Thomas R. Brown Family Foundation endows faculty chairs
$2.2 million grant calls for designing software toanalyze intelligence dataand develop strategies
Predicting theunpredictable
Te Tomas R. Brown Family Foundation has donated $4 million toTe University o Arizona to endow two aculty chairs — one in the Col-lege o Engineering and one in theEller College o Management. Eachcollege has received a $2 million git.om Brown, ucson’s most suc-cessul high-tech entrepreneur, diedin 2002. Since that time, the Brownamily, through its oundation, hasbeen a strong supporter o technology and management at UA.om Brown and his riend, PageBurr, ounded Burr-Brown Corp. in1956. exas Instruments acquiredBurr-Brown in June 2000 or thehighest price ever paid or an Arizonacompany.“Burr-Brown grew to be a multi-billion-dollar enterprise because thepeople there were internationally competitive,” said Sarah Brown Small-house, one o om Brown’s daughtersand president o the Brown Family Foundation.“Tey had the talent to both under-stand technology and managementprinciples, and — in the context o acorporate culture that valued excel-lence and innovation — the company thrived.“Te University o Arizona was akey partner in the success o Burr-Brown, and our trustees eel that help-ing to strengthen the university aculty in engineering and management is anappropriate way to give back to a com-munity partner that made so mucho Burr-Brown’s success possible,” shesaid.
Visit our web pages at http://www.engr.arizona.eduSpring 2008Vol. 31 • No. 1
Continued on Page 11Continued on Page 19
EE
lectrical and Computer Engi-neering Pro. Jerzy Rozenblit hasreceived a $2.2 million grant to designcomputer sotware to analyze volatilepolitical and military situations.Te sotware will predict the actionso paramilitary groups, ethnic actions,terrorists and criminal groups, whileaiding commanders in devising strate-gies or stabilizing areas beore, duringand ater conicts.It also will have many civilianapplications in nance, law enorce-ment, epidemiology and the atermatho natural disasters, such as hurricaneKatrina.Te Asymmetric Treat Responseand Analysis Project, known as ARAP, is a massively complex set o computer algorithms (mathematicalprocedures) that sit through millionso pieces o data, considering many actors including social, political,cultural, military and media inu-
M a t t B r a i l e y
They ease Twin Cities trafc problems and develop ways to retrot bridges
UA engineers tackle infrastructure woes
Using ‘More info’
2
Dean’s Viewpoint: By Tom Peterson
Arizona Engineer
is published twiceyearly or alumni and riends o TeUniversity o Arizona College o Engineering.•
Editor/Writer:
Ed Stiles
Photographer:
Matt Brailey •Te University o Arizona is anequal opportunity, armative actioninstitution. Te University prohibitsdiscrimination in its programs andactivities on the basis o race, color,religion, sex, national origin, age,disability, veteran status, sexualorientation, or gender identity and is committed to maintainingan environment ree rom sexualharassment and retaliation.• Arizona Engineer, Te University o Arizona, College o Engineering, P.O.Box 210072, ucson, AZ 85721-0072E-mail: stiles@u.arizona.eduPhone: 520-621-6594• All contents ©2008 Arizona Board o Regents. All rights reserved.
ARIZONA
Engineer
Spring 2008 Vol 31 • No. 1
© U A / R o b e r t W a l k e r
At the end o several stories in
Arizona Engineer
, you’ll nd a wordor phrase under “More ino.” You canuse this phrase to search or a longerversion o that story at http://uanews.org/section/Science+and+echnology.ype the word or phrase into the searchbox at the top right o the web pageand click the magniying glass icon.
O
ne o the most rewarding aspectso an engineering career is theopportunity it afords us to makesignicant contributions to society.Nowhere is that more evident than inthe contributions engineers make inthe atermath o tragic events.Last July, 11 people died when aninterstate highway bridge collapsedbetween Minneapolis and St. Paul,Minn. Tousands o other Minneso-tans were signicantly inconveniencedby the loss o this IH-35W bridge,a major arterial that carries 140,000vehicles daily.Tis tragedy highlights the hugeinrastructure problems acing theUnited States and the challenges andopportunities we ace as engineers.Tis country experienced incrediblegrowth and expansion in its highway and bridge inrastructure in the 1950s,’60s and ’70s. oday, those structuresare deteriorating, and many needrepair and or replacement.Tese highways are the lielines o our country and we don’t have theluxury o making repairs and replace-ments in the absence o signicanttrac demands.
Engineering Faculty Help Out
Tree members o our CivilEngineering aculty recognized theseinrastructure problems early on,conducted research over several years,and are now in a position to make sig-nicant contributions to solving theseproblems and others.Proessor Yi Chiang Chiu designsand builds sophisticated computersimulations that predict trac patternsunder the inuence o complicatedurban scenarios, including accidents,loss o arterials, and natural disasters.Te Minnesota Department o rans-portation has asked Chiu to modeltrac ow and to devise ecientstrategies or rerouting trac while theIH-35W bridge is being replaced. While Chiu’s work will helpMDO mitigate some o the immedi-ate trac woes, two other UA CivilEngineering aculty members havedeveloped technologies that couldbenet transportation departmentsacross the nation as they grapple withupgrading aging structures.Te Minnesota tragedy has takenthe discussion o inrastructure main-tenance and repair out o the academic journals and trac engineering pub-lications and placed it squarely on theevening news.Te general public now recognizesthe need or maintenance, repair andreplacement o bridges and that hun-dreds o billions o dollars in potentialexpenses and liabilities are involved.Reliable methods to retrot existingbridges, particularly methods thatcan return the bridges to structurally “as new” condition, ofer tremendousadvantages.
Retrotting Solutions
Proessors Hamid Saadatmaneshand Mo Ehsani have developedrelatively inexpensive ways to dothis using composite materials tostrengthen existing bridges quickly and without major trac disruption.It is particularly gratiying or me, asdean o the college, to see the signi-cant ways in which these members o our aculty and many others are con-tributing to society. Solving societalproblems is what we do in engineer-ing, and it’s great to be part o such arewarding proession.• While we’re talking about contrib-uting to society, I want to expressmy particular pride in Jay Alexander,one o our undergraduate students inMaterials Science and Engineering.He donated a large part o his timethis past summer to raise money orHabitat For Humanity. Jay and 28 o his soon-to-be-clos-est-riends participated in the HabitatBicycle Challenge. On June 1, thegroup let New Haven Conn. andpeddled or eight weeks and three daysto Seattle, Wash.Te ride let Jay in the best shapeo his lie and with an experience thatmost o us only dream o. And his ridecontributed to providing housing orpeople who otherwise could not afordit. Tis put Jay’s efort squarely in thebest traditions o engineers, whose jobit is to make lie better or us all.
Michael Marcellin
M e gA s k e y C o ur t e s y of Mi c h a el M ar c el l i nE d S t i l e s
UA Engineeringvideos on iTunes U
UA on iunes U went live as the allsemester began.Te podcasting site ofers down-loadable courses, aculty lectures,recorded events and other program-ming to the public.More than 20 videos rom the Col-lege o Engineering are included onthe web site. Te engineering videosinclude an overview o the college,descriptions o student projects, arundown on the summer engineer-ing robotics camps, descriptions o engineering majors and more.UA on iunes U, which resultedrom an agreement between UA and Apple Inc., provides a centralizedaccess point in the iunes Store orpodcasts by UA aculty and instruc-tors, departments and programs.“UA on iunes U is going to draw a great deal o attention to podcast-ing as an instructional and marketingresource,” said Stuart Glogof, UA Learning echnologies Center seniorconsultant.UA on iunes U opened with aninitial ofering o podcasts madeduring the past year.Te podcasts include the prestigiousCollege o Science lecture series on“Evolution: Our World Ourselves”and “Global Climate Change.” Also ofered is the College o Fine Arts series on “Art and Identity.”In addition, departmental podcastsinclude those rom the School o Inormation Resources and Library Science, and rom the Oce o Stu-dent Financial Aid.o visit UA on iunes U go tohttp://itunes.arizona.edu/ and click onthe “Go to UA on iunes U” button.
Marcellin namedRegents’ Professor
3
News Briefs
Paul Prazak
(right), of Texas Instruments, presents a check for $3,000 to the winners of the TexasInstruments Design Contest. The team developed a self-contained sine wave source that connectsto evaluation modules for testing Texas Instruments’ analog-to-digital converter microchips.
Students win $13,500 in cash awards during Engineering Design Day
S
tudent engineers won a total o $13,500 in 18 award categories atUA’s 2007 Engineering Design Day.Design Day 2007 included 59 proj-ects that were judged by more than 70practicing engineers.Some Design Day projects may eventually be commercialized. Others will provide important experimentaldata or companies that sponsoredthe projects or will become integralparts o ongoing engineering researchprojects at UA.Te awards included:
• Lockheed Martin Best Overall Design Award ($1,000)• Ventana Innovation in Engineering Award ($1,000)• BAE Best Overall Sotware Design($1,000)• exas Instruments Design Contest Award ($3,000)• Honeywell eam Leadership Awards(wo awards: $250 each)• Advanced Ceramics Research BestInterdisciplinary Proo o Concept Award($500)• Lockheed Martin Best Interdisciplin-ary Award ($500)• Veeco Best Optics Design Award($500)• Western Design Center, Inc., Best Sys-tems and Industrial Design Award ($500)• Best Aerospace Design Award ($500)• Best Application o Engineering Anal-ysis to Aerospace Design Award ($500)• Most Creative Aerospace Design Award ($1,000)• Best Mechanical Engineering Design Award ($500)• Best Mechanical Engineering Fabri-cated Prototype Award ($1,000)• Most Creative Mechanical Engineer-ing Design Award ($500)• exas Instruments Best Overall ECEDesign Award ($500)• Most Creative ECE Design Award($250)• ECE Best Presentation Award ($250)
•
More info: DD2007
Te Arizona Board o Regentshas named Michael Marcellin, o Electrical and Computer Engineer-ing (ECE), to the rank o Regents’Proessor.Marcellin isan internationalexpert on imagecompression andhas played a key role in the movieindustry’s moveto a standardizeddigital ormat.Marcellin is also the Interna-tional Foundation or elemeteringProessor in ECE.In addition he is recognized asan exceptional teacher and has wonoutstanding-teacher awards onnumerous occasions.No more than three percent o tenured and tenure-track aculty atUA may hold the rank o Regents’Proessor at any given time.
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Arizona Engineer Spring 2008
Spring 2008 edition of the UA College of Engineering alumni magazine.
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