News

'Nanonet' circuits closer to making flexible electronics...
Together, researchers at Illinois and Purdue have overcome a major obstacle in producing transistors from networks of carbon nanotubes, a technology that could make it possible to print circuits on plastic sheets for applications including flexible displays and an electronic skin to cover an entire...

Articulograph International Steering Committee calls on...
Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering , recently became a member of the Articulograph International Steering Committee (AISC), a group of volunteers trying to provide standard human subjects safety information for new users of the...

Students "chilling" design should save $2 million a year in...
When it comes online in 2011, the Blue Waters petascale supercomputer at the University of Illinois is expected to be the most powerful computer dedicated to scientific research. It will also require lots of cooling power, as its many processors generate vast amounts of heat. A student design...

Illinois Receives Major DoD Research Award for Secure...
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is part of a six-university collaborative cyber security initiative that has been selected by the U.S. Department of Defense to receive a projected 7-year, $7.4 million grant. The initiative, entitled "A Framework for Managing the Assured...

Researchers catch ion channels in their opening act
Each thought or action sends a million electrical signals pulsing through your body. At the heart of the process of generating these electrical impulses is the ion channel. A new study by researchers at Illinois measures movements smaller than one-billionth of a meter in ion channels. This...

U of I leading electric machine design effort
Professor Philip Krein and Associate Professor Patrick Chapman, in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, recently received funding from the Office of Naval Research to further investigations dedicated to improving electric machine design. As a result, the University of...

Brainstorms and Sound Waves: Two CSL Students Win NSF...
Cyrus Omar and Andrea Trevino have a lot in common. For starters, they are both working on technologies that could bring new capabilities to disabled people. Omar is working on brain-computer interfaces to help people communicate even if they do not have any muscle movement in their bodies; and...

Making it personal...
Imagine receiving an email from a friend or colleague that does not include any text. Instead, when you open the letter, a synthetic talking face appears on the screen and delivers the message, complete with facial expression and emotion. While it may seem far-fetched, Thomas Huang, the William...

Krein receives IEEE distinguished service award
Philip Krein, the Grainger Endowed Director’s Chair Professor in Electric Machinery and Electromechanics, has received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Power Electronics Society's 2008 Distinguished Service Award. "It's an important recognition of volunteer work in...

IDOT Pledges $15 Million the Illinois Center for...
The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) plans to invest more than $15 million over the next three years to continue the innovative transportation research conducted by the Illinois Center for Transportation (ICT) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This new agreement comes...

Shannon addresses UNESCO Water Forum
"Newer technologies can leapfrog current practices in the developed world to deliver appropriate solutions for specific problems in different regions in Africa, without having to first duplicate technologies in industrial countries such as the United States," said Mark Shannon, director of the ...

"Aye, Captain. Activating the cloaking device..."
Now you see it, soon you might not, say researchers at the University of Illinois. In computer simulations, the researchers have demonstrated an approximate cloaking effect created by concentric rings of silicon photonic crystals. The mathematical proof brings scientists a step closer to a...

Engineering in the News July 2008
Excerpts from Illinois in the News, a daily service provided by the University of Illinois News Bureau . This collection of July excerpts focuses on engineering topics and faculty contacted for their expertise by print and broadcast reporters around the world FLEXIBLE CIRCUITS FROM CARBON...

Engineering at Illinois leads campus gender equity effort
"The search process plays a vital role in shaping our faculty and thus provides the best opportunity for diversifying our workforce," stated Ilesanmi Adesida, dean of the College of Engineering. "The college is committed to removing barriers to gender-equitable recruiting practices and to directly...

Tucker’s theory employed by Herschel and ALMA telescopes
Ever wonder how stars, galaxies, or even the universe were formed? Within the next few years, you may no longer have to speculate. By 2012, astonishing advances in astronomy will be achieved due to the recent development of two powerful telescopes. While the Herschel Space Observatory will...

Three engineering faculty selected for NAE's Frontier's...
Three Engineering at Illinois faculty--Paul Kenis, Daniel Pack, and Andrew Singer--are among eighty-two of the nation's brightest young engineers selected to take part in the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) 14th annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium. The 2½-day event will bring...

Dear Diary: "We made it to Nigeria..."
An interdisciplinary team of Illinois students, members of Engineers Without Borders (EWB), is spending the summer in Nigeria, a country where over 50% of the population does not have access to safe drinking water. The team is helping the village of Adu Achi develop a water management program and...

Kumar develops automated, collision avoidance software
P.R. Kumar, the Franklin W. Woeltge Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and his students have been studying new dimensions of wireless networks, merging the fields of communication and computation with control. Kumar anticipates the next phase of the information technology...

Chuang receives Humboldt Research Award
Shun Lien Chuang , the Robert C. MacClinchie Distinguished Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, received a 2008 Humboldt Research Award for Senior U.S. Scientists. "The award is given to scientists for the achievements in research and teaching overall, so it's a nice...

2008 ITI Undergraduate Summer Intern Program Underway
This year marks the second offering of the annual undergraduate research program at the Information Trust Institute. Increased interest in this year's program--94 applicants--followed the success of last year's inaugural offering (18 winners were selected from 40 applicants). This year's...

Three Illinois researchers net IBM Faculty Awards
Three College of Engineering researchers--Ravi Iyer, Zbigniew Kalbarczyk, and Aleksei Aksimentiev--have been recognized with 2008 IBM Faculty Fellow Awards. The IBM Faculty Awards is a competitive international program to foster collaboration among researchers at leading universities worldwide and...

Iyer chosen as Vice Chancellor for Research
Professor Ravishankar ("Ravi") Iyer, the George and Ann Fisher Distinguished Professor of Engineering and director of the Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL), has been chosen to serve as interim vice chancellor for research for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, pending approval...

Engineering well represented among NCSA research fellows
This year, five College of Engineering faculty are among the nine researchers from Illinois that have been awarded fellowships enabling them to pursue diverse collaborative projects with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). The fellows from the college who will work with...

Conferences remember Biological Computer Laboratory
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the University of Illinois' Biological Computer Laboratory in 1958, and two organizations recently contributed to a celebration of this milestone. The American Society for Cybernetics and the annual conference on Understanding Complex Systems...

Researchers observe spontaneous 'ratcheting' of single...
Illinois' researchers report that they are the first to observe the dynamic, ratchet-like movements of single ribosomal molecules in the act of building proteins from genetic blueprints. ( View animation. ) Their study, published in the journal Molecular Cell, reveals a key mechanism in the...

CEE Grad Students Win Awards in FAA Challenge
Three Illinois graduate students took top honors in the recent Design Competition for Universities sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Offices of Safety Services and Airport Safety and Standards, in partnership with the American Association of Airport Executives, Airport...

AlTurki wins prestigious King Abdullah Scholar Award
Musab AlTurki , a PhD candidate in computer science , was selected as a King Abdullah Scholar with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) . The King Abdullah Scholar Award is the most prestigious KAUST scholarship award that is conferred upon outstanding doctoral students....

To prevent hurricane damage, build more land
Since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, many have championed the idea of raising the height of the levees to protect New Orleans from future storm surges. While recognizing the necessity of that plan, a multi-disciplinary team of scientists funded by the National Science Foundation's ...

Engineering in the News June 2008
Excerpts from Illinois in the News, a daily service provided by the University of Illinois News Bureau . This collection of June excerpts focuses on engineering topics and faculty contacted for their expertise by print and broadcast reporters around the world. ‘BLUE WATERS’COMING TO...