EECS Chair’s Newsletter November 2007
Dear Alumni and Friends of EECS at Case Western Reserve University, in our research and educational program webpages for more information on our current programs and major initiatives. This newsletter covers the highlights of the year: arrival of new faculty, promotions and retirements of existing faculty, a brief glimpse at some highlighted research activities, and the celebration of a number of awards, honors and recognitions of department members.
Prof. Norman Tien, the Ohio Eminent Scholar in Condensed Matter Physics at Case Western Reserve University, Nord Professor of Engineering and chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at the Case School of Engineering, has been appointed the school's dean by Interim President Gregory L. Eastwood, M.D., effective February 1, 2007. Dean Norman Tien joined the Case faculty in January 2006 as the Nord Professor of Engineering and the department chair of EECS.
Team Case has been selected by DARPA as one of 36 semi-finalists in the 2007 Urban Challenge (See the DARPA News Release here). Congratulations to Prof. Newman and all 50 members of TeamCase! Dexter was one of the 20 teams at the semi-finals in October 19th, but not selected as one of the 11 finalists to compete at the final event on November 7.
Using its expertise in biological robotics TeamCase has been developing hardware and software for DEXTER, its entry in the DARPA Urban Grand Challenge for the past year. Although the final competition will be a timed race following a GPS specified route which will be given to the team the day of the race, DEXTER must sense everything that a human driver must deal with such as curbs and lane markers, other vehicles, and obstacles which might range from parked cars to concrete blocks in the road. Throughout the competition DEXTER must obey the traffic laws of the state of California and points will be deduced for traffic infractions. DEXTER uses a combination of GPS, lidar, radar, stereo vision, cameras and a host of other sensors to find his way. TeamCase is one of eleven teams which will be part of a documentary to be aired on the Discover Channel in spring 2008
A new state-of-the-art, multimillion-dollar Sears Undergraduate Design Laboratory in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department now provides electrical engineering students with an environment that promotes and encourages hands-on engineering and design. The $6 million donation from alumni Larry and Sally Zlotnick Sears was the largest outright gift from an individual in the engineering school's history.
We have just completed a year of classes in the new Sears Undergraduate Lab and everyone is still excited about the new facility. The old equipment has been updated, and the current equipment in the new lab is now equal to those found in many industrial engineering labs. The physical layout with open glass walls makes the lab look more like a business office than a lab. The “sandbox” area with its Wi-Fi, microwave and coffee machine has become a favorite destination for many undergraduates to work on their homework, brainstorm with peers or simply hangout. Students receive lectures on practical electronics in the new classroom adjacent to the lab, and can then simply step across the hall into the lab to test what they've just heard. The lab has new staff, courtesy of an endowment fund included in the Sears donation. Ed Burwell, our new engineer, and George Daher, our master technician, are everpresent with the students in the lab, sharing their years of industrial experience in subjects ranging from class labs to senior projects. A corner of the store room has evolved into a “flea market” where all kinds of electronic goodies ranging from resistors to computers are freely available to students for any project they may be working on. Lab space and specialized equipment may be used for long-term student projects. Glass shelves showcase antique electronic trainers, toys and electronic equipment to remind students of our electrical engineering heritage.
Professor Mehran Mehregany, a former chair of the EECS department, is now the director of a new Center in California! Case Western Reserve University has taken a bold step to connect its science and technology research enterprise with application opportunities globally by establishing a Science and Technology Application Center (STAC) in San Diego, CA. To jumpstart the center, the University has relocated our very own Professor Mehran Mehregany, a prominent senior EECS faculty with a proven record of research, innovation and entrepreneurship, to the San Diego metropolitan area to lay the ground work and develop the requisite long term plans, with initial focus on California and Asia. The Center will enable the University to project its science and technology research assets globally while providing global application and enrichment opportunities back home. STAC is envisioned to develop and market applications, R&D and educational offerings of interest to companies and/or the general market. STAC will be enabled by integrating its competencies, CWRU’s assets, input from engaged companies and information from the market.
The EECS department is excited about the new faculty and staff who recently joined EECS.
Dr. Mehmet Koyuturk joined the department as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Computer Science in the Fall 2007. With research primarily focusing on bionformatics, Mehmet works on the development of algorithms, software, and analytical tools for analyzing high-throughput datasets in systems biology. He is also interested in the development of algorithms and software for data mining and knowledge discovery, algorithmic problems in parallel and distributed computing, and optimization problems in scientific computing. Mehmet received his PhD in Computer Science from Purdue University in 2006. His BS degree in Electrical & Electronics Engineering and MS degree in Computer Engineering are from Bilkent University, Turkey. Prior to joining the EECS department this Fall, Mehmet was a post-doctoral researcher in the Computer Science department at Purdue.
Dr. Xiaowei Sun joined the department as an Instructor in Computer Science, also starting in Fall 2007. Xiaowei received her BS and MS degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 1992 and 1996, respectively. After receiving her Ph.D in Computer Science from Northeastern University in 2005, she has been a part-time lecturer with the EECS and the Mathematics departments at CWRU. Her research interest is in the area of data management, and, more specifically, on techniques to provide high availability and scalability in parallel databases.
Professor Michael (Misha) Rabinovich, full professor of Computer Science, was awarded tenure in 2007. Misha Rabinovich received his PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1994, and was at AT&T Bell Labs (and AT&T Labs) between 1994 and 2005. He joined Case and the EECS department in the Fall of 2005. Misha Rabinovich’s research is in the area of distributed systems and networking. More specifically, he has contributed to the areas of the Web and Internet, distributed databases and transaction management, and workflow management. In recent years, he has introduced a new area, namely, utility computing, and started to branch into the area of Internet measurements in the marketplace.
Congratulations to Professor Rabinovich on his tenure!
Charles Babbage Award: Professor Christos Papachristou and the EECS Department are the recipients of a Charles Babbage Grant sponsored by both Synopsys and HP in 2007. Through the grant, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science will receive licenses of Synopsys' comprehensive electronic design automation (EDA) software and intellectual property, along with curricula, support and professor training, and sixteen dual core HP xw4400 Workstations to outfit the new Synopsys/HP EDA Laboratory.
Spotlight Award for Research: Professor Meral Ozsoyoglu received the Spotlight Award for research in Engineering from Mather Center for Women.
Best Paper Award: CS graduate student Ray-Yaung Chang, and professors Andy Podgurski, and Jiong Yang received the Best Paper Award at the 2007 International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA) for their paper, “Finding What’s Not There: A New Approach to Revealing Neglected Conditions in Software”.
Best Poster Award: Professor G.Q. Zhang and his students Adam Troy and Jacek Syzmanski received the Best Poster Award, The ImTK Consortium for Multicenter Image Management, 2007.
New Editor-in-Chief for ACM TODS: Professor Meral Ozsoyoglu is appointed as the new Editor-in-Chief for ACM Transactions of Database Systems (TODS). She is the sixth Editor-in-Chief for this highly prestigious international journal. She has been in the Editorial Board of ACM TODS for more than seven years before becoming the first women Editor-in-Chief for the journal.
Prestigious Student Internship for Software Development: Benjamin Chodroff completed his second consecutive internship in the prestigious IBM Extreme Blue working at IBM’s India Software Lab researching how Second Life, a virtual on-line world, can interact with the real world. Extreme Blue is IBM’s premier internship for top software development students. Ben is the first American IBM Extreme Blue intern traveling abroad. He is currently a graduate student, studying Computer Engineering in our department, where he started as an undergraduate student in Fall 2003 with a major in Computer Engineering. Washington Internship in Science and Engineering (WISE): Sarah Rovito spent the summer in the WISE (Washington Internship in Science and Engineering) working with IEEE in Washington to draft science and engineering policy in Sarah is a senior in EECS department majoring in Electrical Engineering.
DoD Graduate Fellowship: Christian Miller, a recent EECS alumni (MS’2007, CS), received an extremely competitive DoD Graduate Fellowship. He will use the Fellowship to study for a PhD in computer graphics in the Department of Computer Science at University of Texas at Austin.
After 40 years of service to Case and the EECS department, Prof. George Ernst has decided to retire at the end of the Fall’06 semester. Prof. Ernst made longstanding contributions to Artificial Intelligence in the 1960’s and 1970’s; and his work on the General Problem Solver (GPS) (carried out both at CMU and Case) is known worldwide. Prof. Ernst will be remembered as an outstanding colleague, and as a treasured mentor to both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as junior computer science faculty at Case. Over the years, he never hesitated in offering both help and valued advice regarding academics, research, teaching and life at Case.
Prof. Lee White, who was at Case for 19 years, also decided to retire at the end of Fall 2006 semester. Prof. Lee White joined Case in 1988, and was the department chair of the Computer Engineering and Science Department in between 1988-1996. He is known for his contributions in Software Engineering, more specifically, software testing, where he published extensively. Prof. White led the (now merged) department of Computer Engineering and Science at Case through hard times, mentoring the faculty hired during his chairmanship and later, and helping the department in any way he could.
We wish Professors Ernst and White good luck, good health and success in their retirement and future endeavors!
We were recently informed by the ABET accreditation Commission that four of our engineering- and computer science-affiliated undergraduate programs, namely, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering and Computer Science (BS) are all accredited. (The department also offers BA in Computer Science, which does not have ABET accreditation). This is yet another indication of the high quality of our undergraduate degree programs in the EECS department. Also note that the new ABET accreditation requirements now require us to collect year-around significant information such as “program outcome” data from our courses, and annual surveys of graduating students and alumni of the department.
Using our web site at www.eecs.case.edu, you can access detailed information about our faculty, students, and a wide spectrum of research and educational programs
You are welcome to visit us, our facilities and programs. I hope that you will remain an active member of the department's alumni community. Please keep in touch!
Best Regards,
Z. Meral Özsoyoğlu
Chair and Andrew R. Jennings Professor of Computing
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department
Case Western Reserve University
Please visit our website at: http://www.eecs.case.edu
We welcome your comments!
