Convergence Issue 23

SPRING 2019

The magazine of engineering and the sciences at UC Santa Barbara

FOCUS ON:

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT UCSB’S BURGEONING IP AND STARTUP LANDSCAPE

THE ULTIMATE SUNSCREEN ALUM’S KEY ROLE IN KEEPING THE PARKER SOLAR PROBE COOL

CRITICAL CONNECTIONS ELIZABETH BELDING: BRINGING THE INTERNET TO THE UNDERSERVED

THE BIG SHRINK

A BRILLOUIN LASER GOES FROM BENCH SCALE TO CHIP SCALE

Message from the Deans

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he marketplace is where ideas, products, technologies, and innovations can have their biggest and most far-reaching effect. When UC Santa Barbara faculty, students, or alumni launch successful companies, or industry licenses a UCSB IP, the discoveries made at the university have an impact far beyond academia, improving how we reduce food waste, cure disease, communicate, acquire education, entertain ourselves, or study the universe, to name only a few examples.

Companies that incorporate advances PIERRE WILTZIUS ROD ALFERNESS discovered at UCSB into their products provide Susan & Bruce Worster Dean and Richard A. Auhll new jobs, fueling economic growth. UCSB-born Dean of Science, College Professor, College of of Letters & Science Engineering startups launched in the Santa Barbara area solidify the strong and growing local tech economy, making it possible for more UCSB graduates to live and work here while also attracting venture capital and angel investors to the area. Those investors, in turn, support more startup launches in a virtuous entrepreneurial circle of evolution and growth that sends benefits in many directions.

In this issue of Convergence, a special section, titled “FOCUS ON: Entrepreneurship” (see page 16), highlights our campus’s burgeoning entrepreneurial activity. The articles examine the landscape, providing a look at accomplishments to date, the history that made them possible, programmatic and infrastructural support for startups, and the great promise our expanding presence in this area has for making positive contributions to the world.

Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find recognition of some of the many engineering and other STEM faculty who have received prestigious awards recently, an interview with major UCSB benefactor Jeff Henley, a look at how computer science professor Elizabeth Belding turns her research to social benefit, and the story of a Gaucho alum’s pivotal role in designing the heat shield that protects the Parker Solar Probe while orbiting the Sun. There are also articles about breakthroughs in understanding zeolitic catalysts, creating graphene interconnects directly on chips, reducing a powerful “quiet” laser from bench size to chip size, and determining how James Clerk Maxwell’s 160-year-old finding on the isostatic stability of manmade structures relates to the dynamics of biological molecular networks.

We hope you enjoy these articles and have a wonderful summer break.

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CONTENTS 3

News Briefs High rankings for UCSB engineering, electron microscopy for liquids, handling hauls of scientific data, a faculty TED Talk, and a workshop on upcyling polymers in plastic.

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Recent Faculty Awards High honors for UCSB professors.

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Champion of Engineering Oracle Chairman, UCSB alumnus, and visionary donor Jeff Henley.

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New Promise for Creating Custom Catalysts Brad Chmelka’s lab develops an innovative atomic-level technique for informed direct design.

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Critical Connections Elizabeth Belding uses WiFi to connect the underserved.

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FOCUS ON: Entrepreneurship A special section highlighting the people, the programs, the infrastructure, and the evolution of UCSB’s thriving entrepreneurial landscape.

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Moving Precision Lasers from Bench Scale to Chip Scale Dan Blumenthal’s lab shrinks a highperformance laser, paving the way for broader applications.

The Ultimate Sunscreen Alumnus Doug Mehoke led the team responsible for the mission-critical heat shield on the Parker Solar Probe, now orbiting a star near you.

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What Bridges, Buildings, and Molecules May Have in Common James Clerk Maxwell’s 155-year-old finding on the rigidity of structures helps UCSB researchers understand the behavior of molecular networks.

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Paving the Way for Graphene A process developed in Kaustav Banerjee’s lab may hold the key to large-scale deployment of graphene in the semiconductor industry.

COVER Image Entrepreneurship is thriving in UCSB’s College of Engineering — and beyond.

Illustration by Brian Long

The Magazine of Engineering and the Sciences at UC Santa Barbara Issue 23, Spring 2019 Editor: James Badham Director of Marketing: Andrew Masuda Art Director: Brian Long Graphic Designer: Lilli McKinney UCSB Public Affairs Contributor: Sonia Fernandez Artwork: Brian Long, Lilli McKinney Photography Contributor: Matt Perko

College of Engineering

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NEWS BRIEFS The UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering (CoE) placed highly in the 2020 U.S. News & World Report magazine report on leading graduate and professional programs at American universities, with two departments ranking among the top ten in the nation.

In the magazine’s list of “Best Graduate Schools,” which ranks 214 engineering programs that offer doctoral degrees, the UCSB materials program is ranked No. 1 among the nation’s public institutions and No. 3 overall, tied with Stanford and behind only the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northwestern University, both private research institutions.

In addition, UCSB’s chemical engineering program moved up to No. 10 overall and No. 6 among public universities.

Electrical engineering, which at UCSB is part of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, ranked No. 11 among public universities, and mechanical engineering climbed to No. 13 among

public universities. The CoE as a whole was ranked No. 12 among public universities.

“We’re excited to see the UCSB College of Engineering’s strong showing in the 2020 U.S. News & World Report rankings of the nation’s top engineering graduate schools,” said Dean Rod Alferness. “Our high rankings demonstrate the quality and impact of the research conducted here, and our faculty members’ dedication to teaching and mentoring, which enables our graduates to become valued professionals in their fields.”

U.S. News does not compile rankings in all fields every year and this year did not update those for graduate programs in the biological and physical sciences, including chemistry, mathematics, physics, statistics, and computer science. The Department of Computer Science in the CoE, which the magazine includes in its Sciences category, will be reranked next year.

In addition to the graduateprogram rankings, UCSB placed

The College of Engineering receives high — and rising — rankings.

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No. 5 in the magazine’s list of the “Top 30 Public National Universities” and came in at No. 30 on its “Best National Universities” list, which includes both public and private institutions across the country.

The rankings are based on a weighted average of various measures, some specific to particular programs. Criteria include assessments by peers and measures of faculty quality and resources, student selectivity, and research activity, among others.

Highlights of the U.S. News & World Report rankings appear in the 2020 edition of “America’s Best Graduate Schools” and on the magazine’s website: usnews.com/best-graduate-schools.

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UCSB’S COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING RANKS AMONG NATION’S BEST

Turning AI to better learning: Matt Beane delivers his TED Talk.

TMP PROFESSOR: NEW METHODS ARE NEEDED FOR SKILLS TRAINING WITH AI The path to mastering a skill has been the same around the globe for thousands of years: train under an expert and take on small, easy tasks before progressing to harder and riskier ones. But right now, we’re handling artificial intelligence (AI) in a way that blocks that path, and in doing so, we’re sacrificing learning in our quest for productivity, says organizational ethnographer Matt Beane, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering’s Technology Management Program at UC Santa Barbara.

From startups and policing to investment banking and online education, Beane notes, as organizations try harder to get results from AI, they are peeling learners away from the expert work necessary to refine skills. The “see one, do one, teach one” model is fading, Beane says, and learning on the job is getting harder.

What can be done? In his talk, Beane shares a vision that flips the current story into one of distributed, machine-enhanced mentorship to take full advantage of AI’s amazing capabilities while ensuring that learners can enhance important skills at the same time.

Watch the video: https://bit.ly/2Go10e9.

TECH FRONT: ELECTRON MICROSCOPY FOR LIQUIDS

Matthew Helgeson

Electron microscopy is wonderfully useful for characterizing solid materials at the atomic scale. Liquids, however, have remained beyond the realm of e-microscopy, because they tend to evaporate in the microscope and destroy the integrity of the vacuum around the

crystallization of a material in solution. “No one has ever been able to observe that process directly,” Helgeson says. “We will be able to look at individual events happening in the crystallization process, though we are still working up to doing those experiments.” The results could provide new scientific insights that could be used to engineer better crystallization processes for manufacturing foods, pharmaceuticals, and specialty chemicals.

Despite the significant advance of the sample holder, Helgeson notes, “There are still numerous challenges to putting liquids in the electron beam to see certain processes at the nanoscale. For instance, because you’re confining the sample to a very thin gap between the windows and exposing it to high-energy electrons, any interactions between fluid constituents and the microchip surfaces or the electron beam can dramatically alter the processes we are trying to study.

We want to be looking at what’s going on in the absence of those interactions. That will involve careful formulation of the liquid samples and, potentially, physical and chemical surface modifications to prevent them from occurring.

“This is what happens when you’re on the leading edge of the technology. Your ability to envision the new science that can happen with the instrumentation can sometimes exceed what the company knows how to do with the technology when they make it.”

As part of the same grant, Helgeson’s team is also testing a new high-speed electron camera that adds another dimension to expanding the capability of electron microscopy, particularly for liquids.

Conventional cameras used in electron microscopy detect photons, but TEM uses an electron beam, so the camera requires a device to convert the electron signal to photons. “That,” explains Helgeson, “causes you to lose signal and, therefore, efficiency, so, you end up having to count photons for longer than you would count electrons to construct an image. That, in turn, limits the frame rate you can use to acquire an image to maybe twenty to thirty frames per second in the best case.

“But we’re trying to resolve processes that are happening on the sub-second time scale,” he adds, “and the cameras we recently acquired, called direct electron detectors, detect electrons rather than photons. These state-of-the-art cameras can record, in principle, up to four thousand to six thousand frames per second. That will allow us to look at processes occurring orders of magnitude faster than those that could be observed previously, processes happening at time scales of hundreds of microseconds to tens or hundreds of milliseconds, which is where most nanoscale liquids live and dynamically evolve.”

sample, which is key to the process.

Right now, however, a group of researchers, led by Professor Matthew Helgeson in the Department of Chemical Engineering in the College of Engineering, is testing a new sample holder that makes it possible to confine thin liquid samples within a sealed electrontransparent microchip, thus separating the sample from the vacuum so that liquid dynamics can be observed under ambient or otherwise controlled conditions.

The device, called the Poseidon and made by Protochips, came to UCSB through the National Science Foundation’s Major Research Instrumentation grant program, which puts new devices like the liquid sample holder into the hands of university researchers, who then test the technology, determine its potential and design experiments to leverage it, inform further instrument innovations, and move science forward in the process.

Because the electron beam needs to pass through the Poseidon to interact with the sample, the walls that shield the sample from the vacuum must be penetrable to high-energy electrons. To achieve this, Protochips uses a semiconductor material to make nanometers-thin windows in the tiny sample compartment that are semi-transparent to the electron beam.

“This means that we can do TEM [transmission electron microscopy] on liquids,” Helgeson says. “We can now see with our eyes processes that are occurring in the liquids at the nanometer scale. That was not possible before. These new capabilities could have potentially enormous importance, especially for observing fluids in which the dynamics at the nanoscale are determining what’s happening at the macroscopic scale.”

It also opens opportunities to The Poseidon sample holder makes it possible to use electron microscopy to observe liquids. The conduct new experiments, such sample is secured between two tiny windows in the tip of the instrument, shown here at far left. as observing the earliest stages of

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NEWS BRIEFS

CONFRONTING THE PLASTIC PERIL Experts take up the challenge at a UCSB-hosted workshop on upcycling-polymers About forty guests — members of industry, experts in the scientific community, and up-and-coming engineers and scientists — gathered at UC Santa Barbara’s California NanoSystems Institute in January for a two-day polymer upcycling workshop. The purpose, said Susannah Scott, professor of chemical engineering and leader of the Mellichamp Academic Initiative in Sustainable Manufacturing, was to get some of the best minds started on cracking the problem of plastic.

“It’s a very small field at the moment,” said Scott, who holds the campus’s Mellichamp Chair in Sustainable Catalytic Processing.

“We’re just getting people together to share interests and know that we have common goals and complementary skills.”

In a series of presentations and discussions, industry participants presented the practical challenges of recycling and upcycling polymers, while the academics and national-lab researchers pitched ideas and potential solutions.

An astounding 91 percent of recycled plastic never gets reused, primarily because it’s cheaper to make new plastics than to recover and repurpose existing plastic. Exacerbating the problem are diminishing space in local landfills and shifts in the recycling market, with China — previously the biggest importer of the U.S.’s used plastic exports — drastically cutting its imports. The time is ripe, researchers say, to confront Awash in plastic: upcycling could reduce such waste.

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the endless stream of plastic, which is found throughout the environment and even in our bodies and will take decades to centuries to degrade fully.

Workshop participants approached the topic on several levels, from polymer chemistry to the economic, social, and policylevel landscape.

A bit of good news is that single-use plastics are the subject of several new and upcoming bans, one to take effect in the European Union in 2021, and one this year in Bali, Indonesia. As the bans generate positive results, more municipalities around the world are moving to phase out single-use plastics.

Also, many heavy hitters in the plastics industry have teamed up to create the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, some members of which were present at the workshop, where participants focused on the new strategy of upcycling plastics — turning various used or scrap polymers into more valuable products via chemical transformations.

“Recycling efforts, I think, though very well-intentioned, have not been successful because the recycled products are always lower-value than the products you would make from the pristine material,” Scott explained. Upcycling takes a different approach, she said, by asking what could be done to add value to the material so that the products are even more useful, instead of becoming trash.

“Where is the technology for that?” she says. “The researchers and the companies need to work together to make this happen.”

Big-data driven: Paul Weakliem (left) and Nathan (Fuzzy) Rogers in front of “Pod,” the newest high-powered cluster in the CSC.

UCSB’S BIG-DATA PIPELINE: THE CENTER FOR SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING To be as useful as it is in so many fields, the actual data of big data need to be generated, moved, processed, and analyzed, all of which requires vast amounts of computing power and memory. For some researchers at UC Santa Barbara, the Center for Scientific Computing (CSC) supplies those functions.

Responsibility for the center — comprising racks of humming computer “clusters” housed in a chilly room in Elings Hall — is shared by several UCSB entities: the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), the Materials Research Laboratory (MRL, an NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center), and Enterprise Technology Services (ETS). The center itself, overseen by Professor Frank L. Brown (Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Physics), provides computing services used by more than 25 departments and organized research units on campus. It also provides outreach, instruction, and support to ensure that faculty, graduate students, and researchers know what resources are available, which ones might best suit their project, and how to use them for maximum benefit.

“One nice element of our job is that we hold these fall workshops to get people up and running on the clusters,” says CSC co-director Paul Weakliem. “We’ll go and meet with the research groups upon request. That’s when you start to really understand the different groups and what they’re doing, so you can help direct them to the right tool and set them up correctly.”

Every six years or so, the CSC applies for funding to upgrade local high-performance computing (HPC) resources available to all researchers across campus. The most recent NSF grant was received in 2017 and enabled the purchase of a $1.1 million cluster for campus researchers. A cluster consists of a login node attached to many compute nodes with a shared parallel file system. The central computer organizes and farms out the resources according to fair-share policies, and the compute nodes then work on individual jobs for as long as it takes to complete them.

The newest cluster, named “Pod,” as in group of dolphins, consists

of 2,560 regular compute cores, twelve 32GB NVIDIA V100 GPUs, and four 1.5TB RAM nodes. It coexists with “Knot,” the 12-teraFLOP cluster that was installed about seven years ago. “The new GPUs are important for machine learning,” says the MRL’s Nathan (Fuzzy) Rogers. “Knot is still maintained because we have so many users with tailored software on it, and they feel more comfortable using it. They know that their software is on it and that it works there,” he says.

Projects on the clusters are tracked to help the CSC understand changing usage. The subject matter of recent requests ranged from genomic analysis for RNA sequencing data and image analysis of microscopy data to theoretical studies of condensed-matter physics, simulation of neural networks, and first-principles calculations of magnesium alloys, among many others. In fact, the CSC is working with Intel to help optimize chemistry and materials engineering code in an effort to solve problems at the atomic level more efficiently.

UCSB faculty researchers also have access to a pair of “condo” clusters, which are reserved for faculty who buy into them and receive a percentage of time based on their ownership of the cluster.

The campus also has access to a recently created West Coast GPU cluster called Nautilus, a network spread across approximately twenty universities in the western states as part of the Pacific Research Platform. Nautilus consists of consumer-grade GPUs that are ideal for machine learning but are not as expensive as those in “Pod” and cannot do double-precision computations as quickly.

Finally, Sharon Solis of ETS, who also supports people running jobs on CSC clusters, helps manage the interface to supercomputing centers across the United States. She ensures that researchers who need the kind of computing power that is beyond CSC’s capabilities can use the national labs or national supercomputing centers.

With a new $400,000 NSF grant application out to purchase another GPU cluster that would double or triple available GPU capacity on campus, CSC is working hard to keep pace with the ever-larger strides of big data.

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aculty in UC Santa Barbara’s College of Engineering continue to receive high-level awards and recognition for their approaches to developing fundamental science and engineering solutions to grand challenges. Here are some of those faculty and the awards received since November 1, 2018.

Guillermo Bazan

Materials, Chemistry, Biochemistry Admitted to the Hall of Fame, Advanced Materials, for “contributions in molecular design and synthesis of innovative, functional materials for applications in organic electronics and bioelectrochemical devices.”

Francesco Bullo

Mechanical Engineering Named Fellow of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics for “contributions to geometric control, distributed control, and network systems with applications to robotic coordination, power grids, and social networks.”

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Irene Beyerlein Elizabeth Belding

Computer Science Named a Fellow of the Association for Computer Machinery for her “contributions to communication in mobile networks and their deployment in developing regions.”

Otger Campas

Mechanical Engineering Elizabeth D. Hay New Investigator Award from Society for Developmental Biology for “tremendous contributions to understanding of mechanics of tissue and organ formation, ”key to connecting molecular and genetic data to physical forces that sculpt embryos.”

Materials, Mechanical Engineering The Brimacombe Medal, from Minerals, Metals & Materials Society for “groundbreaking work on plasticity of HCP metals and metal nanocomposite” and the American Institute of Mechanical Engineers Champion H. Mathewson Award for a paper on metallic materials.

Michael Chabinyc

Materials Named Fellow of the Materials Research Society for “contributions to fundamental science of the structure and electronic properties of organic semiconductors and translation of these relationships to functional devices.”

Phillip Christopher

Chemical Engineering Received a U. S. Army Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers to conduct research on materials at the atomic scale to enable efficient catalytic chemical transformations and processes.

Nadir Dagli

Electrical and Computer Engineering Named a Fellow of the Optical Society of America for “contributions to the modeling of photonic integrated circuits and development of ultra-low voltage and wide-bandwith electrooptic modulators.”

Songi Han

Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Biochemistry Named a Fellow of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance for “contributions to the field through worldleading research and techniques” and support for her colleagues.

B. S. Manjunath

Michelle O’Malley

Loai Salem

Rachel Segalman

Electrical and Computer Engineering Named a Fellow of the Association for Computer Machinery, recognizing his “contributions to image search and retrieval with applications in digital libraries, marine sciences, and biology.”

Chemical Engineering The first woman to receive an American Chemical Society Young Investigator Award, recognizing her “innovative research and significant contributions to the field of biochemical technology.”

Tresa Pollock

Materials Received one of 13 2019 AIME Champion H. Mathewson Awards from the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, for a paper representing “a significant contribution to scientific findings that promote broad engineering application of metallic materials.”

Zheng Zhang

Electrical and Computer Engineering NSF Early CAREER Award to conduct research focusing on “uncertainty quantification, and algorithm and hardware design of electronic and photonic integrated circuits.”

Mechanical Engineering Pneumatic-powered soft robot named one of Top 10 Robotics Technologies of the Year by Science Robotics.

Linda Petzold

Bolin Liao

Mechanical Engineering NSF Early Career Award to study phonon-electron scattering and methods for modifying how a material conducts heat. Received a U.S. Army Young Investigator Program award to research the cooling process of electrons in 2D materials.

Elliot Hawkes

Electrical and Computer Engineering Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for research to “make power circuits smaller without losing power efficiency by inventing circuit topologies that rely largely on capacitors.”

Mahnoosh Alizadeh

Electrical and Computer Engineering NSF Early CAREER Award to pursue her research aimed at designing “a scalable control and data-analytic framework to enable sustainability in infrastructure systems and smart cities.”

Chemical Engineering and Materials Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for pioneering work in engineering functional polymers. She was among the first to demonstrate the potential of polymers as efficient thermoelectric materials.

Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering Sidney Fernbach Award from the IEEE Computer Society for “pioneering contributions to numerical methods and software for differential-algebraic systems and for discrete stochastic simulation.”

Ram Seshadri

Materials, Chemistry, Biochemistry Named Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for “distinguished contributions to structure-property relations in crystalline inorganic materials, developing predictive understanding of polar, magnetic, and luminescent materials.”

Stephen R. Barley Christopher Bates

Materials, Chemical Engineering Received an NSF Early CAREER Award to study the fundamentals of block copolymers for use in designing and analyzing new soft materials.

Technology Management Program Conrad Arensberg Prize from the Society for the Anthropology of Work for “outstanding contributions focused on the impact of new technologies, the organization of technical work, and organizational culture.”

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Jeff Henley 9 Spring 2019

eff Henley (BS ’66) is known in the tech world as the longtime (28 years) chairman of the global software and cloud-services giant Oracle, which was No. 82 on the Forbes Fortune 500 list in 2018. At UC Santa Barbara, Henley and his wife, Judy, are known equally as the benefactors who in 2012 presented the College of Engineering with a $50 million gift, $26 million of which will be combined with other donations to fund construction of Henley Hall. Scheduled to open in fall 2020, the new building will be the administrative home for the Institute for Energy Efficiency (IEE). It was the university’s largest-ever gift at the time, surpassed only in 2018 by the donation of the 1,800-acre Las Varas Ranch a few miles west of campus. The Henleys also funded the Henley Gate at the south entrance of campus and the Jeff Henley Endowed Chair in Economics, Henley’s home department while an undergraduate at UCSB. He went on to earn his MBA at UCLA and moved to Silicon Valley in 1972, where he worked for several companies before eventually landing as CFO at Oracle. The Henleys moved back to Santa Barbara in 2000 and soon became, as Jeff puts it, “engaged with the university.” Convergence spoke with him this past winter.

Champion of Engineering:

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I’M INTERESTED IN STEM, BECAUSE I THINK IT HAS THE MOST IMPACT ON SOCIETY. IT’S NOT REALLY DEBATABLE. STEM WILL DRIVE HUMAN PROGRESS FASTER THAN ANYTHING ELSE.

”

C: How does it feel to have your name on Henley Gate?

How did that gift come to be?

C: Can you tell us a bit about the source of your connection to UC Santa Barbara?

JH: I went to school here; so did my sister and brother, and I appreciate what it did for us. My granddaughter is graduating this year, and our third-oldest grandchild is starting in the fall.

Both of their parents graduated from UCSB. When we moved back to Santa Barbara, I got to know [Chancellor] Henry Yang. Matthew Tirell [then dean of the College of Engineering] got me on the college’s dean’s advisory council, and a group of us became interested in how we could help to build the university. Based on the college’s strength in materials and various other STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] disciplines, we worked with Matt and came up with the theme of energy efficiency, as sustainability was becoming a big deal even in those days. We thought we should create the IEE, so we formed a committee, and I agreed to do a match to fund the building.

Further, one of the biggest needs at UCSB is lab space. One reason the college is successful is because we’re winning a lot of government grants, but we need to hire people, and we need labs to attract the best faculty, because top faculty want modern labs. The best faculty then attract the best graduate students. It all comes together that way.

With Henley Hall, I’m not building a monument to myself, but if we’re going to keep growing the excellence of the university, we need to provide lab space.

C: What is it about STEM disciplines specifically that attracts you to support them?

JH: Having spent more than half my career at Oracle, I’ve developed a big appreciation for technology. I’m interested in STEM, because I think it has the most impact on society. It’s not really debatable. The world’s productivity is being driven by technology by and large, and all of our advances are science based. STEM will drive human progress faster than anything else. An increasing number of students declare as STEM majors, because they see that, too.

JH: The gate is a great thrill for us. Judith Hopkinson was a UC regent and is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where they have the famous Sather Gate, which was donated many years ago. Judith thought we should do something at the south entrance to the UCSB campus. She prodded Henry [Yang], and pretty early after Judy and I came back to Santa Barbara, we became involved in that conversation. Judy likes design and contributed to the design of the arch. We wanted something that made a statement and would make you feel good about driving in, something soft and inviting. Whenever we go through it now, we’re very proud.

C: What’s your take on UC Santa Barbara as you look at how it has evolved over the past five or so decades?

JH: The university has come a long way. When I went there, it had five thousand students and had moved to the current campus only a couple of years earlier.

We’ve grown physically and in stature, especially in the whole STEM area. We have many strong national ratings. We’re serving a record number of students and continue to construct new buildings for them and faculty. Several of the early deans did a tremendous job of working to raise the standing of the school. Henry’s been very good at supporting investments in the right areas to continue to build the disciplines, and he and his development team have done a phenomenal job of raising the money to build the buildings. The direction UCSB is going is great, and it’s all about having really good professors, visionary deans, and a chancellor who will figure out how to fund this stuff.

C: What strikes you as you consider the future of technology?

JH: Everything is moving so fast compared to how it was when I grew up. It’s exciting to see how much you can do today in your business or as a consumer, and most of it is tech driven. The pace of innovation is going to continue to accelerate. It’s a marvel and it’s also frightening. I expect that in the future, with change happening so fast, college graduates will probably have to reinvent their careers multiple times during their lives. I think higher education is going to have to play a big role in that. One of my daughters has built a career doing mostly IT infrastructure, but a large part of that is going to the cloud, and those jobs are going away, so she’s taking a nine-month course to massively retrain herself around the new programming languages, big data, and machine learning — nothing she learned twenty years ago. There’s going to be a bigger, deeper pool of people who will need not just an extra class in cooking, but a fundamental reinvention of their skillset.

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NEW PROMISE FOR CREATING CUSTOM CATALYSTS

BRAD CHMELKA’S LAB DEVELOPS AN INNOVATIVE ATOMICLEVEL TECHNIQUE FOR INFORMED, DIRECTED DESIGN

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n 1756, Swedish mineralogist Axel Fredrik Cronstedt was surprised to see steam escaping from a heated stone. Today, Cronstedt would recognize that stone as one of at least 250 different types of zeolite, a class of highly porous crystalline aluminosilicate materials that have become indispensable to chemical separation and catalytic processes.

As catalysts, which are used in many manufacturing processes, zeolites enhance the rate of a chemical reaction by lowering the amount of energy required for the reaction to occur. Equally imporant is the high porosity of zeolites, which provides abundant surface area, over 300 square meters per gram, where those chemical reactions can take 11 Spring 2019

place. It also allows them to adsorb a tremendous amount of water and release it through heating, which is what Cronstedt witnessed.

Of the roughly 250 zeolites known today, approximately 40 occur naturally as minerals, many of which are rare. The other 210-plus are not found in nature but have been synthesized over past decades.

They are all composed mainly of silicon, oxygen, and aluminum, but individual zeolites have unique framework structures and often exhibit very different properties. Importantly, each aluminum atom in a zeolite framework introduces a negative charge that must be balanced by a positively charged ion, or cation. The properties of a zeolite depend on where the aluminum atoms are located in the framework structure and the types of cations present. When the cation is a hydrogen ion (H+), a strong acid results, which accounts for the important catalytic properties of many zeolites.

It has long been known that the locations of (negatively charged) anionic aluminum sites — and their corresponding cations — in a zeolite system affect the performance of the catalyst and, further, that the distribution of aluminum atoms crucially influences the distribution of those catalytic reaction sites. “Aluminum, oxygen, and silicon atoms can be arranged in a huge number of ways, and specific arrangements can result in catalysts having very different properties,” says Zach Berkson, a PhD student in the lab of UC Santa Barbara professor of chemical engineering Brad Chmelka. The two collaborated on research described in the March 29, 2019, issue of the journal Angewandte

aluminum atoms and their associated catalyst active sites are distributed randomly among the different possible WHAT HAS BEEN ABSENT IS AN sites in a zeolite framework.

In some cases, though, there EXPERIMENTAL MEANS TO IDENTIFY were indications, but no direct UNAMBIGOUSLY WHERE ALUMINUM evidence, that aluminum atoms may not be distributed ATOMS ARE WITHIN A ZEOLITE randomly. What has been absent FRAMEWORK. is an experimental means to identify unambiguously where aluminum atoms are within a zeolite framework.”

In their paper, Chmelka, populations, we have established that, Berkson, and colleagues from Chevron, the in fact, about nintey-five percent of the Laboratory of Crystallography at ETH Zurich aluminum atoms are located in only four in Switzerland, and the Center for Very of the fourteen distinct sites in the SSZ-70 High Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance zeolite framework. It is these four sites, the in Lyon, France, describe a way to locate most accessible to reacting species, that precisely which sites the crucial aluminum account for this zeolite’s excellent catalytic atoms occupy in a zeolite framework. They reaction properties. We are now using this did this by using powerful methods of twoinformation and applying the approach to dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance other zeolites to determine which aluminum (NMR) spectroscopy to distinguish sites are associated with desirable or signals from aluminum atoms in different undesirable performance. We expect this framework sites and correlate them with will open opportunities to optimize zeolite signals from the silicon atoms to which syntheses by directing aluminum atoms to they are chemically bonded. This required specific locations in the zeolite framework a combination of a high magnetic field (19 where the catalytic reaction properties are Tesla) and low temperatures, which together best. Such improvements would enable provided crucial enhancements in sensitivity more efficient and less expensive processes and resolution for their measurements. for energy and chemical The researchers focused on a particular production, zeolite catalyst, called SSZ-70, which was manufacturing, discovered by Chevron about ten years pollution ago and shows promise for a number abatement, of applications of interest to the energy etc.” industry. “To understand why SSZ-70 performs so well, we need to know where the aluminum sites are, which has not previously been determined for such a complicated zeolite framework. That’s because there are many possible locations where each silicon or aluminum atom could be found,” Berkson explains. Further, he adds, it is challenging to distinguish silicon and aluminum from each other by using conventional techniques, such as X-ray Brad Chmelka diffraction or electron microscopy. “We know that the catalytically important H+ sites must be near the aluminum atoms, because the negative charges associated with those aluminum sites must be charge-balanced by H+, but the locations of the aluminum atoms have been elusive.”

Chmelka explains, “Now that we have a way of distinguishing where the aluminum atoms are and their relative

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Concept illustration depicting various aluminum ions (colored spheres) in a zeolite framework.

Chemie-International Edition.

Until now, however, researchers have been unable to identify exactly where those aluminum atoms are located within complicated zeolite catalyst frameworks, a limitation that has prevented chemists from understanding, designing, and controlling the compositions and structures of new catalysts, and has limited engineers’ ability to exploit them for diverse applications.

The energy industry has managed to create effective catalysts through many decades of optimization based on empirical experimental studies. “It has been the result of trying many different things, finding which catalysts work and then modifying them,” says Berkson, “Generally, hundreds of different samples would be synthesized and their catalytic properties tested to try to determine which ones performed best for a given reaction.”

This new work contributes to changing that. “For a long time,” Chmelka says, “it has been thought that the crucial

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12

Computer science professor Elizabeth Belding works to advance social causes by bringing WiFi-powered web access to underserved communities.

Elizabeth Belding 13 Spring 2019

I

n 2013, Elizabeth Belding, professor in the Computer Science Department at the UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering, and UCSB colleagues won a grant through a U. S. State Department project on internet freedom. It was inspired by the Arab Spring and the increasing tendency of authoritarian governments around the world to sever internet connections as a way of controlling their populations by silencing their voices on social media.

Members of the team traveled to three nations that have authoritarian regimes — Turkey, Zambia, and Mongolia — meeting with members of marginalized communities, civil rights activists, journalists, and others who are at risk when governments shut down the internet or monitor social media spaces in an effort to identify and punish opposition users. “We talked about what they needed and what they feared, and then developed a solution,” Belding says. “We wanted to develop a way for people to communicate locally and anonymously so that they would be able to organize.”

The project included a technical aspect relating to wireless networking, Belding’s area of expertise, and, separately, a smart-phone app that worked with Twitter.

It allowed someone to start a group and those with the proper credentials to join it. Members could then push messages to the group. The posters’ identities would be hidden, but group members would know to trust the post because it came from a verified group member.

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IF I’M GOING TO BE ENGAGED IN SOMETHING, I WANT IT TO BE SOMETHING I REALLY CARE ABOUT.

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For Belding, it was the kind of project that has increasingly defined the focus of her research in recent years, which is to provide internet connectivity in ways that empower groups disadvantaged by economics, politics, geography, or even weather. She came to UCSB in 1996 as a PhD student studying wireless networking in the

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. About a decade into her career, she found herself wanting to align her work with her social consciousness.

“I’ve always tried to be active in areas of personal importance,” she says. In her early twenties, she even attended a training workshop to learn to be an activist and led a couple of protests. When she picked up the thread again, she looked “for ways to merge my professional research with those personal passions.”

At UCSB, nearly all of her faculty service work has focused on the advancement of women, “particularly in computer science, since there are so few women in the discipline,” she notes. “If I’m going to be engaged in something, I want it to be something I really care about.”

In her initial social-impact efforts, she worked on internet connectivity in less-developed areas of the world. “It was a way I could use my wireless-networking background to get people connected, because the benefits of internet connectivity are so vast,” she says. Those projects include one in which she studied the availability of cellular and internet connectivity for Syrian families living in the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, and designed solutions to extend cellular connectivity. Today, she says, “I don’t have any projects that I think are not socially beneficial.”

Eventually, she became aware of the surprising lack of internet connections that exists in many rural areas, and especially on tribal lands here in the United States.

Five years ago, she says, only about fifteen percent of Native Americans living on reservations had internet access in their homes, a fact she describes as “unthinkable,” and one that brought her focus back to “how I could help people in this country.”

In 2013, she began working with various university partners and Native American organizations to bring internet connections to underserved rural Indian communities.

“We wanted to get people connected in areas where population densities are low and cellular providers aren’t going to install expensive cell towers,” she explains. Living without the internet — which, she observes, “You need for everything from applying for a job to taking online classes to using social media” — affects lives and futures of those who lack access.

One way that is seen on reservations is in something called the “homework gap,” which refers to a situation in which children attend schools that have internet connec14

Internet connectivity would be a boon for Syrians living in Jordan’s Za’atari refugee camp.

tivity but have no connection at home, even though they might need it to do their homework. “With a quick internet search, you can find many articles about kids sitting in parking lots, hotels, or fast food restaurants at the edges of a reservation in order to get free WiFi so they can do their homework,” she notes.

In 2016, Belding and her research collaborators received a $550,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to extend wireless connectivity within reservations in San Diego County, deploying TV “white-space” — unused television frequencies — networks for “last-mile” connectivity. The idea is to put a base station where internet connectivity exists, such as a tribal government office or a school, and then use it to pick up and extend the connectivity into people’s homes.

A second NSF grant, awarded in 2018, is funding efforts to extend tribal internet connectivity, and to grow community web skills through digital literacy courses to, for instance, enable tribal communities to create marketplaces for cultural crafts. “You typically can reach a broader audience and get a better price online,” Belding notes. “Imagine if tribal members could sell their crafts on Etsy rather than only at the local tourist market. It makes a huge difference economically.”

In another project, Belding is working to improve communications in areas hit by natural disasters, such as hurricanes or earthquakes. In those situations, she explains,“Cell towers get knocked down, the power’s out, and whatever is left rapidly becomes overloaded. We are looking at networking solu-

15 Spring 2019

tions that can get people connected more developing regions. She was also recognized quickly. One of the things we’ve seen in recent in 2018 as one of ten “Stars in Computer Netdisasters is people turning to Twitter when working and Communications” by N2Women, they can’t get through to 911. They’re posting an organization of female researchers in the cries for help on social media, but that works communications and networking fields. She only if you can get an internet connection. So was selected from a large international pool of we’re looking into solutions such as the use of candidates “who have had a major impact in drones for aggregating those messages even networking and/or communications.” for people in disconnected areas, so that their For Belding, though, the most rewarding tweets can be posted and get to the right part of her socially relevant research is seeing individuals.” students, some of whom have experienced She is also collaborating with UCSB mafirst-hand the problems she is trying to solve, chine-learning expert William Wang, an assistant professor in the Computer Science DepartI LOVE TO WATCH THEM REALIZE THAT THEY ment, and a large CAN USE THEIR COMPUTER SCIENCE SKILLS group of student researchers to IN THESE AMAZING WAYS. analyze hate speech and hate groups within Twitter. The goal of the project is to use machine learning to classify hate speech more easily become engaged in it. “I love to watch them and automatically in order to generate effecdevelop passion for the topic and then realize tive counter speech, and to better understand that they can use their computer science skills hate groups’ motivations, intentions, and in these amazing ways,” she says. “I have behavior. former students who are now junior faculty Last year, Belding was named a Fellow at other universities and are continuing to do of the Association for Computing Machinery, the same kind of work with their students. In cited her contributions to communication that way, the work is growing and blossoming in mobile networks and their deployment in generationally.”

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focus on:

Entrepreneurship With more than 100 businesses launched to date, which have generated more than $10 billion in shareholder value, UC Santa Barbara is in the midst of a startup storm that has helped to transform the Santa Barbara-Goleta area into a center of tech-based economic growth. In this special section, we take a look inside this thriving entrepreneurial landscape.

The Evolution of

Entrepreneurship Thirty years ago, UCSB inventors had no clear path for taking ideas to the marketplace. Now they do.

Here’s how it happened.

There is no definitive starting point for entrepreneurship at UC Santa Barbara, no place or time that can be identified as “the beginning.” It simply occurred and then, over time, evolved, much in the manner of a startup. “Entrepreneurship at UCSB is really an organic story,” says Bob York, a professor in the College of Engineering’s (CoE’s) Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and currently dean of Professional and Continuing Education at UCSB, who was a key architect of the Technology Management Program (TMP), Bob York now home to programmatic support for entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurial activity was occurring at UCSB at least as early as the 1960s, when mathematician and electrical engineering professor Glen Culler played a key role in the university’s becoming one of the four original nodes of the ARPANET, the technological precursor to the Internet.

Tim Schwartz, formerly assistant dean for development at the UCSB College of Engineering (CoE) and executive director of the entrepreneurship program, and now UCSB Senior Director of Development, says that while planning an event honoring Culler in 1996, he learned about nearly a dozen startups launched by the professor’s graduate students and one by Culler himself.

In the early 1990s, UCSB’s former dean of engineering, Venky Narayanamurti (known as “Dean Venky”), was deeply engaged with the CoE’s Advisory Committee, made up of local technology CEOs, around the shifting Santa Barbara economic landscape.

The community was experiencing a major recession, including a significant decline in the once-robust local defense industry. The Advisory Committee was looking to the College of Engineering to consider its role in training students both to create and fill highwage, clean tech jobs. Venky was particularly drawn to the course in entrepreneurship his fellow Bell Labs transplant Professor John Bowers had started in 1992, partly in response to the same economic scenario the Advisory Committee was considering.

Another reason was that Bowers saw a lot of talented scientists being laid off during the recession. “Around 1992 I started wanting to talk about how you do innovative research to generate new products and make companies successful,” he says. “I thought that it is important to write not just an incredibly good paper, but also 17 Spring 2019

an incredibly good patent. That’s what can help a company become commercially successful.”

Eventually, Bowers merged his class with a similar one taught by economics professors Samantha Carrington Crouch, Robert Deacon, and Jon Sonstelle. It was called Economics of Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Engineering, and Bowers

John Bowers

remembers it as “the largest class I ever taught. Enrollment was capped at one hundred fifty students, and it was full every time.”

Bowers was also having regular lunch meetings with a group of student entrepreneurs from his course at the time, among them then-master’s student Olivier Jerphagnon (MS ’99), now CEO of the startup he founded, PowWow Energy. One day during spring 1998, Jerphagnon and three of his fellow students met with Dean Venky and handed him a three-page proposal they had written for a program in entrepreneurship. The dean, Jerphagnon recalls, “took a quick look at it, got up, and left the room.” He came back a few minutes later, carrying a different sheaf of papers. It was another outline for an entrepreneurship program, but it had been written about a week before by Schwartz, largely at the behest of the Engineering Advisory Committee.

“The driver for us was how to give undergraduates opportunities to get better jobs locally and to give graduates more opportunities to start companies from their inventions,” Jerphagnon recalls.

The two briefs were nearly identical, and Venky joked that Schwartz needed to convince him that he had not helped the students write their proposal. The dean, who was fond of saying, “Entrepreneurship is a contact sport,” acted decisively. If two separate groups had come up with nearly identical plans at the same time, and the community was looking to the college to grow its role in fostering economic development, he reasoned, it must be an idea whose time had come. Soon thereafter, the Center for Entrepreneurship and Engineering Management (CEEM) was born.

CEEM was a startup of sorts in its own right, depending almost

entirely on private support for its operations and programs. The center was formally launched in fall 1998 with its first donation, from businessman and entrepreneur Tom Harriman. Bowers, who had returned from a leave of absence to start his first company, Terabit Technology, was named director as Venky announced he would be leaving for Harvard University. CEEM started with a public lecture series, a student association, an advisory network comprising alumni and community entrepreneurship experts, and an external board of directors. In 1999, John McIntyre, a retired technology CEO, was

Olivier Jerphagnon

Inogen, and with support from many on the CEEM board, such as members and donors David Laffitte, Steve Cooper, and Kathy Odell, became a great success and is now traded on the NASDAQ. (See page 21.)

“With the creation of CEEM, entrepreneurial training and education became a powerful engagement vehicle for alumni and the community,” Schwartz says, adding, “From here forward, new ventures were being created by design rather than by chance.”

In 2001, CEEM’s Faculty Board of Advisors and its external Board of Directors considered a very rough outline for a master’s

Tim Schwartz

named interim executive director.

While the standard model for starting such a university program is to attach it to an existing business school, that wasn’t an option at UCSB, which does not have a business school and did not want to create one. The objectives, as outlined by Bowers, Schwartz, and interim CoE dean, Gene Lucas, were multifold. It should offer students from all disciplines education, networks, and experiences around the business of technology. “We didn’t want this to be just about engineering students,” Schwartz recalls.

“Successful careers and companies are built with multiple perspectives.” Additionally, the center set out to integrate the community and alumni in developing and delivering the content and designing a model for spinning off new ventures.

During the 1999-2000 academic year, the lecture series had to be moved to accommodate the growing attendance. CEEM added a scholarship program, technologyfor-investors workshops, and its Business Plan Competition (now called the New Venture Competition), all with private donations.

The second competition was won by

vice chancellor, appointed Bob York, an entrepreneur himself, to coordinate a formal academic review of the program. Following what York remembers as a “long, arduous review process,” he was appointed as the new chair of TMP. “After the review, we pitched the program by saying that UCSB doesn’t need another MBA school, and it doesn’t just need more engineers,” he explains. “What it needs are engineers who can lead businesses. It needs tech-savvy business people. And it also needs people to believe they can work in a tech environment even though they may not have

Kyle Lewis

degree and the framework for a new series of three courses as a means of expanding entrepreneurial education and experiences into the curriculum. In 2002, with private funding raised by CEEM, Gary Hansen, from the University of Washington’s Business School, was invited on a visiting basis to launch three courses at the undergraduate level, but open to both graduates and undergraduates from across campus.

The center’s success was growing on campus, as was its impact in the community, and that momentum provided new CoE dean, Matthew Tirrell, with the basis to secure campus support for a full-timeequivalent faculty position in technology entrepreneurship. In 2004, Hansen was hired on a permanent basis, and CEEM became the Technology Management Program.

In 2009, the UCSB Academic Senate decided to take a close look at proposals to turn the non-degree TMP into a full degree program. The senate offered guidance for what the program would need to become a new official Academic Unit with a Graduate Degree, the first to be created in quite a few years. Lucas, by then executive

a technology background.”

As York got deeper into the project, he became especially excited abut the connection linking technology management and entrepreneurship with the social sciences, which brought in the human aspect. “Business by its nature is a human endeavor,” York says. “We call it the Technology Management Program, but it’s really more about that intersection of what became the three rings in the TMP logo: The business, technology, and driver human factors.” for us was York partnered with communications how to give professor Dave Seibold undergrads to write the first formal proposal for the opportunities master’s and PhD to get better jobs degree programs locally and to give at the end of 2010, which graduates more were greenopportunities to start lighted in 2013. companies from their

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inventions.

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startup focus:

Apeel Sciences Jenny Du, VP, Operations and Compliance Founded in 2012 by UCSB alumnus James Rogers (PhD Materials, 2012) with key funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Apeel has developed an edible coating made of plant-derived products that is applied to harvested fruits and vegetables to dramatically extend their shelf life and reduce spoilage.

Based in Goleta with presences in Mexico, Peru, and the Netherlands, Apeel currently employs 130 people and expects to add at least 70 more over the next year. Jenny Du says that the company is currently at the stage of “scaleup beyond startup. We believe the proof of concept has been well demonstrated. Coming off our first year of having product available in the market, it’s about commercializing the business, continuing to grow, and prepping the business to take on that growth.”

Most surprising aspects of the startup world? Having a certain amount of naiveté going in is almost an advantage, because if you knew everything that would be involved beforehand, it would be easy to talk yourself out of it, to say, ‘How am I going to do all this?’

It has also been great to see how communal and helpful the entrepreneurial community is.

There’s no shame in not knowing, and if you put yourself out there, you will find people who are willing to share their experience with you.

Advice to aspiring entrepreneurs? This never gets easier. Your reward for overcoming a challenge or an obstacle is a bigger challenge or obstacle. If you get into this thinking you can just get started and then hit cruise control, it’s probably not going to happen. To young and ambitious types, I would say that a little humility goes a long way.

Apeel leadership (from left): Jenny Du, James Rogers (CEO), and Louis Perez (VP Technology).

19 Spring 2019

As soon as TMP became an academic unit, Seibold moved over to become one of the first faculty members. “Hiring faculty was hard in some ways, because we didn’t have a business school or a full department quite yet,” York notes, “but we managed to get Kyle Lewis [TMP professor and current chair] and Paul Leonardi [TMP professor and Duca Family Endowed Chair] to come. They’re adventurous people and they believed in the program. It has been smooth sailing since we hired them.”

Shaping the entrepreneurship component of TMP is the responsibility of lecturer David Adornetto, an experienced businessman who works closely with Lewis and runs the New Venture Program (see page 20) with the support of local entrepreneurs and TMP lecturers

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interest to organization scientists.”

Lewis also knits together the subtleties of how entrepreneurial training, whether from a startup perspective or an academic one, complement each other.

“People might see the startup environment as distinct and separate from the organizational science we do here, but it isn’t,” Lewis notes. “For example, the kinds of things that the students learn as they prepare for the NVC, the kinds of things you have to do to think about a startup — who is your customer, how big your market is and how much of it can you capture, what do the users in your market really want or need, and many other considerations — all of these marketing- and finance-orientated questions are outside of the technology itself, but they

We have a lot of talented folks who succeed elsewhere, land here with a lot left in the tank, and want to do things.

John Greathouse and Jason Spievak. “We have an embarrassment of riches in Santa Barbara, talented folks who succeed somewhere, land here with a lot left in the tank, and want to do things,” York says.

Now TMP’s entrepreneurial offerings, open to students across campus, are balanced by two management-based degree tracks — the PhD in Technology Management, which began in 2016, and the professional Master of Technology Management (2013) — plus the Graduate Program in Management Practice Certificate, and the undergraduate Technology Management Certificate.

The academic side of TMP also benefits from the close proximity of the department’s startup activity, much of which is centered around the New Venture Competition, now in its twentieth year, and the startups launched before or after it.

“It is not well understood that there is scholarship around entrepreneurship,” Lewis says. “We have an opportunity to help entrepreneurs but also to have the entrepreneurs be part of the research that we do. So, for example, the teams involved in the NVC or that are being incubated — these are teams that we could potentially study. It gives us a nice little living laboratory to investigate some of the research questions that are of

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are fundamental to almost any business enterprise. So, it’s not just for those who want to start new companies. It’s a general set of concepts and problem-solving skills that will serve our students well in any corporate environment.”

Further, adds Adornetto, looking at a business in such depth makes you a more engaged and valuable employee.

In the past few years, California Assembly Bill 2664 has enabled the creation of three important facilities that provide essential space and services for startups. (See article on page 21.) Within the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), the Center for Scientific and Engineering Partnerships (CSEP) supports graduate students primarily — and especially those in underrepresented populations — to become aware of and gain access to entrepreneurial opportunities across campus.

Finally, the Office for Technology and Industry Alliances supports UCSB inventors with assistance in licensing their intellectual properties if that is the appropriate route for them to bring their ideas to market.

Since the early days of ARPANET, UCSB has gone from running a highly successful non-degree co-curricular program to offering degrees and wide-ranging support for those seeking to make a difference by connecting technology to enterprise.

Marathon Before the Launch For 20 years, the New Venture Competition has been a key to unocking student startup power.

The annual spring New Venture Competition (NVC), which began life as the Business Plan Competition and is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, lies at the heart of the UCSB student entrepreneurial experience. Multiple successful startups have been launched by teams that finish at or near the top of the competition, including Inogen, Apeel Sciences, Milo Sensors, Shilo, and EV Match.

The process begins in fall quarter, when David Adornetto, Technology Management Program (TMP) lecturer, NVC director, and startup veteran and consultant with more than 25 years of experience Startup mentors: NVC director David Adornetto (left) and fellow TMP in the tech business world, holds a series of information sessions lecturer Jason Spievak in the Wilcox New Venture Incubator. to welcome students and inform them about what the NVC offers.

About 250 students from across campus attend the sessions. Some then realize they don’t have the time for the required commitment, canvas framework allows a much more fluid approach to developing and the others form into what are typically thirty to forty teams. a business model considering nine specific attributes. It’s a process of Early on, Adornetto sets up students in a kind of “speed-dating” developing a set of hypotheses and then going out to the market to setting for them to meet each other and mentors from the community prove or disprove them. If you prove them, then you persevere. If you who want to help, and to start brainstorming, swapping ideas, and disprove them, you pivot.” getting feedback on whether they have a sound idea and should Students have several options in winter quarter.They can take proceed, should look at their idea in a different way, or should come a course called “Developing a Market Tested Business Model,” up with a different idea. They spend the next eight months developing, which requires them to conduct at least ten customer interviews per testing, and redirecting their product or service to reflect what they week to refine their understanding of the market and their customer. discover while identifying and validating their market and customer.

Also in winter quarter, students can participate in a new-venture Along the way, they rehearse elevator pitches and receive guidance workshop series, which, in addition to supporting their business-model from TMP lecturers, local angel investors, entrepreneurs, and other development, exposes them to legal considerations for startups, experts while attending to dozens of reated tasks. financial literacy, and a variety of entrepreneurial guest speakers.

“The fall-quarter priority is ideation, team formation, and mentor Adornetto summarizes the spring-quarter experience as getting introductions,” says Adornetto. the students ready for competition. The teams learn to develop and For some teams, the process leading to the NVC is an engaging refine an elevator pitch, create an investor pitch deck, and craft a story and novel way to acquire business skills and insights they would that effectively describes their business and the value it provides. probably not get any other way. For others, it’s an invaluable, essential “Storytelling is an essential element of the process,” Adornetto says. process for reaching their goal of actually launching a startup business. “A great idea communicated poorly can doom a startup.”

In the past few years, NVC offerings have been expanded to include Throughout the eight-month program, students work alongside a variety of new-venture programs that more broadly support students mentors who help guide them through the process. Adornetto notes, to succeed not only in the NVC, but also after graduating. In that work, “Our program is built on the backs of our mentors and instructors, an Adornetto is joined by a group of highly experienced educators and amazing group of entrepreneurs and business professionals who value mentors, both within and beyond UCSB, incuding local entrepreneurs giving back. They do a tremendous job with our students.” and TMP lecturers John Greathouse and Jason Spievak.

In May, twenty teams are chosen to participate in the New Venture Winter quarter is when the teams start to develop a business Fair. They set up poster presentations and exhibits and deliver their model around their idea. They work with something called a ‘business pitch to the crowd of attendees, some of whom carry score sheets and model canvas,’ which takes a diagrammatic, fill-in-the-boxes approach help to choose six finalists to participate in the NVC Finals in Corwin to identifying and monitoring progress on processes and tasks. “It has Pavilion. Forty thousand to fifty thousand dollars in seed financing is replaced the old business plan, which was thirty pages long and out of awarded each year to the winners of various categories. It’s an exciting date by the time it came out of the printer,” Adornetto explains. “The and impressive finale to an entrepreneurially intensive academic year.

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startup focus:

Inogen Ali Bauerlein, Executive VP, Finance Baeurlein (’03) and the Inogen team won the Business Plan Competition (now the New Venture Competition) in 2001, when she was a sophomore earning her degree in economics/ math. The company makes lightweight, compact, portable oxygen concentrators for those who require supplementary oxygen, such as Bauerlein’s grandmother, Mae, who provided the inspiration for the product. Inogen was founded in 2001, delivered its first device in 2004, and is now traded on the NASDAQ. Entrepreneurial experience at UCSB? The business-plan competition has become a lot more robust than when we were there, but even then, they had highly engaged advisers, plus the actual faculty in CEEM [now TMP].

We went to all the entrepreneurship speaker sessions and attended a free conference to interact with experts. Through those, we created relationships with people in town who could help us on the product-design side and the business side. A local law firm also paid all our legal fees to incorporate. Tapping into that network was critical for us to get started.

What has been the biggest challenge? The out-of-the-gate struggle for us was getting conflicting advice, which made it hard to see a path forward. Each person was influenced by what worked for them in their specific situation.

There are also a lot of ups and downs. Even the most successful startups have times when they feel like they’re not going to succeed and are worried about making payroll.

Advice to aspiring entrepreneurs? To students, I say go for it. You’re used to living off little money and don’t have a lot of fixed expenses.

You’ll never be in a more flexible position than you are now. And you will learn a ton.

Oxygen to go: Inogen founders (from left) Brenton Taylor, Ali Bauerlein, and Byron Myers.

21 Spring 2019

Space for Startups At UCSB, state funding results in valuable new facilities to support fledgling companies California Assembly Bill 2664, signed into law

by Governor Jerry Brown in 2016, created a $22 million fund to be distributed equally among the ten UC campuses to support investments in infrastructure, incubators, and educational programming focused on innovation. At UCSB, entrepreneurship and startup culture received a big boost.

Two new spaces — the Wilcox New Venture Incubator and the CNSI Innovation Workshop — were created with the funding, and a third, the CNSI Technology Incubator, was greatly expanded.

“The Central Coast has become a vibrant hub for startup activity, with UCSB students and faculty leading the way in creating jobs and opportunities for entrepreneurs,” says UCSB professor of chemical engineering and CNSI director, Craig Hawker. “At CNSI we have developed a unique wet-lab infrastructure and community space that is critical for helping start-ups navigate the initial demonstration and prototyping phase. These spaces enable us to build on the strengths of UCSB and continue our outstanding success rate in establishing viable companies and extending our impact as a growth engine for the Central Coast.”

Here are a few ways the incubators further entrepreneurship at UCSB.

Wilcox New Venture Incubator on campus to provide a convenient space where teams could receive ongoing help and support.”

With the space has come programmatic support, such as the G2 Summer Launchpad, a startup accelerator designed to facilitate the transition from ideation and business-model development to product commercialization and business launch.

Adornetto explains: “The teams that are accepted into G2 reside in the Garage for that summer. The program provides ongoing entrepreneurship education, networking with mentors and investors, and coworking to facilitate knowledge transfer. If one group solves a particular problem, others can learn from their experience. In this respect, there’s a valuable community aspect to it.”

Wilcox New Venture Incubator The Wilcox New Venture Incubator, also known as “The Garage,” is a central nexus for startups. It’s a comfortable, modern space where teams can meet with each other as well as with mentors, potential funders, legal Fluency Lighting employee Jordan Reed fabriadvisers, marketing experts, or any other cates a part in the the Innovation Workshop. relevant parties.

The Garage was created as part of a broad effort to better support startups and CNSI Technology Incubator give them their best chance at success.

“When I arrived at TMP, we had the New This incubator opened in spring 2015, but Venture Competition [NVC], which ran from AB 2664 funding allowed for it to double October to May, but teams had no clear path in size and receive substantial equipment forward from there,” says TMP lecturer and enhancements to support companies NVC director, David Adornetto. “There was working in chemistry and biology as well as in really no support infrastructure. We wanted electronics, photonics, and other areas that to develop something to extend the runway, do not require a wet lab. because it’s a tough road, so we built the Tal Margalith, Executive Director of

startup focus: Technology at CNSI, oversees the incubator, which currently houses seven UCSB startups.

Five of those companies — bioProtonics, Fluency Lighting Technologies, Mentium Technologies, Milo Sensors, and Nexus Photonics — have secured funding from Tal Margalith (left) and David Bothman in the recenty completed Innovation Workshop. the NSF’s Small Business Innovation Research Grants (SBIR) program. meetings, and recently, several soundproof The funding received by these companies booths were installed in the hallways to has ranged from $225,000 to $2 million in provide privacy for business phone calls or Phase I and Phase II grants (the R&D parts small meetings. of SBIR’s three-phase program.) Laxmi “I’m thrilled that there was a big Therapeutics, started by UCSB mechanical investment over here on the hard-tech side engineering professor Sumita Pennathur, of things,” Margalith says. “Now we see and CZero, founded by UCSB chemical more teams making use of these resources, engineering professor Eric MacFarland, which is great, because the spaces were also incubate at CNSI. designed to take products to market.”

“It’s a long road from coming up with the idea or getting some initial lab results to CNSI Innovation Workshop developing a market-ready product that can attract investors and reflects the needs of an The best way to develop ideas into products is to build, test, and persistently improve identified market. We provide an affordable them. The College of Engineering has place to develop physical prototypes,” long supported a machine shop, which has Margalith says. “With the modest funding facilitated countless inventions. they have, companies can incubate here The Innovation Workshop, just down and leverage UCSB’s ecosystem before the hall from the Technology Incubator, moving on. Hopefully, by that point, they supplements the traditional shop with an have proven their technology and can raise array of high-tech equipment. It houses money to find a space and go into full seven high-end 3D printers, a laser cutter, production.” and a CNC router — all with easy-to-learn“Being able to rent lab and office user interfaces.

There is a workbench for space in the CNSI incubator has been assembling and testing electronic circuits, invaluable to us as an early-stage startand one for programming and testing up company,” says Kristin Denault microcontroller-based machines.

Traditional (PhD ’15), founder of Fluency Lighting hand tools for mechanical, electronic, and Technologies. (See sidebar.) “The existing plumbing assembly are also available. laboratory infrastructure, close access to “The Workshop provides the tools UCSB user facilities, and collaborative and training to use them so that Gaucho working environment have allowed us to inventors can build prototypes of their ideas pursue our R&D goals rapidly and with and test them,” says David Bothman, who limited resources, access the expertise manages both the Innovation Workshop and and state-of-the-art equipment available CNSI’s shared-use Microfl uidics Laboratory. at the university, and develop our business “We’re here to support campus model while engaging with and learning innovation.

CNSI’s facilities complement from fellow entrepreneurs. Without the UCSB’s other shared labs and workshops,” incubator, the time and cost associated says Margalith. with technology development can The space was created with startups prohibit early-stage companies like ours in mind, but it is available to anyone on from reaching their R&D goals, which is campus, and Bothman and students he has necessary to demonstrate value and create recruited provide training on the equipment. a business.”

For contacts and further information, CNSI also has conference rooms go to: innovation.ucsb.edu. for industrial pitches and customer

Fluency Lighting Technologies Kristin Denault, Founder While earning her degree in materials (PhD ‘15), Denault also received the Graduate Program in Management Practice Certificate from TMP and participated in the New Venture Program in 2014. Together, she says, “They gave me a great foundation to understand business terms and to start evaluating our technology from a business perspective. I was able to quickly learn basic business skills that would have taken me much longer to learn on my own. That gave me the business footing to start Fluency Lighting [which is working in the space of LED laser lighting for displays].“ What has surprised you most about the startup world? One nice surprise I’ve found is that there is a wealth of experience out there, and most people are willing to share it to help others along their path. I have had a number of mentors and have attended numerous events to hear from top business experts in their fields share their successes and failures. I have also participated in panels and discussions to share my experiences along my short entrepreneurial path so far, in order to help others who may be considering starting a business. I hope the startup world continues to share in this way.

Advice for aspiring entrepreneurs?

Finding good mentors is key. It’s important to have that network of knowledge and experiences, because it’s impossible to learn everything yourself. Also, I was told that having a co-founder is important, but I wish I was told how important it is to have the right co-founder, and that having no co-founder over the wrong one is better.

Lit-up startup: Fluency founder Kristin Denault.

22

startup focus:

Shilo

Ryan Kim, CEO A year after founding Shilo, which began life as Adomi, Ryan Kim and fellow Class of 2018 graduates Saliq Hussaini, Vahan Ghazaryan, and Tomi Kapoor are preparing to deliver their first prebuilt accessory dwelling units, aka “granny flats,” to the market. Most of the team took at least one or two courses in the Technology Management Program. Two of them earned the undergraduate certificate in technology management. “That prepared us really well to submit our application for the New Venture Fair,” Kim says.

They placed in the top six at the fair and second in the 2018 New Venture Competition (NVC), earning $12,500 plus another $7,500 from UCSB by qualifying for the G2 Summer Launchpad program. They then moved to the Wilcox New Venture Incubator to refine their plan and learn through in-person meetings with leading Santa Barbara–area entrepreneurs.

Most valuable elements of your UCSB entrepreneurship training? The NVC and the G2 Launchpad. Up to that point, the idea of startups was intangible to me. You need to interact with people who have been through it to learn about the good and the bad, the best and the worst practices.

Most surprising aspect of your startup experience? Finding so many people who are willing to help. There is an entire community that has been fostered by entrepreneurship in the Santa Barbara area. It was the most awesome surprise.

Advice to aspiring entrepreneurs? If you are willing to put yourself in a vulnerable position and are willing to learn, the right people will gravitate to you. If we had been really discreet and private, our company never would have happened.

Shilo founders (from left) Tomi Kapoor, Ryan Kim, Saliq Hussaini, and Vahan Ghazaryan.

23 Spring 2019

Where Entrepreneurs

Come to Thrive Over the past nearly thirty years, UC Santa Barbara and the Santa Barbara-Goleta area have emerged as a significant center for entrepreneurship. New technologies, innovations, and ideas are being generated constantly at UCSB, fueling the entrepreneurial and startup environments. According to Sherylle Mills Englander, director of UCSB’s Office of Technology & Industry Alliances (TIA), which licenses intellectual properties to industry, more than one hundred companies have been launched from UCSB inventions and new-venture programs, with four to eight startups being formed every year.

The many successful companies launched out of UCSB (see sidebar) have attracted investors and entrepreneurs who previously built their own successful companies, sold them or took them public, and then moved here. Some have established venture-capital funds, gravitated to the UCSB idea factory, and re-engaged with the local startup culture. More companies have been launched, providing good-paying jobs that fuel the local economy and enable more UCSB graduates to remain here after school, further extending the community of experts who support local entrepreneurship.

The result is that UCSB has its fingerprints on tech startups all over the Central Coast and on multiple global companies.

“If you look at a whole collection of big companies, you see that they’re populated by UCSB alumni,” says Technology Management Program (TMP) lecturer Jason Spievak, who, with his partners, runs Entrada Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund. In March, he noticed that nearly every Central Coast company in which the fund was going to invest has its roots at UCSB. “A handful of technology companies founded in Santa Barbara about twenty years ago have spawned all these other companies today,” he notes. “Over that time, more than ten billion dollars’ worth

of shareholder value has been generated in Santa Barbara alone.”

John Greathouse, Professor of Practice in TMP, is also an investor and serial entrepreneur who worked with former UCSB professor and founder of Expertcity Klaus Schauser to help grow and ultimately sell the GoToMeeting business to Citrix. He also worked with UCSB alumnus Yulun Wang to help launch Computer Motion, which essentially created the field of medical robotics. It merged with Intuitive Surgical, which now has a market capitalization of roughly $50 billion.

Greathouse has seen dramatic changes from the sleepy Santa Barbara he found when he arrived in 1993. “If you look at per-capita statistics on venture capital money raised, VC jobs created, and IPOs, pound-for-pound the Central Coast is as robust as any other strong tech community,” he says. “I think we’re in the very early stages of what Santa Barbara is going to become. In the next twenty to thirty years, a lot is going to happen on the Central Coast, and UCSB will be driving it.”

Students have broad access to this fertile entrepreneurial playing field.

Accepted UCSB undergraduate students might attend an event where TMP chair, Kyle Lewis, describes the value of having both a major in a chosen subject and supplemental real-world business and technology-management skills. Graduate students, and especially those in underrepresented groups, might learn about it at an event or programs offered by Arica Lubin, associate director of the Center for Science and Engineering Partnerships (CSEP) in the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), to raise awareness of entrepreneurship opportunities and funnel students toward them. At the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, lecturer and program manager, Emily Cotter, supports students in the Eco-Entrepreneurship program, while students in technical areas might be introduced to

Some notable startups founded by UCSB College of Engineering faculty

startup culture by Tal Margalith, executive director of technology at CNSI, who may send them to David Adornetto, director of TMP’s New Venture Competition, to learn about validating the market for their technology.

“Students don’t come to UCSB to be entrepreneurs,”Greathouse says, “but I’ve had so many students who, after being exposed to these classes, say to me, ‘This program changed my life, because I came here to be X and now I’m going to become an entrepreneur and change lives.’ I think it’s just giving people permission and showing them role models, people like them who came to UCSB and did this.”

Adornetto explains that the skills students learn in the new-venture program provide an advantage whether or not they pursue a startup.

“These skills are transferable,” he says. “The same concepts that are critical to launching a business are also critical to growing innovative entrepreneurial tech companies. These students will bring the entrepreneurial skillset and mind set — what we call intrapreneurship — into a company.”

Faculty Entrepreneurs

Digital Instruments, founded in 1987 by former UCSB physics professor Virgil Elings; the company was sold to Veeco for $150 million in 1998.

Terabit Technology, acquired by Ciena in 1998, and CALIENT Technologies, founded in 1999 and acquired by Suzhou Chunxing Precision Mechanical Co., Ltd. in 2017 for $290 million; both started by Professor John Bowers, electrical and computer engineering.

Software.com, founded in 1992 by former Bowers PhD student John McFarland; acquired by Phone.com for $6.8 billion in 2000. McFarland then launched Sonos, which he runs today.

Optical Concepts (1991) and Agility Communications (1998), founded

by Professor Emeritus Larry Coldren, electrical and computer engineering, to commercialize his innovations in lasers.

Commission Junction, online pay-forperformance advertising provider that became the world’s largest affiliate network. Founded by UCSB alumnus Per Pettersen, also founder of Savings.com and Impact.

Soraa, launched by UCSB materials professors Steve DenBaars and Shuji Nakamura. DenBaars later partnered with Umesh Mishra, professor of electrical and computer engineering, to found Nitres, acquired by Cree Research for $212 million in 2000. Mishra later founded Transphorm.

Computer Motion, founded by former UCSB professor Klaus Schauser and TMP Professor of Practice John Greathouse.

They were also part of a UCSB-alum-heavy group that developed GoToMeeting at Expertcity, sold to Citrix for $240 million.

startup focus:

EVmatch Heather Hochrein, Founder EVmatch extends the range of electric vehicles by connecting users with a community of “hosts” who offer charging facilities away from home for a small fee via a smart phone app.

Hochrein ( MESM ’16) started the company with Shannon Walker, who has since moved to other pursuits, as the capstone for their master’s Eco-Entrepreneurship (Eco-E) program at UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. Eco-E is directed by Emily Cotter and is closely aligned with the College of Engineering’s Technology Management Program (TMP). After graduating, EVmatch received a Bren fellowship and state grant funding to build their technology. The first product launched in 2017, and EVmatch has since released a commercial platform enabling businesses, hotels, and apartment complexes to host service for EVmatch users.

What was your involvement in UCSB entrepreneurial activities? We placed in the New Venture Competition. We took a class in finance. The grant was essential to building and launching the minimal viable product, and the fellowship from Bren was critical.

Your biggest challenge as a startup?

Accessing capital is difficult, especially if you have an idea but no product yet. Angels and VCs have elevated the amount of traction required to get funding. That’s why government funding resources are critical when you are starting out.

Advice for aspiring entrepreneurs? Be committed and willing to sacrifice. Leverage the resources of your network and the UC system, not only for financial support but also to recruit employees and team members to your company. Your personal network is valuable.

Software developers for us came from friends of friends. It’s helpful to have people who know you and have faith in you.

Plugged in to EVs: Heather Hochrein 24

MOVING PRECISION LASERS FROM BENCH SCALE TO CHIP SCALE Dan Blumenthal’s lab shrinks a high-performance laser, paving the way for broader applications

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Dan Blumenthal

25 Spring 2019

pectrally pure lasers lie at the heart of precision high-end scientific and commercial applications, thanks to their ability to produce near-perfect singlecolor light. A laser’s capacity to produce such light is measured in terms of its linewidth, or coherence, which is the ability to emit a constant frequency over a certain period of time before the frequency changes.

Researchers go to great lengths to build highly coherent, near-single-frequency lasers for high-end systems, such as atomic clocks.

Today, however, because these lasers are large and occupy racks full of equipment, they are relegated to bench tops in the laboratory, limiting their application.

The challenge is to move the performance of high-end lasers onto photonic micro-chips, dramatically reducing cost and size while making the technology available to a wide range of applications including spectroscopy, navigation, quantum computation, and optical communications. Achieving such performance at the chip scale would also go a long way toward addressing the challenge posed by the Internet’s exploding data-capacity requirements and the resulting increase in world-wide energy consumption of data centers and their fiber-optic interconnects.

In the cover article of the January 2019 issue of Nature Photonics, UCSB researchers and their collaborators at Honeywell, Yale, and Northern Arizona University describe a significant milestone in this pursuit: a chip-

scale laser capable of emitting light with a fundamental linewidth of less than 1 Hz — quiet enough to move demanding scientific applications to the chip scale.

To be impactful, these low-linewidth lasers must be incorporated into photonic integrated circuits (PICs) — the equivalents of computer micro-chips for light — that can be fabricated at wafer-scale in commercial micro-chip foundries. “To date, there hasn’t been a method for making a quiet laser with this level of coherence and narrow linewidth at the photonic-chip scale,” says co-author and team lead Dan Blumenthal, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC Santa Barbara. The current generation of chip-scale lasers are inherently noisy and have relatively large linewidth. New innovations have been needed that function within the fundamental physics associated with miniaturizing these high-quality lasers.

The project was funded under the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (DARPA) OwlG initiative. Specifically, DARPA was interested in creating a chip-scale laser optical gyroscope. Important for its ability to maintain knowledge of position without GPS, optical gyroscopes are used for precision positioning and navigation, including on commercial airliners.

The laser optical gyroscope has a lengthscale sensitivity on par with that of the gravitational wave detector, one of the most precise measuring instruments ever made. But

Artist’s concept of a Brillouin laser, depicting photons (pink discs) encountering soundwaves (flashes) along the track-like wave guide. current systems that achieve this sensitivity incorporate bulky coils of optical fiber. The goal of the OwlG project was to realize an ultra-quiet (narrow-linewidth) laser on the chip to replace the fiber as the rotationsensing element and allow further integration with other components of the optical gyroscope.

Blumenthal says that there are two possible ways to build such a laser. One is to tether a laser to an optical reference that must be environmentally isolated and contained in a vacuum, as is done today with atomic clocks.

The reference cavity plus an electronic feedback loop act as an anchor to quiet the laser. Such systems, however, are large, costly, power-consuming, and sensitive to environmental disturbances.

The other approach is to make an external-cavity laser with a cavity that satisfies the physical requirements for a narrow-linewidth laser, including the ability to hold billions of photons for a long time and support very high internal optical-power levels.

Traditionally, such cavities are large (to hold enough photons), and although they have been used to achieve highperformance, integrating them on-chip with linewidths approaching those of lasers stabilized by reference cavities has proved elusive.

To overcome these limitations, the research team has built the lasers by leveraging a physical phenomenon known as stimulated Brillouin scattering. “Our approach uses this particular process of light-matter

“

interaction in which the light actually produces sound, or acoustic, waves inside a material,” Blumenthal notes, adding, “Brillouin lasers are well known for producing extremely quiet light. They do so by utilizing photons from a noisy ‘pump’ laser to produce acoustic waves, which, in turn, act as cushions to produce new quiet, low-linewidth output light.

The Brillouin process is highly effective, reducing the linewidth of an input pump laser by a factor of up to a million.”

The drawback is that bulky optical fiber setups or miniature optical resonators traditionally used to make Brillouin lasers are sensitive to environmental conditions and difficult to fabricate using chip-foundry methods.

“The key to making our sub-Hz Brillouin laser on a photonic integrated chip was to use a technology developed at UCSB — photonic integrated circuits built with waveguides that are extremely low loss, on par with the optical fiber,” Blumenthal explains. “These low-loss waveguides, formed into a Brillouin laser ring cavity on the chip, have all the right ingredients for success: they can store an extremely large number of photons on the chip, handle extremely high levels of optical power inside the optical cavity, and guide photons along the waveguide, much as a rail guides a monorail train.” A combination of low-loss optical waveguides and rapidly decaying acoustic waves removes the need to guide the acoustic waves. This innovation is key to the success of this approach.

Since being completed, this research has already led to multiple new funded research projects, both in Blumenthal’s group and in those of his collaborators.

THE BRILLOUIN PROCESS REDUCES THE LINE WIDTH

BY A FACTOR OF UP TO A MILLION.

”

26

The Ultimate Sunscreen Alumnus Doug Mehoke led the team responsible for the mission-critical heat shield on the Parker Solar Probe

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Photograph by Edward Whitman

ast November 16 was an exciting day for Doug Mehoke (Mechanical Engineering ’80) and his colleagues at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab (APL). That was when the Parker Solar Probe — the lab had built the craft for NASA and it had been launched from Cape Canaveral on August 12 — reported that all systems were operating normally after the first of what will be a series of orbital encounters with the Sun. By the time the electronic pings signaling that all systems were functioning reached Earth that day, the probe had broken records for proximity of a spacecraft to the Sun, passing within 15 million miles of its surface, and had set a new record for spacecraft speed, hurtling around the star at 213,200 mph. It will break both records repeatedly on each of its scheduled, increasingly proximal 24 solar orbits, eventually passing within 3.83 million miles of the solar surface at a speed of approximately 430,000 mph. (That’s New York to Tokyo in 1 minute.)

The mission is intended to help solve two great scientific questions, which are: 1) why is the Sun’s corona, with a temperature of some 3 million degrees Fahrenheit, more than 300 times hotter than the solar surface, and 2) what causes the solar wind to accelerate continuously?

Doug Mehoke (‘80) in the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. 27 Spring 2019

In pursuing answers to those questions, the Parker Solar Probe — named after 91-year-old pioneering University of Chicago scientist Eugene N. Parker, who studied how stars give off energy and coined the term “solar wind” — will fly close enough to the Sun to watch the solar wind speed up from subsonic to supersonic, and will fly though the birthplace of the highest-energy solar particles.

“We’re going into an environment that is completely unforgiving. The temperatures that we’re seeing on the spacecraft have not been seen by any other spacecraft before,” says APL project manager, Andrew Driesman, speaking in a NASA video. He then adds, “You can’t build the Parker Solar Probe unless you can build a shield that can withstand the thermal environment...unless you can keep the power generation cool.”

That is where Gaucho alumnus Mehoke comes in. He is the Group Supervisor of the Mechanical Systems Group, which was responsible for designing and developing the heat shield. “As part of the Space Exploration Sector, our group at APL has about sixty-five people, in mechanical engineering, thermal analysis, structural analysis, packaging, environmental testing, and propulsion, so it’s basically the mechanicalengineering type of functions,” he says.

A mission to study the origins of the solar wind was conceived about fifty years ago and was the subject of many studies through the decades, but it began in earnest at APL in the early 2000s. The Parker Solar Probe mission, evolving out of those earlier efforts, began in 2009. A key challenge for the mission is reducing the nearly 3 million watts hitting the front surface of the thermal protection system to the 30 watts that the spacecraft can withstand.

Mehoke was involved with a good amount of materials testing related to the thermal protection system. But, he adds, “Because there is no facility in the world where you can test this kind of thing, you have to do piece part testing and then determine how to relate that to the real-life operational performance. Above 800 degrees Centigrade (1472 degrees Fahrenheit), it’s hard to get good data from a test. In

Image courtesy of NASA

you can’t really get closer to the Sun than that, and eventually the spacecraft will get too hot, lose attitude control, and basically fry instantly.”

Commenting on being part of a journey to the unknown, he says, “It’s like anything else: the first time you’re very nervous because you really don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s a huge difference between predicting what will happen and actually seeing what does happen.

A spacecraft like the Parker Solar Probe has an amazing number of pieces — mechanical pieces, software pieces, science pieces — that all have to work together to provide the data we’re getting. And there’s only so much Animation capture of the Parker Solar Probe passing over an area of intense activity while orbiting the Sun. you can test on the ground using simulations and software. In the end, you’re As an undergraduate mechanical the 2500-degree Fahrenheit range, where doing something new, and there are always engineering student at UCSB, he remembers we’ll be operating, you put a sensor on going to be surprises that come up.” crossing the street from Harold Frank Hall to the material, but at some level you’re just Mehoke mentions that, at almost the measuring the temperature sensor and not the beach and “riding a bike everywhere.” same time that the Parker Solar Probe began the material.”

Academically, he looks back on faculty “who Temperatures on the Sun-facing side of were really good at relating what you learned its first orbit of the sun, NASA’s New Horizon spacecraft, which launched in 2006 and the spacecraft were 820 degrees Fahrenheit to the real-life experiences you would have flew past Pluto in 2015, was approaching on its first orbit. If all goes well when they and asking test questions that required its next target, a body in the Kuiper Belt, reach 2,500 degrees during the final, closest you to correlate what you learned with which Mehoke describes as “the big cloud of orbit, the 4.5-inch-thick carbon-composite problems that were different from the ones planets, asteroids, and rocks that are farther Thermal Protection System will keep the you were given in class.” He wryly recalls out than Pluto.” his senior group project as a “useful selfprobe’s instruments and systems humming That leads him to an irony. “So, you have directed effort” that involved “wires running along at an electronics-friendly temperature these two things that are happening almost everywhere, lots of saltwater,” and faculty somewhere in the mid-80s F. at the same time but that are four billion stopping by occasionally “to make sure we After graduating from UCSB, Mehoke miles apart from each other,” he adds. “One were still alive.” earned his master’s degree in mechanical group is worrying about things getting very The Solar Probe mission is planned to engineering at Stanford in 1982, and then hot, and the other is worrying about things last seven years. Mehoke says that if the went to work at Lockheed in the Palo Alto getting very cold.” craft is still functioning then, when it will be area before relocating to Johns Hopkins in Such considerations, and the highmore than seven times closer to the Sun 1983. “I knew nothing about Johns Hopkins level engineering it takes to address them than any spacecraft has been, NASA may at the time other than that they had a space and send spacecraft into the teeth of propose it as an extended mission to do business, and since I was involved in the such environments, are what make space more science, depending on the state of the Lockheed Missile and Space Program, it was exploration the ultimate extreme endeavor. probe. However, he adds, “Aerodynamically, a similar kind of work,” he recalls.

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T A H W

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ow do cells move? How do they achieve the rigidity required for their skeletal systems to sustain their mechanics while also remaining sufficiently flexible, or fluid, to slide past other cells and around obstacles in their biological environment? How do they switch from flexible to rigid and back?

A key to unravelling this mystery lies in what seems, at first glance, to be an unrelated idea developed by renowned mathematical physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1864. He considered large structures made from rigid beams, such as bridges or buildings, and recognized the importance of the joints where beams meet to the stability of the resulting truss structures.

Maxwell had the insight that one could achieve reliable rigidity in a three-dimensional network of rigid beams, even if the joints that connect them are floppy hinges, as long as every joint has at least six beams emanating from it. The number of beams that meet at a typical joint is referred to as the connectivity, or valence, of a network. For hinged joints, the value of 6 is termed the critical valence at which 29 Spring 2019

the network becomes isostatic, or perfectly rigid. A lower valence equates with less rigidity.

The possible relevance of Maxwell’s insight to cellular skeletons — microscopic networks of beam-like protein polymers that enable and dictate cell mechanics — and similar artificial polymeric materials has been explored in numerous theory-based papers. But, in materials actually synthesized, the valence is typically well below 6 and not easily changed, so the theories have gone untested — until now. In a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), UC Santa Barbara materials professor Omar Saleh, physics professor Deborah Fygenson, doctoral student Nathaniel Conrad, and undergraduate Tynan Kennedy describe a series of experiments testing the role of valence in determining the mechanics of polymeric networks. The team’s work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Their system is based on DNA nanostars (DNAns) — multi-armed, self-assembled nanostructures that form hinged joints and

spontaneously link to form water-infused networks called hydrogels. The team measured the elastic properties of the DNAns networks as a function of the number of arms in each nanostar — three, four, five, and six — and of the concentration of nanostars in solution. They found that valence-3 DNAns networks are soft and, like a rubber band, can be easily extended, while valence-6 networks lack such extensibility and are nearly one hundred times more rigid.

These differences demonstrate that, indeed, Maxwell’s prediction of a critical valence of 6 still holds for these biological networks formed from tiny DNA beams.

Further, the team’s observation of rubberlike behavior for the valence-3 networks points out a key difference between microscopic and macroscopic networks: while a large trussed structure with valence 3 would just collapse, the microscopic size of the DNA beams allows the valence-3 DNA network to remain mechanically stable, even though it is quite soft. Saleh notes, “This is an interesting example of the different physics at work between nanoscale structures

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A 155-year-old insight into the rigidity of manmade structures sheds new light on the behavior of biological molecular networks

MAY SHARE and the large structures we typically deal with; the nanoscale structures are constantly undergoing random motion driven by their collisions with water molecules, which actually helps prop up the valence-3 DNA network.

These collisions are far too weak to have any effect on, say, a bridge.”

Hydrogels occur naturally in cells and tissues and have been synthesized and developed for wide-ranging applications, from hygiene and food products to diagnostic and therapeutic technologies. The authors write, “Much of the utility of hydrogels derives from their viscoelastic nature, which combines the stress-bearing abilities of a solid with the permeability and flow characteristics of a liquid. Understanding the microscopic origins of these mechanical properties is an important goal for both directing hydrogel engineering and deciphering their biological designs.”

Fygenson notes that what is especially interesting about Maxwell’s insight as it relates to “squishy things,” is how it could be used for control.

“Sometimes you want squishy things to freeze and frozen things to flow again without changing temperature,” she says. “To be able to control a material, you have to understand fundamentally how it works, and here we’re getting at a particular aspect of the structure of a material that controls whether it’s squishy or stiff.”

The researchers used programmed DNA molecules in which sequences of the four DNA bases — adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine — are designed to form junctions with a controlled valence.

“Proteins, like those that make up the cellular skeleton, aren’t so easy

Star trackers: Deborah Fygenson and Omar Saleh

to control. Biology knows how, but we don’t,” says Fygenson. “But we do know how to control a DNA system, and that control allowed us to very directly test the theories.

“It may be that there are lots of materials in our bodies that use this kind of control,” Fygenson adds. “But we don’t have the ability to go in and observe and say, ‘Look, there’s a valence-changing biological network making that happen.’ Instead, the DNA system allows us to create a valence-changing network and play with it to see what it can do.”

Apart from better understanding of biological networks, the researchers think their findings could be useful in technological development. “There is a smart-material application here,” Saleh explains.

“For example, this principle could be used to create a material that senses changes in humidity or blood levels or salinity, and in response actuates a function, because it switches from stiff to floppy or vice versa.”

“Imagine,” Fygenson adds, “a squishy material that when you shine one color of light on it, it becomes completely rigid, but when you shine a different color of light, it flows again. These are the kinds of games we can start playing now that we have this more fundamental understanding.

Once you know what you have to change to get the desired effect, you can change it on purpose.”

Saleh notes, “Here, we synthesized a system of one valence, and then synthesized another system with a different valence. Now we’d like to see if we can take one system and flip its valence back and forth between two values. With that ability, you could think of the material acting as a sensor.”

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31 Spring 2019

PAVING THE WAY FOR GRAPHENE T O

E N T E R

MAI NST RE A M E L ECT RONICS Kaustav Banerjee’s lab develops an innovative synthesis process, overcoming a stubborn obstacle to wide-scale deployment of graphene in the semiconductor industry

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ver since graphene, the flexible, twodimensional form of graphite (think of a 1-atom-thick sheet of pencil lead), was discovered in 2004, researchers around the world have been working to develop commercially scalable applications for this incredibly high-performance material.

Graphene is 100 to 300 times stronger than steel and has a maximum electrical current density orders of magnitude greater than that of copper, making it the strongest, thinnest, and, by far, the most reliable electrically conductive material in the world.

This is why it is an extremely promising material for interconnects, the fundamental components that connect billions of transistors on microchips in computers and other electronic devices in the modern world.

For over two decades, interconnects have been made of copper, but that metal encounters fundamental physical limitations as electrical components that incorporate it shrink to the nanoscale. “As you reduce the dimensions of copper wires, their resistivity shoots up,” says Kaustav Banerjee, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC Santa Barbara’s College of Engineering. “Resistivity is a material property that is not supposed to change, but at the

nanoscale, all properties change.”

As the resistivity increases, copper wires generate more heat, reducing their currentcarrying capacity. It’s a problem that poses a fundamental threat to the $500 billion semiconductor industry. Graphene has the potential to solve that and other issues, but a major obstacle is designing graphene microcomponents that can be manufactured onchip on a large scale in a commercial foundry.

“Whatever the component, be it inductors, interconnects, antennas, or anything else you want to do with graphene, industry will move forward with it only if you find a way to synthesize graphene directly onto silicon wafers,” Banerjee says. He explains that all the manufacturing processes related to the transistors, which are made first, are referred to as the ‘front end.’ To synthesize something at the back-end, that is, after the transistors are fabricated, you face a tight thermal budget, such that you cannot exceed a temperature of about 500 degrees Celsius.

If the silicon wafer gets too hot during the back-end processes employed to fabricate the interconnects, the other elements that are already on the chip may get damaged, or some impurities may start diffusing, changing the characteristics of the transistors.”

Now, after a decade-long quest to achieve graphene interconnects, Banerjee’s lab has developed a method to implement high-conductivity nanometer-scale doped multilayer graphene (DMG) interconnects that are compatible with high-volume manufacturing of integrated circuits. A paper describing the novel process was selected as one of the top papers from more than 230 accepted for oral presentations at the 2018 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), and was one of only two papers included in the first annual “IEDM Highlights” section of the December 2018 issue of the journal Nature Electronics.

Banerjee first proposed the idea of using doped multi-layer graphene at the IEDM conference in 2008 and has been working on developing pieces of it ever since. In February 2017, he led the experimental realization of the idea by Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) of multilayer graphene at a high temperature, subsequently transferring it to a silicon chip, and then patterning the multilayer graphene, followed by doping. Electrical characterization of the conductivity of DMG interconnects down to a width of 20 nanometers established the efficacy of the idea that had been proposed in 2008. However, the 32

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WE OPTIMIZED THE NICKEL THICKNESS AND OTHER PROCESS PARAMETERS TO OBTAIN PRECISELY THE NUMBER OF GRAPHENE LAYERS WE WANT.

”

process was not “CMOS-compatible” (the standard industrial-scale process for making integrated circuits), since the temperature of CVD processes far exceed the thermal budget of back-end processes.

To overcome this bottleneck, Banerjee’s team developed a unique pressure-assisted solid-phase diffusion method for directly synthesizing a large area of high-quality multilayer graphene on a typical dielectric substrate used in the back-end CMOS process. Solid-phase diffusion, which is well known in the field of metallurgy and is often used to form alloys, essentially involves applying pressure and temperature to two different materials that are in close contact so that they diffuse into each other.

Banerjee’s group employed the technique in a novel way. They began by depositing solid-phase carbon in the form of graphite powder onto a deposited layer of nickel metal of optimized thickness, then applied heat (300 degrees Celsius) and nominal pressure to the graphite powder to help break down the graphite. The high diffusivity of carbon in nickel allows it to pass rapidly through the metal film.

How much carbon flows through the nickel depends on its thickness and the number of grains in it. Deposited nickel is not a single-crystal metal, but rather a polycrystalline metal, meaning that it has areas where two single-crystalline regions meet each other without being perfectly aligned. These areas are called grain boundaries, and external particles — in this case, the carbon atoms — easily diffuse through them. The carbon atoms then recombine on the other surface of the nickel closer to the dielectric substrate, forming multiple graphene layers.

Banerjee’s group is able to control the process conditions to produce graphene of optimal thickness. “For interconnect applications, we know how many layers of graphene are needed,” said Junkai Jiang, a PhD candidate in Banerjee’s lab and the lead author of the 2018 IEDM paper. “So we optimized the nickel thickness and other process parameters to obtain precisely the number of graphene layers we want at the dielectric surface.

Subsequently, we simply remove the nickel by etching so that what’s left is only very high-quality graphene — virtually the

same quality as graphene grown by CVD at very high temperatures.

Because our process involves relatively low temperatures that pose no threat to the other fabricated elements on the chip, we can make the interconnects right on top of them.”

UCSB has filed a provisional patent on the process, which overcomes the obstacles that, until now, have prevented graphene from replacing copper. “Overall,” reads the patent application, graphene interconnects help to “create faster, smaller, lighter, more flexible, more reliable, and more cost-effective integrated circuits.”

Banerjee is currently in talks with industry partners interested in potentially licensing this CMOS-compatible graphene synthesis technology, which could pave the way for what would be the first 2D material to enter the mainstream semiconductor industry.

According to Intel’s Tahir Ghani, Senior Fellow of Technology Development and Director of the firm’s Pathfinding Group in Hillsboro, Oregon, “Doped multilayer graphene films appear to be a promising contender to replace copper interconnect, which is plagued by dramatic resistance increase at aggressively scaled wire dimensions.

The innovation in low-temperature growth of high-quality graphene films by Professor Banerjee and his team at UCSB is a critical first step to enable successful integration of graphene interconnects into existing CMOS transistor technology. The remaining work involving graphene interconnects includes further investigation of its ultimate scalability and contact resistance.”

Support for this research has come from various sources over the years, including the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Semiconductor Research Corporation, and currently, the U.S. Army Research Office, and the University of California Research Initiatives.

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GRAPHENE INTERCONNECTS HELP TO CREATE FASTER, SMALLER, LIGHTER, MORE FLEXIBLE, MORE RELIABLE, AND MORE COST-EFFECTIVE INTEGRATED CIRCUITS.

”

Kaustav Banerjee

33 Spring 2019

Let’s Move the Legacy Forward!

From humble beginnings as a local teachers’ college, UC Santa Barbara has risen to No. 5 among the nation’s public universities, according to the 2019 U.S. News & World Report rankings.

This tremendous achievement took vision. It took commitment. It took support on many fronts. Most of all, it took strong financial partnerships with Gaucho alumni and friends of UCSB. Our past is history. Now, it’s time to claim our shared future together. It takes you!

Please join us. Only with you can we attract and retain the best faculty and support progress by delivering the best graduates in engineering and the sciences.

In addition to having established 16 endowed chairs at UCSB, Chemical Engineering Department co-founder Duncan Mellichamp and his wife, Suzanne, became members of UCSB’s Legacy Circle in 2000 by including the university in their estate plans.

Says Duncan, “UC Santa Barbara is the place to invest our resources, because its programs yield such great intellectual returns.”

To learn more about legacy giving and other giving opportunities for the College of Engineering and the Division of Math, Life and Physical Sciences, contact Roxanne Morganstern at: 805-893-5075 or roxanne.morganstern@ucsb.edu.

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