Category Archives: Universities

The Naval Research Enterprise Intern Program

The Naval Research Enterprise Intern Program (NREIP), provides students the opportunity to participate in research at a Department of Navy (DoN) laboratory during summer breaks. Apply for NREIP online; the application deadline is 17 February 2006.

The goals of the NREIP are to encourage participating students to pursue science and engineering careers, to further education via mentoring by laboratory personnel and their participation in research, and to make them aware of DoN research and technology efforts, which can lead to employment within the DoN.

NREIP provides competitive research internships to approximately 230 college students (175 undergraduate students and 55 graduate students) each year. Participating students typically spend ten weeks during the summer doing research at approximately 12 DoN laboratories. To participate, a student must be enrolled at an eligible college/university (comprising approximately 160 institutions; eligibility is determined by the Office of Naval Research) and have completed at least their sophomore year before beginning the internship.

Filling the Engineering Gap

Filling the Engineering Gap by Vivek Wadhwa, an update on the previous post: USA Under-counting Engineering Graduates. In this article Vivek Wadhwa writes:

So what should be done? Further research is needed on a subject of such critical national importance. The Duke study was a small step toward establishing certain baseline facts and reliable statistics. As Professor Ausubel notes, if a team of engineering students can accomplish so much within a semester, why not the experts and analysts?

This is exactly right. We need better information. The Duke study was an excellent step in the right direction but more is needed.

Dynamic engineers develop renewable energy sources, solutions for purifying water, sustaining the environment, providing low-cost health care, and vaccines for infectious diseases. They also manage projects and lead innovation. Talk to any CEO, CIO, or engineering manager, and they’ll likely tell you that they’re always looking for such people.

With all the problems that need solving in the world, we probably need many more dynamic engineers. India and China need them as badly as the U.S. does. But by simply focusing on the numbers and racing to graduate more, we’re going to end up with more transactional engineers — and their jobs will likely get outsourced.

I am not convinced that this dynamic versus transactional engineering distinction is the key. I am willing to listen to more evidence. But I am not at all sure this “dynamic engineering” is the answer. I think it might be too simplistic an explanation. Still at least it is an attempt to look at the matter more deeply. I think much more effort would be helpful. And I am hoping those working on this at Duke, and others, provide us with some additional data, research, theories and proposals.

Google 2006 Anita Borg Scholarship

Google 2006 Anita Borg Scholarship for female computer science and computer engineering students.

A group of female undergraduate and graduate student finalists will be chosen from the applicant pool. The scholarship recipients, selected from the finalists, will each receive a $10,000 scholarship for the 2006-2007 academic year.

Eligibility:
* be entering their senior year of undergraduate study or be enrolled in a graduate program in 2006 – 2007 at a university in the United States.
* be Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical field majors.
* be enrolled in full-time study in 2006 – 2007.
* maintain a cumulative GPA of at least 3.5 on a 4.0 scale or 4.5 on a 5.0 scale or equivalent in their current program.

“Last year we awarded 23 scholarships; this year we’d like to do more.”

Apply – Deadline: 20 Jan 2006

Oregon and Arizona Technology Economies

Ore. growing into tech rival, Jane Larson, The Arizona Republic:

The “Silicon Forest,” with barely two-thirds the population of the “Silicon Desert,” surpassed Arizona in 2003 as the nation’s third-largest state for semiconductor manufacturing jobs. The world’s biggest chip manufacturer, California-based Intel Corp., has grown from a few hundred employees at its Oregon outpost in the mid-1970s to become Oregon’s largest private employer.
…
In Oregon, Intel has three chip-making plants and 15,500 employees. Its Ronler Acres campus in Hillsboro, started in 1994, has become the company’s largest and most complex site, with research into technologies still generations away; an experimental factory dedicated to developing the company’s new manufacturing processes; and a more traditional high-volume manufacturing plant.

The site is so cutting edge that, of the 14 Intel manufacturing plants worldwide, Oregon is where new manufacturing technologies are developed and rolled out to Arizona, New Mexico and other locations…

Mixing researchers, developers and manufacturing technicians in one location has proved powerful. Skywalks connect Ronler Acres’ research lab to its development factory and high-volume plant. That enables the various groups and Intel vendors to work side by side, screening new ideas, ramping them to the point where Intel knows it can produce good yields and then transferring the process to the high-volume factories.

“It’s one of the most amazing facilities anywhere in the world, and the leading research, development and manufacturing site of any semiconductor company,” Bob Baker, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Technology and Manufacturing Group, told the summit. “It brings together the unique aspects of our path-finding, our research and development and our volume manufacturing capacity.”
…
Both states still worry about shoring up their kindergarten-through-12th-grade education systems. Arizona, though, has the edge when it comes to engineering schools, the graduates of which feed the industry in both states.

Indian Institute of Technology Madras Engineering Festival

Shaastra 2005 – the spirit of engineering – ITT Madras, India. The main sponsor of the event was SAP, co-sponsors Google and GE, the media sponsor was the Hindu Express. One more indication of how international the world has become.

Spread over a period of five days in the month of October, Shaastra is a veritable engineer’s paradise where fervent enthusiasts participate in intense contests, witness spectacular demonstrations, assimilate world-class lectures, avail of informative workshops and do much more.

Chennai online article on Shaastra:

Competitions are the mainstay of Shaastra, but most competitions here are hands-on, requiring participants to actually create something using their engineering skill to meet particular objectives. This time, participants can try their hand at making missiles to hit a particular target or make programs to hack into a secure system. For the first time, a competition especially for inventors – students will have to create hardware design to solve any real life problem…this could be anything, from the mundane (automatic back scratchers) to the sophisticated (jet propelled race cars!).

The ethos of IIT has always been to engineer for society. Shaastra takes up the cudgels for the less favoured by encouraging engineering design solutions to real life problems posed by the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) which encourages invention in the rural areas to target local difficulties. Winners of the ‘Engenious’ competition will even be funded by NIF to get their product in a marketable form!

Florida State lures Applied Superconductivity Center from Wisconsin

Ching-Jen “Marty” Chen, dean of the College of Engineering, and Chiang Shih, chairman of the college’s department of mechanical engineering, also were heavily involved in negotiations to bring ASC to FSU.

“The College of Engineering joins the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in welcoming the move of the Applied Superconductivity Center to Tallahassee,” Chen said.

“This is an excellent example of multidisciplinary collaboration between the sciences and engineering. The affiliation of ASC with the College of Engineering amplifies many ongoing efforts in material engineering research in the college and the magnet lab.”

Four top ASC researchers, including Director David C. Larbalestier, will begin relocating by January 2006. They will be followed over the next six months by eight post-doctoral researchers, several highly skilled machinists and a few graduate students. In all, ASC may bring as many as 30 researchers to Tallahassee, along with some $2 million in research grants and another $2.5 million worth of precision laboratory equipment.

Larbalestier is viewed by many of his peers as the leading researcher in the United States, and possibly the world, in the basic research of practical superconducting materials for magnets and power applications. Over a 35-year career, he has profoundly influenced the development of high-field magnets for high-energy physics and other applications, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), that have evolved from them. Among the highlights of his career is his election in 2003 to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering.

“The Economic Development Council of Tallahassee/Leon County (EDC) is excited with this impressive level of investment and ongoing million-dollar payroll that will leave a lasting and positive influence on our regional economy,” said Brad Day, executive director of the ECD. “With the recruitment of research and development activities like this, our community continues to earn its reputation as a technology-rich economy.”

On the ASC site, hosted at Madison, they don’t spin the story quite the same way – Breaking News: ASC will be teaming up with NHMFL in Tallahassee, FL in 2006. Still that headline links directly to the FSU news release.

China’s Economic Science Experiment

The Great Chinese Experiment, Horace Freeland Judson, MIT Technology Review. China is betting its economic health on becoming a world leader in the sciences. But will it succeed? This long detailed article provides insight into the challenges, practices and potential for China’s economy and scientific innovation going forward.

“The major scientific program running right now in China is this one, called 97-3 Program,” Professor Cao said. “A major huge program to catch up with the scientific development of the whole world. Started in 1997, March. This program is for basic research. According to the needs of the nation.” Technological applications? Or basic science? “Both,” she said with a sharp nod. The goal is split in two? “Yes,” she said. “I think that the major scientific program is the whole-world program. Not just for China. The second is the urgent requirement for our country’s social and economic development.”

The 97-3 Program concentrates research in six areas, agricultural biotechnology, energy, informatics, natural resources and the environment, population and health, and materials science. Cao’s own concern is with population and health. In this area the research is divided into 20 fields. She took me through them with the aid of a 33-page position paper she had put together in anticipation of my visit. The list is diverse, the projects ambitious. Yet even the most basic research — in stem cells, for example — has been defined in terms of immediate applications.

Information on the China 973 basic research program from the Chinese government’s web site:

Stipulation and implementation of the 973 Program is an important decision of our country to carry out the two development strategies of ” Rejuvenating the country through science and technology ” and ” sustainable development”, as well as to further reinforce basic research and science and technology work. It is an important measure of our country to achieve the great objectives of China’s economic, scientific & technology, and social development by 2010-2050 , to upgrade the sustainable S & T innovative capabilities and to meet the challenges of the new century.

While the engineering credentials of China’s leadership is noted often, it is still interesting to note that China’s 9 senior government officials are all engineers. A Technocrat Riding a Wild Tiger:

When China’s leaders meet with Hu each week in Beijing’s government district, Zhongnanhai, they could spend hours discussing cables, switches, tool-making machines and control devices. That’s because every one of them has a degree in engineering. The president himself, the son of a tea merchant from Jiangsu Province, trained to build hydroelectric power stations, while the others hold degrees in electrical engineering, metallurgy and geology.

Indian Institute of Technology – Female Students

Women at IIT an endangered species, Anjali Joseph, Times of India:

Women students in IIT Mumbai are a tiny percentage. “There are 34 girls and over 500 boys in our year,” says first year civil engineering student Vidushi Jain.

‘Women engineers are on increase’, Express India:

There is a ‘spectacular’ increase in the number of girls entering engineering courses in the country for the last three and a half decades but the northern India has still to catch up, Prof S P Sukhatme, former chairman, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, said.
…
From a mere one girl student, who was admitted at the University Department of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, in early 1970s, the number of girls joining engineering colleges has steadily increased and in 2005 it stands at 15 per cent of the total admission, Sukhatme said.

The women engineers were mostly specialised in electrical civil, computer and information technology, it added.

The revolution in women joining engineering courses was witnessed mostly in the southern states starting with Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, ‘the northern India with an exception of Delhi, has to improve its position’.

Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay

Self-Assembling Cubes Could Deliver Medicine

Nanocubes photos

Tiny Self-Assembling Cubes Could Carry Medicine, Cell Therapy – News Release from Johns Hopkins (pdf format)

Details of photos: “Scanning electron microscopy images of image of (A) a hollow, open surfaced, biocontainer, and (B) a device loaded with glass microbeads. (C) Fluorescence microscopy images of a biocontainer loaded with cell-ECM-agarose with the cell viability stain, Calcein-AM. (D) Release of viable cells from the biocontainer.”

Johns Hopkins researchers have devised a self- assembling cube-shaped perforated container, no larger than a dust speck, that could serve as a delivery system for medications and cell therapy.

When the process is completed, they form a perforated cube. When the solution is cooled, the solder hardens again, and the containers remain in their box-like shape.

“To make sure it folds itself exactly into a cube, we have to engineer the hinges very precisely,” Gracias said. “The self-assembly technique allows us to make a large number of these microcontainers at the same time and at a relatively low cost.”

Gracias and his colleagues used micropipettes to insert into the cubes a suspension containing microbeads that are commonly used in cell therapy. The lab team showed that these beads could be released from the cubes through agitation. The researchers also inserted human cells, similar to the type used in medical therapy, into the cubes. A positive stain test showed that these cells remained alive in the microcontainers and could easily be released.

And they are “always on the lookout for exceptional and highly creative undergraduate, graduate students and post-doctoral candidates” – maybe you.

Computer Science Education

The Perils of JavaSchools by Joel Spolsky:

Therein lies the debate. Years of whinging by lazy CS undergrads like me, combined with complaints from industry about how few CS majors are graduating from American universities, have taken a toll, and in the last decade a large number of otherwise perfectly good schools have gone 100% Java. It’s hip, the recruiters who use “grep” to evaluate resumes seem to like it, and, best of all, there’s nothing hard enough about Java to really weed out the programmers without the part of the brain that does pointers or recursion, so the drop-out rates are lower, and the computer science departments have more students, and bigger budgets, and all is well.

Except.

I wish they hadn’t listened.

As usually Joel wraps intelligent thought within great writing. For those interested in computer science his blog is a great resource. Also, don’t miss Paul Graham’s essays or his book: Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age. Joel’s writing is also available as a book: Joel on Software. Joel has also collected relating writing: The Best Software Writing I.