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2003

2003 In the News


Trojan Family Magazine Cover Story
December 10, 2003
The School of Engineering is featured on the cover of USC's premier publication, Trojan Family Magazine.
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CNN Headline News Heralds USC's Video Game Plans
November 14, 2003
Anthony Borquez was interviewed by CNN Headline News about the Information Technology Program's video game courses.
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Wired News Reveals School's Video Game Plans
November 14, 2003
A story in Wired News describes the Information Technology Program efforts to bring video game industry savvy to the classroom.
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USC Web Search Agents Find WI 2003 Conference Grand Prize
November 07, 2003
A CS graduate student and an ISI Senior Project leader brought back a "best paper" prize from a recent IEEE Conference on Web Intelligence and Artificial Agents.
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Q & A with School's professor on China's Space Plans
October 10, 2003
Aerospace engineer Paul Ronney comments on China's plan to become only the third nation to put people in space.
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Homebuilding of the Future
October 07, 2003
lbourne Australia's largest newspaper examines Behrokh Koshnevis' project to apply rapid prototyping technology to construction.
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Infrastructure for Grid Computing
October 06, 2003
Chicago Sun-times Looks at Grid Computing, a joint project of Argonne National Laboratories and the School of Engineering's Information Sciences Institute. Carl Kesselman is quoted.
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Iran's Nuclear Program
October 02, 2003
Mohammad Sahimi, chair of the Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Program writes a history of Iran's nuclear program.
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Tsunami's and Surfing!
September 27, 2003
Researcher and surfer Jose Borrero knows how to deal with waves.
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Daniel J. Epstein Profiled
September 11, 2003
The cover story of Industrial Engineer profiles Daniel J. Epstein, USC trustee and member of the the School's Board of Councilors, whose gift named the Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.
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Backwards, Sideways, Up and Down
September 10, 2003
Computer scientist Stefan Schaal teaches a robot how to walk.
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IMSC Research of Great Interest to Hollywood
September 04, 2003
Ulrich Neumann sees virtual stars filling the screen.
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he Next Big Wave in Computer Model
August 19, 2003
The Economist focuses on Costas Synolakis' digital tools for studying tsunamis.
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Blackout Rooted in Aging Power Grid
August 18, 2003
Electrical Engineer T.C. Cheng discusses the massive power outage and the aging electrical power grid on National Public Radio and the NewsHour on PBS.
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Blackout Rooted in Aging Power Grid
August 18, 2003
Electrical Engineer T.C. Cheng discusses the massive power outage and the aging electrical power grid on National Public Radio and the NewsHour on PBS.
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The Birth of DNA Computing
August 18, 2003
Associated Press feature details how USC computer scientist Leonard Adleman invented DNA computing.
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Shapes of Bots to Come
August 13, 2003
Wei Min Shen's and Peter Will's shape-shifting robots are featured in a Science article.
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Grad Student Liang Zhou Makes Headlines
August 10, 2003
EW Woman profiles computer sciences doctoral candidate Liang Zhou who is developing tools to translate Hindi into English.
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Gold Line is Just Glitter
August 06, 2003
Transportation engineer James Moore takes aim at the newly opened Metro Rail Gold Line and L.A. rail transportation in an L.A. Times commentary.
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Humanizing Computers
July 31, 2003
KCET-TV's Life & Times Tonight profiles Lewis Johnson, his research to humanize computers and his second career as a singer.
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Machine Translation Takes Off
July 31, 2003
A New York Times story on machine language translation features Kevin Knight at the School's Information Sciences Institute.
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ISI's Million Vehicle Simulation
July 18, 2003
E-Commerce Times describes how ISI has pushed back the limits of virtual environments by simulating a million moving vehicles.
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The Incredible Shrinking Video Screen
July 18, 2003
IMSC Director Ulrich Neumann tells the New York times that new electronic devices are doing to digital video much what the Walkman did to music.
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DARPA Does Hindi
July 15, 2003
The Indian Express reports on a huge effort lead by Eduard Hovy at USC's Information Sciences Institute to create technology to rapidly translate Hindi into English.
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ISI and the Grid Computing Revolution
July 15, 2003
The New York Times reports on the grid computing revolution led by ISI's Carl Kesselman and Argonne National Laboratory.
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Battery-Sized Fuel Cells
June 16, 2003
Paul Ronney's tiny fuel cells, perhaps the next generation of batteries, are named one the "Six Technologies That Will Change the World" by Business 2.0.
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Building a House in 24 Hours
June 16, 2003
LA Weekly takes a look at Behrokh Khoshnevis' dream to use rapid prototyping technology to build houses in 24 hours without human hands.
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Grid Computing Gurus are 2003 InfoWorld's Innovators
June 10, 2003
Carl Kesselman, director of the Center for Grid Technologies at the Information Sciences Institute, and his grid computing colleagues at Argonne National Laboratory, have been named to InfoWorld's list of 2003 Innovators.
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ISI Researchers Tackle Fast Translation
June 10, 2003
ISI researchers are among computer scientists competing to find ways of quickly translating a randomly chose language into English in a DARPA project. The story is in Wired.com.
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Technology Review Highlights School Brain Project
May 28, 2003
Biomedical engineer Ted Berger's work to build a "brain-machine interface" - to link the brain to the silicon circuits of a computer - is featured in the May issue of this publication. In addition to Berger, biomedical engineer Vasilis Marmarelis and graduate student Walid Soussou are in the article.
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Researcher Warns of Southern California Tsunamis
May 05, 2003
Civil engineer Jose Borrero's study of the tsunami risk in Southern California is covered by the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register and others.
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Chernobyl Still a Problem
April 28, 2003
Safety expert Najm Meshkati says the wreckage of the Soviet-era Chernobyl nuclear plant still poses a threat.
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Len Adleman Wins Turing Prize
April 14, 2003
Professor Leonard Adleman has been honored by the Association of Computing Machinery with the Turing Prize, often called the Nobel Prize of Computing.
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USC Expands Defense Research
April 08, 2003
Dean C. L. Max Nikias relates to the April 7, 2003 L.A. Business Journal how he positioned the School to take advantage of defense-oriented research funding following 9/11.
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US News Ranks USC Engineering Number 8
April 04, 2003
The USC School of Engineering has been ranked eighth in the 2003 US News & World Report rankings consolidating it's place in the top 10.
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Rebuilding Iraq's Infrastructure
March 28, 2003
Civil engineer Henry Koffman, director of the construction engineering and management program, talks about rebuilding Iraq's roads, airports, pipelines, bridges, etc. on the Larry Mantle Show on public radio station KPCC-FM.
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When Sleep Suffers
March 28, 2003
Biomedical engineer Michael Khoo uses engineering tools to study the problem of sleep apnea, which plagues millions.
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USC Brain Chip Project Moves Forward
March 13, 2003
New Scientist reports that Ted Berger, biomedical engineer, will soon begin testing a prosthesis for the hippocampus of the brain.
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Making Robots More Like Us
March 06, 2003
Computer science graduate Student Monica Nicolescu, who is teaching robots to be more like us, is featured in the New York TImes. Also in the article are her adviser Maja Mataric and robotics legend George Bekey.
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Voice of America Highlights Distance Education Network
February 27, 2003
Kelly Goulis, director of the School's Distance Education Network, tells the Voice of America, how students are earning masters degrees without setting foot on campus.
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Reducing Railway Carnage
February 20, 2003
In the Orange County Register, Najmedin Meshkati, associate professor of civil engineering, and his graduate student Krista Slonowski, note that a high fatality rate at street-level rail crossings must be addressed before new light rail projects begin operating.
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Robots to the Rescue
February 19, 2003
As the field of robotics advances, the idea of human-robot interactions moves steadily from imagination to reality. Two USC joint projects explore the prospect of robot teams assisting with tasks once assigned only to people.
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Broadband Access Can Revitalize the Web
February 12, 2003
In an op-ed published in the Sacramento Bee, Dean C. L. Max Nikias argues that we need to wire the world for "the next generation Internet" to complete the Internet revolution.
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Degrading L.A.
February 11, 2003
Most L.A. County infrastructure, built more than 50 years ago for a much smaller population, is in decline. In a new ‘scorecard,’ The American Society of Civil Engineers assesses the state of Southland systems – from roadways to wastewater – and recommends what must be fixed.
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A Laurel Wreath for an AI Expert
February 07, 2003
One of the world's most distinguished universities recently honored one of ISI's newest faculty members. Senior Computer Scientist Jerry R. Hobbs received an honorary degree from the University of Uppsala in Sweden Jan. 24, only three months after joining the USC School of Engineering's Information Sciences Institute.
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Leader of the Pack
January 15, 2003
Grid computing research by Carl Kesselman at the Information Sciences Institute is recognized by MIT’s Technology Review. The emerging technology is expected to transform the way lives are led and work is conducted.
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ISI Leader Quoted in the New York Times
January 09, 2003
Virtual worlds created by There Inc. may become the first sort of digital Club Med where online guests - for a fee yet to be determined - will be able to connect with other people, shop, or simply explore the exotic surroundings. "People spend hours with their e-mail alone for entertainment, and people are getting familiar with big games in which thousands are participating," said Herbert Schorr, executive director of USC's Information Sciences Institute. "Something like this should be a greatly enriching experience for people. I think this will be the next step."
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Using Virtual Reality to Assess and Treat Anxieties and Phobias
January 02, 2003
Skip Rizzo and USC’s Integrated Media Systems Center is leading a revolution in the use of virtual reality technology to assess and treat phobias, anxieties and other cognitive disorders.
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