alan Sahakian traveled to Cleveland, OH from Sept. 13 -16 to attend the IEEE Computers in Cardiology Conference and present a paper entitled: "A simultaneous multichannel monophasic action potential electrode array for epicardial repolarization mapping".

Valerie Taylor will travel to Denver, CO Sept. 19-20 to participate in the CRA-W (CRA committee on the status of women) meeting.

Valerie Taylor will travel to San Francisco, CA Sept. 24-28 to:
- Give a presentation at NASA Ames on Sept. 24 - Give the keynote talk at the UC, Berkeley EECS Undergraduate Forum on Sept. 26

OTHER NEWS

Please join us in congratulating Nancy Singer who has recently been promoted from a part-time Secretary 1 to a full time Secretary II working as the Department Chairman's Secretary.

Don't miss the first GECES event of the school year--our annual Welcome Back Picnic!
When: Tuesday, September 22, from noon-2pm
Where: At Observatory Point, on the Lakefill. (across from the soccer/lacrosse fields, just east of SPAC, where the observatory used to be)
What: We'll have the usual food, games, volleyball, and music. Catch up on everyone's summer vacation and help welcome the new grad students and staff to NU! All ECE faculty, staff, and grad students are invited. Hope to see you there!

GECES
Graduate Electrical and Computer Engineering Students Society

Thursday, September 24, 11am-1pm
Room L324 - ECE Conference Room

There will be a social/meeting for all new graduate students to meet with the ECE faculty and staff for orientation to the department. Attendance is required for new grad students, but the atmosphere will be informal. Faculty and staff members will be introduced, and there will be information sheets to be filled out by the students. There will be plenty of time to ask questions and to meet individual faculty members. Light refreshments will be served.

Larry Henschen
Graduate Director

PERSONAL NEWS

Upcoming Birthday wishes:
Pred Bundalo - Sept. 20
Carol Surma - Sept. 22
Chris Gilmore - Sept. 24

OLD NEWS

You can look at news from previous weeks in Old News .

HOW TO SUBMIT ENTRY

Please send email to ecenews@ece.nwu.edu before Thursday 5PM of previous week to be included on current week's news. Include information about seminars, exams, travel, research grants, professional news, personal news.