Harvard SEAS, Newsletter, Spring 2005

8/14/2019 Harvard SEAS, Newsletter, Spring 2005

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V o l u m e I V I s s u e 1 S p r i n g 2 0 0 5

Inside Education

Some of the greatest engineering suc-cesses are those that go unnoticed. Wesit in comfort as a plane lands without ahitch during high winds. As we type aletter, our computer traps a virus behindthe scenes. It is an age of the invisibleengineer, not only because of advancesin small-scale science, but because theingenuity of engineering and appliedsciences often lies hidden behind a

seamless interface. This leads me to aska tough question: How do we inspirethose who will never be professionalengineers or applied scientists to betterunderstand and appreciate technologywhen they seldom need to go beyondthe interface or open the hood?

As I mentioned in my last message, aftera period of great renewal the Divisionhas indeed emerged and is poised to goon to even greater heights. Our plans,from our size to our structure to theenvironment, all stem from one over-

arching goal: giving students the bestpossible education. With that in mind,we hope to accomplish two criticaltasks in the years ahead:

exposing all undergraduates to key

areas of science and technology,

especially the relationship between

science, technology, and society

using innovative ways to teach stu-

dents, especially experiential learning

through hands-on experiments.

This is ambitious, but purposely so. Ourcurriculum needs to evolve as fields in-

creasingly come together and science andtechnology infuse every aspect of dailylife, from politics to the environment.

Exposure

Engineering and applied sciences (E&AS)often get grouped, and lost, under thebroader term science. Like medicineand law, our practice is distinct and mustbe treated as such. Our community is inan ideal position to emphasize three ofE&ASs most defining characteristics:

Appliedbasic. The push-pull relation-ship between basic and applied researchis our golden rule. Strength in founda-tional disciplines, from applied physicsto computer science, provides a basis foradvancing the boundaries of knowledge.At the same time, students should under-stand how to use resulting technologiesto promote the social good.

Integrative. E&AS is inherently inter-disciplinary and integrative. Not onlydoes E&AS expose students to multiplefields, but it also inspires them to col-laborate and learn togetherskills thatare essential in everyday life and work.

Linking. Given its roots in mathematicsand science, E&AS has an exceptionalway of linking with the professionalschools. Tools developed in engineeringare used to drive discovery in areas suchas biology and medicine. Advances playa critical role in informing policies andpractices in business. With a parallel em-phasis on systems-level thinking, E&ASalso provides students with approachesuseful for tackling any problem.

Experience

The Harvard experienceimmersionin a multifaceted intellectual setting ispart of what makes learning engineeringand applied sciences at DEAS singular.We have increasingly become a key partof that experience through promotingexperiential learning. While incorpo-rating the use of everyday technologyprovides a start, a better investment isletting students get inside the latest

gadget: for example, going below thewires and teasing apart the fundamental

discoveries in physics, microelectron-ics, and materials that led to the 10,000songs in their pockets. The counterpartto this learning by disintegration islearning by integration. Throughhands-on design and an introduction tobasic function and form, we teach stu-dents how to synthesize: moving froman idea (such as modeling a circuit) toan application (actually building one).In addition, we are also

introducing new core courses such asBits and Energy, Environment, and

Industrial Development, and in thenear future, developing a tentativelytitled Tech A&B sequencean over-view that will provide perspectives onscience and technology

expanding our high-school education-al programs, like GK-12, to provide apath that may lead students directlyto our door and help inspire interest inengineering

offering more ways for students todiscover who we are and what we do

by supporting clubs and societies,creating a new social center/caf inMaxwell Dworkin, and increasing ourpresence on campus through concen-tration fairs, research demonstrations,and general lectures.

Opening up the black box to discoverthe how and the why leads to a greaterunderstanding of our world and ofourselves, which in turn informs manyof our decisions and gives us greatercontrol. The power and rewards of suchdiscovery should not be limited to the

few, but need to be made accessible toall students. The next generation ofpolitical, business, academic, and tech-nical leaders who will help run coun-tries and companies will take what theyhave learned with them. They will sharethat knowledge with everyone theywork withand that, ultimately, willmake engineering and applied sciences,and the Division, shine.J

De

ansMessage


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The following article is intended to provide

a broad snapshot of diversity at DEAS

and to highlight past trends. The data reflect

the latest and most complete diversity-related

information that was readily available at the

time of publication.

Charts 1 4 provide a look at the Divisions

entire student body by ethnicity, residency

status, concentration, and gender. Charts 57

provide a snapshot of national undergraduate

and graduate enrollment in engineering only,

and are provided for reference (not direct com-

parison). See the sidebar on page 3 to learn

more about enrollment in computer science.

Complete national data is available on the web-

sites listed in the Resources section on page 4.

A look at the nation

Sources: CST, data derived from Engineering Workforce Commission, Engineering and Technology Enrollments; Women in EngineeringPrograms and Advocates Network, www.wepan.org

2 I DEAS Spring 2005


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Challenges for undergrad computer science

A commonly held perception is that a more diverse fac-

ulty will lead to a more diverse student body. DEAS has

had some recent successes, particularly in the area of

computer science. In 2003 two new female faculty mem-

bers were hired. Women now represent 18 percent of

the total DEAS CS faculty, more than double the national

average of 8.6 percent. Despite this success, there has

been a decline in the overall number of undergraduate

computer science concentrators (especially female), in

the nation as well as at Harvard (see Chart 8 below).

The biggest challenge we face in computer science is

simply low numbers, says Associate Dean for Computer

Science and Engineering Margo I. Seltzer. We have to

break that cycle if we want to make any progress.

Breaking the cycle, however, is as much of a qualitative

as it is a quantitative issue. I think anyone, male or

female, feels better if they see other people who are like

them, says Assistant Professor of Computer Science

Mema Roussopoulos. It is especially hard for a female

student if her classmates say, Hey, you are the only

woman in this class!

Barbara J. Grosz, Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences

and Dean of Science at the Radcliffe Institute, suggests

that part of the solution may involve changing percep-

tions. Making the teamwork orientation of CS courses

and projects more visible and talking about the oppor-

tunities for students to do research with faculty will help

increase not only the number of women but also the

overall number of concentrators, she says.

While the challenges ahead are difficult, Seltzer, a Divi-

sion alum, wants to focus on the positive. A key first step

is finding out why potential computer science concentra-

tors end up dropping out or, more important, why some

students never consider concentrating or taking classes

in the first place. Once students are in the Division,

they seem to really like it, she says.

Social and intellectual collaborationSuccess at the Division has been defined by students and

faculty members willingness to draw on knowledge and ex-

pertise in diverse fields. DEAS is in an ideal position to extend

the concept of renaissance engineering to support a range

of teaching, learning, and mentorship methodologies. While

this issue has garnered increasing attention in recent months,

it is not a new concern; it has challenged the field for decades.Creating and maintaining a welcoming environment for all

faculty and students is an essential part of a longer-term mis-

sion to grow and expand efforts in engineering and the applied

sciences throughout Harvard.

Looking back

DEAS trends. DEAS, like Harvard itself, has an exceptionally

diverse undergraduate student body. While trends among spe-

cific ethnic groups have been mixed, during 19992003almost

40 percent of our students were either minorities or foreign

nationals. The total percentage of undergraduate female con-

centrators increased from 22 to almost 26 percent over the

same period. In terms of specific concentrations, engineeringsciences has grown the most overall during the past five years

(from 74 to 85 students); of particular note, the number of

women in this concentration has nearly tripled, growing from

10 to 29 students. The number of concentrators in computer

science, in keeping with national trends, has declined sharply

(from 187 in 1999 to 116 in 2003), especially among women

(from 31 to 16 over the same period).

While the total number of graduate students at the Division

increased nearly 40 percent (193 to 268) from 2000 to 2004, the

percentage of women at the graduate level has declined, from

28 to 23 percent. It is important to note that the greatest drop

in the number of female students occurred in a single year(20002001) and is related to a national trend of fewer individ-

uals pursuing computer science degrees. Following that drop,

the percentage of women in our graduate student population

has consistently remained around 2223 percent from 2001

to 2004. In the same period, DEAS has enrolled an increasing

number of foreign nationals, and despite a light drop in 2004

due to the Patriot Act and other post-9/11 initiatives, they now

make up over 40 percent of the graduate population. While the

percentage of minorities has remained under 20 percent, the

Admissions Office has been active in trying to attract a more

ethnically diverse application pool through targeted outreach.

Within specific degree areas, the trends are mixed; most notable

are the drop from 28 percent to 16 percent in the number of fe-male computer science graduate students (which contributed

to the overall drop in the number of female students), and the

increase in the number of women in applied physics, which

more than tripled.

National trends.The Women in Engineering Programs and Ad-

vocates Network (WEPAN) reports that the ethnic and gender

profiles of both the undergraduate and graduate student popu-

lations in engineering sciences have remained mixed over the

past several years (based on data covering 1999 to 2003); whats

most notable is that there have been relatively few gains or

major declines for any given population during this period

The Computing Research Association (CRA) and National

Science Foundation (NSF) reported that total undergraduate

enrollments in computer science have dropped more than

25 percent since 2001. Data on ethnicity remains mixed, with

no noticeable trends. A similar decline is apparent among the

number of individuals receiving Ph.D.s in computer science,

and the ethnic makeup has remained relatively constant over

the same period.

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DEAS Spring 2005 I 3


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FURTHER READING

Selected articles related to women in

science and engineering at Harvard:

Summers: Women in Science

Harvard Crimson, April 18, 2005

www.thecrimson.com/

article.aspx?ref=506949

Sciences Struggle to Draw WomenHarvard Crimson, December 17, 2004

www.thecrimson.com/

article.aspx?ref=505150

Feature from Harvard Magazine

www.harvardmagazine.com/features/

february15.html

For a broader view of undergraduate

life and education, including diversity

on campus, mentoring, and teaching

science and engineering at Harvard,

see:

Making the Most of College: Students

Speak Their Minds, by Richard Light(Harvard University Press, 2001)

RESOURCES

The following resources offer compre-

hensive national data and statistics

on enrollment and graduation trends

among undergraduates and graduates

in engineering and computer science,

as well as information about current

and past faculty makeup and hiring/

promotion trends in these areas. Most

of the information is freely available.

National Science Foundation

www.nsf.gov/statistics/

Computing Research Association

www.cra.org

The American Society for

Engineering Education

www.asee.org

Ongoing and recent efforts at the DivisionAs part of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, students have an opportunity to join dozens

of organizations that support a wide range of interests, from the Harvard-Radcliffe Chi-

nese Students Association to the Harvard Society of Black Scientists and Engineers.

1 Advising, mentoring, and educational programs

With the 2004 addition of Assistant Dean for Academic Programs Dr. Marie

Dahleh, DEAS is in a better position to offer increased levels of support to all

students. Dr. Dahleh is devising a comprehensive plan to assess all aspects of the

Divisions undergraduate programs, recruitment efforts, and quality of learning. In

addition to a lead role for DEAS in representing engineering and applied sciences

in the Colleges curriculum review, tentative plans include offering new types

of courses designed to be of interest to a wider population of Harvard students.

Already, through Dahlehs guidance, the University has become a member of

MentorNet, an online program that provides guidance for women in the sciences.

Alums are encouraged to join; contact [email protected].

Dr. Kathryn Hollar is the Director of Educational Programs, overseeing an effort

that extends beyond DEAS and provides outreach to the Cambridge-area K12

student populations. Programs such as GK12 and Project TEACH expose DEAS

graduate students to diverse student populations, provide a resource for localteachers who want to teach engineering and applied sciences, and allow junior-

high and high-school students to link up with potential role models. Those two

programs, along with the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program,

designed to offer research experience to undergraduates from across the country,

bring a diverse group of students to DEAS each year. One sign of success: Several

REU students have been accepted to Ph.D. programs at the Division this year.

2 Support and social groups

Women in Science at Harvard-Radcliffe (WISHR) and the related Women in

Computer Science (WICS) are devoted to fostering a sense of community among

women engaged in science and computer science at Harvard College. In addition,

the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Racial Relations sponsors events for

the entire Harvard community, and the W.E.B. du Bois Graduate Society caters to

supporting ethnic groups among the graduate student population.

3 Scholarships

The Deans Office announced the first annual Innovation Fellowship this past

spring. Fellowships of$15,000 will be given each year to help attract and retain

the best and the brightest applicants.

4 Task forces

The Presidents Office recently created two related task forces: the University

Task Force on Women in Science and Engineering, chaired by DEASs own Barbara

J. Grosz, and the University Task Force on Women Faculty, chaired by Evelynn

M. Hammonds, Professor of the History of Science and of African and AfricanAmerican Studies.

Looking forward

DEAS is evolving to meet the challenges facing the University and society. Sustaining

diversity is part of that evolution; it must be carefully integrated into all aspects of

the current planning process. The greatest challenges are treating the issue thought-

fully and sensitively, and realizing that a robust solution will not be centered on one

institution or in one area of education. We will continue to keep you informed on

issues of diversity through our newsletter, Web site, and other materials. Your feed-

back and input ([email protected]) are welcome and encouraged. JMarie Dahleh serves as the AssistantDean for Academic Programs at DEAS.



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Mixing metaphors

Everyones familiar with this common pattern of pixels:the computer desktop wastebasket. You might believethat dragging a file into the virtual trash bin makes it vanish,

but since the trashed data is not immediately deleted, a more

accurate metaphor would involve going into a library, taking a

books card out of the card catalog and throwing it away, then

pretending that the book had disappeared from the shelf.

The metaphorical world of information devices has proven so

successful that people are freed from having to understand the

technology in order to make the devices work, says HarvardCollege Professor and Gordon McKay Professor of Computer

Science Harry Lewis. The problem is when people begin to

believe the metaphors. In some sense, [the metaphors] have

been too successful. We have, in modern parlance, entered

the Matrix.

Harvard cybercitizens have two ways of learning the truth, and

Lewis serves as the Universitys version of Morpheus (pill-free,

of course). Students can delve into his new core course, QR 48:

Bits, or they can find out the truth the hard way, as starlet Paris

Hilton did when a hacker put the contents of her e-address

book on public display.

The course tackles recent and often up-to-the-minute issues,from privacy and security to cryptography and terrorism,

but Lewis created QR 48 as a response to his own awareness

of how technology had transformed during his eight years

(19952003) as Dean of the College. When I went into Uni-

versity Hall, computing was the important thing, and when I

came out, information was, he says.

Courtesy of Moores Law and the cabling of the world with

fiber-optic lines, every nanosecond billions of bits are now

seamlessly moved, stored, and accessed on the cheap. Never

one to miss a good metaphor, Lewis suggests thinking of

information as food. We

consume it all the time; there

are different varieties, ways

of preparing it and serving it

that may come as a complete

surprise, he explains. In

other words, its a 24-hour

buffet for anyone with a

port, and the sneeze guard is

looking a bit murky.Divided neatly into four segments (information as stuff,

privacy, communication, and intellectual property), QR 48

equips those who will determine policies, whether as legisla-

tors, corporate leaders, or ordinary citizens, with a founda-

tional knowledge of the social and technological choices that

lie ahead. Even without a heavy math focus, the course hits

students with the healthy dose of hard science they are likely

to need, including the fundamentals of cryptography, a review

of Shannons information theory, and a lesson on the electro-

magnetic spectrum and how it is used.

To cover such a wide range of material, Lewis calls on a col-

league at MIT, Professor of Computer Science and EngineeringHal Abelson, to co-teach the course. He also leans on some

amazing guest lecturers, such as William Crowell, security

expert and former deputy director of the National Security

Agency; and John Perry Barlow, former lyricist of the Grateful

Dead and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation,

one of the most influential advocacy groups in cyberspace.

Even as the instructors balance so many concepts (in addition

to teaching and research, Lewis himself is writing two books,

one about his deanship and the other based on the course),

students are not left without guidance.

Lewis, who, in tweed jacket and pink pinstripes with crimson

tie, looks like the classic avatar of a Harvard College profes-

sor, keeps the undergraduates focused using a series of what

he calls bit koans. The one that starts the course also serves

as a fitting conclusion: Data and information are different.

Neither is the same as truth. The man famous for his essay

telling incoming students how to get more out of Harvard by

doing less cannot stop the dizzying pace of information flow,

but he is well positioned to provide the tools to keep future

graduates a few steps, or bits, ahead. J

To learn more and to watch video lectures, visit

www.eecs.harvard.edu/qr48

Professor Harry Lewis asksstudents to enter the Matrixin his new course, QR 48: Bits.(Lewis was brave enough toadmit that he has yet to seethe Matrixtrilogy. A boxed setof the movies, a black leathercoat, and a pair of mirrorshades are on order.)



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CollaborationsTraversing physics and applied sciencesJoining Cruft Laboratory to Pierce Hall is an aerial structure

known unofficially as the Van Vleck Bridge. Traversing it, we are

reminded that it was Van himself who served in the crucial years

as the bridge between physics and applied sciences at Harvard.In that figurative sense, Van Vleck bridges stand out as landmarks

in 20th-century Harvard and 20th-century physics.

Edward M. Purcell, remarks at a memorial for JohnHasbrouck Van Vleck, Harvard Dean of Engineeringand Applied Physics, 195157

Nature magazine (433:179) ran an editorial proclaiming:Einstein is dead. Until its next revolution, much of theglory of physics will be in engineering. It is a shame that the

physicists who do so much of it keep so quiet about it.

John Huth, Chairman of the Physics Department, begs to differ,

as would anyone who took a stroll over the bridge that linksPierce and Cruft halls. The dimly lit chute, flanked with offices

on either side, is far from quiet in either direction and provides

the best (and never silent) view of the construction of the

Laboratory for Integrated Sciences Engineering (LISE) building.

The assumption of the writer is that there is a dividing line

between engineering and physics, says Huth, with several

counterexamples at the ready. We can take the example of

superconductivity or MRI [fostered in part at Harvard by

Nobel Prize winner Edward Purcell] or SQUID [superconduct-

ing quantum interference device]. These all originated as some

basic physics but metamorphosed into engineering.

Historically and increasingly today, the Physics Departmentshares a particularly close intellectual relationship with

the Division, where crosscutting research in computational

physics, electrical engineering, and nanotechnology is on-

goingfrom Eric Mazurs work on nanowires to Federico

Capassos work on the Quantum Cascade and Raman lasers

and Jene Golovchenkos investigations of nanopores, useful

for detecting single molecules.

Come fall 2005, the Division will boast 15 joint faculty ap-

pointments (14 senior and 1 junior) with Physics. In addition,

researchers have long shared facilities, such as the Harvard Cen-

ter for Nanoscale Systems (CNS), and equally taken advantage

of the two NSF-funded research centers, NSEC and MRSEC. The

me casa es su casa attitude will extend to new physics faculty

member Jenny Hoffman, whose work focuses on how electrons

behave in novel materials. Her future lab will reside comfort-

ably on the other side, in the basement of Pierce Hall.

One of our groups initial projects will be the construction of

a low-temperature, highmagnetic field, scanning tunneling

microscope, to investigate the field-dependent properties ofvortices in high-temperature superconductors, she says. Hoff-

man plans to use her imaging technology to investigate how

various types of crystal defects may pin the vortices in place in

yttrium barium copper oxidecoated conductors (critical for

developing small, lightweight power systems).

Despite the emphasis on technology, Huth is a great fan of

pure physics and admires Einstein, even if he did get some

things wrong, such as disputing the nature of measurement

in quantum mechanics or, for a long time, refusing to acknowl-

edge the existence of the strong interaction as a fundamental

force. The famed theorist certainly deserves his place and his

100 candles, but the future also looks bright.In non-engineering physics, we have the success of a unified

model of the weak and electromagnetic interactions. Moreover,

where the origins of mass and symmetry are breakingsome-

thing we dont understandis about to be probed by the Large

Hadron Collider. The discovery of dark energy has presented

us with a huge mystery that points to a new kind of physics

that was totally unexpected, Huth explains. In short, the

physics revolution, especially with the glorious potential of

using a physics-based approach to tackle biological questions,

is far from over.

Van Vleck, who won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977 for pio-

neering the application of quantum mechanics to the study ofmagnetism, would no doubt be pleased. His own work led to

many engineering advances in radioastronomy, microwave

spectroscopy, and magnetic resonance. The conversations

between the two areas are likely to remain loud and clear for

years to come at Harvard. Of course, it doesnt hurt that the

current Dean of the Division and of Physical Sciences has a

B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D., all in experimental physics. J

For more, see

www.physics.harvard.edu

www.hno.harvard.edu/guide/faculty/fac6.html

John H. Van Vleck (left), Harvard Dean of Engineering and Applied Physics from 19511957 and new arrival Jenny Hoffman (right), AssistantProfessor of Physics. The formula for yttrium barium copper oxide is in the background.



7/20

Its rare for any book to get fan mail. Its almost unthink-able when the tome in question weighs in at 1,000-pluspages, unabashedly offers equations and circuit diagrams, and

definitely comes with homework. But mention the title, The

Art of Electronics, to any physicist or engineer and they will

likely proclaim, Well, thats not surprising at all! The classic

silver and black doorstop and favorite line-item entry of its

publishers CFO will likely grace shelves for decades to come.

Nothing captures the devotion many feel toward the book bet-ter than a readers comment: Your book is a crown jewel in the

branch of electronics literature. It is my recreation, reading it

in free evenings. The books authors, Paul Horowitz, Professor

of Physics and of Electrical Engineering, and Winfield Hill,

Director of Electronics Engineering at the Rowland Institute

at Harvard, never anticipated that such success (and a large fan

base) would come from a pile of photocopied pen-and-ink lec-

ture notes bound together with an overstretched rubber band.

The Art of Electronicscame to life as part of Physics 123, a 1974

Harvard course started by Horowitz. With the aid of Hill, the

course was transformed in a text that captured their intuitive

back-of-the-envelope approach to electronic design. This

newly created text proved popular with students, even in its

unwieldy draft form. After the requisite rejection by several

book editors (who are no doubt wondering how they missed

a hit), Cambridge University Press eventually converted the

pack of papers into a smoothly bound, shiny hardback.The secret to the books success might be the homespun style

that provides the patient reader with some unexpected humor.

Heres a typical passage: This example illustrates a frequent

designers quandary, namely a choice between a complicated

circuit that meets the strict worst-case design criterion, and is

therefore guaranteedto work, and a simple circuit that doesnt

meet worst-case specifications, but is overwhelmingly likely

to function without problems. There are times when you will

find yourself choosing the latter, ignoring the little voice

whispering into your ear.

It was good foresight for the authors, and for all their future

readers and fans, that they did listen to their own little voiceswhen it came to creating the book. The text has gone on to

another edition, enjoyed record sales of a million copies world-

wide, and been translated into eight languages. Perhaps more

impressive, The Art of Electronics has changed how students

learn about electronics and how faculty teach the course. The

next time someone says they are going to curl up with a good

book, dont be surprised if it comes with equations. J

For more information on the book, the authors, and

some outlandish uses for the volume, check out

www.artofelectronics.com/

Links and nodesThe art (and electronics) of publishing

We combined a working engineers pragmatic

approach to design with a teachers approach to

conveying that kind of know-how. Electronic

design is best seen as an enabling part of scientific

research, says Winfield Hill. In other words,

continues Paul Horowitz, this was not a book

written by two professors retelling what they

learned from their professors.

Winfield Hill (left) and Paul Horowitz (right), among internationalversions of their book, look forward to completing their third edition.



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AwardsFoundational research

Navin Khaneja has been

granted a Friedrich Wilhelm

Bessel Research Award,

which recognizes young,

top-flight scientists and

scholars from abroad who

are already recognized as

outstanding researchers in

their fields Open bound-

aries Division collabora-

tor George Whitesides has

been named a member of

the National Academy of

Engineering and, with MITs

Robert Langer and C.N.R.

Rao of the Nehru Center

for Fundamental Research

in Bangalore, India, has

won the Dan David Prize

for Future Dimensions

in Materials Science

Quantum creativity

Federico Capasso has

been co-awarded one

of the 2005 King Faisal

International Prizes (KFIP)

for Science (Physics). He

shares the prize with Frank

Wilczek (MIT) and Anton

Zeilinger (University ofVienna). The King Faisal

Foundation called Capasso

one of the most creative

and influential physicists in

the world, having achieved

international recognition

through his design and

demonstration of the

Quantum Cascade laser

Career move Mema

Roussopoulos and David

Brooks have both been

awarded NSF CAREER

grants for their research.

In her paper, Reliable

Peer-to-Peer Data Pres-

ervation, Roussopoulos

outlined a peer-to-peer

digital preservation system

called LOCKSS (Lots of

Copies Keep Stuff Safe), a

tool librarians can use to

preserve long-term access

to content published on

the Web. The system is

currently being deployed at

about 100 libraries around

the world. Brooks was cited

for work on embedded

computing and power

issues. The NSF CAREERprogram recognizes and

supports the early career

development activities of

those teacher-scholars who

are most likely to become

the academic leaders of the

21st century Peer review

The Divisions Michael

J. Aziz, has been awarded

the distinction of American

Association for the

Advancement of Science

(AAAS) Fellow. J

of crucial importance for

the development of future

international environmental

agreements Why?

A Boston Globe editorial

writer, so intrigued by L.

Mahadevans approach to

research, was inspired to

write a lead op-ed piece

about how scientific

curiosity can be its own

reward. On February2,2005, the editorialist wrote,

[Mahadevans] philosophy

should be inspiration to

educators seeking to

ignite young minds, and to

anyone who wants to keep

his or her own gray matter

nourished. Seeking an

understanding of every-

thingfrom a strange plant

in a pot to the outermost

dust in the cosmosis

the zest of science, and

the best way to meet

Nota beneEarth man Scot Martin,

who is using the tools of

chemistry to shed light

on how natural processes

interact with human activi-

ties to affect the environ-

ment, was profiled in the

March 17, 2005, Harvard

Gazette Memorial Minute

A Memorial Minute onthe passing of Harold A.

Thomas Jr., former Gordon

McKay Professor of Civil

and Sanitary Engineering,

was published in the March

3, 2005 Harvard Gazette

Iron chef David A. Weitz

was quoted in a February

25, 2005 Washington

Times article about edible

nanotechnology. The

challenge for edible nano-

technology developersin

terms of the substances

finding widespread com-

mercial use in foodlies

in building capsules

robust enough to stand

whatever processing they

go through, and will yet

release the active agents

whenever you eat them,

said materials scientist

David Weitz of Harvard Uni-

versity, states the article.

Weitz is part of the Kraft

Foods NanoteK Consortium,

a group of researchers

dedicated to exploring

food technology Fast

break Essential Science

Indicators has an interviewwith Daniel J. Jacob. His

fast-breaking (i.e., highly

cited) paper in the field

of geosciences provides

an overview of the use of

aircraft measurements to

verify emission inventories

of environmentally impor-

tant species from a large

continental source region.

Jacob says, Such verifica-

tion of emissions, leading

to better understanding

of emission processes, is

A nano change The Center for Imaging and Mesoscale Structures

(CIMS) has officially changed its name to the Center for Nanoscale

Systems (CNS) as of April 4, 2005. The missions and goals of the

Center have not changed. The new name is more descriptive and

puts an emphasis on the concept of the fabrication and construc-

tion of nanoscale systems. For more, see

http://cns.fas.harvard.edu

Assistant Professor ofComputer ScienceMema Roussopoulos

Professor of Applied PhysicsDavid A. Weitz

Scot Martins research hasglobal reach.



9/20

the challenge of living

Better shoes Mahadevan

was also appointed the

Schlumberger Visiting

Professor of Mathematics

at Oxford University, thefirst holder of such a post

in mathematics there. He

says, On my first visit

this summer we worked

on designing a better

shoe, a physical model for

gene therapy that involves

designing viruses that can

beat the immune system,

and the mathematics of

drapes, textiles, and ropes

The apprentice The

February 2005 issue ofSci-

entific American highlights

the path from concept to

company at Harvard. It all

started when Charles M.

Lieber, a major figure in

nanotechnology, asked one

of his graduate students,

Thomas Rueckes, in 1998

to undertake the design

of a radically new type of

computer memory and

eventually led to the inven-

tion of the NRAM (made

from nanotubes) and a new

company, Nantero, Inc.

Two top picks Technology

Research Newslist of top

advances for 2004 included

advances in biotechnology

and computer security

developed at Harvard: a

nanowire-based biochip

developed by Harvard

University researchers that

detects single viruses, andthe implementation of a

six-node quantum cryptog-

raphy network designed

to operate continuously to

provide a way to exchange

secure keys among BBN

Technologies, Harvard, and

Boston University The

nanosphere and beyond

The January/February

2005 issue ofHarvard

Magazine explores the

nanoscientists weird

world, featuring profiles of

Federico Capasso, Robert

Westervelt, Charles Marcus,

Charles Lieber, and George

Whitesides. The same issue

also notes the work of

biomedical engineer David

Edwards, in an article on

the new Harvard Initiative

for Global Health Potent

quote Dean Venky was

quoted in the February 16,

2005, issue of the Boston

Globe in a piece about the

new Biological Engineering

course at MIT, saying, Thisis a time of integration

Quotas in context The

Divisions Fred Abernathy

and the Kennedy Schools

David Weil spoke at the

National Press Club on

December 16, 2004,

about the outlook for U.S.

manufacturers, in light

of the end of quotas on

apparel and textile exports

from most of the rest of

the world at the start of

2005. Abernathy and Weil,

both PIs at the Harvard

Center for Textile and

Apparel Research, also

wrote an editorial, Apparel

Apocalypse? that appeared

in the Washington Post

Sixth sense CNET

reported that a group of

Boston-area academics,including members of the

Division, is stepping up

efforts to commercialize an

experimental technology

aimed at giving computer

networks powerful new

surveillance capabilities

Measure by measure

Robert Westervelt is

quoted in the November

19, 2004, issue ofScience,

in an article about how re-

searchers are exploiting the

oddities of the nanoworld

to make new measuring

devices 40-40 vision

For IEEE Spectrums 40th

anniversary issue, Harvard

researchers Federico

Capasso and George White-

sides, along with 38 other

leading thinkers from the

science and engineering

world, were asked to gaze

out over the technology

landscape and describe

what they see Exemplary

engineering John W.

Hutchinson will receive an

honorary degree of doctor

of engineering from the

University of Illinois at

Urbana-Champaign. His

scholarly work in threedifferent branches of the

mechanics of solids has

contributed to shaping

this field of research for a

generation, wrote nomina-

tor L. Ben Freund of Brown

University. His profes-

sional leadership has been

exemplary. His abilities as

an educator/mentor are

most in evidence through

his former graduate

students, who are forging

distinguished careers for

themselves at Illinois,

Brown, Harvard, and many

other universities, com-

panies, and laboratories

in the U.S. and abroad.

Hutchinson is a member

of the National Academy

of Sciences, the National

Academy of Engineering,

and the American Academy

of Arts and Sciences.J


Professor of AppliedMathematics andMechanics L. Mahadevan

Professor of EngineeringJohn Hutchinson

Former graduate studentThomas Rueckes helped foundNantero, Inc. a company usingcarbon nanotubes to developnext-generation semiconductordevices like new types of RAM.

With the end of quotas,low-cost apparel has begunto flood the market.

In IEEE Spectrums 40thanniversary issue, leadingthinkers from the scienceand engineering world gazeout over the technologylandscape and offerinsights about the future.


10/20

Plug and play laserpacks a punch

Federico Capasso, Robert L. WallaceProfessor of Applied Physics and Vinton

Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electri-

cal Engineering, and his colleagues have

demonstrated the feasibility of a new

type of plug-in laser that could lay the

groundwork for wide-ranging security

applications. As reported in the February

24, 2005 issue ofNature, their invention

of the Raman injection laser combines

the advantages of nonlinear optical de-

vices and semiconductor injection lasers

with a compact plug and play design.

While our paper merely demonstratesproof of concept, one day it may lead

to the sort of security experts dream of

having: a portable device that you could

use to detect things like weapons or

explosives, simply by shining an invis-

ible light to see what someone might be

hiding, says Capasso. The work also

represents an important advance in

quantum design, since we are now able

to engineer, from the bottom up, a new

Raman material and laser and tailor its

property for a given application.Conventional Raman lasers depend on

a fundamental phenomenon in physics

called the Raman effect. When light

from an intense laser beam, known as

the pump, deflects off the molecules of

certain materials, some of the incident

photons lose part of their energy. As a

result, a secondary laser beam, with a

frequency shifted from that of the first,

emerges from the material. By combin-

ing the power source

and the Raman material,

literally creating a laser

within a laser, the team

has created the first current-driven

Raman laser. Because the pump laser is

now self-generated, the device is highly

efficient, reducing the standard decline

that happens when an external power

source is used.

Capassos co-authors included the

Divisions Mariano Troccoli and Er-

tugrul Cubukcu, Alexey Belyanin of

Texas A&M University, and Deborah

L. Sivco and Alfred Y. Cho, both of Bell

Laboratories, Lucent Technologies. The

work was partially supported by the

Texas A&M Telecommunications and

Informatics Task Force Initiative.

Adapted from a February 25, 2005, press release

prepared by the DEAS and Faculty of Arts andSciences Offices of Communications.

Related articles appeared inScience, theHarvard

Gazette, Texas A&M News Office releases, Photon-

ics.com, and Optics.org.

How the Venus flytrapsnaps up its preyL. Mahadevan, Gordon McKay Professor

of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics

at the Division and affiliate in the De-

partment of Organismic and Evolution-

ary Biology, with former students and

postdocs Yoel Forterre (Universit de

Provence), Jan M. Skotheim (Cambridge

University and Harvard), and Jacques

Dumais (Harvard), reported in the Janu-

ary 27, 2005, issue ofNaturehow the Ve-

nus flytrap snaps up its prey in a mere

tenth of a second by actively shifting the

curved shape of its mouth like leaves.

To trap its prey, the carnivorous plant

relies on both an active biochemical

and a passive elastic process. When an

insect brushes up against a hair trigger,

the plant responds by moving water

to actively change the curvature of its

leaves. In essence, a leaf stretches until

reaching a point of instability, where it

can no longer maintain the strain, Ma-

hadevan says. Like releasing a reversed

plastic lid or part of a cut tennis ball,

each leaf folds back in on itself, and inthe process of returning to its original

shape, ensnares the victim in the

middle. The hydrated nature of the leaf

quickly dampens the vibrations caused

by the movement, so the unlucky bug

doesnt spill out. It then takes the plant

up to eight hours to ready its leaves for

the next unsuspecting bug.

One day, engineers might be able to

emulate the plants ingenious alterna-

tive to muscle-powered movements in

tiny artificial devices, such as those that

control the flow of minute amountsof liquids or gases. Common applica-

tions that already use related technol-

ogy include valves and switches in

microfluidic devices, hydraulic sensors

and actuators, and timed-release drug-

delivery mechanisms.

Related media stories appeared in theBoston

Globe, New Scientist, Scientific American, the

Los Angeles Times, Popular Mechanics, and theNew York Times. NPR produced a radio story on

the research. Future stories are slated to appear in

Boys Life and on the Discovery Channel. Videos

Selected articles aboutthe Division

Federico Capasso (left) ,and Mariano Troccoli (right)hope their work on theRaman injection laser willlead to a new generation

of tuneable compact lasersthat can operate at almostany wavelength of theinvisible light spectrum,including the Terahertzrange.

To reveal howthe Venus flytrapsnaps, L. Mahade-van and colleaguespainted ultravioletfluorescent dots onthe external faceof the leaves andfilmed them underultraviolet lightusing high-speedvideo.



11/20

and additional images of the plant in action are

available online at www.deas.harvard.edu/re-

search/Venusflytrap.html.

Adapted from a January 26, 2005, press release

prepared by the DEAS and Faculty of Arts and

Sciences Offices of Communications.

Seeing the real world

By mining direct recordings of neuronalactivity in live animals as they viewed

natural scenes, Garrett B. Stanley, Associ-

ate Professor of Biomedical Engineering,

and graduate student Nicholas A. Lesica

have developed a more realistic model

of how the brain encodes real-world vi-

sual information. The work, published

as a cover story in the November 24,

2004, issue ofThe Journal of Neuroscience,

could help move scientists beyond

artificial visual stimuli typically used

in experimentssuch as spots, bars, or

sine wavesto a better understandingof how the brain processes dynamic

objects such as trees swaying, cars

speeding by, or joggers stretching.

The scientists used snippets from

movies of common scenes to pinpoint

the pattern and sequence of neuronal

firings in the lateral geniculate nucleus

(LGN), a layered structure in the brains

thalamus with cells that respond to form

and motion. In the future, with a better

understanding of how the brain encodes

everyday scenes, engineers might be able

to artificially trigger a visual response or

experience by sending such data from a

computer through a device that directly

interfaces with the brain.

Adapted from a December 13, 2004, press release

prepared by the DEAS Office of Communications.

Pollution gets awarm receptionA warming globe could stifle summers

cleansing winds across the northeastern

and midwestern United States over thenext 50 years, significantly worsening

air pollution in these regions, says Lo-

retta J. Mickley, a research associate at

the Division. Her findings, reported in

February at the annual meeting of the

AAAS in Washington, D.C., are based

on modeling the impact of increasing

greenhouse gas concentrations on pol-

lution events across the United States

through 2050.

Using this model, Mickley and col-

leagues found that the frequency of

cold fronts bringing cool, clear air out

of Canada during the summer months

declined about 20 percent. These cold

fronts, Mickley said, are responsible for

breaking up hot, stagnant air that builds

up regularly in the summer, generatingincreased levels of ground-level ozone

pollution. Mickleys collaborators in-

cluded Daniel J. Jacob and B. D. Field at

Harvard, and D. Rind of the Goddard In-

stitute for Space Studies. Their work was

funded by a Science To Achieve Results

(STAR) research grant from the Environ-

mental Protection Agency (EPA).

Related media stories appeared in theBoston

Globe and on CNN. Mickley was also interviewed

by CBS Radio.

Adapted from a February 19, 2005, press release

prepared by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Office

of Communications.

Waiting to exhaleSome individuals exhale many more

pathogen-laden droplets than others

in the course of ordinary breathing,

scientists have found, but oral admin-

istration of a safe saline spray every six

hours might slash exhalation of germs

in this group by an average of 72 per-

cent. The researchers, including David

A. Edwards, Gordon McKay Professor ofthe Practice of Biomedical Engineering,

and biotechnology firms Pulmatrix and

Inamed, reported results from their

clinical study in the Proceedings of the

National Academy of Sciences. Their work

may help decrease the spread of bacte-

ria and viruses responsible for airborne

infectious diseases such as influenza,

tuberculosis, and severe acute respira-

tory syndrome, or SARS.

Loretta Mickley andcolleagues foundthat a warming globecould stifle summerscleansing winds acrossthe Northeast andMidwest over the next50 years, significantly

worsening air pollutionin these regions.

(Courtesy of staffphotograher KrisSnibbe, HarvardNews Office)

David Edwards and his co-authorsfindings could dampen the contagiousnessof individuals most likely to spreadairborne germs when sick, and alloweveryone to breathe a bit easier.

Edwards and his co-authors concluded

that roughly half the population

6 of11 individuals in their studymay

produce more than 98 percent of all

potentially pathogenic bioaerosols. The

researchers found that a six-minute

inhalation of aerosolized saltwater

solution, often used in the treatmentof asthma, can markedly reduce the

number of bioaerosol particles exhaled

by these high producers for up to six

hours. Using a cough machine designed

to simulate normal human breathing,

they linked the reduction in droplet ex-

halation after saline administration to

increased surface tension among fluids

lining human airways, producing larger

droplets that are less likely to remain

airborne and exit through the mouth.

Related stories appeared on the Reuters, AP,and Bloomberg wire services as well as the

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and CNN.

A Webcast video story appeared on ScienCentral,

and WHDH-TV (Channel 7, Boston) created a

feature story.

Adapted from a Faculty of Arts and Sciences

press release and a Harvard Gazette story,

November 29, 2004.J



12/20

The racing circuitElaine Ou, a G2 Computer Science Ph.D. student, designs

high-speed circuits for use in fault-tolerant memory as part

of the Harvard VLSI Group, led by Professor of Electrical

Engineering and Computer Science Woody Yang. Shes also

dedicated to exploring a different type of circuit, where

speed is calculated in miles per hour (often up to 180), not in

megahertz, and when a burning smell is a sign of success,not system failure. Here Elaine writes about the thrill of

building cool stuff, the stress-reducing benefits of motorcycle

racing, and how her other hobby keeps her well grounded.

When it comes right down to it, all I really want to do isbuild cool stuff. My medium of choice just happens tobe digital circuitry. I recently helped design an error-correct-

ing code thats suitable for different types of semiconductor

memory, like those used in USB Flash drives.

Right now, there isnt any form of error correction, so after

manufacturing, 3050 percent of the development cost goes

into testing the memory to make sure all of it works. As an

alternative, I am proposing a high-speed circuit (patent

pending) that can perform error correction on demand with

minimal latency.

Some of the things I do when Im neglecting my schoolwork

are ride my motorcycles (I am racing this season!) and fly

airplanes (I am hoping to obtain my IFR [instrument flight

rules] and commercial ratings, and have future plans to build

my own plane).

Whats racing a bike like? Traveling at nearly 200 mph, it is

hard to think about anything else, so I find it a great way to

release stress. The feeling is really hard to describe; its purely

interactive and definitely gives you an adrenaline rush.

My other hobby, flying, offers a completely different, and much

more technical, experience. Its closer to doing engineering: If

anything is a little bit off, the entire system can fail. In short,

you dont want to get an adrenaline rush when youre in the air,

since that probably means you are going to have a problem!

Of course, my parents disapprove of both my hobbiesand

after cracking three motorcycle helmets (and theres only one

surefire way to do that!) in less than a year, I understand their

concern. But over time Ill get better at performing my own

form of error correction. At the very least, Im now highly mo-

tivated to save money on gearI have that plane to buy. J

CS graduate student Elaine Ou hits the roadways (above)and the airways (below).



13/20

AwardsHarvard College senior Yi

Liu 05 has been awarded

the 2004 Colonel and Mrs.

S. S. Dennis III Scholar-

ship in recognition of her

hard work and dedication

to research. Ms. Liu, a

2005 candidate for the S.B.

degree in Engineering Sci-

ences (honors biomedical

track), was born in Wuxi,

China. She came to the

United States when she

was six years old, attended

St. Andrews School in

Delaware, and now resides

in Arlington, Texas. Ms.

Lius academic interests are

wide ranging, including bio-

mechanics, oceanographic

engineering, and mechani-

cal design. Currently, she

is conducting research

with Robert Howe, Gordon

McKay Professor of Engi-

neering and Director of the

Harvard Biorobotics Lab, on

the material properties of

breast tissue using finite-

element modeling. Aftergraduation, she will work

as a structural dynam-

ics engineer for Northrop

Grumman, an aerospace

technology firm in Redondo

Beach, CA. The company

has awarded her a graduate

fellowship that she plans to

use to pursue a masters

degree in engineering.

...........Xiaofeng Li, Ph.D. student

in Donhee Hams group,

has won the 2005 Ana-log Devices Outstanding

Student Designer Award in

recognition of his outstand-

ing Ph.D. work, currently

focused on ultrafast quan-

tum circuits using carbon

nanotubes. Mr. Li, who

graduated from Caltech

in 2004, is also the Gold

Medal winner of the 29th

International Physics Olym-

piad and ranked first in the

Building networksHeres a quick look at recent two student-oriented visits at

DEAS given by industry professionals.

Cisco Systems, Inc.

St. Patricks Day at the Division featured green motherboards

of a sort. Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President

of Cisco Systems Charlie Giancarlo, who received his M.B.A. atHarvard Business School, visited that day to meet with faculty

and to talk with and recruit Harvard students.

Samsung Electronics Company, Ltd.

In conjunction with the Business School, the Division wel-

comed Dr. Chang-Gyu Hwang, President and CEO of Samsung.

To help participants remember to attend, the company offered

free 256 MB USB Flash memory sticks. The promo worked a

little too well, given the 800 students who packed the Burden

Auditorium. In addition to meeting with Division and HBS

faculty, Dr. Hwang, an IEEE Fellow, discussed DigitAll, the

companys new strategy that uses advances in semiconductor

technology to create a mobile society. J

Boston Area Undergradu-

ate Physics Competition in

2001.

...........

Yaakov Kobi Gal (above

left), who works with

Professor Avi Pfeffer, and

Geoffrey Werner-Allen

(below right), research

assistant to Professor Matt

Welsh, were given teaching

fellow awards.

...........Two teamsHarvard .*

(comprising Tiankai Liu

08, Anatoly Preygel 07,

and Qicheng Ma 06) and

Harvard 124 (comprising

Timofei Gerasimov 06, Yan

Zhang 07, and Alexan-

der Sasha Rush 07),

both part of the Harvard

Computing Contest Club

(HC3)competed in the

Association for Comput-

ing Machinerys annual

International Collegiate

Programming Contest.

In the Western New Eng-land College contest, 124

and .* placed third and

fourth, respectively, snugly

behind MIT in a field of

18 teams. Harvard 124

advanced to the regional

competition on November

13, 2004, in Rochester,

New York. After a grueling

11 hours and 27 minutes,

the team solved three

problems out of five and

placed third overalla

great performance, but not

good enough for the World

Finals, where last year

a Harvard team came in

ninth. If anything, [Har-

vard 124 members] have

garnered excellent experi-

ence for use in later con-

tests, and team chemistry

was, as usual, well coordi-

nated throughout the whole

contest, said the team

reporter, Yan Zhang. J

Strong frictionFuture bodybuilders may one day lift and curl more safelythanks to a device (below) with as much brains as brawn. Forhis Senior Design Project, Jonas Corl 05 designed a prototypefor a strength-training machine that dissipates stored energy(created when a user lifts a weight) into friction. In standarddevices, if a user suffers an injury during a repetition, the

stored energy has nowhere to go except back into the body, po-tentially increasing the damage. J



14/20

C ambridge, England. Half-past mid-night. A cold rain flicks at the clubswindow, distorting the smoky mirage ofa small crowd of jazz listeners settling

into their pints. Tall, lanky, fair-haired,

he readies himself. The crowd does an

initial double-take at his trombone, but

the brass horn, with its extended slide,

gives off a quiet elegance in the dim

light. Gray figures with drums, bass, and

keys fill out the stage. Cue the sounds of

Casa del Funk.

These days, Patrick Wolfe, who has dual

bachelors degrees in electrical engineer-

ing and music from the University of Illi-nois and a Ph.D. in engineering from the

University of Cambridge, has a perma-

nent gig as Assistant Professor of Electri-

cal Engineering at Harvard. On the first

floor of the Divisions Pierce Hall, a differ-

ent type of stagehis new audio labis

taking shape. Rather than making noise,

Wolfe investigates ways to reduce it and

explores techniques related to recover-

ing lost audio and signal data. His work

is likely to result in applications rangingfrom basic scientific research tools to

improved hearing aids and advances in

speech-recognition software.

What I really do is signal processing,

says Wolfe. Although his focus is pri-

marily on audio signals, the broader field

covers a range of electrical phenomena

such as radio, biomedical, video, image,

and sonar data. A natural collaborator

who uses his expertise in mathematics

and statistics to inform his research,

he also draws on psychoacoustics, therelationship between physical stimulus

and perceptual sensation, to develop

statistical models of how we hear.

In particular, hes looking for better ways

to preserve signal quality, since reducing

static inevitably occurs at the expense

of signal resolution (i.e., quality). Noise

reduction, in an engineering sense, boils

Slide rulerdown to the problem of how to best esti-

mate an underlying signal from a noisy

observation. Given a sequence of data

say, an old recording of Duke Ellington

that has been damaged [corrupted by

noise, in signal processing terms]how

can we recreate the closest version of the

original sequence so that a listener can-

not tell the difference? Wolfe asks.

To avoid throwing the signal out with

the static, Wolfes trick is to take ad-

vantage of what our ears and brains

already do so well: receive and filter in-

formation. The recovered signal needs

to be only as perfect (or imperfect) as

the human auditory system. The key to

achieving clarity involves borrowing

a statistical technique first developed

in the 18th century. Classic Bayesian

methodologya ratio for using what

we already know in order to predictwhat will come, named after the Rever-

end Thomas Bayesprovides a math-

ematical boost to help restore a signal.

An audio engineer like Wolfe can, in a

principled way, incorporate perceptual

information a priori into a statistical

model when restoring a damaged piece

of music, for example.

Patrick Wolfe, solo artist and collaborative engineer,

makes (and reduces) some noise



15/20

By incorporating our knowledge of

human hearing into the noise reduc-

tion process, we gain a more robust

framework, explains Wolfe. The noise

removal algorithms [intelligent pieces

of software that know what to save and

what to throw out] concentrate on re-

moving the most perceptually salient

noisein other words, what we would

most notice.

Imagine listening to a damaged CD

that skips every few seconds, but apart

from the skip, plays normally. Compare

that experience to listening to a poorly

recorded analog cassette tape that has a

constant hiss in the background. From

a purely mathematical perspective, the

amount of noise, or error, would be

much greater in the tape than in the

CD, which jumps only occasionally. Yet

Wolfe argues that despite the greater

overall error, You would likely prefer

listening to the less distracting under-

lying white noise of the tape than the

jarring, if less frequent, CD skip. Thus,he takes human preferencesor whats

called a perceptual cost functioninto

consideration when trying to obtain the

most listenable restored signal.

Anyone with an MP3 player has already

benefited from a similar approach. To

create a compressed yet high-quality

audio file, sound engineers reduce the

number of bits needed to represent the

signal. The error caused by whats miss-

ing is made inaudible by the remaining

signal. In return, music listeners can fit

more songs on a players internal hard

drive. Wolfe hopes to refine the use of

a similar distilling process to optimally

remove the most perceptually salient

noise when restoring audio data. In this

reverse procedure, the important bits

are effectively added back in (or re-

stored) while the din is de-emphasized.

Given his success in mixing disciplines,

Wolfe strongly advocates pursuing re-

search at the border between applied

mathematics and the engineering sci-

ences, combining a strong theoretical

foundation with practical experience.

While he could have gone either way,

engineering or statistics, he felt that

engineering, perhaps because of his

own musical inclinationsthe desire

to build and playwas a better fit.

Wolfe jokes that the chance to join

Harvard is like what they say about the

Mafia: Its an offer you cant refuse. In

his case, the combination of the Divi-

sion and Harvard left him with little

reason to go anywhere else. Even before

he arrived in the summer of2004, Wolfe

had made strong links with members

of the Statistics Department. Hes now

looking forward to working with theStatistics faculty to design and teach

a new course in signal processing and

statistics next yeara sign, he says, of

the great way the Division reaches out

across campus.

Links down the hall are also emerging.

When applied mathematician L. Ma-

hadevan realized that Wolfe plays the

trombone, he immediately offered to

film him in action with the same high-

speed camera he used to capture the

motion of the Venus flytrap. The basiclongstanding models for how the vocal

tract works are only a small part of the

picture, says Wolfe. The eventual goal

is to analyze the entire vocal production

mechanism; once you have a parametric

description for this (how the air columns

vibrate in trombones and how the vocal

cords vibrate in humans), you can invert

it and synthesize speech sounds. Using

clear plastic mouthpieces on wind in-

struments, and looking inside the vocal

tract, researchers can get a glimpse of

whats happening on the inside. While

we can model and accurately replicate

simple vowel sounds with existing tech-

niques, things like shh, fff, kkk, and all the

other sounds we make are a bit harder.

Mahadevan, however, might have to

wait for a solo performance, even for

the good of research. I am ashamed to

say that Ive been so busy getting things

up and running, I have not unpacked

my horn since Ive arrived, says Wolfe.

Its like any other physical activity. You

have to get into the regimen of playing

thirty to forty-five minutes a day. As for

the eternal question, Why the trom-

bone? he admits that he cannot think

of any professional trombonist who

chose the instrument on purpose. In

his case, his school marching band had

to fill a slot (in the front row, naturally).

The trombone, however, is a mainstay

in classical orchestras and is frequently

employed in jazz and pop.While at Cambridge, where Wolfe held

a fellowship and college lectureship

jointly in engineering and computer

science at New Hall and eventually

served as dean, he frequently had music

gigs, played in the orchestra, led a big

band, and even directed the musical

scholarship program. Once he settles

into the Division, he will benefit from

the close proximity of the Harvard Mu-

sic Department, a few steps away from

Maxwell Dworkin.

In the meantime, his work and collabo-

rations in electrical engineering, statis-

tics, and related fields are likely to keep

him busy, as is the attitude of his fellow

faculty. Everyone at DEAS thinks like a

scientistengineers included. I think

that really sets us apart. People here

start at a different point, blending basic

science and technology to create some-

thing new. J

In his case, the high-

school marching band

had to fill a slot.

Wolfe employs a filtering algorithm to reduce noisy signals in audio data such as a damaged Duke Ellington recording.(From left to right) A representation of the original, damaged recording; the same recording with 40 percent of the signal data dropped;the final, restored (less noisy) recording.



16/20

I knew immediately it was some-thing I would like to do; prettymuch since I graduated from Rindge, I

have been doing tutoring, says Rebecca

Nesson A.B. 98, referring to her alma

mater, Cambridge Rindge and Latin High

School. The something she mentions

is the National Science Foundations

GK-12 program that puts Harvard

graduate students like Nesson to work

in the Cambridge Public School System.

When Nesson talks, its clear that she

has the air of a teacher and the patience-tempered passion necessary to compete

for the dwindling teenage attention

span. She always knew that teaching

was in her future, but her academic path

was not as clear. Nesson studied folklore

and mythology as an undergraduate at

Harvard, received a J.D. at Harvard Law

School in 2001, and then, finding inspi-

ration in that schools Berkman Center

for Internet and Society, took classes

in computer science part-time at DEAS

before deciding to pursue a Ph.D. in the

field in fall 2003.

Rindge, she says, is a tough school

system because students come in with

low skill levels when they start in ninth

grade, and teachers are not necessarily

in a position, with classes as large as

they are, to catch everyone up.

That hard reality, which she learned

firsthand, is what inspires Nesson to

get students excited about something

potentially even more daunting: math,science, and engineering. She appeals to

what students know and lovetechnol-

ogy, whether in the form of their MP3

players, cell phones, Xboxes, or PS2s.

To make physics more appealing and

accessible, Nesson created a module on

sound, centered on recording technol-

ogyfrom how to build a speaker or mi-

crophone to what happens in a modern

music studio. I was doing some of the

songs that they liked and tried to relate

[the songs] specifically to the stuff they

were learning about, such as amplitude,

frequency, and filters.

Her own field of computer science was

a tougher sell because, Nesson says

frankly, the stuff is hard and it really

requires students to push through logi-

cal thinking, and they are going to make

mistakes. If we are working on sorting

an array of numbers, we will take num-

bers on a piece of paper and stand at the

front of the class and run the sortingalgorithm ourselves, she says. The

students then can get a sense that [the

information] is already there in their

heads, making it easier to put it into the

codein this case, Java.

Amazingly, Nesson doesnt see herself as

a role model. For her, participating in the

GK-12 program is a privilege, a rare op-

portunity to pursue teaching and bring

the latest research off the bench (or the

monitor) and into a classroomone

she herself sat in not that long ago.She says she simply wants to provide

support, encourage teamwork, and

help students realize that in science

and engineering, failure is likelybut

thats not a bad thing, since failure often

inspires creative solutions. J

To learn more, visit

www.eecs.harvard.edu/~nesson/

Home schooling

GK-12 takes teamwork

Students and teachers get a lot out ofthe program, says Kathryn Hollar (left),

Director of Educational Programs at

DEAS. But we tend to forget that the

graduate students also benefit, both

by explaining the research theyre doing

to students who dont yet have an

extensive science background and by

fielding some of the unexpected

yet fundamental questions that these

students have. For more, see

http://gk12.harvard.edu/

(Right) Rebecca Nesson is one of 10 DEASgraduate students who worked at localCambridge Rindge and Latin High Schoolduring the past year to help teachersdevelop and implement educational activi-ties that excite students about scienceand engineering.



17/20

Early admits

Every year a group of Cambridge

seventh graders has an opportunityto get into Harvard earlyabout five

years early. Thanks to Project TEACH

(The Educational Activities of Cam-

bridge-Harvard), a partnership with the

citys public schools created more than

15 years ago by Harvards Office of Com-

munity Affairs, middle-school students

have a chance to spend a day immersed

in the college experience. The projects

goal is to inspire the students to dream

big, encouraged by meeting Harvard

students, eating lunch in a dining hall,

and touring the campus.

As part of the endeavor, the Divisions

Director of Educational Programs,

Dr. Kathryn Hollar, asks NSEC- and

MRSEC-affiliated faculty to demonstrate

their engineering know-how. Last year,

students learned about the wonders of

carbon nanotubes from Joel Rosenberg

of the Boston Museum of Science (with

which NSEC has a strong relationship).

This past March, Robert M. Westervelt,

Mallinckrodt Professor of Applied Phys-

ics and of Physics and Director of NSEC,

let the students take a spin (see photos

at right) to understand the physics ofmotion (code for a short course in basic

mechanics).

By reaching out to kids well before they

begin dreaming of ivy, Project TEACH

aims to bring out the nascent scientist

or engineer in each of them. J

EventsIn addition to almost daily seminarsand colloquiafrom computer sci-ence to squishy physicsthe Division

also sponsors major workshops. Visit

www.deas.harvard.edu/newsandevents/

for the latest details, dates, and times.Graduates are welcome (and encour-

aged) to attend events. Here are some

highlights from the past several months.

High-tech society

The Center for Research on Computa-

tion and Society (CRCS) Distinguished

Lectureship series has succeeded in

providing a dynamic forum for the high

society of high tech. In March, Louise

Robert Westervelt (above) gives a waveto explain how the physics of motion mayget in the way of a good shot; and then(at right) gives two students a quick spinto demonstrate.

Richardson, Radcliffe Institute Execu-

tive Dean, discussed the myth of cyber-

terrorism, contending that the Internet

has become a safe haven for terroristgroups, and that in attacking it, they

would likely undermine themselves

and their own activities. The fear is that

terrorists will bring down the Internet.

Yet Al-Qaida could not function without

the Internet, she says. Id be far more

concerned about cyberplanning than

cyberterrorism. Butler Lampson, Distin-

guished Engineer at Microsoft, followed

up with some timely advice on why

robust computer security is so tough to

implement. Real-world security is about

value, locks, and especially punishmentfor misdeeds. When it works, you get

good enough locks (not too many break-

ins), good enough police (so break-ins

arent a paying business), and minimum

interference with daily life.

Check the Web site (www.crcs.deas.har-

vard.edu) to watch past lectures by oth-

er speakers, including Barbara Simons

of IBM, and to see a related talk by Andy

Neff, Science Officer at VoteHere.

Going with the flow

The Industrial Outreach Program (IOP)

delved into the wet world with its

spring workshop, Bioengineering and

Medicine: A Confluence of Innovation.The event attracted some of the best

and brightest in the field, including ris-

ing bioengineering star Kristi Anseth

(U. Colorado); Robert Langer (MIT),

one of the fathers of the field; Dean of

Engineering Matt Tirrell (UCSB); and

Harvards George Whitesides with the

Divisions David Edwards. J

For more details, check out

www.deas.harvard.edu/industry

Sit...

and spin...

and miss.

Radcliffes Louise Richardson was oneof five speakers who took part in CRCSslectureship series for 20042005. The interface beween biology and engineer-

ing is an increasingly critical area for DEASand Harvard.



18/20

Boulder, Colorado, native Danielle

Feinberg A.B. 96 (Computer Sci-ence) has taken a plunge into a vast

animated ocean. As lead lighting artist

at Pixar Animation Studios, she led the

team that rendered the aquatic universe

in Finding Nemo, from the surge and

swell of plant life to the bounce and pop

of billions of bubbles.

Feinberg, whose exposure to computer

graphics began at age eight with design-

ing spirographs in LOGO, already has

a list of future classics to her credit, in-

cluding A Bugs Life; Toy Story2;Monsters,

Inc.;and most recently, The Incredibles.

With a touch of physics and a lot of

finesse, she has gone a long way forward

(thats FD in LOGO) and will no doubt

repeat (RT) her success and light the way

for others, both real and imaginary.

So, you make artificial light

for a living?

We create a three-dimensional world in

the computer where I move little icons

of lights and have 30 or 40 controls over

each light. Our world in the computermimics real life, so if I dont put in lights,

the final image that ends up on film

would be black.

When did you say, Hey, I want

to work in computer animation!?

It was fall of 1994 in my junior year; I

was sitting in Professor Joe Markss

computer graphics class. He showed a

couple of the Pixar short films one day,

and I absolutely fell in love with com-

Q&A with Danielle FeinbergBreathing life into light at Pixar

puter animation. It was like everything

I had ever tried to do, taken 10 million

levels up.

Are things easier today or more

difficult because we can (and want to)

do so much more with technology?

I dont think technology necessarily

makes life easier, but it definitely broad-

ens our horizons. At Pixar, it seems like

every time we get faster computers or

some new algorithm that allows us bigefficiency gains, we start trying to put

in something that was previously on the

computationally expensive forbidden

listway more detail, fur, hair, cloth,

etc. Technology can inspire creativity,

just as creativity can inspire technology.

Is an animators goal to achieve a

perfect simulation of real life?

Pixar always strives for believabil-

ity instead of realism. When you make

humans a little more stylized, like we

tried for in The Incredibles, the audiencecan accept them as human beingtype

creatures, stop comparing them to the

real thing, and instead just enjoy the

story. However, there are definitely

some things where we strive for more

realism, like smoke, fire, explosions,

and waterfalls. All of these things tend

to look very fake if they dont have some

of the proper physics behind them. If

one thing goes out of whack, the whole

thing can look phony and pull the audi-

ence out of the story.

Any thoughts about being a female

computer science student and now

a professional in the field?

Being a woman concentrating in com-

puter science was hard. There were, on

average, about 10 percent women in my

classes, sometimes less. In my first lead

position at Pixar, I was 23 years old and

in charge of a team of nine men, eight ofwhom were older than me. I think some

of the things I learned about being in

the minority in my computer classes at

Harvard helped me navigate my way.

One thing I really missed when growing

up with computers was having any role

models or mentors that were women.

Now I spend time at several different

science camps for girls, talking about

computer animation and what I do.

How did Harvard prepare you for

what you are doing now?The most valuable thing I learned at

Harvard was how to find information on

my own, because it was rarely handed

to you. I also found that being around so

many intelligent and motivated people

inspired me to think very big about

what I wanted to do in my own life. And

finally, I learned the rules of hockey.

Surely that will help me for the rest of

my life! J

Alum Danielle Feinberg 96 (inset) is responsible for the incredible lighting effects in the filmThe Incredibles. (Image Disney Enterprises, Inc./Pixar Animation Studios. All rights reserved.)



19/20

The inverse viewGraphics and animation are not

simply for the movies. Vision and

graphics are inverse problems,

says Assistant Professor of Electri-

cal Engineering Todd Zickler, who

studies computer vision.

In graphics, you are given adescription of the geometry, the

illumination, and the surface

material. Then, by placing a vir-

tual camera in this scene, you can

compute the corresponding image.

In vision, we address the inverse

problem. We are given the image

and [we must] figure out whats

going on in the world. Theres a lot

of manual fine-tuning that makes

things look good in the movies.

The knobs they are turning most

often do not correspond to any

physically meaningful parameters

but are heuristics that people have

developed over time.

In academics, we can learn from

industry by looking at what knobs

have developed over time, because

those are the things that matter

perceptually, comments Zickler.

And he believes we have some

incredible things to look forward

to on the small screen. The dis-

tinction between real and virtualwill sort of fade away, and we will

get away from two-dimensional

displays and work in a three-

dimensional environmentor an

augmented reality. J

Ingenious gifts

Giving backHarvard graduate Fred Weber 85, Cor-

porate Vice President and Chief Technol-

ogy Officer of Advanced Micro Devices,

Inc. (AMD), was

named an Innova-

tor of the Year by

EDNas part of their

annual Innovation

Awards. The award

cited Webers role

in leading the

AMD design team

responsible for de-

veloping a next-generation 64-bit proces-

sor. Weber studied physics and systems

engineering at Harvard and received a

bachelors degree in physics. He desig-

nated Harvards Division of Engineering

and Applied Sciences as the recipient of

the $10,000award scholarship that EDN

provides as part of the honor.

Collaborative science in actionAlbert J. Weatherhead III 50 and Celia

Weatherhead have given $30 million

to create the Weatherhead Endowment

for Collaborative Science and Technol-

ogy at Harvard. The endowment will

function like a venture capital fund,

enabling the University to seed promis-

ing interdisciplinary science and tech-

nology projects as they emerge. Among

the innovative areas that may be sup-

ported is nanoscience, a field in which

researchers can now use powerful tools

to examine, manipulate, and fabricate

materials at a microscopic scale; design

molecules and drugs with specific func-

tionality; and simulate the behavior of

complex materials. Harvards Center

for Nanoscale Systems (CNS) serves as

the home for much of the Universitys

advanced work in nanotechnology.

In a similar way, in the early 1900sGordon McKay, U.S. inventor, engineer,

and entrepreneur best known for the

development of machinery that revolu-

tionized the manufacture of footwear,

gave a then-unprecedented sum of

money to support applied science at the

Lawrence Scientific Schoolwhat we

now call DEAS. Today, McKays legacy

has grown to support 42 professorships

and even inspired a novel, McKays Bees,

by the late Thomas McMahon.J

Find out moreFor more information about the

Challenge Fund or other gift

opportunities, see

www.deas.harvard.edu/alumni/

or contact:

Alexis Bloomfield,

Assistant Director of Development

(617) 495-4044

[email protected]

Progress and promise

The Challenge Fund, created by an anonymous donor to establish 10 newprofessorships and 10 innovation funds, will ultimately generate a total of $45million in new support for the Division. All 10 Innovation Funds for Engineering

and Applied Sciences have now been filled. We are also pleased to announce four

newly endowed Professorships in Engineering and Applied Sciences:

Amy Smith Berylson A.B. 75, M.B.A. 79 has endowed a Professorship i

Documents

Harvard SEAS, Newsletter, Spring 2005