Media turn to ECE experts to explain blackouts
ECE honors undergraduate scholarship recipients
2003-2004 graduate fellowships
New: Computational science lecture series
Great teachers and graduate students
NSF awards for sensor research and wireless system on a chip
Research expenditures increase by 14 percent
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I compose this message a little more than a year into my tenure as department chair and nine months since writing last in our Fall/Winter 2002-03 edition of ECE News. To better coordinate and to improve the effectiveness of our reporting, ECE has adopted new publication schedules and means of delivery for this year.
Our ECE News, historically published in January, is this year entering production in October, on the heels of production of ECE's full 2002-03 annual report. This newly formatted and scheduled ECE News will provide summary and newsworthy highlights of the preceding year in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UW-Madison, and will be our primary print publication for external distribution. Our more voluminous annual report, which will be available electronically, or as a "print on demand" hard copy, will supplement the ECE News by providing an in depth look at our department's enrollments, degrees granted, publications, research support and more. This full annual report may be found in adobe acrobat format at our departmental web site, www.engr.wisc.edu/ece/.
My colleagues and I hope that this coordinated reporting will better inform and serve our wide spectrum of readers.
The 2002-03 academic year was an extraordinarily productive one for ECE, as we have begun to reap the benefits from our concerted efforts in attracting and cultivating great new faculty and students. As reported in my last chair's message, seven new members joined the ECE faculty in 2002-03. Our new colleagues have definitely "hit the ground running," already making significant contributions in our curriculum, in educational and research lab development, in scholarly achievements, and in attracting extramural research support. More recently, we welcomed Assistant Professor Seapahn Megerian to our faculty in August 2003, and look forward to upcoming arrivals of Assistant Professor Katherine Compton and Assistant Professor Annette Muetze in 2004. I want to acknowledge here the important role in faculty recruiting played by private gifts through the UW-Foundation. Attractive packages of startup support are critical in competing for world-class faculty, and are the vehicle that allows our new faculty to be quickly productive in their UW-Madison careers. Private gifts provide critical leverage and matching funds to supplement institutional startup support. In this context, I particularly want to thank Dr. Peter R. Schneider and the Grainger Foundation for their generous support. We are also very pleased to recognize through promotion the exemplary achievements of our established faculty members. We closed the 2002-03 academic year with UW Regents' approval of promotion of Akbar Sayeed to associate professor with tenure, and promotion of William Sethares to full professor.
In other career changes, Fernando Alvarado and Bob Lasseter announced retirement from regular faculty status, effective July and August 2003 respectively. The ECE Executive Committee and UW chancellor extended emeritus professor status to both, and we look forward to their contributions in this new role.
The summer of 2003 also brought the sad news of the death of Emeritus Professor Vincent C. Rideout. Vince's many contributions to the department, and throughout the community, are highlighted here in ECE News. In contemplating Vince's remarkable life, I was reminded of E.M. Forster's oft quoted admonition from Howards End, to "only connect." The many connections made by a great educator like Vince Rideout ripple through many lives, in many ways. For myself, I felt the connection through one of the mentors of my undergraduate career, Fred Schweppe, who was largely responsible for my decision to pursue graduate training. Fred Schweppe was supervised in his PhD by Vince, receiving his doctorate from this department in 1958, and first joined MIT's Lincoln Labs, and then the faculty at MIT, where I was to meet him in 1978. I recently allowed myself the pleasure of checking out and reading Fred's PhD thesis from the Memorial Library. I was treated to a fine piece of scholarship, in which I could see reflected two great researchers and educators.
Inspired by the historic contributions of great educators such as Vince Rideout, ECE works hard to continue the tradition of seeking excellence in education as integral with our pursuit of excellence in research. We are thrilled to see this commitment to excellence in education recognized through prestigious campus-wide awards.
In April 2003, Assistant Professor Susan Hagness received the Emil H. Steiger Award for excellence in teaching, one of only eight of this class of awards made for 2003. This highly coveted award led to a very singular event in the career of an engineering faculty member: Susan and her fellow 2003 Distinguished Teaching Awards recipients were introduced on field and honored before the crowd of the Sept. 13, 2003 Badger Football game against University of Nevada Las Vegas. Also in April 2003, ECE TA Jacob Eapen won the UW Graduate School's Exceptional Service Award for teaching assistants. This award honors TA's who, in addition to regular duties, contribute extraordinary service to the educational mission of their department.
Our faculty, staff and students have been exceptionally productive in research achievements. An achievement faculty covet, but one that proves difficult to measure, is that of career impact of scholarly publications.
A key measure of such achievement is the long-term impact of scholarly publications. The firm Thompson ISI maintains the website ISIHighlyCited.com that processes historic citation data, and seeks to provide a tool to "identify individuals, departments and laboratories that have made fundamental contributions to the advancement of science and technology in recent decades." A very select group appears on their list of highly cited, highly influential researchers.
My colleagues and I were very proud when ECE Professor Bob Barmish was recently named to Thompson ISI's "Highly cited" list. Collectively, our faculty, students and research staff produced a remarkable breadth of scholarly publications, theses, reports and patents for 2002-03. Reflecting this activity, our faculty showed excellent performance in securing research support in a very competitive climate, typically through processes of rigorous peer review. Research expenditures for fiscal year 2002-03 grew by nearly 14 percent from the previous fiscal year, reaching $16.4 million. Significantly, healthy growth occurred in both federal and private research support.
To maintain this educational and research excellence, we are focused on attracting the highest quality students to our programs, through recruiting, scholarship and fellowship support, and through the offering of world-class instruction and research experience, in excellent facilities and laboratories. Our recent September 17, 2003 Undergraduate Scholarship Ceremony ranks with commencement as one of the highlight events on our calendar. The opportunity to reward our most promising undergraduates is very gratifying, and I want to thank the many donors whose gifts made possible this scholarship support and recognition for almost 90 of our outstanding undergraduate students.
We have been similarly active in our efforts to attract and support excellent graduate students, with key events being the college's annual Opportunities in Engineering Conference in the fall, and ECE's own Graduate Student Open House event in the spring. The Opportunities in Engineering Conference brings promising graduate students to campus, and particularly seeks to introduce students from under-represented groups to engineering at UW-Madison. ECE's Graduate Student Open House brings to campus very promising candidates among our admitted pool of students, in advance of their decision deadlines. By providing opportunity to meet first hand with faculty, to see research laboratories, and experience UW-Madison, these programs enhance the diversity of our applicant pool, and improve our competitiveness amongst our peer institutions in securing acceptance from the best graduate students offered admission.
We are also grateful to the sponsors of our many graduate fellowships, including Intel, IBM, AT&T, the GEM Fellowship Program, the Graduate Engineering Research Scholars Program, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the UW Graduate School. Among private donors, we thank the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, the Grainger Foundation, the Richardson Foundation, the Procknow and Morgridge families, the Madison Gas and Electric Foundation, and Dr. Peter R. Schneider.
As we enter the 2003-04 academic year, we see signs of improvement in many technological sectors of economy, expanding opportunities once again for our engineering graduates. We see tremendous interest and need for the fruits of ECE's research and educational expertise, opening many exciting new avenues for scholarship and service. In this environment, my colleagues and I share great enthusiasm for the future, and for the growing contributions our department is poised to make to our state, the nation, and the world.
Chris L. DeMarco, Professor and ECE Chair