2009

The professor, who has been at the Viterbi School more than 25 years, will become chair of the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering January 10.

Viterbi grad students like Erin Reynolds, game industry reps, and CS faculty are featured in a report on GamePipe Demo Day

Lab Director Mike Zyda introduced representatives of 16 game companies to 21 student game creations.

Paul Mockapetris discusses his USC Information Sciences Institute work on the domain name system (DNS) of Internet addresses.

The transportation technology magazine Go! highlights the pioneering work of Astani Department Professor Yan Xiao, who created a new bamboo-based material for use in high-load bridges and other structures.

The Federation of American Scientists hopes the 'serious game' will help high schoolers understand the immune system, VentureBeat reports.

David Geer's GeerHead column offers a detailed look at Wei-Min Shen's "Polymorphic Robotics Lab, which is conducting research into self-reconfigurable, autonomous robots with capabilities derived in part from the study of insect and animal life."

"Born in Belgrade, in what was then Yugoslavia, Maja Matarić originally wanted to study languages and art," begins a 5000-word feature entitled "Robots That Care." The ending: "But robotic interaction should not replace human interaction," she said. "It should only improve it."

Hillis, a research professor of engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and co-chair of Applied Minds Inc, is the principal investigator for a $16 million effort to bring non-medical scientific expertise to bear on oncology.

Sophisticated warning systems are crucial, says Astani Department specialist Costas Synolakis in a WSJ opinion piece, but educating people in risk areas is equally important, and "the lesson that education saves lives has apparently been lost to emergency managers world-wide."

Introduced by Daniel J. Epstein Department Chair James E. Moore, the President of Olin College of Engineering delivers the 2009 installment of the annual series of talks honoring the memory of system architecting pioneer Eberhardt Rechtin

KTLA's Kurt the CyberGuy visits the USC Robotics Laboratory with Radha Mitchell, co-star of Surrogates, to talk about "the real life of robots."

Kristen Scudder is profiled and video-interviewed in the American Society For Engineering Education online and print publication eGFI, aimed at encouraging K-12 students to consider engineering as a career.

Los Angeles Daily News: "'We have created surges of water on Mondays and Thursdays, (and) that has created new demands on our system and increased stresses on our pipes,' said Jean-Pierre Bardet, chairman of the University of Southern California department of civil and environmental engineering, and director of USC's Center on Megacities."

The Hsieh Department professor's role in the Catalyst Workshop, a DOD-funded effort to train scientists and engineers as screenwriter/directors, is explored in an L.A. Times feature about the first film to come out of the program.

As part of what Integrated Media Systems Center Director James Baker calls the convergence of radio and the Internet, students will submit proposals for multimedia projects centered on classical music for USC's top-ranked music station.

“The mechanisms of life operate at the nanoscale,” says Aristides Requicha, director of the [Computer Science Department's] Laboratory for Molecular Robotics. “If we build devices at their scale, we will be able to interact intimately with them.”

P. Daniel Dapkus of the Hsieh Department and Professor of Chemistry Mark Thompson discuss the research plans for the Energy Frontiers Research Center for Emerging Materials for Solar Energy Conversion and Solid State Lighting, recently funded by the U.S. Department of Energy/ (Video)

AP reports: "An architect ... suggested the team get in touch with [the Viterbi School's] Behrokh Khoshnevis, who had developed a rapid prototyping technology that can be used to make walls. Khoshnevis agreed to work with the students as their chief technology officer."

In a 15-minute interview on Tech Talk with Craig Peterson, the AME professor discusses future fuels, vehicles, carbon dioxide limitation, wind power and much more, including strategies for effecting change. (podcast)

The New York Times article notes, "Alan E. Willner, an electrical engineer at the University of Southern California, is one of those academics (working with industry). He is an expert in photonics, using light photons instead of electrons to transmit information.”

"'The goal of the attack is to bring service down so clients cannot get to it,' said Jelena Mirkovic, a computer scientist at USC’s Information Services Institute.'It is very, very difficult to tell whether A certain client is a human client or an [Internet bot].'"

"'We’re responding to what we perceive are needs and demands,' said Dean Yannis Yortsos. 'We offer an immediate way for engineers out there to specialize in these new areas of economic growth.'"

"'Our results show how much the mechanics of the body, and a given task, affect what the brain can or can't do,' said Francisco Valero-Cuevas of the Brain-Body Dynamics Lab at the University of Southern California, who led the research."

William Swartout, a research professor of computer science at the USC Viterbi School, has received the Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Lecture Award from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

A joint Viterbi School/College project directed by Priya Vashishta of the Mork Department reaches out to engage underrepresented communities.

"Brenton Guy: A Profile in Leadership" is front page news in the city employee newsletter for July.

The namesake donor of the Klein Institute for Undergraduate Engineering Life, 2008 Viterbi School commencement keynoter and CEO/President of Wind River Systems Inc. is now a member of the university's governing board.

"Chunqi Jiang at the University of Southern California and her colleagues have come up with a dental plasma torch. [She] reckoned that a cold plasma rich in oxygen ions would do the job of breaking up biofilm without harming the patient." -- The Economist

"Scanning electron microscopy showed complete destruction of endodontic biofilms inside a root canal after plasma treatment, according to Chunqi Jiang, a research assistant professor in USC's Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering."

"This is a historic occasion," GamePipe's Mike Zyda said in NPR coverage of the Electronic Entertainment Expo. "This is the first time a student-built game has gone directly from class to sale." Besides Zyda, two CS students spoke about their game work.

Ching-Hua Chuan, Ph.D. alumna of Elaine Chew's Music Computation and Cognition Lab, is the subject of "The Great Gig," the cover story of the magazine of the Florida university where she now teaches.

A reporter from KABC-TV visited Tutor Hall, interviewing GamePipe Lab Director Mike Zyda and GamePipe students demonstrating their creations to scouts from an industry paying $80,000 starting salaries.

"In the past, very talented kids would go into business school," said Yannis C. Yortsos. But now "they may go into engineering instead." ME senior Loni Iverson says she "became an engineer because of alternative energy."

"A lot of people really liked our concept," said Computer Science senior Keith Co, one of the leaders of the GamePipe Team that created the prizewinning mobile game Reflection

A Washington Post feature focuses on socially assistive robots: "That term was coined by Maja J. Mataric´, director of the Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems at the University of Southern California, and her research group."

"Students may resist geek studies. But they'll flock in for the opportunity to change the world," Vivek Wadhwa reported in BusinessWeek, after observing all of the excitement that was sparked, despite the snow, sleet and ice.

Full results of the newly released survey, conducted by Duke University, on American attitudes toward engineering and engineering challenges.

Jose Borrero was featured on the popular San Diego Sports Talk Station XTRA (1360 AM) in two consecutive segments, discussing what people should and shouldn't do to Southern California beaches.

"Bandit II is the poster boy for 'socially assistive' robots, a term coined by his creators, the University of Southern California's Maja Mataric´ and her team."

Reporter Phil Shuman interviews CS grad student James Pita and others about their CREATE-funded security software, which is now in routine use at Los Angeles International Airport.

"The ambitions of eight [engineering] students are about to take off in early March with the first free flight test of their prototype lunar lander," reports the Daily Trojan.

Gerald E. Loeb's JAMA commentary on a new design for brain-controlled prostheses was widely quoted in the extensive news coverage of the device, including a story in the The New York Times.

"Fingerprints evolved to augment sensory function while exploring objects. They're not just there for the benefit of the FBI," Loeb said, discussing his work creating better prostheses.

The Viterbi School chapter says work on a new water system in two small Honduran towns could begin this spring.

The Viterbi School's Robert E. Vivian Professor of Energy Resources and Chair of the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science spoke and participated in a two-day program honoring U-H's Dan Luss

A team of electrical engineers at USC is applying nanocarbon technology to synthesize neural activity in the brain in a three-year, NSF-funded investigation.

In a L.A. Daily News op-ed, Professor Najmedin Meshkati and recent grad Robert "BJ" Takushi criticize the MTA for "continuing to squander millions of dollars" on legal maneuvers instead of spending the money on improving safety.

"Riverside County's largest hospital is performing about 40 more surgeries a month based on production principles learned last year during participation in a University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering project," reports the Riverside Press-Enterprise

iPhone users are listening to more than 4000 radio stations thanks to work by Jin Pei Li (EE), Lecturer Dr. Marco Papa, Raed Shomali (CS) and Chaitanya Ramavajjala (CS).

The lessons of classes conducted in Auckland by Mike Barr and Paul Krivonos of the USC Aviation Safety and Security Program make up an entire issue of Safety Link magazine.

The Spanish-language daily La Opinión reports on the new collaboration between the Viterbi School and the largest and oldest university in Mexico initiated by BME's professor Francisco Valero Cuevas.

"Engineering professors and students at the University of Southern California are applying Southwest Airlines quality improvement concepts to cut operating room turnover times in California," Outpatient Surgery reports, interviewing David Belson.