Volume 10, Issue 17
April 2, 2008
In this issue:
- Awards and honors in the Engineering Community
- Croll professor selected
- Meet the new faculty online
- Third Cornell-Tsinghua workshop set for April 29-30
- COMSOL to offer free workshop on multiphysics modeling
- Library offers info session on new NIH requirement
- Second workshop added on identity theft
- Guest speakers and seminars
Awards and honors in the Engineering Community
Three ECE assistant professors, Ehsan Afshari, Sunil Bhave, and Farhan Rana, have been identified by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to receive DARPA 2008 Young Faculty Awards. The DARPA Young Faculty Award program is designed to seek out ideas from non-tenured faculty in order to identify the next generation of researchers working in microsystems technology.
Assoc. Prof. T. Michael Duncan, CBE, has been selected by the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society as the winner of the 2008 Tau Beta Pi Teaching Award, presented by the Cornell Engineering Alumni Association. The award was presented at the CEAA Awards Banquet on March 28.
An article by Deyan Luan, a CBE graduate student working with Assistant Professor Jeffery Varner, has been selected for publication in the 2008 International Medical Informatics Association Yearbook of Medical Informatics. Luan's article is titled "Computationally derived points of fragility of a human cascade are consistent with current therapeutic strategies," Comp Biol 2007.
Croll professor selected
Jefferson W. Tester '66, M.S. '67, will hold the first Croll Professorship of Sustainable Energy Systems in the College of Engineering, pending approval by the Cornell Board of Trustees. As the Croll Professor, Tester, currently the H. P. Meissner Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, is expected to play a leadership role in the college's Sustainable Energy Initiative as well as the Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future, which is bringing together experts in education and research from across campus to work toward common sustainability goals. He will arrive on campus this fall, where he will join the faculty in CBE.
Meet the new faculty online
Profiles of new faculty members who have joined the college in the past year are now available online.
Please take a moment to browse these profiles for an introduction to the newest members of the Engineering community.
Third Cornell-Tsinghua workshop set for April 29-30
On April 29-30, the College of Engineering will host the Third International Joint Workshop with Tsinghua University, Beijing, PR China. These workshops were established to promote collaboration between Cornell and Tsinghua, a leading engineering institution in China. This workshop will focus on "Sustainable Development: Water Resources, Energy and the Environment."
For more information, please visit the Web site or contact Clare Zuraw, 254-8732.
COMSOL to offer free workshop on multiphysics modeling
On April 16, COMSOL will offer a free multiphysics modeling workshop at Cornell, with an introduction and live demo from 9 to 10:30 a.m. and a hands-on training session from 10:30 a.m. until noon. The workshop, hosted by the Swanson Engineering Simulation Program in MAE, will be held in 471 Rhodes Hall. It should be useful for anyone interested in simulating and optimizing engineering phenomena based on PDEs, such as structural mechanics, heat transfer, electromagnetics, and fluid flows.
Seating is limited, so registration in advance is advised. If you have any questions, please contact Konrad Juethner, 781-273-3322.
Library offers info session on new NIH requirement
Recipients of National Institutes of Health funding should be aware of a new reporting requirement that goes into effect on April 7. Principle investigators must ensure that electronic versions of any peer-reviewed manuscripts arising from NIH funding and accepted for publication after that date are deposited in PubMed Central, NIH's digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature.
The Engineering Library will offer an information session regarding this requirement on April 2 from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the Engineering Library Blue Room.
The session will cover:
* What you need to know about copyright ownership in order to comply with this requirement
* How to deposit articles in PubMed Central
* How this increases your access to the biomedical literature
No registration is necessary. For more information, contact John Saylor and or visit the Web site.
Second workshop added on identity theft
Cornell Information Technologies, the Division of Financial Affairs, and Cornell Police have joined forces to design a program called Identity Theft: Deter, Detect, and Defend at Home and at Work to educate Cornell staff about identity theft and the steps they can take to protect sensitive data.
For those of you unable to attend the workshop on March 28, a second session has been scheduled for April 21 from 10 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. in B11 Kimball Hall. This free information session in open to all university faculty and staff. Register online.
Guest speakers and seminars
Fridays, noon, 5130 Upson
Lunch to be provided at noon; talk begins at 12:15
Web site
4 Apr
Asst. Prof. Eyal Amir, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Reinventing partially observable reinforcement learning
Wednesdays, 4:15-5:15 p.m., 155 Olin Hall
Refreshments in 155 Olin at 4:00
Web site
2 Apr
Eric Darling, research associate, Orthopaedic Bioengineering Laboratory, Duke University School of Medicine: Investigations of single-cell, mechanical biomarkers via atomic force microscopy
Thursdays, 3:35-4:25 p.m., 255 Olin Hall
Web site
3 Apr
Kris Kieswetter, director, Global Research, Kinetic Concepts: TBA
10 Apr
Jon Rowley, director of research and development, Lonza: TBA
17 Apr
Prof. Alan J. Grodzinsky, director, Center for Biomedical Engineering, MIT; president, Orthopaedic Research Society: TBA
Fridays, 3:30 p.m., 655 Rhodes
Refreshments at 4:30 in 657 Rhodes
Web site
4 Apr
Prof. Jonathan Farley, Mathematics Department, Caltech: Toward a mathematical theory of counterterrorism: Building the perfect terrorist cell
11 Apr
Prof. Yannis G. Kevrekidis, Chemical Engineering, PACM, and Mathematics, Princeton University: Equation-free modeling and computation for complex systems
18 Apr
Asst. Prof. Jennifer Dy, Electrical and Computer Engienering, Northeastern: Non-redundant multi-view clustering
4 p.m., 155 Olin Hall
Refreshments at 3:15 in 128 Olin
Web site
Prof. Carol K. Hall, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, North Carolina State University
21 Apr
Thermodynamic and kinetic origins of Alzheimer's and related diseases: A chemical engineer's perspective
22 Apr
Self-assembly of dipolar particles: Designing smart materials using computer simulation
Fridays, 4:30 p.m., 166 Hollister (McManus Lounge)
Refreshments at 4:15
4 Apr
Jeremy Isenberg, member of NAE; distinguished member of ASCE, former president and CEO of Weidlinger Associate: Recent lessons and changing practice in structural engineering
Mondays, 4:00-5:00 p.m., 165 Olin Hall
Refreshments at 3:45 in 128 Olin
Web site
7 Apr
Prof. Manoj Chaudhury, Chemical Engineering, Lehigh University, Motion of droplets on surfaces induced by noise and a bias
14 Apr
Prof. Roland Faller, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of California, Davis: Molecular modelling of soft matter
Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4:15 p.m., B17 Upson Hall
Web site
3 Apr
Gad Kimmel, postdoctoral associate, UC Berkeley: Computational problems in human genetics
7 Apr (Monday)
Bryan Ford, Ph.D. candidate, MIT: Intuitive global connectivity for personal mobile devices
8 Apr
Jure Leskovec, Ph.D. candidate, Carnegie Mellon University: Dynamics of real-world networks
10 Apr
Su-In Lee, Ph.D. candidate, Stanford: Machine learning approaches for understanding the genetic basis of complex traits
15 Apr
Feng Chen, Ph.D. candidate, Univ of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: Runtime monitoring for reliable software
Mondays, 3:30 p.m., 2146 Snell Hall
Refreshments at 3:00 in Snee Hall Reading Room
Web site
9 Apr
Asst. Prof. Peter Diamessis, CEE, Cornell: Numerical modeling of high Reynolds number stratified wakes and implications for oceanic and atmospheric turbulence
16 Apr
Robert S. Davis, senior forecaster, National Weather Service, Pittsburgh: Using the flash flood monitoring and prediction program (FFMP) to detect the entire spectrum of stream flooding
Sponsored by the Cornell Engineering Alumni Association
Wednesdays, 4:30 p.m., 101 Phillips Hall
Web site
2 Apr
Donald M. Aubrecht '06 EP, graduate researcher, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University: Innovation: What to do when the problem sets end
Thursdays, 4:30 p.m., 140 Bard
Refreshments at 4 in 260 Bard
Web site
3 Apr
Prof. Jonah Erlebacher, Johns Hopkins University: Materials science and engineering of nanoporous metals for fuel cell catalysis
10 Apr
Chris Stanek, Los Alamos National Laboratory: Materials science for next generation nuclear energy
Tuesdays, Noon, G01 Biotechnology Building
Light refreshments served; bring your lunch if you like
Web site
8 Apr
Prof. Adele Boskey, Biochemistry, Weill Cornell Medical College: FT-IR spectroscopic imaging of age-dependent changes in physiologic hydroxyapatite nano-crystals
15 Apr
Sudeep Mandal, graduate student, Erickson Research Group, MAE, Cornell: Optofluidic devices for biomolecular detection and particle transport
Wednesdays, 4:00 p.m., 406 Malott Hall
Refreshments afterwards in 301 Malott
Web site
2 Apr
Sonja Greven, postdoctoral fellow, Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins University: On inference for random effects variances and mixed model penalized splines
Wednesdays, 4:30 p.m., 205 Thurston Hall
Refreshments at 4:15 in 206 Thurston
Web site
2 Apr
Prof. Mark Shattuck, Physics Department, The Benjamin Levich Institute, City College of New York: Shaken, not stirred: Granular equilibrium
4 Apr (special seminar)
Prof. Richard D. James, Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, University of Minnesota: Lessons on structure from the structure of viruses
9 Apr
Prof. Huajian Gao, Division of Engineering, Brown University: Nanomechanics of biological systems: Bridging single molecule and continuum mechanics descriptions of cell adhesion
16 Apr
Asst. Prof. Prashant Purohit, Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania: Twisting DNA and its implications on gene regulation
Submitting announcements to Information Update
Please send your news notes to engr_info_update@cornell.edu. Announcements will be published no more than twice and should be limited to about a hundred words or less. The next issue of Information Update, published biweekly during the academic year and monthly in the summer, will be May 29, 2013. The deadline for submissions to this next issue is Friday, May 24, 2013 at 5 p.m. Information received after the deadline will be published in a future issue if appropriate.
