DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING NEWSLETTER
Week of April 22 - 26, 2002

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

This newsletter is also emailed by Friday afternoon of the previous week to all faculty, staff, and students in ECE.

If you are not receiving this email, please contact <nancy@ece.northwestern.edu> and we will get you on that email list.

CHAIRMAN'S COLUMN

It is very strange to finally have a week without a faculty candidate visit. I hope we have other scheduled seminars to keep everyone here busy, now that extra time is available.

Next Wednesday, April 24, is Administrative Professionals Day (or as my politically incorrect Alaska Calendar calls it, "Secretaries Day"). I am asking the faculty to join me in expressing our appreciation to our professional staff for making this department run so smoothly.

On Thursday, April 25, it is Take Our Daughters to Work Day. We look forward to welcoming all our young visitors that day.

-Abe Haddad
Interim Chairman

SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENTS

CENTER FOR QUANTUM DEVICES (CQD) Seminar/Colloquium
DATE: Thursday, April 25, 2002
TIME: 8:30 a.m.
PLACE: MLSB/Cook Hall Room 2058
TITLE: "Single Molecule Electronics"
SPEAKER: Dr. Mark Hersam, Materials Science and Engineering Department, Northwestern University

EXAMINATIONS

Thursday, April 25, 2002: M.S. Final Examination - 4:00 p.m.
Room L324
Jayaprakash Pisharath
"Design of a Power Aware Memory Hierarchy"
Committee Members: A. Choudhary (chairman), P. Banerjee, and R. Figueiredo

Friday, April 26, 2002: Ph.D. Final Examination - 10:00 a.m.
Room L324
Richard Waltz
"Algorithms for Large-Scale Nonlinear Optimization"
Committee Members: J. Nocedal (chairman), A. Haddad, R. Freeman, and R. Fourer

OTHER NEWS

I am pleased to inform you that my student Paul Voss has been selected as one of the eight finalists for the 2002 New Focus Student Award. Each finalists receives a cash prize of $2,500. Three of the finalists will be awarded a top prize of $10,000 after oral presentations at the Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics to be held in Long Beach, CA, May 19-24, 2002.

This is very prestigious award as it not only emphasizes academic achievement, but also leadership in the community and presentation prowess.

I have attached details of the New Focus Award competition below for your information. Further information about the New Focus Award can be found at

http://www.osa.org/aboutosa/awards/theawards/awardsdesc/award30.cfm

Last year my student Jay Sharping went on to win the prestigious $10,000 award.

Congratulations are in order for Paul Voss; we at Northwestern are very proud of him!

-Prem Kumar

New Focus Student Award
----------------------------
The OSA New Focus Student Award was established in 1997 to encourage research excellence, presentation prowess, and leadership in the optics community among OSA Student Members. In 2002, the program will move from competition and presentation at the OSA Annual Meeting to the CLEO/QELS conference in May 2002 in Long Beach, CA. Students do not need to be presenters at CLEO/QELS to be considered.

All nominations will be reviewed by the New Focus Student Award Committee in March 2002 and they will select eight finalists by mid-April. The eight finalists must make an oral presentation of their technical paper at a special New Focus Student Award session during the week of CLEO/QELS 2002 in Long Beach, CA to be judged on their presentation skills. Five of the eight finalists will receive $2,500 each and three will receive $10,000 each.

OLD NEWS

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

HOW TO SUBMIT ENTRY

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