Engineering in the News September 2012

Excerpts from Illinois in the News, a daily service provided by the University of Illinois News Bureau. This collection of September stories focuses on engineering topics and faculty contacted for their expertise by print and broadcast reporters around the world.

SEMICONDUCTORS
R&D Magazine (Rockaway, N.J., Sept. 30) -- U. of I. researchers have a new low-cost method to carve delicate features onto semiconductor wafers using light – and watch as it happens. “You can use light to image the topography and you can use light to sculpture the topography,” says electrical and computer engineering professor Gabriel Popescu. “It could change the future of semiconductor etching.” National Science Foundation (Sept. 28).

TRANSIENT ELECTRONICS
ABC News (Sept. 27) -- John A. Rogers, the Lee J. Flory-Founder Professor of Engineering at Illinois. led a multidisciplinary team that has developed dissolvable electronic circuitry, which could be used in medicine, electronics, pollution control and many other applications. Also: NPR (blog, Sept. 26), ABC Science (Australia, Sept. 28), Arizona Republic (Phoenix, Sept. 28), Ars Technica (Boston, Sept. 27), BBC (London, Sept. 27), Business Standard (New Delhi, Sept. 28), CBS News (Sept. 27), Chemistry World (Royal Society of Chemistry; Cambridge, England, Sept. 27), CNET News (San Francisco, Sept. 27), Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad, India, Sept. 28), Deseret News (Salt Lake City, Sept. 27), Discovery (Sept. 27), EE Times India (Manila, Philippines, Sept. 28), Forbes (Sept. 27), FOX News (Sept. 27), French Tribune (Bouches-du-Rhône, Sept. 28), Gizmag (Melbourne, Australia, Sept. 27), Huffington Post (Sept. 27), India TV News (Noida, Sept. 28), io9 (San Francisco, Sept. 28), Live Science (New York City, Sept. 28), MSN (London, Sept. 27), Nanowerk News (Honolulu, Sept. 27), Nature (London, Sept. 27), NBC News (Sept. 27), New Electronics (London, Sept. 28), News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, Ill., Sept. 28), New Scientist (Cambridge, England, Sept. 27), NPR (Sept. 27), Philippine Star (Manila, Sept. 27), Popular Mechanics (Sept. 27), Salon (Sept. 27), Science Codex (San Jose, Calif., Sept. 27), Science Daily (Chevy Chase, Md., Sept. 27), Science News (Washington, D.C., Sept. 27), Scientific American (Sept. 27), Smithsonian magazine (Sept. 27), Star Tribune (Minneapolis, Sept. 27),  The Detroit News (Sept. 28), The Engineer (London, Sept. 28), The Province (Vancouver, British Columbia, Sept. 27), The Register (London, Sept. 28), The Telegraph (London, Sept. 27), The Washington Post (Sept. 27), Time (Sept. 27), USA Today (Sept. 27), Voice of America (Sept. 27), Yahoo! News (Sept. 27), ASEE FirstBell (Sept. 28), Science360 News Service (National Science Foundation, Sept. 28), ScienceBlog (Sept. 28), Los Angeles Times (Sept. 28), Athens Banner-Herald (Georgia, Sept. 27), Azom.com (Warriewood, New South Wales, Sept. 29), EE Times (San Francisco, Sept. 28), Engadget (New York City, Sept. 28), FARS News Agency (Tehran, Iran, Sept. 30), IEEE Spectrum (New York City, Sept. 27), Journal Star (Peoria, Ill., Sept. 27), KIMA-Channel 29 (CBS; Yakima, Wash., Sept. 28), The Kansas City Star (Missouri, Sept. 27), WFLI-Channel 18 (Lafayette, Ind., Sept. 28), Winston-Salem Journal (North Carolina, Sept. 28), Youngstown Vindicator (Ohio, Sept. 27). Editor's note: Google listed more than 250 stories on this subject during September.

NUCLEAR ENERGY
The State Journal-Register (Springfield, Ill., Sept. 28) -- The U.S. Department of Energy is giving the U. of I. $3.5 million to test the performance of new nuclear technology for light-water reactors through computer modeling and experimentation. The Energy Department said Thursday the money is part of President Barack Obama’s strategy to develop and maintain a wide variety of energy sources. Also: News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, Ill., Sept. 28), The Associated Press (Sept. 28).

HOLONYAK -- FATHER OF MODERN LIGHT
Ecoimagination (General Electric, Sept. 27) -- 83-year-old Nick Holonyak talks about his work at GE’s laboratories in the 1950s and 1960s, where 50 years ago, he invented the visible light emitting diode, or LED. Watch the video.

MYONG NIH AWARD
Yon Hap News Agency (Korea, Sept. 26) -- Sua Myong, assistant professor of bioengineering, is the recipient of a National Institutes of Health Director's New Innovator Award. The article (in Korean) talks about the award amount, number of recipients, its high risk-high reward nature along with details about Myong's winning proposal (biomedical relevance, why it’s transformative, and potential outcome).

STEM
Forbes (Sept. 25) -- Opinion: Neustar CEO Lisa Hook says expanding graduation numbers in STEM fields is a priority. She cites Neustar Labs Innovation Center at the U. of I. as a model program.

ELECTION PREDICTION
WICS-TV (Springfield, Ill., Sept. 24) -- Everybody has a prediction on who they believe will win the presidency in November. But it's already a forgone conclusion for researchers at the University of Illinois. The theory by researchers in the computer science department has already been tested in 2008. PhD student Jason Sauppe said the formula recognizes national polling data is not always indicative of how the race will turn up. So the researchers look at polling data state by state, then use dynamic programming algorithms. These take individual state probabilities and combine them into one overall probability that a candidate will win at at least 270 electoral votes, which is what they need to take over the White House.

SMELL
Science 360 (National Science Foundation; Washington, D.C., Sept. 20) -- U. of I. physics professor Klaus Schulten and colleagues have found that the vibration of an odorant molecule’s chemical bonds contributes to the perception of smell. Note: The article is third under “Latest News.” Also: e! Science News (Quebec City, Sept. 19), PhysOrg.com (Douglas, Isle of Man, Sept. 19).

ENGINEER GUY VIDEOS
Ceramics Today (Sept. 19) -- In reviewing educational resources for the classroom, the author states, "One of the other better sets of videos I have come across are the ones featuring 'The Engineering Guy'—aka, Bill Hammack, a member of the faculty in the Dept. of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. The emphasis is on creating fun explanations (many of which could be reproduced in classrooms) that only take a few minutes to demonstrate.

U of I CONTRIBUTES TO CHICAGO TECH PULL
Chicago Magazine (Sept.) - A thriving tech sector could add thousands of jobs and millions in tax revenue, helping to turn employment numbers around. It’s not that the region lacks the means to educate techies. For example, the University of Illinois has top-notch engineering and computer science programs (alumni have been prime movers behind YouTube, Netscape, PayPal, and Firefox).

iFOUNDRY FELLOW WRITES
International Business Times (Sept. 18) -- Dr. Diana E. Sheets, an iFoundry Fellow and Research Scholar at the University of Illinois, writes about "Post-Convention Bytes: The 2012 Presidential Election And The Obama/Romney Divide." 

U of I SPINOFF EXPANDING MANUFACURING
Optics.org (Sept. 18) -- Semprius, the developer of high-efficiency concentrated photovoltaics (CPV) modules based on extremely small solar cells – even for CPV - will open its new Henderson, North Carolina, manufacturing site next week. Originally a spin-out from the University of Illinois, Semprius is commercializing selected technologies developed by John Rogers.

NANOTWEEZERS
Phys.Org (Sept. 17) -- Using ultra-low input power densities, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have demonstrated for the first time how low-power "optical nanotweezers" can be used to trap, manipulate, and probe nanoparticles, including fragile biological samples. "We previously showed that we can use these structures with a regular CW laser source to make very good optical tweezers," explains Kimani Toussaint, Jr., assistant professor of mechanical science and engineering at Illinois. "This is exciting because, for the first time, we're showing that, the near-field optical forces can be enhanced even further, without doing anything extra in terms of fabrication, but rather simply by exploiting the high-peak powers associated with using a femtosecond optical source. Also: ScienceBlog (Sept. 17), Nanotech Now (Sept. 17), Nanowerk News (Sept. 18), AzoNano (Sept. 18), Science Codex (San Jose, Calif., Sept. 17), Laboratory Equipment (Sept. 18), Product Design & Development (Sept. 18).

TELECOM
Crain’s Chicago Business (Sept. 19) -- When Charlie Catlett went looking for a super-fast connection between big research computers in Urbana and Chicago more than a decade ago, only one telecom carrier was willing to offer it – at a fraction of the capacity he wanted and at a price tag of $1 million a month. Instead, “We became our own phone company,” said Catlett, a senior computer scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. Catlett outfitted the iWire network with three 10-gigabit lines that link the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the U. of I. with Argonne. Editor’s note: This site requires registration.

ILESANMI ADESIDA
Channels Television (Lagos, Nigeria, Sept. 16) -- A profile of U. of I. Provost Ilesanmi Adesida, who is the former dean of the College of Engineering at Illinois. Also: Information Nigeria (Sept.), Nigerian Daily Post (Sept. 16), Nigerian Tribune (Lagos, Sept. 22), Nigerian Tribune (Lagos, Sept. 29).

NEW MATERIALS CENTER
Azom.com (Warriewood, New South Wales, Sept. 15) -- The U.S. Air Force has set up a new research center at John Hopkins to carry out research on advanced materials design for aerospace applications. The center will be at John Hopkins and will employ a national multidisciplinary research team including the U. of I. Also: Avionics Intelligence (Sept. 14).

ABOUT FIBER OPTIC CABLES
Science 360 (NSF, Washington, DC, Sept. 14) -- In his most recent video, engineering professor Bill Hammack explains how fiber optic cables work and how engineers use them to send messages (see YouTube video).

LEVCHIN BIO
Forbes (Sept. 14) -- CS alumus Max Levchin — co-founder of PayPal and Chairman of Yelp (YELP) — has taken a rare path from Ukraine to Silicon Valley — but one that follows a familiar pattern. As a contributor to and beneficiary of the Silicon Valley Start-up Common (SVSC), his successes are a testament to its power to create new ventures.

ANDREESSEN ON STEM
USA Today (Sept. 14) -- It’s fashionable to talk about how schools have to be better for U.S. workers to compete. U. of I. computer science alumnus Marc Andreessen would rather talk about how today’s 20-year-olds should use the schools they have. In two words, “study STEM” (science, technology, engineering and math), he says. In liberal arts, a person will have to be good enough that his book is a best seller or her song goes global, or he’ll have to be smart enough to apply philosophy to corporate strategic thinking, he says. For people who want to be well-paid employees but not start businesses, he says superior creative talent or exceptional brainpower will be essential.

ABE NAMED NATION'S BEST
Farm Industry News (Sept. 13) -- The undergraduate program in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (ABE) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has been ranked number one in the nation by U.S. News and World Report.

ONLINE ANONYMITY
New Scientist (Cambridge, England, Sept. 13) -- To thwart eavesdroppers, researchers from the U. of I, the University of Texas and the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a system using Facebook to help preserve online anonymity. Also: News Track India (from Asian News International, New Delhi; New Delhi, Sept. 14), Gizmodo (Bath, England, Sept. 14).

ELECTRONIC CIRCUITS ON YOUR SKIN
io9.com (Sept. 11) -- A team of engineers today announced a discovery called an "epidermal electronic system" (EES) — an electronic circuit mounted on your skin, designed to stretch, flex, and twist — and to take input from the movements of your body. Engineers John Rogers and Todd Coleman, who worked on the discovery, tell io9 it's a huge step towards erasing the divide that separates machine and human. Also: Digital Journal (Sept. 11).

ASTROBIOLOGY
NASA (Washington, D.C., Sept. 5) -- NASA has awarded five-year grants totaling almost $40 million to five research teams to study the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe. The newly selected teams are from the U. of I., the University of Washington, MIT, the University of Wisconsin and USC. The Illinois team, led by physicist Nigel Goldenfeld, seeks to define a "universal biology," or fundamental principles underlying the origin and evolution of life anywhere, through an interdisciplinary study of how life began and evolved on Earth. Also: GenomeWeb Daily News (New York City, Sept. 11), Space Daily (Sept. 6), News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, Ill., Sept. 18), ASEE FirstBell (Sept. 20).

BATTERIES
Environment 360 (Yale University, New Haven, Conn., Sept. 6) -- U. of I. materials scientist Paul Braun says a car cruising down the road uses about the same power as 100 100-watt light bulbs. Charging rapidly would mean moving the power through the battery 20 times faster than it discharges – a major slug of power “many times what is supplied to your house,” Braun says. Also: The Guardian (London, Sept. 10), SmartGridNews (Redmond, Wash., Sept. 13).

ALUMNUS KHAN GRACES FORBES COVER
Forbes magazine (Sept. 24) -- Engineering alumnus Shahid Khan, a member of the Engineering at Illinois Hall of Fame and of the College of Engineering Board of Visitors, is the subject of the cover story. "With sweat and smarts, Pakistan-born Shahid Khan built a $3.4 billion manufacturing juggernaut from the ruins of an Illinois auto parts maker. To celebrate, he just bought one of the worst teams in the NFL, with the pledge of a similar turnaround. Only in America, folks." The story includes references to his time at Illinois, early business developments, and, most recently, his acquisition of the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars.

Related article #1: Forbes (Sept. 18) -- U. of I. alumnus and benefactor Shahid Khan talks about philanthropy.

Related article #2: Chicago Sun-Times (from The Associated Press, Sept. 19) -- U. of I. alumnus and benefactor Shahid Khan is ranked No. 179 on Forbes’ list of wealthiest Americans.

50 YEARS OF THE LASER DIODE
Electronics Weekly.com (Sept. 4) -- The Institute of Physics (IoP) is to celebrate 50 years of the laser diode at the University of Warwick later this month. Jim Coleman from the University of Illinois, a former student of [LED inventor Dr Nick] Holonyak, will give a survey of landmark developments since that time through heterostructures, quantum confinement and strain.

ON-LINE COURSES
News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, Ill., (Sept. 4) -- The first U of I online course offered through Coursera, the California company that delivers free classes to students around the world, has attracted nearly 32,000 students in its first week. "I'm burning the midnight oil," admitted Lawrence Angrave, senior instructor in the Department of Computer Science in the College of Engineering. He is preparing materials to teach "Creative, Serious and Playful Science of Android Apps" on Coursera this fall. "I'm very excited to be part of a top-five department, and I see my efforts here as being directly connected to being in a world-class department. Working in the Siebel Center (for Computer Science) we see a huge amount of energy and innovation here and I can't help but want to be part of it here." Related story: Chronicle of Higher Education (Sept. 28).

LIGHT-ACTIVATED MUSCLES FOR ROBOTS
ZeitNews (Sept. 3) -- Scientists at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania have genetically engineered muscle cells to flex in response to light, and are using the light-sensitive tissue to build highly articulated robots. Rashid Bashir, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and bioengineering at Illinois, says the group’s light-activated muscle may have multiple applications in robotics, medical devices, navigation and locomotion. He says exploring these applications would mean the researchers would first have to address a few hurdles. “Development of ways to increase the forces of contraction and being able to scale up the size of the muscle fibers would be very useful for future applications,” Bashir says.

PCM MEMORY
The Economist (Sept. 1) -- The “phase-change memory” (PCM), an emerging technology that is similar to the flash memory that provides storage in mobile phones, cameras and some laptops, can retain information even when the power is switched off. But it promises to be smaller and faster than flash, and will probably be storing your photos, music and messages within a few years. Last year a group led by Eric Pop at Illinois demonstrated how a prototype PCM memory cell could be made that was just 10 nanometres across, bridging a gap between two carbon-nanotube electrodes. The research, published in the journal Science, also showed marked improvements in energy consumption compared with flash.

ALUMNUS PRODUCES BEST SOLAR LAMP
The Economist (Sept. 1) -- Just as the spread of mobile phones in poor countries has transformed lives and boosted economic activity, solar lighting is poised to improve incomes, educational attainment and health across the developing world. The best solar lamp among those tested was the Sun King, produced by an Indian company, Greenlight Planet. The unit is made up of a few light-emitting diodes (LEDs), a solar panel and a small rechargeable battery, encased in a durable plastic shell. Greenlight Planet was started by Patrick Walsh, an engineering alumnus who initially funded his enterprise via several campuswide competitions including the Lemelson Illinois Student Prize. 
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If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.