FACULTY NEWS
With a five-year, $1.25 million grant from the National
Institutes of Health, Associate Professor Susan
Hagness is leading an effort to develop non-ionizing, non-invasive
electromagnetic sensors and sensing techniques for detecting early-stage
breast cancer. The team, which includes ECE Professors Barry
Van Veen and Dan
van der Weide, as well as researchers from radiology and medical
physics, is combining low-power, ultra-wideband (UWB) microwave radar
techniques and robust space-time signal processing methods to create
a highly sensitive screening tool for breast cancer. Hagness and her
collaborators aim to design and implement a prototype imaging system
and evaluate its suitability for breast cancer detection. If successful,
the project could permit development of a microwave breast imaging system
suitable
for clinical trials.
Professor Luke
Mawst, Chemical and Biological Engineering Professor Thomas Kuech,
Materials Science and Engineering Professor Susan Babcock, and workers
at Duke University, UC-San Diego and Brown University, recently received
a $4.9 million dollar grant from the Army Research Office under the
Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) Program. The
five-year grant is entitled “Realization and Integration of Large
Lattice Mismatched Materials for Device Innovation: A Comprehensive
Approach to the Underlying Science and Practical Application.”
In collaboration with several government and industrial concerns, the
researchers will investigate the growth, integration and device fabrication
of large lattice mismatched materials. The team expects the work to
impact areas ranging from new high-speed electronics to novel sensors.
Professor Leon
McCaughan and Chemical and Biological Engineering Professor Thomas
Kuech received a $450,000, three-year grant from the National Science
Foundation to develop new synthesis methods for making optoelectronic
devices. The grant entitled “New Chemical Pathways to the Growth
of Complex Oxide Films for Nonlinear Photonics” aims to find new
chemical routes to form thin layer oxide structures. New classes of
modulators and devices important to light wave communication could result.
IN THE NEWS
Forward Wisconsin, a state
marketing and business recruitment organization, featured news
on its website in March 2005 about Professor Dan
van der Weide’s work with Prairie Technologies
of Madison. Prairie Technologies manufactures scientific instruments
for researchers who study how the brain processes information
for learning and memory. In relation to this, van der Weide
is developing technology that uses microwaves to monitor the
capacitance of a cell’s ion channels.
In addition, among the innovations featured in a July 2005 New
Scientist magazine story was a
spectroscopic camera developed by van der Weide and Tera-X,
a company he co-founded. The story, “Cutting edge technology
could reveal bombers,” reported that van der Weide’s
camera could potentially reveal, from 20 meters away, unusually
dense, characteristically shaped packages that might be bombs.
The Sunday, May 1, 2005 edition of the Boston
Globe profiled the Women in Science
& Engineering Leadership Institute (WISELI), and the department’s
efforts to hire more women faculty. The article quoted ECE professor
and former chair Chris
DeMarco, WISELI Co-director Jo Handelsman and ECE
Professor Amy
Wendt. DeMarco attended
a WISELI workshop that helped him address the issue of recruiting
more women to the department. This workshop, the article said,
“is one innovation that officials at Harvard University
have been studying as the university’s task forces on
women prepare to make recommendations this month to President
Lawrence H. Summers on how to improve Harvard’s record
of hiring and promoting women.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education
and The Capital Times reported on Professor Nick
Hitchon’s participation
in an ongoing series of documentaries. The series has followed
the progress of 14 British children of varying socioeconomic
backgrounds, and its producers have interviewed Hitchon every
seven years since he was seven years old. The latest report
in the series is titled 49 Up.
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