2006

DARPA funds center for NEMS/MEMS research at Harvard

Three-year program has over $2M in total funding from DARPA and industry partners

DEAS to Become SEAS

Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted today to recommend to the Harvard Corporation that DEAS change its name to the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). The change in name was recommended by the DEAS Visiting Committee and several other advisory groups, and warmly endorsed by the Corporation.

Dust in the wind

Daniel Jacob, a professor of atmospheric chemistry and environmental engineering creates a computer model for estimating the environmental impact of dust from Asia (Harvard Gazette)

Student athletes

After blazing brightly through regionals with clever coding fueled with plenty of java (in both senses of the word), the Harvard Computing Contest Club (HC3) is among he top 85 teams out of over 6,000 worldwide that has advanced to the 2007 ACM-ICPC World Finals in Tokyo, Japan

Early birds

Harvard's early applications for undergraduate admission have risen, with an 18% increase in the number of students indicating an interest in studying engineering

Siebel scholars

Peter A. Webb, MS candidate in CS, has been named DEAS' first Siebel Scholar

User friendly

Harvard Engineering and Applied Sciences has become a partner of World Community Grid, joining the IBM Corporation and a group of more than 240 companies, associations, foundations, nonprofits and academic institutions

Well tuned

The December issue of WIRED says of CS grad student David Malan's podcast of CS E-1: "If every undergrad watched this series, IT help desks would be out of business ..."

Too much tech

HBS' Clayton Christensen and DEAS' Woodward Yang told EE Times that designers in the semiconductor industry often deliver more technology than consumers can figure out how to use

Weaving barrels from DNA

A team of Harvard students designed a tiny container, about 30 nanometers in diameter and made entirely of DNA, that could one day be used to deliver drugs or gene or protein-based therapies to specific tissues in the body (Technology Review)

Kudos

Graduate students Alex Donohue, Applied Physics, and (pictured) Megan McClean, Applied Math, are the recipients of the Spring 2006 Engineering and Applied Sciences Teaching Fellow awards

Code commandos

Andrew K. McCollum '07, Ameya A. Velingker '10, and Yan Zhang '07 competed in the Northeast regional finals of the 31st annual ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest

A new deal

Bioengineer David Edwards' quest is to "transform the way that new drugs move from the University]s laboratories to remote villages in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia" (Crimson)

At the crossroads

Scientists visiting Harvard this month gave an audience a glimpse into the future of medicine - a world of implantable arteries, "bioartificial" organs, and replacement cells for failing hearts (Harvard Gazette)

Ads in space

Alum Thaddeus Fulford-Jones (Engineering Sciences) and now MIT graduate student is part of a group offering companies the chance to put ads into orbit (Boston Globe)

A natural engineer

We are pleased to welcome Colleen Hansel, Assistant Professor of Environmental Microbiology

Howe nice

Congrats to two grad students in faculty member Rob Howe's biorobotics lab

SEAS implements largest IBM Blue Gene supercomputer in U.S. academia

The CrimsonGridBGL will enhance multi-scale computational science and support advanced research in science and engineering

Applied mathematician Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan wins George Ledlie Prize

Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, who finds joy in "discovering the sublime in the mundane," has been awarded the George Ledlie Prize by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

A sad passing

Joseph Harrington, Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Engineering and Professor of Environmental Health Engineering in the HSPH Department of Environmental Health, has passed away

Winning design

Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) announced that a team of graduate students from Harvard University won first place in the SRC/SIA SoC Design Challenge

Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology Established at Harvard University

Endowment will boost research at the interfaces of biology, engineering and nanoscience

Back on earth

Stephanie Wilson '88 (Engineering Sciences) returned to campus on Sept. 14 to share her space experiences in an hour-long talk that mixed the technical accomplishments of her space shuttle flight and colorful details of life in space (Harvard Gazette)

A model computer scientist

Radhika Nagpal and colleagues walk the line between computer science and biology with ease, as their latest Nature paper, "The emergence of geometric order in proliferating metazoan epithelia" showcases

Harvard University engineers demonstrate laser nanoantenna

New laser could lead to higher density DVDs, more powerful microscopes and novel tools for biology and engineering

Better than life

CS grad Student Rebecca Nesson and her father, Professor Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School, have teamed up to offer Harvard's first class held in a virtual world using an environment called Second Life (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Nanowire arrays can detect signals along individual neurons

Merger of nanowires and neurons could boost efforts to measure and understand brain activity

Summer research

Chimdimnma (Chi-Chi) Esimai '08, an Engineering Sciences concentrator, and Assistant Professor Kit Parker are two of the many scientists and engineers who spent their summer months immersed in research (Harvard Magazine).

Enter the grid

How the Crimson Grid, based here at DEAS, enables collaborative research to flourish at Harvard (NSF's Science Grid This Week).

New dean of Physical Sciences

Geophysicist Jeremy Bloxham has been named dean for the physical sciences in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Photo finish

Graduate student Marcus Roper has received a fellowship from the Kodak Fellows Program. Roper studies microfluidics. The fellowships are given each year to one of the top graduate students, as designated by the host program, at a few of the best schools across the country.

Under the sea

This August in Monterey Bay, Calif., an entire fleet of undersea robots will work together without the aid of humans to make detailed and efficient observations of the ocean (Princeton University)

A warm glow

Potential applications of stopping light, a breakthrough technique first conducted by Lene Hau and her colleagues in 2001 (IEEE Spectrum)

New recruit

We are pleased to welcome Marko Loncar to our faculty

The road ahead

Calls for supporting a wide range of approaches to science education and research in Longwood, Allston, and Cambridge

In good company

Computer Science graduate student Emanuele Viola has won a (SIAM) Student Paper Prize for "Pseudorandom Bits for Constant Depth Circuits with Few Arbitrary Symmetric Gates

Cool courses

The Crimson has picked ES 221: Drug Delivery, taught by recent arrival Debra Auguste, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering, as one of the 15 courses for '06-'07 (Crimson)

Hot wired

Computer scientist Matt Welsh has found another mountain to climb---a volcano to be precise

Good sports

Faculty and students from Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational-Technical High School's Engineering Technology program fabricated six plastic 'membrane stretchers' to be used in experiments led by bioengineer Kit Parker (SouthCoast Today)

Faster than a ...

Researchers at Harvard University have shown that nanowire transistors can be at least four times speedier than conventional silicon devices (Technology Review)

Rewarding research

Assistant Professor of Bioengineering Maurice Smith has been awarded a Wallace H. Coulter Foundation Early Career Award to support research on error feedback control dysfunction as a measure of the progression of Huntington's disease

Soda fountain

Applied Physicist Dan Blair appeared on NECN to explain what happens when Mentos, those tiny candy mints, meets Diet Coke (NECN)

Bursting on the scene

Bioengineers Nicholas Lesica, Garrett Stanley, and their colleagues have investigated ways in which thalamic neurons may encode visual information to respond dynamically to common visual scenes like a tiger's tail emerging from the tall grass

Active thinker

The Crimson profiles John A. Armstrong '56, longtime supporter for engineering and applied sciences at Harvard, in its special section on the class of '56 (Crimson)

Baby steps

All that hand and arm waving by children starting at around three months old, turns out to have a purpose other than simply getting a toy or attention

Harvard proposes to transform Engineering Division into a school

Longtime DEAS Dean Narayanamurti to remain as leader

Harvard team takes major step toward high volume production of quantum cascade lasers

Breakthrough could soon lead to the large-scale commercialization of QC lasers and open up new markets for laser based chemical sensors

Prize patrol

Congrats to our Herchel Smith Undergraduate Research Scholarship winners

Teacher appreciation

An apple goes to teaching fellows Alex Healy (CS 220) and Kelly Heffner (CS 50), recipients of the Fall 2005 DEAS TF awards

Finding her way

Held at Harvard's Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences on May 3, Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day, a nationwide effort in its sixth year, aims to do more than simply live up to its title (Harvard Gazette)

Cover shot

The Gates Foundation-sponsored research of bioengineer David Edwards was featured as part of a cover story, "Injecting New Ideas Into Vaccines" (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Engineers go 'round the world

Undergraduates win Weissman Internships

A second first

LONO Medical Systems, a medical device company started by four Harvard students (including three current seniors), won the $25,000 first prize at the first annual U Texas Tyler-Peltier Business Plan Competition

Keeping score

RFC Cambridge, the Harvard-MIT undergraduate RoboCup soccer team, placed second (behind powerhouse CMU) in the RoboCup U.S. Open (small size category)

Re-ignite

Assistant Professor Shriram Ramanathan is part of Hydrophen, a Harvard University team that's among the top 10 finalists in the 2006 Ignite Clean Energy Competition

Engineering is everywhere

Media round-up (Harvard Gazette)

Multitasking undergrads

The Crimson gave some publicity and praise to the top senior engineering design projects for ES100/100hf (Crimson)

Grad life revealed

The Washington Post profiled applied physics graduate student Benjamin G. Lee, a member of Federico Capasso's lab, in the April 18th edtion (Washington Post)

Out of the box

Purdue University's student newspaper covered a recent talk by Dean Venky encouraging engineers to invent outside the box (The Exponent)

Eyes on the sky

A new telescope will scan the universe for signs of life on other planets (Boston Globe)

Paving the way

CS Graduate student Rebecca Nesson has been awarded one of the 19 $10,000 2006 Anita Borg Scholarships sponsored by Google

Guggenheim fellow

L. Mahadevan has been awarded a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship

Shared knowledge

India's Newindpress and The Hindu both reported on a talk given by Dean Venky about ways to transform Indian engineering colleges to meet international standards

Changed world

Changing Our World: True Stories of Women Engineers, published by the American Society of Civil Engineers, features two DEAS pioneers

Inspired engineering

Artist Jonathon Nix created the "Mahadevan Series", a group of paintings inspired by Professor L. Mahadevan's elegant research on the science of everyday life

Model behavior

Undergraduates Elaine Angelino '06 (Applied Math), Shaun Fitzgibbons '06 (Physics & Math), Alex Glasser '06 (Physics & Math) won the 2006 Consortium for Mathematics and Its Applications (COMAP) Mathematical Modeling Competition

Muscle man

Bioengineer David Mooney and his team have developed a new method of cell transplantation (Harvard Gazette)

Light train

Donhee Ham group's demonstration of a robust self-sustained electrical soliton oscillator is discussed in the March 2nd edition of Nature Magazine News and Views section

Clicks in class

Eric Mazur has helped Harvard launch its first wireless classroom. Aided by clickers that allow students to raise a virtual hand to answer questions (Harvard Gazette)

Congrats

On behalf of the New York City Post of the Society of American Military Engineers (SAME), Harvard College senior Daniel Foti has been awarded the 2005 Colonel and Mrs. S.S. Dennis, III Scholarship

American dreams

Colette Shen '04 (AB in Engineering Sciences) is among the 30 graduate students in the nation named Paul and Daisy Soros new American Fellows for 2006

A bit more press

The Financial Times features a piece highlighting Professor Harry Lewis' course "Bits"

Kicking and scheming

Undergrads from Harvard and MIT join together to compete on a robotic field of dreams (Harvard Gazette)

Congrats

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Matt Welsh has won a NSF CAREER Award for his work on wireless medical sensors

Better shopping

The Crimson reports on the ingenuity of Engineering Sciences concentrator Michael W. Reckhow '06

Star performance

Profile of graduate student Roberto Martinez (Boston Globe)

Go team!

Congrats to HCES and their "Robotic Futbol Club"

Grand designs

Congrats to David Ricketts and Kyoungho Woo in Donhee Ham's Group for winning the 2006 ADI Outstanding Student Designer Awards from Analog Devices

Going the distance

Harvard University, through its Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has joined the Indo-US Inter-University Collaborative Initiative in Higher Education and Research