Home > News > Weekly News Archive > Weekly News from 2004-05 > September 20, 2004

CHAIRMAN'S COLUMN

I wish to welcome all our new and returning undergraduate and graduate students to a new academic year. I also wish to welcome the faculty, who I hope have had a restful but productive summer, and are ready to resume their teaching and other duties for the academic year.

Special welcome is extended to our new faculty who arrived on campus two weeks ago:

Russ Joseph, Ph.D. from Princeton, as Assistant Professor in the area of computer architecture;

Dongning Guo, Ph.D. from Princeton, as Assistant Professor in the area of communications, wireless, and networks.

Please join me in welcoming them to ECE and making their experience at NU very pleasant.

We extend our congratulations to Professors Pappas and Shahriar, who were granted tenure at Northwestern.

The Dean held a meeting of the McCormick Advisory Council (MAC) last week and ECE was commended for its improved ranking in the undergraduate programs to 14 in EE and 18 in CompE. The MAC also applauded ECE and CS for their increased cooperation.

I look forward to working with you during the 2004-05 academic year, which I hope to be productive and exciting.

-Abe Haddad
Interim Chairman

EXAMINATIONS (July-September 25, 2004)

Wednesday, July 14, 2004: Ph.D. Qualifying Examination
Jinye Zhang
"Intensity Noise Induced by Stimulated Brillouin Scattering In Optical Fiber Transmission Systems"
Committee Members: M. Phillips (chairperson), P. Kumar, and A. Taflove

Monday, August 30, 2004: Ph.D. Final Examination
Gaurav Mittal
"A Compiler Infrastructure for Compiling Assembly and Binary Programs onto FPGAS"
Committee Members: P. Banerjee (chairman), R. Dick, H. Zhou, and G. Memik

Monday, September 10, 2004: Ph.D. Qualifying Examination
Marisa Ruffolo
"The Design of a Digital Medical Imaging Network"
Committee Members: A. Sahakian (chairman), R. Berry, and M. Daskin

Tuesday, September 14, 2004: Ph.D. Qualifying Examination
Yujun Xie
"Design of an Automated Interface Linking CAD-Designed Products with CAM Manufacturability"
Committee Members: C-H Wu (chairman), L. Henschen, and K. Ehmann

Tuesday, September 14, 2004: Ph.D. Qualifying Examination
Wiroonsak Santipach
"Performance of Multiple-Input Wireless Channels with Limited Feedback"
Committee Members: M. Honig (chairman), A. Haddad, and R. Berry

Tuesday, September 21, 2004: Ph.D. Qualifying Examination - 10:00 a.m.
Room L324
Preetpaul Devgan
"Applications of Nonlinearities in Fibers and Optoelectronic Devices for All-Optical Signal Processing"
Committee Members: P. Kumar (chairman), W. Kath, and M. Phillips

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES/AWARDS/HONORS

Hai Zhou became a senior member of IEEE.

TRAVEL

Abe Haddad traveled to Boston, MA, June 28-July 4, to attend the 2004 American Control Conference. He chaired a session, co-authored a paper entitled, "An Application of the Control Theoretic Modeling for a Scalable TCP ACK Pacer," presented by graduate student Yishen Sun (with Prof. Berry and Lee as co-authors), and attended a meeting of the AACC Board.

Prem Kumar visited Baltimore and Washington, DC, August 23-25 for the Feynman Festival 2004, University of Maryland, and DARPA Slow-Light Kick-off meeting in Washington. He presented the following invited paper at the Feynman festival: P. Kumar, "Long-distance distribution of fiber-generated entanglement.

Prem Kumar traveled to Waikoloa, Hawaii, August 1-7, for the Nonlinear Optics Topical Meeting. Invited Paper Title: Telecom-band entanglement generation, storage, and long-distance distribution, Authors: Prem Kumar, Xiaoying Li, Jun Chen, Paul L. Voss, Jay E. Sharping.

Jorge Nocedal is traveling to New York, NY, Sept 17-21, to give a seminar entitled, "Steering Penalty Methods," at the IBM Watson Research Center.

Jorge Nocedal traveled to Erice, Italy, June 20-July 1, and gave a plenary lecture at the 4th Workshop on Nonlinear Optimization.

Richard Waltz traveled to Erice, Sicily, Italy, June 21-July 1, for the International School of Mathematics "G. Stampacchia" 40th Workshop on Large Scale Nonlinear Optimization. He gave a talk entitled "Advances in SLQP Algorithms for Large-Scale Nonlinear Optimization."

Bruce Wessels attended the Integrated Photonics Conference in San Francisco, June 29-July 2. He attended the conference on Physics and Applications of Spin-related phenomena in semiconductors in Santa Barbara, July 20-23, and presented a paper entitled, "X-ray absorption and dichroism of InMaAs epitaxial films." He presented a paper entitled, "Magneto-optical properties of heteroepitaxial ferromagnetic InMaAs thin films," at the International Conference on the Physics of Semiconductors in Flagstaff, AZ, July 26-30. He presented the paper, "Ferroelectric thin films for non-linear optical applications," at Argonne on September 13. He presented a seminar entitled, "Ferroelectric thin films for microphotonics," at North Carolina State University, September 16-17.

Horace Yuen traveled to Sendai and Tokyo, Japan, August 4-19, and presented a paper on cryptography in Tamagawa University and Tohuku University.

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